There’s no doubt the online market is crowded, with around 12 to 24 million e-commerce websites worldwide. This overwhelming scenario poses a significant challenge for online businesses striving to get their products in front of their target audience.

The key to success lies in mastering their digital shelf. However, with increasing competition and evolving consumer preferences, maintaining a healthy digital shelf has become an inescapable struggle for brands.  

Digital shelf health: The next challenge for brands?  

In the context of e-commerce, a digital shelf is the online version of product shelves at a brick-and-mortar store. It is a collection of digital experiences through which consumers discover, learn about, compare, and ultimately make purchases of products.  

The digital shelf is the heart and soul of a brand’s online presence, and its health is paramount to thriving in the fiercely evolving e-commerce landscape. As consumer dependence on online shopping rises, understanding and addressing the challenges of digital shelf health have become vital for brands looking to stay ahead of the curve.  

Firstly, the advent of “the endless aisle” has given consumers an abundance of choices at their fingertips, but immense competition for brands and retailers in online retail.  

The competitive e-commerce landscape also encourages price wars among brands across the board. While offering lower prices or discounts may seem like a quick fix for gaining a competitive edge, it can have long-term repercussions for digital shelf health as it impacts brand reputation and profitability.  

Evolving consumer behaviour is another challenge to digital shelf health. Shoppers are more informed and discerning than ever, conducting thorough research before making purchase decisions. They read reviews, compare prices, and scrutinise product details before clicking buy. Brands must keep up with these changing behaviours and ensure their digital shelves are optimised to meet these evolving expectations.  

Managing all of this across multiple retail channels, in addition to daily operations, is demanding on the systems and resources in place. As a result, digital shelf health is given low priority, which is slowing down business.  

Traditional digital shelf health monitoring methods are killing businesses

Monitoring and managing digital shelf health involves the collection of performance insights. But how information on performance, competition, and the playing field is collected and put together as a strategy can significantly impact business outcomes.  

Also Read: How express delivery services can become a key differentiator for e-commerce businesses

Currently, many businesses are going into e-commerce blind or functioning with limited or dated insights on three key aspects:  

• The digital space  
• Key competitors  
• The target audience  

Here are some of the resources commonly used to gather digital shelf and market insights in e-commerce and their limitations:  

• Market data reports from companies like Nielsen Holdings, Gartner, and Forrester Research are incredibly insightful but also valuable for a limited period and lack real-time information.  
• Business intelligence (BI) tools offer significant advantages in terms of data analysis and decision-making, but they have certain limitations, like data integration complexities due to data collection from different sources requiring extensive mapping, transformation, and consolidation.  
• Marketplace dashboards offer great insights, but again data consolidation is required when selling across different marketplaces.  
• Manual analytics is another approach to assessing performance, competition, and markets. But this is a big investment as multiple resources are required in-house, and very often, analytical data may be dated, inaccurate, or delayed.  

Online retail is a complex space with opportunities but also pits that can hurt business. So, visibility is invaluable in e-commerce, and the best way to acquire it is through real-time digital shelf health insights.  

To mine these golden insights, digital shelf health analytics backed by modern technology is vital.  

Ways in which digital shelf health insights empower retailers

Extracting digital shelf health information is easier with solutions and platforms available today. But leveraging this data is still new for many in e-commerce retail.

To break it down, here’s how retailers and brands can run high-yielding businesses: 

Create powerful pricing strategies 

Research suggests that a good pricing process can increase a company’s profitability. But most companies don’t have a pricing process. It is commonly believed that products with the lowest prices get the highest sales.

In fact, checking things like price comparisons has influenced 51 per cent of shoppers to purchase from a company other than the one they originally intended to. This is causing brands and retailers to lower prices, initiating price wars and poor brand representation.  

With sufficient actionable insights on price trends, competitor pricing, and promotions, businesses can determine if their products are overpriced or underpriced. This will enable them to maintain competitive rates and prevent price wars that deteriorate their brand and earnings. 

