Remote workers make things simpler, more efficient, and often cheaper for startup organizations. It’s also a perk for employees who like eliminating their commute and working from the quiet of their own homes. For these exact reasons, remote work has grown exponentially over the last few years. According to a Gallup survey, 43 percent of employed Americans spend at least some of their time working remotely.

Remote work has its clear advantages, but cybersecurity threats will accompany them. Remote workers often allow easier access for hackers, malware, and other attempts to corrupt or steal sensitive information from a company. Their unsecured networks, weak passwords, high employee turnover, and limited monitoring ability make them ideal targets.

The benefits of remote work are many, and as such, it’s better to handle the threats that come with it rather than trying to eliminate it. Your security threats don’t have to increase dramatically just because you use remote workers.

Here are some things you can do.

Manage the BYOD Movement

The bring your own device (BYOD) movement is a popular strategy for employers. It saves money, is more efficient, and eliminates the need for an IT department. However, it can also increase your risk of being infiltrated by a hacker who gains access through an unsecured personal device.

Also Read: Remote work leads to better productivity and lower costs; Here are 10 reasons why remote work rocks

“Frequent trainings to ensure compliance with security measures are critical to decreasing risk,” suggests an article from the secure SD-WAN firm Cato Networks. “Teams should have well-researched BYOD policies in places to protect against as many potential threats as possible. You also may want to consider mobile device management (MDM) which requires employees to grant IT access to their personal devices, including permission to wipe a lost or stolen device clean.”

Mandate strong password regulations

Passwords are often an easy entry point for hackers. Weak passwords are easy for experienced hackers to crack. Plus, many people use the same password for everything, so once that password is hacked, they’ll have access to every account that’s connected to it.

Many employees have varied, strong passwords, but they store them on a piece of paper or in a document on their computer. Hackers know to look for those saved documents to gain access to a network.

Create a series of password standards for your employees. Passwords should have special characters, numbers, and capitals, and they should be changed often. Each password should be reserved for just one account, and should not be shared. To keep passwords secure, have employees use a cloud-based password manager like LastPass, Dashlane, or Sticky Password.

Secure your network with a VPN

A virtual private network (VPN) is like a secure tunnel that allows your computer to connect to the internet. Enterprises often use a VPN to protect their privacy and prevent casual hackers from accessing transactions while using Wi-Fi, whether public or private.

Also Read: The 4 drawbacks of working remotely and how to address them with your team

“When you’re on public Wi-Fi at an airport or café, that means hackers will have a harder time stealing your login credentials or redirecting your PC to a phony banking site,” says Ian Paul of Tech Hive. “Your Internet service provider (ISP), or anyone else trying to spy on you, will also have a near impossible time figuring out which websites you’re visiting. On top of all that, you get the benefits of spoofing your location.”

Each of these masking elements allows your remote workers to stay secure while working on your network, limiting exposure to unwanted third-party attention.

Use two-factor authentication

Two-factor authentication can be used in multiple ways to protect both your employees and your organization from unauthorized access. When employees must go through two steps to access your server or website, such as entering both a password and a code sent to their personal email, access is considerably more secure.

Additionally, if you provide your remote workers with their hardware, consider requiring two-factor authentication when they access their devices. For example, many laptops now come with an eye or fingerprint scanner. Requiring employees to put in both a password and a bio-print scan can add an extra layer of security that protects both your organization and your employees from major cybersecurity threats.

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Image Credit: rawpixel / 123RF Stock Photo

Editor’s note: e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

This article was first published on March 22, 2018.

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Spacely AI, an interior architecture design platform powered by Generative AI, has announced the closing of an undisclosed pre-seed investment from SCB 10X.

The Thai startup is expanding its global footprint, serving users from Thailand, the US, Portugal, and several other countries worldwide.

