Aspire, a provider of an all-in-one finance operating system (OS) for businesses in Southeast Asia, has closed a US$100 million oversubscribed Series C round co-led by Lightspeed Ventures and Sequoia Capital SEA.

Paypal Ventures, Tencent, LGT Capital Partners and existing backers also co-invested.

Aspire plans to use the funding to enhance its product offering, expand its regional presence, and add more talent across Southeast Asia.

Established in 2018, Aspire offers businesses a unified suite of financial services, including international payments, corporate cards, and payable and receivable management accessible via a single, user-friendly account.

Andrea Baronchelli, Aspire Co-Founder and CEO, said: “From delivering real-time financial data, fast and transparent cross-border payments to empowering business teams with world-class spend management capabilities to move fast and move right, we look forward to empowering every modern business, big or small, with the right financial tools to realise their full potential.”

Also Read: Aspire lands US$158M Series B to scale its ‘all-in-one finance OS’ for SMEs across SEA

Aspire is the all-in-one finance operating system for new-age businesses. The company claims it helps SMEs save time and money with multi-currency accounts and cards, expense management, payable management, and receivable management solutions – all in one account.

It said it recently tripled its annualised total payment volumes to US$12 billion from over 15,000 businesses across the region.

Headquartered in Singapore, Aspire has over 400 employees across four countries.

In September 2021, Aspire closed an oversubscribed US$158 million Series B fundraise led by an undisclosed global growth equity firm. Two years earlier, the firm secured US$32.5 million in a Series A round of financing led by Mass-Mutual Ventures Southeast Asia, with participation from Arc Labs and Y Combinator, Hummingbird Ventures, and Picus Capital. 

This was preceded by a US$9 million seed investment from Insignia Ventures Partners, Mark 2 Capital, and Hummingbird.

Aspire is a graduate of Y Combinator Winter 2018.

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Southeast Asian consumer fintech platform Fave today announced that Founder & CEO Joel Neoh is set to depart the company by early March 2023.

Following his departure, Co-Founder Yeoh Chen Chow will continue to lead the business together with Avantika Jain, General Manager in Singapore; Aik Kuang Heng, Fave’s newly appointed General Manager in Malaysia; alongside local leadership teams in Indonesia and India.

“I have had the privilege of a lifetime to work with some of the best talents in Southeast Asia to build Fave into a household brand name – today, one out of every three Singaporeans, and millions of consumers across Malaysia, Indonesia and India use Fave on a daily basis for payments and rewards. With the strong leadership and culture we have built, I am confident in the company’s continued growth in the years to come. As I leave Fave, I look forward to further contributing to Southeast Asia’s technology ecosystem, paying it forward by helping other fellow entrepreneurs grow in their startup journeys,” Neoh said in a statement.

Also Read: Fave acquired by Pine Labs for US$45M, to expand its consumer payments app to India

Fave’s products have evolved from offering deals to QR payments and loyalty programmes on both the Fave app and other major banks and digital wallets.

Fave fully acquired e-commerce company Groupon in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia back in 2017.

It was eventually acquired by Pine Labs for US$45 million in 2021.

The company said that by the end of 2022, it had achieved its all-time highest volumes of transactions, reflecting the company’s growing popularity and market share.

“The data shows a staggering 40 per cent quarter-on-quarter growth and trajectory is well set for 2023. The company will be rolling out more collaborations with key banks and financial institutions across the markets; as well as targeting to enter the flexible payment processing space for online merchants in Q2,” it said.

Also Read: Fave raises funding from Pine Labs to expand cashless payment solutions to SMEs

Neoh was one of the founders of Groupon in Malaysia in 2011, where he later managed Groupon Asia Pacific’s US$2 billion business with over 2,500 employees. Prior to that, in 2009, he co-founded Says.com, a digital media platform that merged with Rev Asia and was acquired by media conglomerate Media Prima.

He continues to remain plugged into Southeast Asia’s digital and technology ecosystem as an investor in over 25 startups, through holding mentorship and advisory roles in Endeavour Malaysia, XA Network, Sunway University, as a limited partner in 500 Southeast Asia III, Better Bite Ventures, and as an investor in Nasdaq-listed Prenetics, among others.