Offer market share insights and boosts content quality

Actual knowledge and real-time visibility of their digital shelf health keep brands and retailers aware of sales performance and accurate revenue data. This enables informed business strategies and helps enhance customer experience through better product images and descriptions.

Retailers and brands can capture the market perception of their products and address customer concerns through a sentiment score based on online ratings and reviews. Brand visibility, engagement, and traffic can even be compared with competitors to measure their share of search so businesses can fine-tune their customer approach.  

Also Read: Filipino B2B e-commerce startup Shoppable Business attracts US$1.15M funding

Empowered with actionable insights to improve their online marketplace performances can help optimise product listings, ensuring accurate and up-to-date information across multiple platforms.

Enable timely replenish 

A core part of good digital shelf health is ensuring it is well stocked. With insights about product availability across all sales channels over set time frames, businesses can efficiently track stock levels.

At the same time, with smart technology monitoring existing products and new launches by competitors across platforms is much easier. Comparing product sales with competitors helps businesses make their products available when competitors run out of stock. 

Optimise revenue growth  

For a clear picture of GMV by marketplace, brands, sellers, and categories (multiple times a day), retailers need appropriate digital shelf analytics. They can streamline efforts and resources by monitoring top-performing and low-performing products by units sold and GMV and make data-driven decisions with detailed charts of bestselling brands based on channel performance.

They can even leverage specific reports by price range and units sold to optimise revenue. 

Reduce revenue loss 

With sufficient product comparison insights, brands and retailers can determine if they are losing revenue to grey sellers and third parties due to price and copyright violations. The right digital shelf analytics technology integrated into their backend operations system could help protect brand value. It could even build consumer trust via flagging price violations by grey sellers and resellers. 

Stand out and stay ahead  

Brands and retailers can also explore the products their competition sells and compare them side-by-side based on parameters that matter.

For example, selling price, review score, discounts offered, and more. They can identify similar products based on common keywords and get detailed information for stand-alone products and store with pricing history, promotions, likes, and more for thorough comparisons.  

Armed with this knowledge, informed decisions can be made, and strategies can be altered to gain a competitive edge. Understanding what competitors are doing better allows brands and retailers to identify areas for improvement and refine their offerings accordingly.  

In conclusion, the digital shelf represents a vital cornerstone of e-commerce, transforming the way consumers interact with products and brands within online marketplaces.

By amplifying product visibility, facilitating product discovery and evaluation, driving seamless omnichannel experiences, and harnessing data-driven insights, the digital shelf empowers businesses to thrive and succeed in the digital era.

Understanding the importance of digital shelf health is no longer an option; it has become imperative for e-commerce retailers worldwide seeking to remain competitive and propel growth in the dynamic world of e-commerce.

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If teams can’t agree on “how to grow,” effort is wasted on low-value daily work, and progress is slowed.

TLDR: A new approach to growth awaits you. It’s simple but different. It’s about shifting focus away from the end result towards the cause. The metrics that can predict success. ‘Leading indicators’. Pinpointing them, aligning your team around a single, powerful ‘North Star Metric’, and working backwards from the problem you must solve.

This isn’t a complex formula, but a way to orchestrate your team towards exponential growth: ‘What is the problem you’re trying to solve?’

Turning that company-aligning insight lets you develop an “Equation for Growth” and then focus time and resources where they drive the most impact.

The power of outcome-back thinking to organise daily activity

The first step is always crucial. It sets the tone. A beginning of a successful venture? Or a struggle? Like in a journey, growth begins with the destination in mind. What is the problem you’re trying to solve?

An “Equation for Growth” lets leaders better focus time and resources towards where they drive the most impact. Leading indicators. Predictive. Actionable. Not like lagging indicators, which are reactive, historical. Your North Star Metric (NSM), the central beacon, the guide that ties everything together, aligns every department towards the grand finale – success.

Consider an advertising agency. Their growth might follow this pattern:

Profit = Revenue – Cost, where Revenue ≈ Number of proposal invites x Average project size x Win rate x Project quantity x Project duration.

