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Debunking 5 common misconceptions about product-market fit

As an entrepreneur or startup operator, navigating product-market fit (PMF) is crucial for any business’s success. PMF is the sweet spot where your product features, target customers, and business model come together seamlessly.

Rather than any specific performing metric, PMF is a composite signal for a company that, based on market response and conditions, the time is ripe to sell and scale operations around a specific product. Many startups fail due to a lack of PMF, which may stem from issues such as narrow market focus, insufficient R&D, or inexperience.

And while PMF is not the sole factor investors consider, it significantly influences their decisions during Series A and B funding rounds. Demonstrating PMF can improve a startup’s chances of securing investments.

To better understand this vital aspect of company building, we debunk some common misconceptions about PMF, explore its importance for long-term growth, and examine real-world examples from Southeast Asia.

Misconception: PMF solely depends on the product and market

Reality: Product-market fit isn’t the only fit that matters. Achieving PMF is a challenging journey that involves factors beyond the product and market, such as language, distribution channels, and operations. Understanding these factors can help refine your product and achieve better PMF.

Real-world example: Especially for fintechs, it’s important to know existing regulations and consumer sentiments around the status quo. The founding team behind the pioneering digital bank Tonik had to spend time working with local regulators to secure a license to launch in 2021. They also made it a point to find a language-market fit that would appeal to their target market.

Misconception: PMF is a one-time achievement

Reality: PMF is not a final destination but a continuous process that requires constant adaptation based on customer feedback and data. Embracing this dynamic journey can lead to long-term growth and success.

Real-world example: Instead of optimising for topline, GTV growth on their financing and ERRP SaaS business, Indonesian fintech for FMCG SMEs AwanTunai optimised their ability to manage risk and build up their data ops to unlock successive PMFs after their initial financing product, leading to the launch of their app-less ERP software and financing products for other stakeholders in the FMCG supply chain. This especially enabled the company to weather the impact of the pandemic on financing businesses and more recently, become a Top 50 APAC high-growth company.

Misconception: Sustaining growth is all about product features

Reality: Every product eventually reaches a plateau in user growth. To break through this ceiling, startups must revisit customer assumptions, optimise performance, and unlock new market segments.

At the heart of breaking through what is often called the “S-curve” of growth is the company having the ability to unlock value from the data it has. Already we are seeing today that the biggest companies today aren’t just great at selling, they are great at leveraging data to make what they’re selling matter.

Also Read: Achieving product-market fit: The ultimate guide to growth, strategy and positioning

Real-world example: From day one, auto retail platform Carro has been leveraging its ability to ingest data on customer transactions to improve the auto retail experience, from offering personalised financing and insurance to optimising pricing and ensuring the quality of their supply of used cars.

Misconception: Achieving PMF guarantees long-term growth

Reality: Long-term growth requires continuous product improvements, experimentation, and the ability to build viral products. PMF is a critical aspect of achieving this durability and sustainable growth, but not a guarantee.

Real-world example: Vietnam retail wealth management platform Finhay found PMF with their initial mutual fund investment product, but realised in order to unlock further growth, they needed to expand into other asset classes. This led to them launching several other products in the next few years, including savings accounts, stock trading, and gold investing.

Misconception: Scaling is independent of PMF

Reality: Scaling a business without a solid PMF can lead to wasted resources and customer churn. Establishing a paying customer base, ensuring your product can be sold by your sales team, and maintaining customer retention rates are essential steps in the scaling journey.

Real-world example: Indonesian startup Gojek, in its early years, successfully scaled by focusing on its paying customer base, expanding its services beyond ride-hailing, and maintaining low churn rates.

While there’s no single formula to find PMF, it is clear that having clarity on what this means for your startup is crucial for long-term, sustainable growth.

Instead of a single formula, what we have are many frameworks, mental models, and approaches born out of the experiences of entrepreneurs over the years. We distilled 20 of these frameworks and more insights into a Product-Market Fit playbook which is free to access here.

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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East Ventures, Trihill Capital invest in hyperlocal online F&B startup Uena

(L-R) Uena Co-Founders Roy Yohanes and Alvin Arief

UENA, a hyperlocal online F&B startup based in Indonesia, has raised an undisclosed amount in funding co-led by existing investor East Ventures and new investor Trihill Capital.

This new round, closed in Q1 2023, strengthens Uena’s balance sheet following the seed funding raised in September 2022.

The new capital will be used to continue expanding the locations and services to reach more users and customers.

