The post PPI day warning: Bitcoin faces make-or-break moment as US$79,900 level hangs in balance appeared first on e27.

The cloud crossroads: Why your startup should weigh the risks before betting on NetSuite in 2026

In the high-stakes world of Southeast Asian tech, the “growth at all costs” mantra has been replaced by a much grittier reality: operational resilience. For years, moving to a Tier-1 ERP system like NetSuite was considered a rite of passage. It was the “grown-up” choice—the software that signaled you were ready for global expansion.

But as we cross the midpoint of 2026, the narrative is shifting. From reported system fluctuations to a parent company pivoting toward the AI frontier, the “NetSuite Comment” circulating in founder circles isn’t as unanimous as it used to be. For startups sitting on a proposal to migrate their financial stack, the current climate suggests that “due diligence” needs to be deeper than ever.

Learning from 2025: The cost of digital dependency

To understand the current skepticism, we have to look at the operational hurdles reported across the industry last year. In 2025, the market observed three significant system outages that disrupted global operations. For any enterprise, these moments are more than technical glitches; they represent hours where finance teams cannot close books and warehouses cannot ship orders.

For a startup, an ERP is the central nervous system. When that system experiences downtime, the friction costs run high. While these incidents were largely addressed, they left many CFOs questioning the inherent risks of “putting all your eggs in one cloud.”

A pulse check on system robustness

If 2025 was the year of the “wake-up call,” 2026 has been a year of continued scrutiny. Recent months have seen a series of service indicators that suggest the road to total stability remains under construction.

In mid-April 2026, reports surfaced of service degradation affecting users in the US Phoenix region. For startups running integrated stacks where NetSuite communicates with Shopify or Salesforce, UI sluggishness or API timeouts can create data synchronization backlogs. Furthermore, a degradation of the NetSuite Payroll Service on May 1, 2026, added to the conversation regarding system reliability.

When you invest in a premium ERP, you are paying for the promise of a “utility-grade” service. However, recurring reports of degradation—even if brief—force a conversation about whether the platform’s robustness has evolved at the same pace as its price point.

Also read: Top 5 popular HRMS software for manufacturers in Singapore

The oracle pivot: Stability vs. the AI euphoria

Perhaps the most discussed signal isn’t coming from the status dashboard, but from Oracle’s corporate restructuring. In April 2026, Oracle announced a significant workforce reduction, a move widely interpreted as a pivot to reallocate resources toward AI and data center infrastructure.

This raises a strategic question for the ERP market: Where does the “boring” but essential world of business applications sit on Oracle’s priority list?

We are living through an “AI Euphoria.” Oracle, like many titans, is moving aggressively toward GPU clusters and LLM training. But ERP excellence requires a massive human “success” infrastructure—consultants, support engineers, and developers who understand the nuances of local tax laws or complex audit requirements. If the market perceives a thinning of these specialized teams, the perceived value of the platform may begin to erode.

The technical debt of modernization

The 2026.1 update cycle has also highlighted the “maintenance tax” that often accompanies legacy-scale software. Mandatory shifts in authentication protocols (OAuth 2.0) and changes to journal entry sublists mean that lean startup engineering teams must spend time fixing what isn’t “broken” rather than building new features. In an era where every developer hour is a precious resource, the complexity of maintaining a Tier-1 ERP integration is a factor that must be weighed against its benefits.

Also read: Navigating the new era of brand mention tracking and AI visibility in Singapore

Why thinking twice is strategic, not cynical

This isn’t to say NetSuite has lost its power. It remains a feature-rich environment. However, the context of 2026 has changed the risk-reward calculation. Before signing a long-term contract, founders should ask:

• The Support Reality: Following the recent layoffs, what does the support path look like? Is the institutional knowledge still there to help you through a complex implementation?
• Downtime Tolerance: Does your business model allow for the “outage frequency” observed over the last 18 months?
• Vendor Alignment: Is your ERP provider innovating for your specific operational needs, or are you a passenger on their journey toward an AI-first future?

The verdict

The ERP market is no longer a one-horse race. The rise of agile, specialized financial platforms suggests that startups have more choices than ever. You no longer have to default to a legacy giant if you feel their focus is shifting elsewhere.