It’s a map of leading indicators. Assembled to guide. Identify the most impactful part, rectify it, and your growth continues. This ‘outcome-back’ approach mitigates misalignment and wastage of resources, solving a common yet often overlooked problem in many organisations, startups and companies alike.

Busywork is the everyday work that doesn’t directly drive your company’s growth. While these tasks might feel like you’re getting work done, they don’t significantly contribute to your company’s advancement towards its growth targets.

A map of leading indicators can guide daily activity to where it best drives growth. This is actionable leadership.

So often, companies get mired. Swept up in a whirl of activities. This activity? It amounts to little. Little that contributes to growth. Little that drives the larger picture.

Busywork feels comfortable. Easy to measure. We’ve always done it this way, right? Writing whitepapers. Researching and quoting reports that aren’t in real-time. Sticking to old processes. Small tweaks on old products. This work? It hums. It buzzes. Does it elevate? No. We are busy, yes. But being busy does not mean growth.

Also Read: Striking the right balance: Financial health, talent retention, and business growth

Now, let’s picture the opposite. Imagine work that truly drives growth. Growth-Driving Work. These are not just actions. They are deliberate strokes of strategy. Significant. Measurable. Impactful.

How does it happen? By understanding the levers of your business’s growth equation. Understanding what needs to be focused on. The leading indicators.

Growth Equations break down department siloes for efficiency and speed

Team misalignment and siloes are possibly the greatest threat to innovation. When teams function in isolation, the focus on the customer is lost, and the opportunity for creating better, faster, cheaper value for our ideal customer segment is lost. That reimagining of a new customer reality is ambitious, and unnecessary waste only burns your runway.

Efforts duplicate, initiatives scatter, and in the end, it’s not the market that’s the competition. It’s the incentives and priorities within your own various teams. Conversely, when teams are aligned and incentives synchronised, they become best positioned to drive growth.

It’s a reason why founder-led companies often succeed where others don’t. Founders influence to focus and re-focus on the customer and make sure each team is adapting to that updated focus too.

Often, we find ourselves caught up in the details without understanding how they connect to the bigger picture. We don’t ask ourselves, “What is the problem you’re trying to solve?” But, when we shift our thinking, when we start with the outcome and work our way back, magic happens.

And when we de-silo teams, bringing everyone together under a common goal, cross-functional teams are more natural and more effective, and the experience and expanded perspectives of what is possible maximise your ability to find product-market fit.

Misalignment and siloes? They’re the invisible thieves. They steal your time. Your resources. Your energy. But when you align your teams, when you synchronise incentives, the story changes. Growth becomes a team sport. Growth becomes a system. Siloes crumble. Initiatives align. Everyone’s moving together, charging towards that product-market fit.

So, how do you start de-risking your growth? It begins with understanding the growth equation. When you know where you’re going and have everyone moving in the same direction, you reduce waste and accelerate your growth journey. It’s all in the power of alignment. It’s all about de-siloing and synchronising for success.

Consider a SaaS company. The easy road? Increase free trial users. But what’s the larger leap? Improve the trial-to-paid conversion. Enhance user engagement. These actions matter. They bring measurable impact. They shift the balance — a balance between customer lifetime value (CLTV) and customer acquisition cost (CAC).

The Growth Equation eliminates Vanity Metrics

Vanity metrics, as the term suggests, are metrics that look good on dashboards and reports but don’t have a real impact on your business’s core objectives. They can be misleading because they paint a rosy picture without being tied to tangible business results.

Consider this. Are you tracking visits on your website? Sure, it’s a large number. It’s impressive. But is it driving conversions? Is it bringing revenue? No. These are vanity metrics. Impressively hollow. Vanity metrics can create focus on busywork. They offer comfort, not growth.

Instead, focus on growth-driving work. These involve metrics tied to business results. They help you understand your growth equation better. They move the leading indicators. The metrics that matter. Conversions. User engagement. Trial-to-paid ratios. These are not just numbers. They’re signs of progress.