“The majority of our orders come from repeat customers and their orders continue to increase from month to month. Even though we have only been operating for less than one year, the mature stores are already break-even and getting a healthy payback period. The new fund adds our confidence to continue capturing the great opportunity ahead,” said Alvin Arief, Co-Founder and CEO.

Also Read: Bootstrapped: How dating app Sirf Coffee takes on the likes of Tinders without raising VC money

Since launching in August 2022, Uena has opened seven kitchen locations in Jakarta and has served more than 300,000 portions. Customers can order Uena directly through its app or by contacting WhatsApp number. It does not rely on food delivery aggregators too much since more than 80 per cent of its orders come through direct channels.

Each of the kitchens only serves a hyperlocal radius of 1-1.5 km radius and handles delivery internally to minimise delivery cost and delivery time. A typical order will arrive in 15 minutes after a customer placed the order.

Uena sees the problem where the daily food segment in Indonesia is a US$90 billion market annually but almost entirely served by unorganized street-side vendors. This causes customer pain related to high fragmentation, especially in quality, reliability, and price. Uena aims to solve this problem by serving quality food at affordable prices through online delivery. It uses a very light cloud kitchen format and leverages the power of technology and economy of scale to increase quality while decreasing the price at the same time.

Uena is now gearing up for expansion and duplication in Jakarta. Each kitchen requires low capital, fast set-up, and flexibility to use a wide range of available spaces.

It will also continue to add more menus to increase customer repeat orders at multiple meal times each day and multiple days throughout the week.

Echelon Asia Summit 2023 brings together APAC’s leading startups, corporates, policymakers, industry leaders, and investors to Singapore this June 14-15. Learn more and get tickets here. Echelon also features the TOP100 stage, where startups can pitch to 5000+ delegates, among other benefits like connecting with investors, visibility through the platform, and other prizes. Join TOP100 here.

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Exploring the rise of finance-as-a-service in APAC

Southeast Asia and India’s first wave of fintechs was characterised by B2C products that provide consumers with easy access to financial services. While demographic and macro factors favoured fintech adoption, a large part of this was also driven by venture funding. Rewards and incentives, rather than the products alone, spurred end-user adoption.

Last year’s market correction became a forcing mechanism for fintechs to prove their long-term value. With tighter capital, fintechs and embedded finance companies are now forced to rely on a differentiated product or service to attract demand.

The necessity to differentiate has in turn created a new opportunity: Finance-as-a-service startups that abstract complexity at the infrastructure layer, enabling end-customer-facing companies to build better products and solutions faster than ever.

(Re)Building infrastructure

Instead of building for the last mile, finance-as-a-service startups provide the infrastructure needed for emerging companies to build an end-customer solution on top. By building the baseline tech stack, solving for regulatory compliance, and forming partnerships with banks, they help accelerate the pace of development of other fintechs and embedded finance startups.

For traditional banks, working with infrastructure companies can help them grow their digital distribution channels. As an example, M2P Fintech is partnering with traditional banks to offer an integrated tech stack for lending.

Finance-as-a-service does not just help new startups starting from scratch. Existing companies can leverage this to improve the quality of the tech stack or reduce the time for expanding into new product lines or geographies.

Also Read: Revolutionising fintech in Southeast Asia: AI and ML empower businesses with data

An embedded finance player expanding from Singapore to Indonesia will have to rebuild its own integrations and bank partnerships, a process which would take at least half a year without an infrastructure partner.

Finance-as-a-service

Source: Cathy Innovation

Banking-as-a-service

An end-to-end model that allows third parties to connect with the banks’ systems directly through APIs to build banking offerings on top of the providers’ regulated infrastructure. BaaS is different from Open Banking, which is the framework that makes BaaS possible by providing rules around how third parties can access financial data (i.e., BaaS is a subset of Open Banking).

Bank-connections-as-a-service 

Their APIs provide third-party access to financial data from banks. Use cases include enabling users to have a consolidated view of their finances across platforms or enabling bank transfers as a payment method on checkout forms.

Point solutions in as-a-service

Models that focus specifically on enabling one type of financial service, instead of the full banking proposition with bank accounts, cards, loans etc. Examples here include Marqeta, Card91, and FinBox for cards issuing-as-a-service, and Calyx and Finastra for lending-as-a-service. Point Solutions provide a focused product set for companies who do not necessarily want to become banks and can also help traditional banks extend their services digitally.