NetSuite’s recent track record suggests a platform navigating a period of transition. In 2026, the most “mature” move a startup can make is to look at the performance data, listen to the peer commentary, and decide if the “safe choice” still aligns with their need for absolute reliability.

Why we write this article

PRbyAI enjoys in sharing updated market news, using our team’s tech knowledge, to help corporate clients looking for the most informed decisions.

—

Want updates like this delivered directly? Join our WhatsApp channel and stay in the loop.

This article was shared with us by PRbyAI

We can share your story at e27 too! Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. You can reach out to us here to get started.

Featured Image Credit: Canva Images

About PRbyAI

PRbyAI is a tech-driven Martech startup leveraging cutting-edge AI SEO (GEO) to help customers generate leads and tap into new markets.

The post The cloud crossroads: Why your startup should weigh the risks before betting on NetSuite in 2026 appeared first on e27.

Across Asia, digital commerce is scaling at an unprecedented speed. Payments are real-time, marketplaces are more mature, and consumers are deeply embedded in digital ecosystems. Yet one critical layer remains underdeveloped: how non-cash value moves across these ecosystems.

Rewards, vouchers, incentives, and stored value are still managed through fragmented merchant networks, single-brand systems, and manual fulfilment processes. There is limited visibility into usage. This is not a minor operational inefficiency. It is a structural gap in the digital economy.

The scale of the opportunity is significant. The global gift card market is projected to reach US$2.22 trillion by 2034, while ASEAN’s digital economy has already surpassed US$300 billion in GMV.

Businesses increasingly need to move value across employee rewards, customer engagement, partner incentives, merchant-funded campaigns, and loyalty ecosystems. However, the infrastructure supporting these flows has not kept pace.

The real problem: Value doesn’t move efficiently

Every business today needs to move value. HR teams reward employees, banks incentivize customer behavior, insurers drive engagement and retention, and FMCG brands motivate distributors and retailers. Enterprises also run promotions, loyalty programs, and large-scale campaigns.

However, the systems supporting these functions remain rigid. Rewards are often difficult to deploy at scale, limited in where they can be redeemed, poorly aligned with user preferences, and hard to track or optimize. When redemption fails, the entire value chain breaks. A reward that is not used has no impact.

The current system can issue value, but it cannot ensure that value is meaningfully used.

Turning vouchers into infrastructure

Gift2O is a globally positioned brand built to address this gap across markets, with Thyaga as the Sri Lanka based counterpart behind the platform’s development, market validation, and operating foundation. Founded in 2021 and backed by Accelerating Asia Ventures, Thyaga developed the multi-merchant digital value exchange platform that now powers Gift2O’s broader proposition, enabling businesses to issue flexible, usable, and trackable value across ecosystems.

Sri Lanka was Thyaga’s first operating market and the launchpad from which the model was proven at scale before being carried forward through Gift2O’s wider brand positioning. Today, through Thyaga’s operating base in Sri Lanka, the platform serves over 500 corporates and hundreds of thousands of users, supported by a network of more than 200 merchants across over 3,000 outlets. It has also demonstrated repeatable enterprise usage across sectors such as banking, insurance, FMCG, and corporate HR, reinforcing its position as a B2B platform with consumer applicability rather than a consumer gifting business alone.

A fundamental shift: From closed-loop rewards to open value networks

At the core of Gift2O’s approach is a fundamental shift in how vouchers are understood. Traditional vouchers operate as closed systems tied to a single brand and redemption path. Gift2O, powered by Thyaga’s platform infrastructure, replaces this with a multi-merchant value layer, allowing a single voucher to be redeemed across multiple brands, categories, and everyday use cases.

This shift improves usability and directly increases the effectiveness of rewards. The value of a reward is tied to its usability and broader redemption options increase both engagement and perceived value.

Also read: Revolutionising retail: A blueprint for future success

Product decisions that drive real commercial outcomes

This thinking is reflected in product design. The platform’s partial redemption feature allows users to spend part of a voucher and retain the remaining balance for future use, aligning with real-world spending behavior. Combined with multi-channel delivery options, including SMS, email, and physical formats, the platform ensures accessibility across different users and use cases.

Its merchant network expands the likelihood that recipients will find a relevant and usable redemption option within their everyday spending behavior. This strengthens redemption outcomes, improves user experience and engagement, and increases the practical value of each reward issued.