To sum it up, when choosing what to focus on, always remember to ask yourself: “Is this a vanity metric or a valuable metric?” The answer could change your business’s trajectory.

What we do matters less than the impact we make. It’s not about doing lots. Busywork or growth-driving work. The choice is yours. It’s your equation to solve.

Busywork is simply filling the hours. Growth-driving work is filling the future. It’s carving out our trajectory, not just following it. It’s shifting time spent in comfort zones towards building launch pads. We need an outcome-back strategy that aligns. That elevates. That disrupts.

Also Read: Financial literacy in Southeast Asia is set to match industry growth

What we do matters less than the impact we make. It’s not about doing lots. It’s about achieving lots. Busywork or growth-driving work. The choice is yours. It’s your equation to solve.

The balancing act of acquisition cost: Optimising and leveraging both paid and organic growth

On the path to growth, the cost of acquisition per segment or per product (CAC) and, thus, the length of your Payback Period is the compass that keeps you oriented. 

Avoid averages. Insight into segments with the fastest payback periods can guide significantly towards the greater engagement that drives retention.

Paid marketing is rapid. Predictable. But organic growth offers sustainable growth when paired with Paid Acquisition. Ideally, insight from organic growth (that works) should be what drives your paid strategy. You’ll also be more sure that (what’s getting you traction through) Organic is putting you more surely on the path to Product-Market Fit.

Both are needed, but many miss the discipline to keep enough focus on the Organic: email, newsletter, community outreach and benefit-aligned organic and incentivised referral built into your product and platform.

Many solo and tech founders under-emphasise acquisition from organic and incentivised referrals built into the product and platform.

Consider a Direct-to-Customer (D2C) startup. With a product-led growth strategy, it might look like this:

• Acquisition: (Number of paid acquisitions x Cost-per-acquisition) + (Number of organic acquisitions x Cost-per-organic-acquisition)
• Engagement: Active users x User activity rate (daily actions) x DEpth of Engagement
• Retention: Number of users retained after x days/months
• Monetisation: Average revenue per user

Different components harmonised. It paints a picture. Tells you where to fine-tune.

These are leading indicators—proactive measures that can forecast the outcome, unlike lagging indicators like revenue, which only provide hindsight. Knowing ‘What is the problem you’re trying to solve?’ allows the team to focus on improving the right leading indicator and working backwards from there.

Where indicators show you are doing well, add that effort to the backlog. Don’t focus on marginal improvement when there is other, more significant gain to be made. Where there is a significant upside to a leading indicator, that’s where you focus.

Also Read: Tap into the potential of your location data to boost business growth

The Growth Equation lets us focus effort away from the marginal upside. It becomes a comprehensive lens to remove “busywork” from the business and focus on high-impact efforts this quarter.

Your North Star Metric: Aligning every initiative and task

Your North Star Metric (NSM). It’s the recurring theme. The guide that cuts through the complexity. The indicator that directs every decision in your journey.

In the D2C model, this beacon could be ‘Number of active users.’ For a SaaS business, it could be ‘Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)’ or ‘Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).’ Your NSM is the score that each department follows. Keep it in view, and develop it in the context of the Growth Equation. Update where necessary, and look for ways to optimise net benefit.

What are Leading Indicators?

Think of leading indicators as a glimpse of the future. Predictive measures. They allow you to anticipate and act.

What’s a North Star Metric?

Imagine the central beacon of your journey. That’s your NSM. A single measure that’s most predictive of your success.

How often should we revisit our growth strategy?

Consider a monthly or quarterly review. Adapt and evolve with the changing rhythm of your business.

Is every growth strategy the same?

No. Each business requires its unique roadmap. Its own growth levers. Strategic goals.

How do we balance between paid and organic?

This balance depends on your progress. Your goals, resources, and market conditions. Your leading indicators guide the way to increase and decrease effort on paid as new user growth and depth of engagement change.

Can our beacon, our NSM, change?

