ASEAN countries have consistently achieved high economic growth rates, which are attributed to careful macroeconomic strategies, relatively open trade and investment policies, and access to export markets in developed nations.

A key driver of the ASEAN economies is the manufacturing supply chains. From 2015 through 2019, manufacturing exports from ASEAN’s ten member states averaged five per cent annual growth—outpacing the global average of three per cent.

As governments across the world implement ESG and reporting regulations, businesses and manufacturers in ASEAN are faced with increased urgency and pressure to adopt sustainable practices to maintain competitiveness in the global supply chains. More than that, there are significant opportunities to extend its capabilities in manufacturing and establish competitiveness in green manufacturing.

The rise of ESG regulations and sustainable procurement in ASEAN and beyond

Globally, regulatory frameworks have evolved rapidly, led by the European Union with parallel initiatives in Asia.

Under the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), exports to Europe will be subjected to carbon tax on their emissions starting in 2026, posing major trickle-down effects for ASEAN businesses by affecting export competitiveness.

The release of the International Financial Reporting Standards’ (IFRS) inaugural ISSB standards in June 2023 has also placed renewed attention on the ASEAN ESG regulatory landscape. Many ASEAN governments have started taking a phased adoption approach in incorporating new global sustainability reporting standards, with Scope three emissions reporting due to become mandatory under regulatory standards from 2025 onwards. Reporting is also no longer confined to just publicly listed companies but also non-listed and smaller companies.

Also Read: The future of finance: ESG integration in tokenised funding

Digital tools needed to accelerate corporate sustainability

Today, sustainability reporting, especially for businesses with extensive supply chain activities, involves the demanding and manual process of collecting data from various sources such as SMEs, suppliers, clients, and other stakeholders within the supply chain.

In the ASEAN context, where SMEs dominate the market and supply chains, accounting for 98 per cent of existing businesses, this challenge is particularly pronounced. SMEs face difficulties in commencing their corporate sustainability and sustainability reporting journey efficiently, mainly attributed to the absence of streamlined digital processes, sufficient resources, and requisite expertise.

As such, a gap has emerged in ASEAN between the growing data needs for comprehensive ESG reporting and the actual availability of such data in SMEs and entities in their supply chain, presenting a challenge around compliance.

Embracing supply chain transparency for green manufacturing

While local reporting is not yet mandated across most ASEAN countries as of 2024, foreign corporates and MNCs, which ASEAN manufacturers serve, are increasingly adopting sustainable procurement, causing major trickle-down effects on ASEAN businesses.

There is a need for ASEAN businesses to prove their green-ness in order to set themselves up for greater business and investments opportunities.

This is where ESG tech and digital solutions come in to play a key role in empowering ASEAN businesses and manufacturers towards corporate sustainability and ESG compliance.

Digital solutions like ESGpedia play a pivotal role in helping to facilitate easier and more robust self-serve reporting for ASEAN companies, with subsequent third-party assurance and certification. They help support efforts to navigate the evolving ESG regulatory landscape by digitalising country-specific and international reporting frameworks (e.g. ISSB, TCFD, GRI, etc.) for a streamlined and guided way for businesses, especially those with limited resources and expertise, to easily access and input. This is particularly beneficial in times when regulations are becoming increasingly complex and soon to be mandatory.

Third-party assurance and certification can also be digitally facilitated by technology. This is important as they offer credibility and recognition to companies so that they can effectively prove their sustainability commitment to global MNCs and stakeholders, mitigating the risk of greenwashing. For instance, an ISO14064 aligned report produced under the renowned ISO standard serves to recognise company’s commitment towards establishing, validating, and reporting its GHG emissions in accordance with international standards.

Establishing Scope three GHG metrics with full value chain calculations​ is a fundamental step for the ASEAN manufacturing sector to embark on sustainability. However, Scope three GHG calculation is typically a time-consuming and complex process, requiring great ESG expertise and manual data collection from each supplier.

Also Read: 6 reasons why startups should invest in sustainability

To lower the barriers to this seemingly massive ESG challenge, businesses and manufacturers in ASEAN can leverage technology solutions to digitally streamline the end-to-end process, from data collection to mapping both the value chain and product lifecycle, accurately calculating the company’s Scope three emissions in accordance with industry methodologies, and to take actions to actively engage suppliers in order to drive compliance with regulations across the entire supply chain.