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Image Credit: Fave

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There are no simple tools in the market to tap into the value of unstructured data (images, videos, audio, and text data) easily.

“Building in-house AI solutions requires a tremendous investment of time and money and the intrinsic transformation of the team culture,” says Ping-Lin Chang. “Only Big Techs have such a luxury. This is where Instill AI comes into the picture.”

Instill AI provides no-code/low-code tools to convert unstructured data into meaningful data representations. Users can integrate its service into their data stack, tap into the wealth of their unstructured data, and benefit from AI in a snap.

The startup was founded in 2020 by Ping-Lin Chang and Xiaofei Du. Chang (CEO) holds a PhD in Robotic Vision from Imperial College London with a research focus on Visual Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping and Machine Learning for Augmented Reality in image-guided surgery. Meanwhile, Du holds a PhD in Medical Physics from University College London with a research focus on Surgical Vision and Medical Image Analysis with Machine Learning.

Last August, Taiwan-incorporated Instill AI launched its open-source project Versatile Data Pipeline (VDP). According to Chang, VDP is the future for unstructured data infrastructure, where developers won’t need to build their own data connectors, high-maintenance model serving platform, or data pipeline automation tool.

Also Read: Will AI replace humans in customer service?

“Our mission is to make VDP the single point of unstructured data integration to streamline the end-to-end unstructured data processing pipeline. VDP can extract unstructured data from pre-built data sources such as cloud/on-prem storage or IoT devices and transform it into analysable or meaningful data representations by AI models imported from various ML platforms. It can also load the transformed data into warehouses, applications, or other destinations,” Chang explains.

VDP currently supports popular AI tasks, including image classification, object detection, keypoint detection, optical character recognition and instance segmentation. More AI tasks, such as text generation and text-to-image, will soon be released.

“Our ultimate goal with VDP is to streamline the end-to-end unstructured data flow, with the transform component being able to import AI models from different sources flexibly,” Chang states.

Chang claims that Instill AI’s solution can be modularised into working components to benefit a broader spectrum of AI tasks and industry sectors.

“To be more specific, our no-/low-code unstructured data pipeline solution can significantly save development resources to harness the latest AI technology for AI-first application companies (who build their core business based on AI features but do not want to allocate too much budget to build their unstructured data pipeline) and AI-empowered companies (who want to extract business intelligence from their massive unstructured data but don’t want to allocate too much budget to build their unstructured data pipeline) — no matter if they are AI-capable or non-AI capable,” he elaborates.

Currently, Instill AI serves customers in the fields of drones, service robots, cloud security cameras, manufacturing, AI content production, and so on. The company will release VDP under the open-source Apache licence 2.0 to benefit a broader community.

In the meantime, Instill AI offers Instill Cloud, a fully managed cloud service of VDP. The product will be launched early this year. The goal is to serve the community members who want to explore, process or analyse their unstructured data without worrying about the infrastructure maintenance themselves.

Funding and plans

Instill AI recently raised a US$3.6 million seed round of investment from investors such as RTP Global, Lunar Ventures, and Hive Ventures. It will use the money to double the team size by the end of 2023 to build the open-source infrastructure for unstructured data.

It will also continue to improve the user experience for each AI and Data practitioner who works on unstructured data or builds AI-first applications. “We will release a new user dashboard for monitoring, logging and auditing, a new component for logic operators to flexibly manipulate the dataflow, a new drag-and-drop UI to assemble components into pipelines easily, and more data connectors for unstructured data,” Chang explains.

Also Read: Preparing for the AI revolution: Ensuring a positive outcome for humans

The company is also keen to make the model import and deployment more user-friendly. Many new AI tasks will be added, including tasks for Generative AI. To unleash the full power of VDP, model training and evaluation features are planned in the 2023 roadmap.

The market size and trends

According to Precedence Research, the estimated global AI market size was US$87.04 billion in 2021, and it is expected to hit US$1.6 trillion by 2030, with a registered CAGR of 38.1 per cent from 2022 to 2030.

A MarketsandMarkets report pegs the global big data market revenue to be worth US$162.6 billion in 2021, which is poised to reach US$273.4 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 11 per cent from 2021 to 2026.