Absolutely. As your business evolves, so does your NSM. Regular revisions keep it relevant.

The pinnacle of sustainable growth

Your growth equation, leading indicators, and North Star Metric – are the components of your growth. As the architect, you start from the desired outcome, work backwards, correct for siloes between teams, and identify and solve your critical problems.

A growth strategy can be harmonised and paced to lead your team and stakeholders towards sustainable, exponential growth.

Don’t just write growth plans. Architect a journey.

—

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

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Southeast Asia has long marked itself on the world map for its burgeoning tech startup ecosystem. The region — comprising Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, and several smaller countries — witnessed spectacular growth in terms of startups in the past decade.

Young demography, growing internet penetration, burgeoning middle class, favourable regulatory environments and startup-friendly policies have worked in its favour. These factors helped it attract foreign talents and venture capital despite challenges like cultural diversity, market fragmentation, and infrastructural gaps.

According to Forbes, Southeast Asia holds massive growth potential, with the valuation of tech startups in the region predicted to reach a whopping US$1 trillion by 2025 from the current US$340 billion.

 Singapore, a bright spot

Despite being a relatively smaller market in Southeast Asia, Singapore remains the most attractive destination for startups and VCs. Singapore is home to nearly 4,800 tech startups, 252 incubators and accelerators, 529 investors, and 700 family offices.

As per the Global Startup Ecosystem Report (GSER) 2023, in the world startup ranking, the city-state moved an impressive ten places to #8 from #18 in the GSER 2022 and is the second-highest ranked Asian ecosystem after Beijing.

Singapore is also home to celebrated unicorns such as Grab and Sea Group. In addition, 80 of the world’s top 100 technology firms have business operations on the island. A growing talent pool, advanced IT infrastructure, progressive immigration policies, solid government support, and an efficient public transport system make it a hot spot for domestic and international startups.

Singapore’s close trade ties with India

Singapore has long been a favourite destination for Indian startups. Over the past decade, many Indian companies have either registered their companies in or moved their headquarters to Singapore, given the ease of registration, low-cost incorporation process, favourable tax policies, access to a burgeoning region and business-friendly environment.

Indeed, Singapore and India have enjoyed close ties for decades, and their relationships have a history of intense cultural and commercial links.

Also Read: 27 Singapore tech startups that have made us proud this year

The island nation is one of India’s biggest trade and investment partners in ASEAN. In 2021-22, Singapore accounted for 27.3 per cent of India’s overall trade with the bloc.

Singapore is also one of India’s vital sources of FDI (Foreign Direct Investment); the total investment into India from the wealthy republic was almost US$136.7 billion (23 per cent of the total FDI inflows) in the past two decades.

In the past four-five years, the two countries strengthened their ties in science & technology, innovation, and startups. In 2018, the India-Singapore Entrepreneurship Bridge was launched to enable aspiring entrepreneurs, startups, incubators, and investors from both countries to connect with each other.

Early this year, Singapore and India inked a partnership to integrate their respective real-time retail payment systems — Unified Payments Interface (India) and PayNow (Singapore) — to make cross-border remittances easier and more convenient for the citizens of both.

These new partnerships are expected to accelerate the ties between the two countries.

Tapping into the HNI Network

As Asia’s most prominent wealth management centre, Singapore has attracted ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNIs) worldwide over the past several years. Its UHNI population grew nearly 9 per cent to 4,206 in 2021 from 3,874 in 2020, and it is expected to rise by almost 300 per cent by 2026, as per a Knight Frank study.

These HNIs are looking for new opportunities to invest their capital, and startups from emerging markets like India could be a potential option. Indian startups can look to tap UHNIs in the island nation for potential investments.

Bringing together communities from these countries is one way to keep the dialogue moving. TiE Singapore (The Indus Entrepreneurs) is hosting a summit to discuss investment opportunities, among other things.