Government support to facilitate doing well while doing good

It is no doubt that sustainability equates to profitability in the long run. It is time for ASEAN countries to extend their focus and capabilities from manufacturing to green manufacturing to maintain competitiveness in the global market.

ASEAN countries can benefit by engaging in cross-border collaboration to build their green economy and workforce. For instance, the Singapore government’s Budget 2024 covered a tiered support approach for businesses on their digitalisation roadmap, particularly focusing on financial support for training and digital adoption as well as digital technologies such as AI. This is something that the other ASEAN governments can consider emulating in order to advance ESG initiatives across the region.

Governments across ASEAN can also consider introducing a standardised set of guidelines in relation to ESG disclosures to help companies future-proof against upcoming mandatory sustainability reporting to be implemented in 2025. Relevant examples already implemented in the region include the Simplified ESG Disclosure Guide (SEDG) Adopter Programme in Malaysia, as well as the Sustainability Report (SuRe) Form in the Philippines.

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Dilip Krishnan steps into the role of President & CEO at Vatic AI, succeeding Arthur Becker, who transitions to Executive Chairman.

Krishnan, who is based in Singapore, will also join the board of directors. With over 16 years of experience in Digital Innovation and Corporate Strategy, Krishnan brings a wealth of expertise. His responsibilities will encompass overseeing Vatic AI’s global expansion into new markets, managing mergers and acquisitions, and spearheading the development of new AI products, mainly focusing on predicting creditworthiness within anonymous online audiences.

Having previously served as the Global Lead for Digital Transformation at Mastercard Data & Services, Krishnan boasts a proven track record in driving growth and innovation. His background includes stints at esteemed financial institutions such as OCBC Bank, Citi, and HDFC Bank, where he played pivotal roles in designing and executing transformative strategies and fostering fintech partnerships. Moreover, Krishnan’s involvement as a mentor with Enterprise Singapore and SMU Institute of Innovation & Entrepreneurship underscores his commitment to nurturing the startup ecosystem across the region.

Under Krishnan’s leadership, Vatic AI aims to leverage its Qscore product, which uses AI to predict the credit qualifications of anonymous online audiences.

“In the longer term, we envision being the audience intelligence platform of choice across industries, helping to strengthen credit access by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI),” he says in an email to e27.

Also Read: Artificial intelligence and the art of building presentations

By harnessing proprietary algorithms, the company seeks to optimise advertising expenditures at the Top of the Funnel while simultaneously driving down customer acquisition and processing costs for the finance industry. With Krishnan’s vision and experience at the helm, Vatic AI is poised for strategic growth and continued innovation in artificial intelligence and financial services.

“We saw that traditional digital advertising platforms use broad keyword categories for audiences, which can lead to irrelevant targeting. With more precise keyword categories, we can create more value to the online experience for both brands and consumers. Combining this with our data refreshes happening every hour, instead of DSP data normally 30 days or more old for audience categories, we can be the most relevant and reach the most in-market users,” Krishnan explains.

Regarding its Qscore product, he says, “We have developed our Qscore product for the finance industry, which uses AI to predict the creditworthiness of our audiences based on multiple factors, indicating the individual user would be qualified financially for a wide range of products. This AI technology allows brands to optimise their top-of-funnel advertising and only advertise to the audiences qualified for their products, massively reducing customer acquisition costs.”

This is why the financial services industry will be the company’s focus today.

“We are actively engaging in acquiring digital banks and lenders as key clients, using our marketing efforts to show our AI’s value and solve their issues of unqualified leads, high decline rates, and ad waste. We are working on strategies in key growth markets in Asia Pacific where we can solve these issues,” Krishnan says.

Also Read: These Artificial Intelligence startups are proving to be industry game-changers

Vatic AI has raised funding from investors such as Jenny Johnson (President & CEO of Franklin Templeton) and Arthur Becker.

The company said that it currently works with around 300 paying clients.