The modern data stack for unstructured data in the AI and Data market is valued at around US$87.04 billion and $162.6 billion, respectively, in 2021.

Chang observes primarily two trends in the AI industry.

1) No-/low-code AI solution: no-code for the non-tech savvy people to benefit from AI without coding and low-code for the developers to integrate with the existing stack easily.

2) Open platform: MLOps tools have been prosperously developed, particularly for the current best practice of Software 2.0 and data-centric AI. Considering the complexity of the MLOps cycle, it is challenging to build the components of an AI system all from scratch. Instead, people would prefer AI tools/services with vendor-agnostic and open frameworks that ensure easy integrations into the existing tech stack.

The advent of Generative AI such as ChatGPT, DALL-E and Midjourney has shown the power to automate content creation. It is just the beginning. More and more AI tools will emerge to take advantage of the rapid development of technology to find and solve new use cases.

“The AI industry is experiencing a shift from vertical AI applications/products to horizontal AI infrastructure. Machine learning and AI should be as easy to access as other off-the-shelf cloud services in the software industry today. With AI being the infrastructure that transforms every aspect of our lives, ‘AI-first’ will become the default norm,” concludes Chang.

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Moonfare, a global digital private equity (PE) investment platform with Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore and Hong Kong, has raised US$15 million in a Series C extension round.

The investment came from 7 Global Capita, a cross-border VC firm investing in capital-efficient internet and consumer technology companies with market-leading potential.

This capital brings Moonfare’s total Series C round to over US$130 million. The startup earlier raised funding from Insight Partners, Vitruvian Partners and Swiss private bank Bordier & Cie.

Moonfare will use the new capital to fuel its growth plans.

Moonfare CEO and Founder Steffen Pauls said: “Individual investors and their advisors are increasingly seeking refuge in private equity, especially in current volatile public markets. We aim to meet this demand by giving an even broader range of like-minded investors access to our curated low-minimum private market funds.”

“We will offer new products, expand into new markets and strengthen our senior management team with seasoned private equity experts. We are well equipped to meet our growth plans for this year,” he added.

Moonfare provides individual investors and advisors with access to curated PE investment opportunities. With a digital onboarding process and asset management platform, Moonfare allows investors to register and invest in companies.

Also Read: How SMUA’s 12-day certificate programme equips you to detect potential FTX-like scams in future

To date, the startup claims to have offered more than 69 private market funds from top general partners worldwide, such as KKR, Carlyle, Permira, and EQT, with an emphasis on private equity buyouts, venture, growth and real asset categories like infrastructure.

Moonfare’s investment team conducts ground-up due diligence on all funds. Fewer than 5 per cent of available funds pass this process and make it onto its platform. It has over 3,00 clients who have invested more than €2 (US$2.13) billion on its platform.

The company increased its assets under management by almost 60 per cent to over US$2.3 billion in the last calendar year. The number of Moonfare investors grew by 40 per cent to 3,393, and the community of registered users more than doubled to over 48,000 in this period.

It recently increased the funds offered on its platform from 40 to 69 and entered into two new asset classes, Impact and Philanthropy.

Headquartered in Berlin, Moonfare operates in 25 countries across Europe, Asia, and America and has offices in New York, Hong Kong, London, Zürich, Singapore, Paris and Luxembourg.

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There are three billion gamers globally, with roughly half of them in the Asia-Pacific region. Southeast Asia alone boasts a US$5 billion video game market with 270 million gamers. With rising technological literacy, affordable smartphones, a young population, and improving internet infrastructure in the region, there is ample room for growth still.

Contrary to traditional gender stereotypes, recent data shows that video games are not only for boys. Women today already make up around 45 per cent of gamers in Asia, and the number is fast growing. India, Indonesia, and Malaysia are three of the top markets in APAC for female gamers playing on mobile, with other markets catching up neck-to-neck.

As we look for new growth engines in 2023, female gamers will play a significant role if businesses are equipped with the right insights to penetrate this new group of customers. In addition, the fast growth of mobile gaming also sparks a promising outlook.

Know your customers and give them what they want

Knowing your customers is at the core of any gaming business, which needs to tap into the emerging trends and reflect the diversity of their gamers’ profiles.