The TiE Global Summit 2023 will gather entrepreneurs, industry experts, investors, and thought leaders from around the globe. In addition, the event will provide a platform for showcasing groundbreaking ideas, shaping the future of entrepreneurship, and fostering meaningful connections across the public and private sectors.

TiE Global Summit (TGS), in its eighth edition, will be held from November 15-17 in Singapore in partnership with the Singapore Fintech Festival 2023.

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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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Amidst the AI revolution, e27 presents a new series showcasing how organisations embrace AI in their operations.

Jon Howard is the General Manager at Bud, a PR and content agency. Specialising in company reputation management, he’s directed full corporate rebrands, delivered multi-year B2B comms strategies and has worked with and reported to multiple C-suite types.

Howard originally hails from the UK’s south coast and worked in Germany and Finland before moving to Singapore. After studying journalism, his big break in PR came managing a press office for one of the UK’s biggest consumer lobby groups.

In this edition, Howard shares how Bud has embraced Artificial Intelligence.

Edited excerpts:

How do you perceive the AI revolution and its potential impact on your industry and workforce?

When I started my career in PR 15 years ago, we still had a workflow that involved physically scanning newspaper clippings and sending them via post. Since then, we’ve vastly more sophisticated AI-powered ways of breaking down who is reading/watching a piece of news and how they’re acting.

Likewise, the emergence of large language models (LLMs) now lightens the load on a PR pro if they, for example, ask ChatGPT to summarise a report’s key findings for a briefing document or devise a more catchy headline for an upcoming op-ed.

The question remains: Does this new technology help free up more time in a PR pro’s day to create meaningful relationships and tell powerful human stories relevant to the current news agenda? So far, many proof points suggest this is the case, hence the positivity from our side.

In what ways has your company embraced AI technologies to improve operational efficiency or enhance business processes?

Earlier this year, we saw many media outlets publishing their framework on how they’ll be using generative AI in their editorial. We got inspired and realised we shared a similar responsibility to do the same with our clients and partners.

Last month, therefore, we published our generative AI framework on our website. This took two months to produce and is a living document, meaning it will change over time as the technology (primarily LLMs like ChatGPT and Bard) evolves. Our use cases are divided into Ideation, Research, Writing and Editing.

Can you share specific examples of how AI has been integrated into your workforce to streamline operations or drive innovation?

Where to start?! Some examples include:

• As a PR agency, we’re naturally very conscious of how our time is spent, so we have a time management tool that notifies us when we’re exceeding a planned amount of time on a task or going over budget.
• We also need to react fast to the news agenda, which means getting to grips with the key points of a breaking story. By using ChatGPT to condense the key points of breaking news, we can align faster as a team and consider how any of our clients might comment on the story.

Also Read: The value for biz lies in how humans, AI will enhance each other’s strengths: Mixpanel CEO

• As a more fun example, our company meetings no longer (on the whole) contain boring corporate stock photos! With Canva’s generative AI functionality, it’s now effortless to generate an image that fits the message you want to convey. This is great for internal engagement.

What challenges or concerns did you encounter when implementing AI technologies within your organisation, and how did you address them?

When we introduced LLM usage within the agency, our clients were our biggest concern. We needed to ensure that our generative AI framework respects the trust (including any formal confidentiality agreement) our clients have placed in us.

More broadly, any usage is needed to represent their best interests and demonstrate an uplift in the overall quality of work. The challenging part came when finalising a framework to achieve that balance.

How do you ensure transparency and uphold ethical considerations in using AI technologies within your organisation to mitigate privacy concerns?

We published our generative AI framework on our website to give our clients and partners transparency. We also want to create a dialogue within the communications and PR industry.

A potential industry-wide framework would create a positive upside for all PR agencies and in-house teams. We’re very keen to speak to teams who think the same.

As for ethical considerations, the most important one is never inputting any confidential information into an LLM. This is the same best practice we’ve followed for years with search engine inputs, but it is now all the more important.

In short, think twice before inputting any sensitive information into ChatGPT, especially as specific prompts cannot be deleted from your history.