Also Read: Snaptrude can convert a hand-drawn sketch to a 3D model in a few seconds

Spacely AI is a “quick and easy” rendering tool for interior designers. The platform offers 12+ innovative features, 100+ interior curated premium styles, and supports more than 100+ space types, from interiors to exteriors.

Along with this announcement, Spacely has launched instant rendering API (to allow for quick visualisation of design concepts), smart recommendation API (which matches the products with customers’ designed space based on their preferences, budget, and space), product visualisation API (which provides a visual representation of the products within customer’s spaces), and precision space planning API (which offers detailed space measurement guidance for optimal fit and sizing).

The company said it has formed strategic partnerships with Index Living Mall and Proud Real Estate to design over one million spaces for 120,000+ users worldwide.

Also Read: What entrepreneurs (and the rest of us) can learn from Taylor Swift

“Given the powerful breakthroughs in visual-based generative AI, spatial design is an application that will continue to benefit from the rapid advancements of this technology. We will continue to support Spacely AI in identifying the strategic and product priorities for the platform, enriching Spacely AI’s proposition from Thailand to the global design community,” said Mukaya (Tai) Panich, CEO and Chief Venture and Investment Officer of SCB 10X.

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X marks Echelon. Join us at Singapore EXPO on May 15-16 for the 10th edition of Asia’s leading tech and startup conference. Enjoy 2 days of building connections with potential investors, partners, and customers, exploring innovation, and sharing insights with 8,000+ key decision-makers of Asia’s tech ecosystem. Get your tickets here.

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Singapore-based SaaS health tech company MiyaHealth has broadened its reach into Indonesia and the Philippines by extending its proprietary product suites, MiyaPayor and MiyaProvider, through strategic partnerships.

These collaborations aim to elevate healthcare access and efficiency in underserved markets by leveraging innovative technological solutions and delivering high-quality healthcare. Through partnerships with a third-party administrator (TPA) and a leading hospital group in Indonesia, as well as Health Maintenance, Inc. (HMI) in the Philippines, MiyaHealth is poised to optimise the overall patient experience in both countries.

These are just some notable milestones that MiyaHealth made recently after closing its Pre-Series A funding round in Q42023 and securing the ISO 13845:2016 Certification and CE Mark.

“We have learned the significance of product differentiation, customisation, and certifications in addressing client’s needs and establishing credibility. This has granted us a competitive edge over alternatives. Most vendors would find it challenging to pinpoint and customise a solution to address all the insurer’s existing and future needs,” says Dr Ramesh Rajentheran, CEO and Co-Founder of MiyaHealth, in an email interview with e27.

Founded in 2019, MiyaHealth builds and operates digital infrastructure that powers healthcare. The company offers three product suites, MiyaPayor, MiyaPatient, and MiyaProvider, leveraging its AI and ML data capture, processing, and interoperability capabilities across the healthcare ecosystem.

Also Read: Decoding digital preferences: A glimpse into the future of health tech ecosystem in SEA

While existing players typically focused on either health tech or insurtech, MiyaHealth intends to serve all facets of healthcare by enhancing interoperability between health systems, leading to better patient outcomes.

In this interview, Dr Rajentheran explains the company’s strategy to win the Indonesian and Filipino markets and what is coming up for MiyaHealth. The following is an edited excerpt of the conversation.

You are expanding into Indonesia and the Philippines. What drives you into these markets? What opportunities do you want to seize there? What is your strategy?

Expanding into our priority markets, Indonesia and the Philippines, is a strategic move driven by our mission to address the unmet needs in healthcare, such as limited insurance penetration and infrastructure shortages (e.g. shortfall of healthcare manpower) for millions of people. Both markets present significant growth opportunities, given that only around 10-12 per cent of the population have private insurance coverage. This means that as our insurer and TPA clients expand, we will grow with them.