A recent report from Niko Partners found that the number of female gamers in Asia is growing at a rate of 7.6 per cent year-on-year, against five per cent for male gamers. Evidence from the US, however, suggests that only 30 per cent or fewer mobile games are believed to be designed for women, with 44 per cent of the top games on Google Play featuring male characters.

Also Read: 7 trends changing the reality of immersive gaming

Clearly, there are unmet market needs for games tailored to female players and featuring female characters. Notably, while male gamers are typically driven by competition (61 per cent), challenge (58 per cent) and learning new skills (58 per cent), female gamers are more likely to cite relaxation (47 per cent), fun and entertainment (45 per cent) and escapism (44 per cent) as reasons for gaming.

Therefore, brands looking to make the most of this growing demographic should gain a female perspective and speak directly to these needs to gain a competitive edge.

Offer more mobile-friendly games

Tapping into the growing market of female gamers also means a focus on the mobile experience.

Statistics show that 94 per cent of female gamers in the world’s top 10 games markets use mobile as their primary gaming platform, and mobile is the preferred choice in every major market in Asia. What’s more, 84 per cent of female gamers are willing to make in-game purchases.

Last year, they spent more than US$20 billion via in-app purchases to enhance their gaming experience. Focusing on mobile-friendly gaming design will largely help businesses stay close to their female users.

The growth of mobile gaming stretches across gender lines and connects more gamers from across the globe – and businesses are moving fast to ride on this momentum. Advances in hardware and big-name franchises, such as Mobile Legends and PUBG, have all widened the landscape of smartphone experiences. Backed by 5G technology and improved internet infrastructure, gamers are now able to unlock the connected and flexible gameplay experience on the go.

The rise of portable gaming has also provided a conducive environment for more people to join the games in a casual way. In 2020, a survey found that 23 per cent of gamers in Singapore are ‘time fillers’ who would play a quick round of mobile games while commuting or waiting. In 2021, the number of installations of such casual games grew even further by 49 per cent.

Unlike PC games which require a complete home setup, mobile games give commuters the flexibility to play wherever and whenever they want – and this is a trend that is expected to grow in coming years as travel resumes. For game developers, it is worth looking into more idle tap games and the like, which would give people a quick escape from the stress of life, turning boring situations into fun ones.

Find the right balance between safety and seamlessness

On the back end, security remains a priority as it safeguards gamers’ trust towards any gaming merchants who aspire to grow in the long run.

Also Read: How e-sports is evolving with blockchain gaming

A recent report shows that password-stealing malware cybercriminals have set their sights on gamers – 185,689 passwords were stolen from 2,179 devices in seven months of last year. As games gain popularity, so does the security threat.

Preventing security risks not only requires good user habits but a robust security system enhanced continually. By setting up a dedicated security team and leaning on trusted payment partners like PayPal, gaming merchants can stay vigilant in monitoring suspicious activity, while gamers can rest easy knowing their data and payment details are in good hands.

Gaming merchants, we work with tell us that gamers tend to be impatient, so a great payment experience should never interfere with the gaming flow. For example, gamers value one-click payments, which allow them to save their information and check out quickly. A smooth website layout with intuitive clicks and a crease-free in-app purchasing process with minimal waiting time are game-changers worth investing in.

Game on and upwards in the year ahead

There is global consensus that the year ahead will be challenging, but emerging trends have suggested bright spots for gaming businesses. Creating more inclusive and mobile-friendly experiences is one way to seize the opportunity.

There is no doubt that inventive game design and brilliant code are essential to success, but the real end game is a winning customer experience from start to finish. With a payment partner that offers built-in security solutions, frictionless check-out, and cross-border capabilities, gaming merchants can focus on what truly matters for their business and audience – elevating and enhancing the gameplay.

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The startup ecosystem does not exist in a silo. By collaborating with various parties, including corporations in the banking sector, startups can tackle some of the most pressing challenges they face today.

According to Amanda Murphy, Head of Commercial Banking, South and Southeast Asia, HSBC, there are a number of challenges that startups face, especially as they are aiming to scale: From how to recruit suitable talents to managing the business side of things.

“They got a great product or a great service. So how do they scale that up? How do they get it available to many people? How do they access markets beyond their home market?” Murphy asks the big questions for founders to consider. “How do they do their banking, and what technology to use?”