How do you ensure that AI technologies complement your workforce’s existing skills and expertise rather than replacing or displacing human workers?

For example, the current generation of LLMs dovetail well with a PR pro’s core skills and expertise, regardless of seniority.

For example, when hiring new employees, we look for candidates with high emotional intelligence, an uncanny nose for knowing what makes a newsworthy story (and what doesn’t) and the ability to build relationships with journalists and clients. What we don’t directly look for is someone who can write solid press releases or compile a nice report for a client. These are skills we expect as a basic standard.

Also Read: AI must be used to enhance team members’ expertise, not to sideline them: Ravi Dodda of MoEngage

So, when considering the role of AI in our workplace, we’re thinking more about how we can free up time to craft newsworthy content and build relationships. These are human traits the current generation of LLMs are not so useful in augmenting.

How do you envision the future collaboration between humans and AI? What role do you see AI playing in augmenting human capabilities?

I will keep this answer in the field of communications and PR. For our team, the collaboration has already made us more time-efficient, where we automate certain routine daily tasks (in line with our framework) and, in the process, have more headspace to chew on meatier communication challenges.

And in the future? Right now, we’re at a level where LLMs can give some sound (but very generalised) advice on potential ways to tackle those aforementioned meatier communications challenges. Going forward, we expect to see the sophistication of this counsel increase, but not at the replacement of a PR professional who makes decisions based on a multitude of (predominantly human) factors playing out in real time.

What advice would you give to other company founders looking to leverage AI in their workforce?

I think no matter if you’re a product or service-based organisation, weigh up carefully the benefit of AI tools alongside the needs and wants of your end customer.

Also, your team’s development and upskilling needs should be front and centre. Create opportunities for your team to learn new skills and allow them to grow into new roles that may not exist just yet.

As a PR agency, we might have a need – in a year or two – for an AI prompt engineer to augment our team’s skills. But right now, we’re all learning as a team and continuing to evolve the AI framework we’ve publicly committed to.

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The post Balance AI tool benefits with end-customer needs: Jon Howard of Bud appeared first on e27.

Dear Pro member,

The Indonesian fintech sector has experienced a substantial decline in funding activities in H1 2023, says a Tracxn report. The slowdown is attributed to cautious investor sentiment due to global macroeconomic factors.

Comparing the H1 2023 to the previous period, the Tracxn findings revealed a notable 46% reduction in funding secured.

This downward trend is most apparent in the number of funding rounds, showing a decline of 26% and 58% in the first half of 2023 compared to H2 and H1 of 2022, respectively.

A total of 14 funding rounds were documented in H1 2023, down from 19 in H2 2022 and 33 in H1 2022.

Notably, no Indonesian fintech companies achieved unicorn status in the first half of 2023, a decrease from two unicorns in the second half of 2022.

The new findings are surprising, as fintech is still one of the hottest sectors globally, including in Southeast Asia.

As the world emerges from the current global slowdown, fintech investments will hopefully improve in the coming years.

This is the highlight of this Ecosystem Roundup.

Scroll down for more news.

Sainul,
Editor.

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Hypefast lays off 30% of workforce to maintain profitability
Established in January 2020, Hypefast helps local brands with revenues exceeding US$32K develop their businesses, particularly through online sales channels.

Indonesia sees consistent growth of VC investments in H1 2023: Report
The Association of Indonesian Venture Capital and Startups report also noted that the number of VC firms operating and investing in Indonesia remains consistent at 55 organisations.

Vietnamese tech giant VNG files for IPO on NASDAQ
The company intends to list under the symbol VNG; The offshore listing will be done through VNG Limited; The size and price range for the potential offering have yet to be determined.

Fintech funding declined 38% in Indonesia in H1 2023: Tracxn report
The number of funding rounds also saw significant reductions; The tally of funding rounds documented in H1 2023 amounted to 14, which was lower than the 19 observed in H2 2022 and notably lower than the 33 seen in H1 2022.