How they generate revenue

  • Interchange: BaaS companies primarily make revenue on the interchange split based on card usage, adopting a rev share model with partner banks.
  • Subscription/SaaS fees: Startups may also charge a subscription fee for platform usage. Some place a higher importance on this as a revenue stream.
  • Monthly per account/per customer fees: This is usually charged in addition to subscription fees to account for variable costs as a startup scale.
  • Credit/lending offerings: Interest rates, account fees etc., which will typically be a revenue share with banking partners.

The opportunity in APAC

In APAC, embedded finance is projected to grow at a CAGR of 24.4 per cent from 2022 to 2029, reaching a total revenue size of US$358 billion. The large and fast-growing market aside, a few underlying characteristics make finance-as-a-service a unique opportunity in the region

Real-Time Payment Systems (RTPS) at the forefront

RTPS is already prominent in countries such as India (UPI), Singapore (PayNow), and Thailand (PromptPay), with others like Indonesia (BIFast) catching up fast. While governments and bank consortiums have focused on the infrastructure, there is much more to do to wrap products around these rails.

Also Read: How voice AI is revolutionising the fintech scene

Emerging companies in the region can differentiate themselves from global brands by delivering products that capitalise on or help to enhance, RTPS. For example, by leveraging RTPS to facilitate instant pay-outs from platforms to freelancers, startups can help platforms circumvent the high costs of instant pay-outs in an automated manner.

Supporting, and not replacing, traditional banks

Many banks in the region operate on legacy core banking platforms with data siloes and APIs that are not suitable for the next generation. Instead of only partnering with banks, finance-as-a-service startups can make banks a lucrative revenue stream by providing them with modern infrastructure for digital offerings.

M2P Fintech recognised this and is expecting their lending infrastructure product to traditional companies to account for 25 per cent of revenue. Hyperface.io, a cards-issuing-focused fintech in India, is primarily helping banks improve their card programs.

In addition to being a revenue stream, this approach can help startups de-risk regulatory restrictions that protect traditional banks.

Constantly evolving local regulatory landscapes

In multiple countries (e.g., the introduction of the Account Aggregator framework in India, and consumer protection rules by OJK in Indonesia) means that companies need to put in substantial effort to stay up to date with compliance and regulatory changes.

For those that plan to scale regionally or globally, this becomes even harder to manage. Instead of managing regulatory complexities on their own, having the right partners will free up their capacity to focus on building products.

Looking for the next best thing rather than having brand loyalty

Case in point: the average number of cards per user in Singapore is close to 5, and a user in Malaysia owns an average of two e-wallets. Startups facing end customers want to spend most of their time on product and service differentiation, and thus have less time to focus on building out a reliable and secure infrastructure layer.

Regional plays over domestic-only play

The fact that many fintechs and embedded finance startups aspire to win in the APAC region, and not just in domestic markets, gives finance-as-a-service a unique opportunity. Aside from providing the required technology and partnerships, emerging companies that can support cross-border money movement or multi-currency accounts will stand out.

Despite the potential, the thesis will take time to play out in APAC

  • Building close to the metal is a long game that takes years.
  • The buy vs build question will continue to be top of mind for many startups. The largest traditional banks and embedded finance companies today have been around since the startup boom and have existing resources (e.g., finances, existing partnerships, and a talent brand) to tap on. In some markets, they can even buy their own bank (e.g., FinAccel’s acquisition of Bank Bisnis, BharatPe with Unity SFB). Given the nascency of financial infrastructure startups in the market today, it may just become a race on who can build faster.
  • Regulations and partnerships in the region are highly local. And with the region lacking an intragovernmental regulatory framework, this makes regional expansion for infrastructure startups themselves difficult to scale.
  • Finance-as-a-service startups work with a wide spectrum of partners and suppliers including card networks, sponsor banks, and other core APIs that they white label. This makes supply-side integrations extremely critical to longer-term profitability, and part of the unit economics of these businesses is the delicate balancing act across third parties. In addition, risks of regulations that limit the upside, such as interchange caps, could mean even tighter margins.

Parting thoughts

While challenging, the heterogeneity of the region and active regulatory landscape means that there will always be lots of complexity and complexity means opportunity. Those who survive need to be highly focused on what matters most to the companies they are selling to and maintain a moat from being commoditised.

Are they selling a stellar tech stack? A solid network of bank partnerships? How sticky is their offering? The startups that can navigate these questions and articulate their value will be worthy of investment.