“Our inception was over five years ago, when we built a team offering managed services for our core AfterSearch technology. We used keyword targeting for our clients to improve their results in display advertising. Post that, we’ve scaled substantially with our executive team based in Singapore and improved our product development and focus to become a data tech SaaS company.”

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Image Credit: Vatic AI

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In addition to running their businesses, startup founders have another important responsibility to take: To stay in tip-top condition throughout the day. They are expected to be in 100 per cent condition all the time; not only for the business that they are running but also to set up an example for their team members. It is also known that a productive day begins with a good morning routine that is able to improve one’s mood and organise their activities.

DailySocial sits down with several Indonesia-based startup founders –Fabelio, Gadjian, e-Fishery– to learn about their go-to productivity hacks. Hopefully, this can serve as a reference for those who are struggling with time management.

The first tip comes from Christian Sutardi, one of the co-founders of Fabelio, who happen to have a unique morning routine. He wakes up after seven hours of quality sleep –without the help of alarm clock. The founder then proceeds to check the company’s performance report from the previous day while enjoying a glass of sugarless iced americano. He also responds to incoming messages according to their priority.

“Then I moved to the living room, have a glass of water, and check the news headlines of the day. Usually, I would read international news on Bloomberg. I start with international politics, COVID-19 updates, the stock market, and any other news that Google recommends. My news preference includes furniture industry, startups, stock market, football, and other sports,” Sutardi elaborates.

Sutardi officially begins his office hour at 8.30 AM. To maintain his productivity, he implements a framework known as “eat the frog first” or to start with the most urgent tasks (the “frogs”). The framework demands users to start with just one of the most pressing task as the first thing to do in the morning. The task does not have to be finished in one go; users are allowed to continue the next day.

Also Read: SEA tech founders playbook: A to Z of becoming a fundraising legend (Part 1)

The next tip comes from Afia Fitriati, CEO of Fast8 Group, the company behind the Gadjian, Hadirr, and Benefide platforms. For Fitriati, getting enough sleep is crucial in maintaining productivity. By getting enough sleep, according to her, the brain will be able to take a moment to recuperate after a long day at work. I will also be able to gain clarity in thoughts.

“There will never be enough time for everything, so it is very important for founders, or anyone in the startup ecosystem, to be able to prioritise. If you are doing it wrongly, you risk wasting precious time that you can never get back, doing insignificant activities. So, my advice is to always ask yourself every day: Do the things that I am doing today matter or not?” Fitriati points out.

The last tip comes from Gibran Huzaifah, CEO and Founder of eFishery, who considers himself as a morning person just like the other two founders. He prefers to use the morning to exercise, plan his day, and learn new things.

“The morning hours are the brightest, most exciting time of the day, that is why I always start with activities that make me feel pumped: Exercise, planning the day. The exercise can include a jog around the house or a seven-minute workout. It helps to improve energy and maintain mental health,” he explains.

“Then I spare a slot to learn or read. If I don’t get to read, I’m going to take an online course on Udemy. On Saturdays and Sundays, I like to spare four hours for learning activities like this, in the morning and evening. With this learning slot, whenever there is a new task or role to take, we can hit the ground running because we always spare the time to learn,” he continues.

Huzaifah also believes that every urgent or impactful task need to be done in the morning, such as strategic thinking or planning, followed by an internal update and problem-solving. If there is a key project or metric that he has been delegating, he is going to spend time in the afternoon to work on something meaningful for the project.

Also Read: 5 productivity hacks for successful people

“The other crucial moment happens in the evening after family time, once the children are asleep when I would review the agenda of the day. Which one goes well, which one doesn’t. It usually involves a simple question: What do I need to do to be five to 10 per cent better than now? Especially on Sundays, I have one more sheet to track my time management. It becomes a base for my improvement plan next week,” he continues.

All three sources agree on the importance of time management. For Huzaifah, having a good system will enable founders to manage their mind, energy, and time. This includes building a good daily routine, complemented with constant evaluation.

“A great part of our life is spent doing things related to work. By becoming more productive, we can do more in a much shorter time. This will enable us to allocate more to other parts of our life, maximise our potentials as a human being, and contribute as much as possible,” Huzaifah closes.

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This article was written by Prayogo Ryza in Bahasa Indonesia for DailySocial. English translation and editing by e27.