Why this is a B2B infrastructure play, not a gifting business

Gift2O operates at the intersection of payments, engagement, and commerce. Built on Thyaga’s proven platform foundation, it is embedded in high-frequency enterprise workflows, including customer rewards and loyalty programs for banks, retention initiatives for insurers, employee recognition for corporates, distributor incentives for FMCG companies, and promotional campaigns for brands.

Across these use cases, the platform addresses a broader business need: helping organizations issue value in ways that are flexible for users, operationally efficient for businesses, and measurable over time. This positions Gift2O not as a niche gifting solution, but as a horizontal infrastructure layer that can support multiple industries and recurring enterprise workflows.

Traction signals a scalable model

The platform’s growth trajectory reinforces this positioning. The company has achieved 300X growth over the last four years, alongside rapid expansion of both its merchant and enterprise networks. Its usage is increasingly embedded within repeat enterprise workflows, where rewards and incentives are recurring expenditure categories.

This creates a system with compounding value. As the merchant network grows, user experience improves. As user experience improves, enterprise adoption increases. As enterprise adoption increases, transaction volume grows, further strengthening the platform.

The emerging moat: Network, integration, and data

At scale, Gift2O’s defensibility is driven by merchant network density, enterprise integration, and behavioral data. Building and maintaining local merchant networks across fragmented markets is operationally complex, creating barriers to rapid replication.

As the platform integrates into enterprise systems such as HR platforms, banking ecosystems, and loyalty programs, switching costs increase. At the same time, data on redemption behavior enables better targeting, smarter reward design, and improved engagement outcomes. Together, these elements create a reinforcing system where value increases with scale.

Also read: Time is the new currency: Why APAC’s SMEs can’t afford slow financing anymore

From Sri Lanka to regional relevance

The opportunity extends well beyond Sri Lanka. Across South Asia and Southeast Asia, digital payments and e-commerce are advancing rapidly, but systems supporting non-cash value exchange remain fragmented.

This creates a consistent regional gap. With Thyaga as the local parent company and proven operating base, Gift2O represents the broader outward-facing brand for expansion into other markets. Markets such as Bangladesh, Malaysia, and the Maldives reflect the kind of environments where the need for flexible, multi-merchant value systems is already present. While each market differs, the underlying problem remains the same.

Why now: The rise of embedded value exchange

The timing of this opportunity is critical. The first wave of digital transformation across Asia focused on payments, marketplaces, and access. The next phase is centered on engagement, retention, and the ability to move value across ecosystems.

Businesses are no longer asking whether they can transact digitally. They are asking how to influence behavior, retain users, and drive engagement at scale. This shift requires infrastructure that enables flexible and measurable value exchange.

A category in transition

Gift2O represents a compelling opportunity within this transition. It operates in a large and underdeveloped category, has demonstrated product-market fit, and is built on a scalable B2B model with network-driven advantages. While it may appear to be a voucher platform, it is more accurately building the infrastructure layer for how value moves in digital economies.

What comes next for digital commerce

As digital ecosystems across South and Southeast Asia continue to expand, the ability to move value seamlessly between businesses, merchants, and consumers will become a foundational capability.

Companies that enable this shift will define the next phase of digital commerce. Gift2O, built on Thyaga’s operating foundation and market validation, is positioning itself at that intersection, building a system designed to make value exchange more flexible, more usable, and more integrated into the everyday flow of business.

—

Want updates like this delivered directly? Join our WhatsApp channel and stay in the loop.

This article was sponsored by Gift2O

We can share your story at e27 too! Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. You can reach out to us here to get started.

Featured Image Credit: Gift2O

The post Gift2O is building the infrastructure layer for rewards and gifting value exchange in Asia’s digital economies appeared first on e27.

There is a particular kind of energy that surrounds a first-time founder. It is the moment when an idea stops being something you think about and starts being something you build — when the question shifts from “what if?” to “how?”. For a growing number of young entrepreneurs, that moment is arriving earlier than ever, and the ventures emerging from it are tackling some genuinely interesting problems.

What stands out about this year’s lineup by Singapore Polytechnic (SP) Entrepreneurship Centre (SPiNOFF) at Echelon 2026 is the range of ideas they are choosing to build. From artificial intelligence platforms to peer-to-peer marketplaces, from brain-computer interfaces to communication tools for people with disabilities, young entrepreneurs today are not waiting for permission to work on hard things. They are finding platforms, building teams, and getting to work.