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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Web3’s Coca-Cola moment: Tapping into incentive design to catalyse better ad experiences

What do Coca-Cola and Web3 have in common?

Not much at first glance. 

Yet could there be timely lessons that Web3 can glean from the world’s most popular beverage?

To find out, we begin with the origins story of Coca-Cola. The American Civil War was not kind to recipe creator John Stith Pemberton. After sustaining a sabre wound, the soldier became addicted to morphine. Desperate for a cure, this doctor brewed a potent concoction of coca wine, kola nut extract and damiana. A brown liquid advertised as an “intellectual beverage”, the first version of Coca-Cola was anything but successful, selling just US$50 in its first year. Pemberton sold the rights to the Coca-Cola formula and brand in 1888 for US$1,750, just over US$50,000 today.

Fast forward 135 years and 94 per cent of the world recognises the iconic white cursive on a red background of the Coca-Cola brand. 

 

What led to the ‘mass adoption’ of Coca-Cola?

There are many factors, but advertising has played a major role in making this medicinal concoction the world’s most popular drink. Between 2014 to 2020, Coca-Cola averaged an annual ad spend of US$4B. The brown liquid that came out of Georgia laid the foundations of a global conglomerate generating more than US$30B in annual revenue

Can ads do the same for Web3? More interestingly, could Web3 also improve the ad experience?

Why do ads feel unwanted?

The common reaction to ads, especially amongst Web3 natives, is “eeck”! Just as few early adopters appreciated Pemberton’s beverage, ads in Web3 seem equally unwelcome. From a builder’s perspective, using ads can often be considered a sellout. For users, ads carry memories of misused data, annoying interruptions and being taken advantage of.

Most of these negative perceptions stem from the power imbalances in contemporary advertising. A whopping 86 per cent of digital ad revenue is concentrated in three companies: Google, Meta and Amazon.

Also Read: Web3 startups: The next big thing investors are flocking to

This has established unfair advantages in accruing first-party data,  the kind users generate through online actions and creates impenetrable ‘walled gardens’ with little space for competitors to offer a better ads experience for audiences. It is little wonder that the ads experience is as unpleasant as interacting with the mob for advertisers or consumers; it’s pitched as a necessary evil with no room for improvement. 

US Triopoly Digital Ad Revenue Share, by Company, 2019-2023 (% of total digital ad spending ) | Insider Intelligence

In Web2, aggregating data created an impenetrable moat: the big get bigger while the disruptor cannot cross the divide

What does Web3 bring to ads?

As written previously,  Web3 heralds a paradigm shift in advertising. The first-party data that Google and Meta used to create unfair moats is now public and accessible if recorded on a blockchain.

With social protocols such as Lens emerging, every user interaction, be it a like or comment, is now on-chain and visible to anyone with a block explorer. Advertisers are no longer walled in by closed ecosystems, nor is their customer targeting reliant on centralised giants.

For example, a fitness application can utilise Web3-native ad networks such as Slise to discover and target the holders of “move-to-earn” tokens. The possibilities to innovate and improve the consumer ads experience are no longer far-fetched. 

If data is no longer the moat, and control is seized from the hands of “too big to fail” tripoly actors, what are the differentiators in advertising?

One factor would be ad network quality and algorithms to more efficiently process data and understand user intent better, as outlined previously. Another would be the thoughtfully designed incentives to reward users; the focus of this piece. While incentives were once one-dimensional, Web3 has created new, fascinating avenues for incentive design.

The case for rewarding users

While the open nature of on-chain data is exciting, it is only half of the equation. On-chain data needs to be complemented with off-chain data to deliver personalised, relevant ads to users. Whereas interactions with smart contracts and dapps create an accessible on-chain history, most transactions and actions still occur off-chain, where accessibility is limited.

Advertisers and ad networks have two choices: permission access to off-chain data, where users approve the sharing of their first-party data, or permissionless access, where user approval is not needed and an understanding of the user is built on a combination of guesswork and algorithms. Both approaches carry distinctive benefits and trade-offs; we believe the permissioned approach will prevail for two key reasons:

Completeness of data

With data and privacy regulations tightening worldwide, a growing amount of personal data will only be accessible to advertisers and ad networks through the explicit permission of the user. These privileged data tend to be most pertinent in ad targeting, so a permissionless approach will face increasing challenges to achieving completeness of data.