These challenges often led to the biggest question of them all: How to secure the funding that can help them reach these goals. Murphy highlights that while many startups might start out by borrowing money from “the bank of Mum and Dad”, they need to expand their connections and tap other resources as they scale –including banks.

“That’s where we’ve been very supportive of startups, both here in Singapore and more broadly across the region. I think that’s where we have a role to play as corporations, by working with small companies who have an idea for a new product and how we can help them get that to market,” she stresses.

Also Read: Bizbaz raises US$4M in seed funding led by HSBC AM to accelerate product development

In this interview with e27, Murphy speaks about how the organisation works together with startups, the milestones that they have made, and what they intend to achieve in 2023. The following is an edited excerpt of the interview:

What is your philosophy in working with startups?

Our philosophy in working with startups is to speak their language.

We have a team of people who are specially trained to deal with startups because there are different questions that you are going to ask them. They do not have a 20-year history to share. Sometimes there is also a bit more informality [in communicating with startups] as we are seeing younger people come through the startup companies. So it is about how we match that as well.

Can you explain to me the existing support that is HSBC currently giving to startups?

We got a dedicated fund for Southeast Asia which is half a billion dollars available for startups. Because what we have found is that there are lots of opportunities in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. We got a very strong balance sheet both here and in another country, so we are utilising that for the benefit of startups.

We’ve got a US$200 million tech fund here in Singapore, focused on tech companies that are being established here in Singapore. That is to help those fast-growing companies expand through Singapore and into other parts of Southeast Asia and beyond.

We also got a tech fund in India for US$250 million dollars, and we got a tech fund in Australia as well.

We are just trying to say to those companies in that space that we are open here to support you. We also have companies who are starting up today and want smooth seamless, disruption-free banking. According to the market, we have the best products in that space. Whether it is our trade services products or cash management products, our transaction banking franchise is very, very strong. We process 1.1 million payments every day with 95 per cent of those through digitally.

Also Read: Singapore’s FX trading platform Spark Systems raises US$15M from HSBC, Goldman Sachs, others

From a trade perspective, we are the world’s largest bank by some distance, and we would finance a million dollars worth of trade every minute.

One of the key areas that we have been focusing on for the last number of years is a heavy investment in digital solutions. So we have spent US$2 billion in investment to improve our digital capabilities … that means we can co-create with startups, take our products, and make them work for you in a bespoke manner for each individual company.

The other thing that we have is an international footprint. Bringing startups to other parts of the world, and bringing other parts of the world to startups, is really important. We know Asia very well; we have been here for over 150 years.

What are the criteria for the startups that you are looking for?

There are no standard criteria. We look at each one on an individual basis. What we would like to see is the potential size of the market. Who are the people that are in it? Who are the people behind the project or the initiative? Do they have experience or knowledge expertise in that space? Will they be able to deliver? What is the business plan look like?

This is not a one-size-fits-all.

Is there any particular sector that you are looking at?

We do look at a lot of sectors. But in recent times, we have been quite focused on the new economy, thinking about these businesses that are established in that space and how we can continue to adapt our policies and our products for that.

Some key areas that we are watching are agri-foods, the use of tech in agriculture is a very fast-growing area. Health tech, you can imagine how COVID-19 has accelerated that. We are seeing some really interesting technological advances in there, whether it’s the use of AI to help solve patients’ queries or drug development.

Then the final one–there has been quite an explosion over recent years–is green tech. Everything from electric vehicles, charging points, packaging, virtual communication … all of those types of initiatives. So, we are seeing quite a bit of that and bouncing back to some of the more traditional industries such as transport, travel, and food. We saw them quieten down in certain areas through COVID-19 times, but they are bouncing back, and the recent announcements of China opening up have just added to that as well.

Also Read: Funding Societies gets US$50M credit facility from HSBC

What are the biggest milestones that you have made with these funds?

It centres on the partnerships that we have established. We partner with a number of tech firms as an organisation. We are ideating, generating new solutions, and thinking about how we evolve. We have used our funds to the benefit of some of the companies here.

If I look at some of the examples that I’m able to share with you, Funding Society … we have lent them US$50 million. They have gotten a credit facility in place, and they’re operating across Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Also, Next Gen Foods. We have helped with some sustainable finance lending for them.