Making as a right, not a privilege

BuilderLab uses artificial intelligence and taps into a global supplier network to translate concepts into manufacturable designs, removing much of the technical complexity that has traditionally stood between an idea and its realisation. The premise is simple but meaningful: the ability to make things should not be limited by your access to resources.

Rethinking how communities share

SnapRent is a peer-to-peer rental platform connecting people with underused assets to those who would rather rent than buy and reflects a broader shift in how younger generations think about ownership and community. It encourages people to see their neighbours as a network and their possessions as shared resources, creating value that flows in both directions.

Also read: Ecosystem Roundup: The day geopolitics broke a mega AI deal

Technology with purpose

Some of the most compelling work happening in youth entrepreneurship today sits at the intersection of technology and real human need. Neural Drive and Assistive Technologies are both building in that space.

Neural Drive is developing brain-computer interface technology that enables paralysed patients to communicate instantly. Their breakthrough eliminates the complexity of traditional brain-computer interfaces, delivering instant communication when it matters most. It is technically complex work, driven by a clear and urgent purpose.

Assistive Technologies is working in adjacent territory, building what it describes as the world’s first messaging tool for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) users, designed to open up communication for people with non-verbal disabilities and connect people from all walks of life. 

Giving students the space to build: SPiNOFF

Ventures like these do not emerge fully formed. Behind every founder with a compelling idea is a space that allowed them to explore it — somewhere they could prototype, fail, iterate, and try again without the pressure of having to get everything right immediately.

SP’s entrepreneurship centre seeks to provide exactly that sort of space for its student founders. Designed for those ready to take their first steps towards building a venture, SPiNOFF offers the space, mentorship, and resources that early-stage founders need to move from idea to reality.

The Small Project Fund gives students pre-seed support to explore and prototype their ideas with resources. Students can enrol in entrepreneurship electives that give structured exposure to the skills and thinking that underpin entrepreneurship, while its entrepreneurship internship programme offers something more unusual: the opportunity to spend their internship period developing their own startup rather than working within an existing organisation for a semester. For students who are ready to build, it is a chance to treat their own venture as the work itself.

Also read: FusionAP’s US$2M raise signals Malaysia’s push up the semiconductor value chain

Leading the SP’s broader entrepreneurship ecosystem, SPiNOFF also connects students to a wider network of programmes, opportunities, and industry touchpoints — giving early-stage founders not just internal support, but visibility and traction in the world beyond campus.

The result is a community of founders who arrive at the market better prepared — with prototypes tested, ideas validated, and a network behind them. For young entrepreneurs working on ventures as varied as medtech, AI, and the sharing economy, that foundation matters.

From idea to venture

What connects BuilderLab, SnapRent, Neural Drive, and Assistive Technologies is not just that they are youth-led. It is that each of them started as an idea that someone chose to take seriously — and then found the platform and support to build it into something real.

That journey from idea to venture is rarely straightforward. It takes time, resources, and the kind of environment that encourages students to back themselves even when the outcome is uncertain. At SPiNOFF, we provide that environment for our students to try, fail forward, and try again.

—

Want updates like this delivered directly? Join our WhatsApp channel and stay in the loop.

This article was sponsored by  Singapore Polytechnic (SP) Entrepreneurship Centre (SPiNOFF)

We can share your story at e27 too! Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. You can reach out to us here to get started.

Featured Image Credit:  Singapore Polytechnic (SP) Entrepreneurship Centre (SPiNOFF)

The post Building something real: How young founders are turning ideas into ventures appeared first on e27.

Southeast Asia’s energy systems are entering a testing phase. Electricity demand is rising as economies urbanise, industries electrify, and data centres expand. Meanwhile, governments are under pressure to reduce emissions and keep power affordable for households and businesses.

These competing demands are forcing policymakers to look beyond familiar solutions and reconsider options that once seemed politically or socially unviable.

One of those options is nuclear energy. Long treated in Southeast Asia as a distant or theoretical possibility, nuclear power is quietly returning to regional policy discussions, as the risks of energy shortfalls, price instability and system fragility are becoming harder to ignore.

Globally, nuclear is simultaneously being reframed as a tool for reliability and energy security. The question now is whether the region is prepared to engage with that debate in a serious and transparent way.