In Southeast Asia, we have observed an increase in middle-income groups and affluent populations, leading to heightened expectations for improved healthcare quality, characterised by a preference for simplicity and convenience. We have acknowledged these demands, particularly in optimising claim processing efficiency, refining health plan design, improving patient care management, and enhancing digital infrastructure for the instant exchange of patient information between providers and payors.

Most importantly, we deeply understand how these improvements can directly impact patients, strengthening their healthcare journeys.

By entering into two of the largest markets in Southeast Asia, we aim to address the unmet needs of millions of individuals while harnessing the ample data both markets offer to refine our models and processes. Additionally, we are working closely with commercial partners, leveraging our proven track record in current markets, utilising our core IP for swift platform localisation, and optimising our deployment process to accelerate the global scalability of our platforms. Moving forward, we plan to secure more long-term partnerships with customers in these markets and other parts of the world.

Can you share a fascinating insight about your users in Indonesia and the Philippines that you learned recently?

Indonesia and the Philippines share more demographic similarities than differences. Both countries exhibit underpenetrated private health insurance markets, signalling substantial opportunities for insurers to expand their footprint. Despite relatively new government universal health coverage schemes, a significant coverage gap remains, necessitating insurers’ focus on enhancing efficiency and managing medical claim costs.

Also Read: What telemedicine and Health Tech holds across SEA amidst COVID-19

Moreover, both nations experience a shift in healthcare service accessibility and consumption, driven by the emergence of middle-income groups. These populations demonstrate an increased capacity and inclination to invest in high-quality healthcare services and insurance coverage.

Additionally, the widespread availability of mobile data and smartphones has catalysed a mobile-centric approach to healthcare access across all age groups in both regions.

What are your targets for these two markets?

We are currently engaged in ongoing discussions with numerous prospective clients to establish additional long-term partnerships for MiyaPayor in the Philippines and Indonesia. Moreover, within the next 12 months, we are gearing up to introduce MiyaProvider and MiyaPatient in the Philippines while simultaneously expanding the commercialisation of these products into future markets of interest, with a particular emphasis on Asia given the robust inbound demand we have experienced.

Recognising the substantial patient volume in both countries, we view the penetration of insurers and providers in these markets as a significant advancement toward serving one hundred million individuals worldwide. To support these initiatives, we plan to onboard more locally based team members in both countries and cultivate additional channel and deployment partners.

What other plans do you have this year?

In the first half of 2024, our primary objective is to secure funding for our Series A round. This funding will bolster our product offerings and technological capabilities, focusing on developing next-generation versions of our products and core technology.

Also Read: How Vietnam’s e-commerce firm Tiki manages to keep employee churn rate healthy

We also plan to utilise the funds to expand our operations and partnerships in existing and new markets. Furthermore, we aim to strengthen our leadership team to facilitate the scaling up of global health systems, ensuring that we are better equipped to meet the evolving needs of patients worldwide.

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Image Credit: xixinxing, 123RF Free Images

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So you finally hit upon that great startup idea which you’re passionate about, which you’re sure you can pull off, and which will eventually let you rake in the millions by scaling for customer growth! You’re on, right?

Not so fast. One of the most common mistakes budding entrepreneurs make is to think of their “idea” as a “company.” They have figured out the solution to the T, but guess what, there’s no problem in the first place! A much-publicized CB Insights study confirmed what experienced businesspeople knew all along – a lack of market need is by far the top reason startups fail.

How then, do you escape the prison of your “next big idea” and make sure your venture doesn’t bite the dust, taking your aspirations along with it? Simple (but not easy): stop building a solution and start solving a problem.

The key to doing this is identifying a critical need in the market around you and creating a product or service that satisfies that need. In marketing parlance, this is called achieving product/market fit.

“When you reach product/market fit you essentially have built something people want. You naturally get traction, and things unfold very quickly. Reaching product/market fit is perhaps the most important thing for a startup.”

– Joel Gascoigne, Founder of Buffer

Here’s my humble attempt to break down three different types of problems that make customers’ lives difficult, and walk you through examples from brands that have successfully soothed their customers’ pain points in each case.