In India, in particular, we have opened bank accounts for over 1,000 new startups. We have also made a partnership with Zoho Books, enabling our customers to access that as well.

So, kind of moving beyond banking, bringing additional value-added services for our clients as well.

What is the big plan for these funds for this year?

The plan is to be very vocal about being open to supporting businesses here in Singapore and beyond. We support businesses through a mixture of funding and lending, but also through other bank products, services, and expertise. Also through the connections with each other.

We’re very bullish on the region; we think there’s a huge amount of opportunity. What we describe as the 3Ds–digitalization, dynamism, and demographics–if you think about Southeast Asia, the digital economy is worth in excess of US$200 billion and it is growing so fast, over 20 per cent every year.

On top of that, you have a very strong growing population, a young population that is growing at a median age is about 30.

Also Read: CXA Group raises bridge round of funding from Thai HR solutions provider Humanica, HSBC Life

Then you add to that the dynamism, and that is very apparent here in Singapore.

Those three things will really make a difference in this region. So we are very excited about what we can do. In a recent survey that we did of customers or non-customers, over 90 per cent said they expected to grow in this region. So, the business sentiment is very strong.

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Image Credit: HSBC

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Asa Ren, a DNA data company based in Indonesia, has closed a new US$8.15 million funding round co-led by Top Harvest Capital (US), Kejora Capital, and Marcy Venture Partners (US).

Northstar Ventures, Naya Capital, PT Diagnos Laboratorium Utama Tbk, and several prominent angel investors also joined.

The capital injection will allow it to deepen its digital capabilities, and develop clinical bioinformatics, an e-health passport, and a clinical-genomic database focused on non-communicable diseases.

In addition, Asa Ren also aims to add medical diagnoses and complete health data of the customers.

The Ministry of Health of Indonesia disclosed that more than 70 per cent of deaths in Indonesia are caused by preventable diseases that can be detected from their DNA (including diabetes, CAD, stroke, and cancer). However, only 17 per cent of the healthcare spending in the country is allocated to prevention.

Also Read: How SMUA’s 12-day certificate programme equips you to detect potential FTX-like scams in future

Asa Ren strives to solve this by providing wellness, nutrition and clinical bioinformatics data for Indonesians.

Founded by CEO Aloysius Liang, Asa Ren aims to accelerate drug discovery and personalised treatments for Southeast Asia’s healthcare industry by developing clinical-genomic databases from healthy and confirmed diagnostic populations.

Its solutions allow customers to understand and manage their healthcare data through their genetic profile, 360 phenotypes, and medical records for a more personalised healthcare experience.

Currently, Asa Ren provides a direct-to-consumer DNA test that offers more than 360 reports, including predisposed health risks, ancestry, and other reports for adults, young parents and children.

Asa Ren has signed service agreements with more than 47 prominent hospital and clinic partners and is expecting to grow its distribution footprint to more than 60 hospital and clinic partners by the end of 2023.

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In the first edition of its Workplace Learning Report, LinkedIn revealed that upskilling employees remains a priority for Learning & Development (L&D) executives in companies in Singapore.

This finding is followed by other focus areas: Creating a culture of learning, aligning learning programmes to business goals, and making learning more agile and measuring the success of learning.

In the report, Crystal Lim-Lange, CEO and Co-Founder at Forest Wolf, as one of the executives surveyed for the report, commented that “L&D is critical for staff engagement and retention.”

This statement is echoed by 98 per cent of organisations who stated that they feel concerned about employee retention. Seventy-seven per cent of the surveyed companies also said that they are using learning opportunities to improve employee retention.

The report also stated that L&D is seen as a “cross-functional effort” by 80 per cent of L&D professionals, who stated that their role has become increasingly cross-functional each year.

Also Read: What can local companies do in 2023 for workplace mental fitness?

In this matter, C-suite influence is also seen as continuing to surge, according to 86 per cent of Department Heads and 67 per cent of heads of HR/CHRO/CPO. “L&D pros are working more closely with company leadership to deploy upskilling or reskilling programmes this year than they were last year,” the report explains.

The Workplace Learning Report was published in conjunction with the launch of the LinkedIn Learning course.