In SEA, Millennial Muslims in Indonesia are more confident about using AI for travel
While 78% of Indonesian respondents show confidence in AI tools for Muslim-specific travel recommendations, the figures are 36% in Malaysia and 31% in Singapore, according to an HHWT survey.

Amid strong Q2 results, Grab to focus on profitability, not incentives
The company is currently focusing on affordable services – such as its relaunched GrabShare product – and growing the market; Grab posted a strong performance in Q2, where it is on track to achieve breakeven on an adjusted EBITDA basis in the next quarter.

AI investments drive PropertyGuru’s 12% revenue bump in Q2
The proptech company recorded an 11.7% year-on-year growth in revenue to US$27.2M in Q2 2023; In June, the company launched GuruPicks, which uses machine learning to generate a personalised feed of property listings.

Traveloka posts 75% increase in revenue, cuts loss by 29% in 2022
The Indonesia-based online travel unicorn posted US$225.9M in revenue for its 2022 financial year, according to VentureCap Insights; It also recorded a loss of US$98.2M for the year, down from US$138.2M in 2021.

Malaysian recommerce startup CompAsia rakes in Series A.
The lead investor is Gobi Partners; CompAsia is a one-stop platform for customers to trade in or purchase pre-owned electronic devices; It claims to have sourced and transacted over 2.1M second-hand mobile devices from 2019 to 2022.

Healthtech startup specialising in brain health Neurowyzr raises US$2.1M
Lead investors are Jungle Ventures and Surge; Neurowyzr’s first product is an online gamified digital neuroscience assessment called DBFS, which reduces the burden of traditional cognitive testing.

PrimaKu secures funding to address parenting challenges in Indonesia
The investors are Northstar Group, AppWorks, BRI Ventures, and BIG Ventures; PrimaKu offers a one-stop solution for parenting needs across every child development stage, with the aim to make parenting easy and worry-free.

Pi-xcels raises US$1.7M funding to take its interactive e-receipt solution to Europe
The investors include Wavemaker Partners, Hustle Fund, and Amand Ventures; Pi-xcels allows offline retailers to issue interactive e-receipts with a single tap of a shopper’s smartphone.

Singapore’s rent-to-own solar startup Solar AI bags US$1.5M seed financing
The investors include Earth Venture Capital, Undivided Ventures, and Investible; The startup will use the capital to upscale its rent-to-own solar programme in the island nation and to expand regionally.

Antler backs Malaysian professional networking platform Mole
Mole plans to venture into the US$1B traditional business card market with its digital offering;Mole is building technology to make business networking a simpler, more productive, and more successful experience for busy professionals.

Google.org invests US$1M to train NGOs in Asia on AI, cybersecurity
Nearly 50 NGOs from 11 Asia-Pacific countries, such as Singapore’s Mandai Nature and the Philippines’ Haribon Foundation, will participate in the 12-month programme, which offers personalized digital consulting and training, among other things.

Bloom Alert uses AI, satellite images to avoid water production loss at desalination plants
The Chile-based Bloom Alert is one of the 55 startups selected for the 11th edition of SMU’s LKYGBPC Competition.

AI cannot replace creative writing at this stage: Marko Zitko of Freelancer.com
AI will enhance freelancers’ overall capabilities and productivity, leading to more efficient workflows and higher-quality outputs, says the Freelancer.com Communications Manager.

Human creativity drives tech while AI accelerates it: Yee May Leong of Equinix
AI can improve many internal processes in the back office, enabling employees to focus on higher-value needs, says Leong.

Why the growing UHNI population in Singapore is good news for Indian startup ecosystem
Despite being a relatively smaller market in Southeast Asia, Singapore remains the most attractive destination for startups and VCs.

Mastering your Growth Equation: A practical guide to dominating your niche
De-risk your growth by understanding the Growth Equation, aligning your team, and reducing waste to speed up your journey.

How to harness open banking for greater consumer and fintech empowerment
Open banking principles let customers control their financial information by sharing it with trusted third parties for improved offerings.

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The image used in this article is AI-generated.

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