Lack of interoperability across on-chain and off-chain sourcesWhile there are emerging ‘bridges’ like oracles to connect on-chain and off-chain data, or to consolidate on-chain data across multiple chains, interoperability remains tricky. As more blockchains emerge, aggregating and analysing data across permissionless chains becomes more technically complex than permissioned methods

If we believe permissioned access to off-chain data is key, then we need incentives to reward users for giving their permission.

Where are the opportunities for incentive design?

One of the most immediate opportunities to incentivise users is the “pay-per-consumption” approach: view an ad, and be compensated.  The benefit to users is clear: they are directly rewarded for completing the desired action instead of centralised entities like Google or Meta.  

Also Read: Meet the 22 Web3 investors that are ready to rock the future with your startup

This model can be over-simplistic: few users would intentionally consume ads to earn compensation. Ads are often a by-product of a user’s job-to-be-done, whether it is checking a token price on a coin tracking site, or searching a transaction on a blockchain explorer. Incentivising a user to divert attention from their job-to-be-done to view an ad can be costly, the few dollars from an impression or click might not be sufficient. 

What if incentives are designed to enable users to complete their jobs to be done faster, cheaper, and simpler?

While users might not intentionally divert attention to consume an ad, there are proven models around cashback, the emphasis being supporting the user’s intended job-to-be-done, instead of hindering. Cashback and other forms of affiliate marketing are turbocharged as a result of on-chain data, as the correlation between a user’s identity and their transactions is accessible instantaneously, and can be rewarded with tools such as Chainvine and Fuul

Another opportunity area for incentives is gas fees: the pesky but necessary costs to transact on blockchains like Ethereum. Currently, end users pay the gas fee.  While the few dollars per transaction might seem trivial to sophisticated crypto traders, gas fees disincentivise new-to-crypto users, adding extra costs and friction toward adoption.

A beginner hoping to transfer their first token may not have the native token to pay for gas. The need to on-ramp a small amount to pay for gas is simply unappealing. Yet, the recent advancement of ERC-4337 reveals a potential opportunity for advertisers and ad networks to silently cover transaction fees for users, thus creating a seamless experience for all. 

Incentives also need not be financial. Often, users may be seeking quid pro quo exchanges. Emerging incentive mechanisms such as the DataDAO model enables users to pool together data, creating meaningful and valuable datasets whose value is greater than the sum of parts. The incentive for users is clear; contribute data in exchange for “credits” to access other forms of data.

Often data that are otherwise hard to access or aggregate. For example, a user can offer her browsing history data in exchange for tokens, and subsequently, she is able to utilise the said tokens to request data around the Web3 data economy. In short, non-financial reciprocity may prove to be a viable alternative alongside financial incentives.

The Coca-Cola moment for Web3

Incentives expand the possibilities of rewarding users and removing friction. Unhindered by barriers like gas fees and empowered by new use cases through quid pro quo exchanges, we can expect to see more users onboard to Web3, generating more demand for Web3 applications, which creates a positive flywheel effect for web3 advertising and general adoption.  

Just as traditional ads brought Coca-Cola from a non-descript beverage to a cultural icon, Web3 ads can potentially catalyse the inflection point across multiple categories. We can expect to see a reshaping of the tripoly advertising landscape where centralised entities have their power undermined, users will be incentivised to share data so they can better accomplish their jobs to be done, and ultimately, mass Web3 adoption will accelerate.

This article is co-written with Oleksii Sidorov, Co-Founder and CEO at Slise. 

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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How Kumu uses virtual gifting to make revenue as a livestreaming app

Arianne Kader-Cu, Chief Operating Officer, Kumu

So, how does a livestreaming app such as Kumu make its revenue?

In this email interview with e27, Kumu Co-Founder and President Rexy Josh Dorado explains how the company’s revenue is currently driven by virtual gifts available on its platform. It allows users to send one-time animations to support their favorite streamers, who earn commissions from those virtual gifts.

“In doing so, users can also support streamers in winning campaigns, which are contests that allow streamers to win prizes, get themselves on a billboard or TV broadcast, etc. But more broadly, our economy is driven by people around the world supporting Filipino content creators–and retained on the platform by a sense of authentic connection that they can’t find elsewhere. Through the years, one thing still rings true – users are willing to support their favorite creators financially, and this has been a key driver of revenue growth for Kumu,” he stresses.

While virtual gifting remains the main source of revenue for Kumu, according to Chief Operating Officer Arianne Kader-Cu in the same interview, there are also a couple of other contributing streams from advertising and social games.