Image Credit: Tim Foster on Unsplash

This article was first published on October 26, 2020

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“It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.”

If you are reading this then you no doubt also have a sense of urgency as we observe and digest what is happening to our climate and planet.

The inevitable question then becomes, “How can we collectively work together to make a difference?”.

To further break this down, we must include Southeast Asia (and its cities) in the solution.

Why? Consider these immutable drivers:

• It is the region with the highest growth globally in terms of population and city growth.
• The demographic bulge is around a very young population (compared to ageing regions such as North Asia, Europe or North America).
• It adds the equivalent of a New York City every six weeks in new urban sprawl.
• Cities account for 75 per cent of global CO2 emissions (but are only three per cent of total land mass).

If we don’t get Southeast Asia “right,” then our global environmental issue can’t be demonstrably solved or improved.

With Southeast Asia so critical, what models or precedents can we observe and potentially adopt to accelerate sustainability and green tech?

Also Read: Growing and transforming global green techs for sustainability

Consider how software evolved in only the last few decades.  It is not only the overwhelming majority of capital spend and investment for businesses but also ubiquitous and integral to our personal lives and our consumption of both services and products.

But it was only a couple of decades ago that software was in monolithic (say ERP) isolated stacks.  It was only specific IT members with deep domain expertise who understood the tech and its usage.

This looks very similar to today’s green tech solutions. It’s difficult to understand areas such as “carbon footprint and management”, “waste to fuel”, or “hydrogen power”. What are the categories around these that are relevant for my business or as an employee? How and where should I start? Am I making the right decisions on the tech, and how do I create an overall integrated architecture that makes sense?

Software presents a very compelling example and set of learnings in this regard.

Firstly, software and its impact and relevance were continually and simply explained to us. We were “conditioned” around “what problem it solves”. From this problem, we then began to understand this new category. This is a critical step in adoption because we think in categories.

A simple example of this is our neighbourhood supermarket. It is not organised alphabetically (or pictograms, etc.). It is in categories. And if we were to jump into a time machine and go back to our supermarket 20 years ago, many of today’s categories (“vegan”; “non-gluten”; “energy drinks”) wouldn’t exist.

If we take that same time machine to 20 years in the future, we will see many new categories that we never thought of, that we never thought we needed! This is because we have been conditioned (and explained to) around why the categories (based on a problem) are relevant to us.

Switching back to software, we see how clear categories evolved. In fact, an entire industry (tech analysts such as Gartner, Forrester, and IDC) was formed to tell us what those categories are and who the respective leaders are in each of them.

This meant that both IT and the business functions could talk about “architecture”. What key problems are we targeting, and how will we architect and combine the categories of software needed?

Also Read: Unlocking green fintech prosperity in Asia: Navigating the top 4 challenges

This is in an ecosystem where solutions can be integrated and interoperate with each other (and “system integrators” are another whole industry based on this).

We  are clearly not “there” yet with sustainability and green tech:

• The solutions are still very difficult to understand for a broad set of internal employees or external users. They are thus not clear “categories” yet.
• They are largely stand-alone and do not easily integrate into a multi-component ecosystem.
• From a business or individual standpoint, it is difficult to see why I would adopt and benefit from this solution.
• ESG, while at least a broad-based framework, is open to interpretation with a convoluted set of components (such as diversity and inclusion).

For green tech startups and innovators to flourish and become as ubiquitous as software, they must “condition” and explain to us the core problem being solved and why it is relevant to us.  This is a “point of view” rather than the product and its tech specs. Within this POV, tell us what this new category is.

And a category cannot exist as one company.  There has to be an ecosystem of partners, channels, regulatory agencies, APIs, data flows (the list goes on).

For real change and impact in Southeast Asia and its urban growth, we must move from isolated products and tech to clear categories and their surrounding ecosystems.  This is a massive opportunity for green tech startups and innovators to seize category and market leadership.

The critical context and impact of Southeast Asia in climate and sustainability around this has never been greater.

As business leaders, investors and advisors, we must encourage green tech startups and guide them on how to elevate their category strategy and the accompanying ecosystem mapping and execution.

It’s about designing the future and not just following! Carpe Diem, Let’s go make a difference!

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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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