The report surveyed learning leaders across Singapore and other Asia Pacific countries to understand how effective L&D programmes put people and skills at the centre of organisational success.

It is also published with the background of the recent layoffs that affect top tech companies in Singapore and Southeast Asia.

A NODEFLAIR report noted 13 media-recorded layoffs in Singapore in 2022.

“At least 1,270 tech jobs were retrenched from July to November 2022. Many of such layoffs were due to economic uncertainty and aggressive hiring during the tech boom amidst the pandemic,” the report stated.

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VFlowTech, a vanadium-based redox flow (VRF) battery company in Singapore, has announced a US$10 million Series A funding round led by Japanese VC firm Real Tech Holdings.

Returning investors, including SEEDS Capital, Wavemaker Partners, and Sing Fuels, joined the round. Michael Gryseels (Chairman of VFlowTech), İnci Holding (Turkey), Pappas Capital (US) and Carbon Zero Venture Capital (Singapore) also participated. 

VFlowTech will use the funds to set up a 200MWh production line capacity and scale up the manufacturing of its 250 kWh modular vanadium-based long-duration energy storage solutions. 

Also Read: VFlow’s recyclable energy solution with an expected lifespan of 25 yrs seeks to replace Li-Ion batteries

A portion of the new capital will be used to expand into Turkey, the US, Japan and India. It will also intensify its R&D efforts to improve its technology, increase system capacity, and explore new markets. VFlowTech will also look to strengthen the management team in the next year.

V-Flow was established in 2018 by Dr Avishek Kumar (CEO) and Dr Arjun Bhattarai (CTO), in collaboration with Entrepreneur First, with generous support from SG Innovate and the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

It claims to develop the cheapest and most efficient modular VRF batteries, which deliver long-lasting, reliable energy storage solutions for renewable integration at an affordable price. VRF battery works through the continuous reduction and oxidation reaction between the vanadium redox couples with no detrimental issues and with the cross-mixing of the redox couples. Due to this setup, the electrolyte has no degradation and the battery provides stable performance over 20 years.

V-Flow’s storage solution has an expected life span of 25 years and is safe and environmentally friendly battery technology.

To date, VFlowTech has commercially deployed 30 kWh and 100 kWh units for residential applications and has completed the production of its MWh system for large-scale microgrid applications. 

Its renewable energy storage solutions have already been deployed to meet energy needs in various parts of the world through joint partnerships in Africa and Southeast Asia, with two batteries set to be deployed in Singapore’s Pulau Ubin this year. 

With a team of 60 people, the firm is also researching the expansion of flow batteries for terminal usage and running a two-year trial to explore scaling flow batteries using storage tank infrastructure.

“Advancements in renewable energy storage solutions will drive the acceleration of cleantech and help other industries come one step closer to meeting their sustainability goals. We already see increased demand for our batteries in creating infrastructure for electric vehicle (EV) charging, peak shifting of renewables, grid services, gated communities, telecom towers, and round-the-clock renewable energy integration,” said CEO Kumar.

Also Read: ‘Singapore isn’t ready for mass adoption of EVs yet; hybrid may be better for the present’

“Grid-level energy storage is critical in the transition to sustainable energy and is among our chief focus areas. VFlowTech is accelerating the transition to renewable energy while offering a solution to the current bottleneck in efficiency with its technology. With the signing of our binding framework agreement, we will also have the opportunity to popularise this technology in the Turkish market,” said Zeki Şafak Ozan, CEO and Board Member of İnci Holding.

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The IMD World Digital Competitiveness study revealed that Singapore was ranked fourth in the world and first in Asia for digital competitiveness in government practices, business models, and society.

Although the government has made tremendous progress in its digital transformation journey, some crucial areas, such as the adoption of Conversational AI (CAI), still haven’t reached their full potential.

While the government is already using Conversational AI solutions to deliver better citizen services, e.g. the Inland Revenue Authority deployment of ‘Ask Jamie’ as their virtual assistant, there is a need to accelerate this adoption across different departments to meet the ever-increasing citizen demand for convenience and ease.

Why is Conversational AI needed in the public sector?