Problems That Affect Pretty Much Everyone

You know about this one. The flu. Crowded trains. Traffic jams. Corrupt politicians. You’re probably struggling with more than one of these problems as you read this. Yes, there are a lot of huge and powerful organizations trying to overcome them. No, they haven’t tasted success yet.

This means there’s a perennial opportunity to solve for practically unlimited markets. Which isn’t to say it’s easy. However, resourceful startups have demonstrably proved time and again that there are few problems that can withstand human motivation to overcome pain.

It often happens that when you aim to solve a particular problem that affects a significant chunk of humanity, you end up solving a whole bunch of related and similar problems. These are called meta problems. And there’s practically no limit to the number of people your solution might possibly impact.

Airbnb is one of the best examples of this. Cities known for popular events or tourist attractions have a perpetual shortage of hotels and places to stay. Airbnb tackled this problem by enabling residents to rent out their rooms and homes to swarms of people descending on their town, solving for both the insider and the outsider.

Also Read: 4 key growth metrics startups should watch closely

A single event helped them shoot into the limelight. In 2008, Obama was supposed to speak at the Pepsi Center in Denver, which had a capacity of about 18,000 seats. Owing to Obama’s rising popularity, the venue was changed at short notice to the 80,000-seat Invesco Field, sparking a potential lodging nightmare for the city. But Airbnb was fully prepared. They ran a multi-channel marketing campaign that brought both consumers (attendees) and producers (property owners) on board at the right time, and managed to avert the crisis as well as gain a lot of media attention in the process.

Airbnb never looked back and has 4 million plus lodgings listed across 65,000 cities today.

Problems Arising from Solutions

Niche markets and unique brands frequently spawn cult followings of their own. You need not look any further than Apple. Steve Jobs created a whole market where there was none not once but multiple times – with the Mac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. These were not so much solutions to problems that people never realized they had (something which we’ll discuss in the next section) but unique products that gave rise to indulgences (pleasure vs. pain) that they never realized they could have!

No surprise then, that there’s a whole ecosystem that caters to exclusive and loyal users of Apple products, ranging from app developers to case manufacturers.

However, in many cases (especially that of Apple), with pleasure and exclusivity comes a subtle lock that binds you to the brand or manufacturer. This leads to resentment among users who don’t want to lose the convenience on offer, but at the same time have no intention of being tied to a limited set of functionalities.

This kind of situation is what begets a “solution to a solution.” Case in point, one of the first things a lot of iPhone buyers look for is ways to bypass iCloud activation. Apple, of course, isn’t keen on users doing this, but that doesn’t prevent them from googling the solution:

This is where tech blogs, another ubiquitous part of the Apple ecosystem (where experts in the domain vie to disclose hacks and review features before anyone else), come in. iGeeksBlog is one such blog (closer to home) that attempts to retain mindshare among Apple power users and early adopters by revealing iPhone and iPad hacks with uncanny resourcefulness and accuracy:

This is a fine example of a customer-first mentality. “We focus on readers’ interests and pain points over product features or the Apple brand. You need to be bold enough to put your audience’s interest over your own if you want to serve them well,” says Jignesh Padhiyar, the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of iGeekBlogs.

As close to having your cake and eating it as it gets, eh?

Problems Customers Can’t Quite Put their Finger On

Finally, there are those problems that customers don’t know can be solved, or even exist. They are vaguely aware of something wrong with a product – a nagging feeling that’s been at the back of their minds for a long time, which comes only while it’s being used, and disappears shortly afterwards. You know what I mean?

The classic example here comes from the men’s shaving industry. Shaving razors and gel were overpriced and typically cost up to US$20 a month when Dollar Shave Club entered the US market in 2012. Gillette was the undisputed leader with a 72 per cent market share. So how did David take on Goliath?