“Advertising involves partnering with brands to create highly targeted and engaging ads or executions that run during live streams and shows. Meanwhile, social games provide a platform for our community to interact with each other making the platform more fun and engaging. One of our games, color raid, allows the community to work together to achieve a common goal to win,” she explains.

To get a better understanding of how this Philippine-based startup do it, Dorado and Kader-Cu answer some of the biggest questions about making revenue in this Q&A session. The following is an edited excerpt of the conversation.

Also Read: Kumu nets Series C to become the ‘Disneyland of social media’; total funding exceeds US$100M

What process did you have to go through to come up with this revenue model?

Dorado: We took pointers from the success of live streaming apps in China, which pioneered livestream virtual gifting. The trial-and-error has been more around how to execute this in a way that promotes a safe, family-friendly content environment that has the potential to break into the mainstream.

We’ve done this by working with some of the leading local influencers, TV shows, and films in the Philippines–which have helped launch live streaming into the public consciousness. The challenge now is how to execute that playbook with talents and IP for whom we are true partners and help them grow their careers while enriching the Kumu ecosystem in the process.

Kader-Cu: There were definitely a lot of experimentations before we got things right. One of the biggest lessons we learned while scaling up the business was the importance of building a strong community of users. It was a balancing game to establish an online culture based on positivity and new possibilities.

Rexy Josh Dorado, Co-Founder and President, Kumu

Who are your users and how do you acquire them?

Dorado: Our users are Filipinos both within the Philippines and around the world. Specifically, Filipinos who are looking for entertainment and connection at a deeper level. The average user spends 60 minutes a day on the platform on just a few pieces of content. We have found user growth primarily effective via word of mouth, but it is also accelerated through partnerships with talents and IP with established fanbases.

Also Read: Kumu nets Series C to become the ‘Disneyland of social media’; total funding exceeds US$100M

There has been greater pressure for startups today to become more sustainable businesses financially. What are your thoughts on this? How do you approach building a profitable and sustainable business model?

Dorado: It’s the right move–especially if you are in a business that’s less winner-takes-all, and more about creating enduring and differentiated value for a specific but highly engaged group of people. This is the case for Kumu; just 20,000 paying users generate millions of dollars a month for our economy.

And in the past, we’ve been profitable for a full quarter before we started investing heavily in growth–which means we are well-positioned to be sustainable again as we go through the rocky macroeconomic movements of the next few years.

Kader-Cu: Having a sustainable business model is crucial for the long-term success of any startup. At Kumu, we have found that diversification of revenue streams and being able to pivot in response to market changes is key to achieving this goal. Relying too heavily on any one source of income can leave a startup vulnerable to changes in the market or unexpected disruptions. That is why we built a model that provides us with multi-faceted revenue streams as a safety net to mitigate any risks and ensure that there are multiple sources of income to draw from.

However, we also recognise that diversification alone may not be enough to guarantee long-term success. Through the pandemic, we’ve had to enact swift strategic changes in our business, which we can admit have been difficult calls to make, but that’s growth; that’s the journey.

Also Read: Kumu raises Series B funding round co-led by SIG, Openspace Ventures

How do the back-to-back global crises affect your business? And how do you deal with it?

Dorado: We grew from COVID-19 as people got stuck indoors–and so growth became harder when the economy opened up. Moreso when inflation started to hit our users’ wallets. For us, this means a shift in focus from aggressive growth to indefinite survival to ensure we are positioned to win in the long term when the tide rises back up.

What other opportunities do you aim to seize this year? What will be your big plan?

Dorado: Growing our base of homegrown talents and IP. Engaging around them more holistically–not just through virtual gifts but through other revenue streams, such as merch, gaming, etc. We are laying the foundations for what we believe will be the most vibrant network of Filipino creativity that we can proudly showcase to the world.

Kader-Cu: Our long-term vision at Kumu is to become a formidable digital entertainment company.

We have begun planting seeds throughout 2022 among a number of local businesses – acquiring Penlab, a leading local comics and webtoons platform with over one million monthly reads, and beginning to take major steps into gaming.

Echelon Asia Summit 2023 is bringing together APAC’s leading startups, corporates, policymakers, industry leaders, and investors to Singapore this June 14-15. Learn more and get tickets here.

Echelon also features the TOP100 stage, where startups get the chance to pitch to 5000+ delegates, among other benefits like a chance to connect with investors, visibility through e27 platform, and other prizes. Join TOP100 here.

Image Credit: Kumu

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