The number of citizens that government agencies serve can range from hundreds to potentially millions. Handling complaints/enquiries individually are time-consuming and difficult. Moreover, the public tends to inquire about issues that revolve around a common topic, usually with the same questions being asked.

Without Conversational AI technology to handle such common queries, public servants will be hard-pressed to address only urgent citizen issues while spending more resources and manual intervention.

A good example of what Generative AI and NLP bring is evident in public health crises like COVID-19. During such situations, it can be challenging to harmonise and disseminate crucial information correctly and timely across different government portals. There is the possibility of providing outdated or incorrect information to the public, which can lead to public discontentment. 

Also Read: Preparing for the AI revolution: Ensuring a positive outcome for humans

This is where automation through Conversational AI technologies such as chat and voice AI agents steps in. With a small number of inquiries usually constituting the bulk of requests, the use of advanced bots, such as Dynamic AI agents, can boost productivity and efficiency, improving the overall process of citizen services by allowing civil servants to focus on more pressing issues. 

How can Conversational AI make citizen experiences personalised and convenient?

Conversational AI solutions can improve the efficiency of government services by automating repetitive tasks and processes. By using a standardised system for answering questions, such solutions can provide instant, consistent and accurate information to citizens, reducing the likelihood of errors or misunderstandings. 

Dynamic AI agents can also handle a myriad of tasks,  from providing citizens with the appropriate information to helping them schedule appointments with government agencies, and sending reminders for these appointments, simplifying a task that would otherwise be time-consuming.

Government employees will have more free time to focus on more complex and high-priority tasks, ultimately improving the overall efficiency of the institution. This can enhance the trust and confidence of citizens in their government, ultimately leading to a more effective and responsive public sector.

Conversational AI solutions can also be useful for interactions between different government agencies. Intragovernmental agencies can use it for different services and inquiries, such as — IT help desks, legal, HR, financial services, etc., more consistently and effectively. 

In addition, CAI also has the potential to greatly benefit and contribute to government services where such applications are commonly overlooked, such as taxation and social healthcare.

Taxation

Dynamic AI agents can be used in the field of taxation to assist taxpayers in filing their tax returns. By providing real-time feedback to taxpayers on the accuracy and completeness of their information, chatbots can prevent errors and ensure that tax returns are filed correctly, potentially reducing the number of rejected or delayed returns.

This can help make the process of filing taxes easier and more efficient, potentially saving taxpayers time and money.

Also Read: How technology is making our food safer

The automation of many of the tasks involved in tax filings, such as data entry and calculation, can also help reduce the workload on tax administrators, freeing them up to focus on more complex tasks. Overall, this improves the efficiency of the tax filing process and improves the user experience for taxpayers.

Social healthcare service

Conversational AI can also greatly benefit the field of social healthcare services. Just like in tax services, a Dynamic AI agent can be easily integrated into a hospital’s website or app, allowing patients to ask questions and receive answers about scheduling appointments, doctor’s availability, ordering medicines, reminders about their appointments and medication refills.

The automation of tasks involved in providing healthcare information, such as answering common questions or scheduling appointments, can help free up time for healthcare professionals to focus on providing quality care to patients, potentially reducing waiting times and improving the overall patient experience. 

A great example can be seen in India, where the Government of Maharashtra Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD) leveraged Conversational AI to extend reach to their beneficiaries. As a result,  in the last quarter alone, the department has successfully run over 4.2 million informational campaigns centred on the department’s key schemes around nutrition and the welfare of pregnant and lactating mothers, reaching out to over 590,000 users on these channels.

What does the future hold?

Conversational AI is providing an unprecedented opportunity to scale operations and automate tasks by bringing human-in-the-loop. With Generative AI, it is becoming far easier to scale complex conversations and does so in cost-effective ways.

As such solutions continue to evolve, they promise to help overcome an interaction barrier and bring in more simplified human-machine collaboration. In addition, future iterations will bolster accessibility by communicating with visual data interpretations. 

Conversational AI can also significantly impact modern governance with the right infrastructure, research, and development. Having said that, it’s important to highlight that it will contribute toward enhancing human employees’ performance rather than replacing it.

With the Singapore government increasing its adoption of these solutions, we can expect the nation to quickly rise through the ranks and lead the way in making the daily lives of its citizens easier through digitally delivered citizen services.

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