Also Read: Determining whether or not now is the time to sell your company

One, Dollar Shave Club made customers aware of the futility of technology in razors (that was garishly advertised at the time), emphasizing that features like multi-blade were pointless and served only to artificially inflate the price of a basic commodity.

Two, they priced a month’s worth of razors at US$1.

Three, they sold their razors via a simplistic online subscription model. You no longer had to remember to buy razors; you simply got them in the mail.

Three problems that men barely knew they faced day just about every morning solved in a flash!

And how did they reach their potential audience? Via a viral YouTube video that has garnered 25 million views to date. Compare that with the roughly 40 million views on Gillette’s 173 videos put together:

No wonder Dollar Shave Club went on to become the number one online razor company. They were acquired by Unilever for $1 billion in 2016.

Over to You

By now, I hope you’ve abandoned the idea of building yet another chatbot, blockchain app, or whatever is gripping the fancy of your fellow Hacker News and Product Hunt addicts these days. Product/market fit is the single most important factor that will guarantee the success and the sustainability of your startup. Here are some simple takeaways that will stand you in good stead for any venture:

1. Identify a problem (and understand the audience that has it).
2. Collect feedback and validate the problem.
3. Attack one aspect of the problem (over multiple facets) and aim to build the perfect product/market fit for it.
4. Scale as and when possible.

Good luck!

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Image Credit: gajus / 123RF Stock Photo

Editor’s note: e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

This article was first published on March 16, 2024

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Filipino VC firm Kaya Founders has announced the second close of its two latest funds for Southeast Asia.

Pavilion Capital; Gabriel and Geraldine Sunshine of Boston-based Bracebridge Capital; Concentric Equity Partners; and unnamed family offices, high net-worth individuals and established entrepreneurs invested in the funds, called ‘Zero to One’ and ‘One to Ten’.

Also Read: Founders are pessimistic about Philippines’ funding climate in 2024: study

This brings the total committed capital of its new funds to PHP1 billion (US$18 million) and the total assets under management to PHP1.25 billion (US$22.5 million).

With the new funds, Kaya Founders is looking to back 30-40 startups in the Philippines and Southeast Asia over the next four years.

“If you look at the amount of venture funding that has gone into the ecosystem—relative to our GDP and population—it’s clear that the Philippines has long been underinvested and underlooked as a market. Through our funds, we hope to catalyze capital into one of the most exciting economies in the world,” said Founding Managing General Partner Paulo Campos.

Founded in 2021, Kaya Founders are led by Campos (co-founder & former CEO of ZALORA Philippines), Ray Alimurung (former CEO of Lazada Philippines), and Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng (founder & CEO of Summit Media).

Kaya invests in the next generation of tech-enabled companies in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. It invests in pre-seed to Series A companies, with the cheque size ranging between US$100,000 and US$500,000.

The VC firm has invested in 44 companies, spanning e-commerce, SaaS, healthcare, financial services, and agriculture. Its noteworthy investments include Etaily (announced a US$17.8 million Series A funding round last November), cloud logistics platform Locad (raised its own US$11 million Series A round in January 2023), salary on-demand provider Advance; global plastic credits marketplace Plastic Credit Exchange; and microinsurance platform RuralNet.

Also Read: Brankas, Kaya Founders launch Open PHinance Challenge for SEA startups

The fund closing coincides with the appointment of Kaya Founders as an official co-investment partner of the Startup Venture Fund (SVF), a PHP500 million fund focused on local startups managed by the National Development Company (NDC), the investment arm of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

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X marks Echelon. Join us at Singapore EXPO on May 15-16 for the 10th edition of Asia’s leading tech and startup conference. Enjoy 2 days of building connections with potential investors, partners, and customers, exploring innovation, and sharing insights with 8,000+ key decision-makers of Asia’s tech ecosystem. Get your tickets here.

Want more from your Echelon experience? Be an Echelon X sponsor or exhibitor. Send enquiry here.

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