A global shift that ASEAN cannot ignore

Nuclear energy is experiencing a worldwide cautious but noticeable rehabilitation. In Europe, countries that once planned rapid phase-outs are reassessing nuclear’s role in maintaining grid stability as renewable capacity expands.

India is scaling up nuclear generation to support industrial growth and data-heavy sectors. In the US, major technology companies are backing nuclear projects to secure reliable, low-carbon electricity for data centres and artificial intelligence.

The common thread is not enthusiasm for nuclear per se but concerns about the reliability of other major energy sources. Wind and solar are expanding quickly, yet they remain dependent on weather and grid capacity. Battery storage is improving, but it is not yet sufficient to replace firm generation everywhere. Gas markets, meanwhile, remain exposed to geopolitical shocks.

Nuclear fills a gap that other technologies currently cannot. It offers large-scale and continuous power with low operational emissions. For governments under pressure to keep electricity affordable and dependable, these are key considerations.

Also Read: Biocomputing: The race for energy efficiency, storage capacity, and machine sentience

ASEAN’s energy dilemma

ASEAN economies are among the fastest-growing in the world. Electricity demand is expected to rise sharply over the next two decades as manufacturing expands, transport electrifies, and digital services grow. For now, many countries remain reliant on imported fuels, leaving them vulnerable to price volatility and supply disruptions.

Solar energy has become the region’s most popular clean technology, thanks to falling costs and abundant sunlight. Hydropower plays an important role in some countries, while gas remains a backbone of power generation in others.

Yet each of these options has limits. Solar strains grids without sufficient storage, while hydropower is vulnerable to changing rainfall patterns. Gas ties countries to global markets at a time of geopolitical uncertainty.

Against this backdrop, nuclear energy is resurfacing, not as an immediate solution, but as a strategic question.

Malaysia has been explicit in its reluctance, prioritising solar and regional grid integration instead. Indonesia and the Philippines periodically revisit nuclear feasibility studies, though political and public resistance remain strong. Vietnam paused its nuclear programme years ago and has yet to revive it decisively.

Singapore stands out as an outlier in the region. While it has no plans to build a nuclear plant in the near term, it is actively studying nuclear technologies, safety frameworks and regulatory requirements. International experts have noted that Singapore’s governance capacity and safety culture would place it among the more technically prepared countries, should it choose to proceed.

This divergence highlights a central issue for ASEAN: nuclear power is not only a technological challenge, but an institutional one.

Trust is the real constraint

Public sentiment remains nuclear energy’s greatest obstacle. Penta Group’s latest analysis on global sentiment towards energy drew on more than sixteen million pieces of content across over one hundred languages, and found that the top concerns are around safety, waste disposal, cost overruns and long construction timelines. These anxieties are especially pronounced in countries without an existing nuclear industry.

Southeast Asia is one of these countries, where memories of high-profile energy-related accidents elsewhere still shape perceptions. These concerns cannot be dismissed as irrational, as they reflect a deeper issue: trust.

Nuclear energy demands confidence in regulators, operators and governments, gradually developed over decades. Without that confidence, no amount of strategic justification will secure public acceptance.

Also Read: Quantum readiness for energy sector: Not encryption, operational longevity

What an ASEAN nuclear conversation must prioritise

The experience of other energy transitions offers a warning. Wind power, despite steady innovation, has stalled in many places due to local opposition. Hydrogen enjoys strong political and investor backing, yet consumers remain unsure what it means for their daily lives. Even solar, the most trusted clean energy source, can lose public support when policy changes increase household costs or strain infrastructure.

In each case, national ambition was prioritised over local consent. If nuclear power is to be part of Southeast Asia’s long-term energy discussion, the approach must be deliberate and transparent.

First, governments need to be clear about why nuclear is being considered. Energy security, not abstract climate targets, is likely to resonate most. Citizens want to understand how nuclear would improve reliability, affordability and resilience, and how it compares with alternatives.

Second, governance must come before commitment. Safety oversight, waste management, emergency preparedness and cost accountability cannot be afterthoughts. They are prerequisites for credibility.

Third, regional cooperation matters. Shared research, common safety standards and open information exchange could reduce mistrust, even among countries that ultimately choose not to pursue nuclear power.

Finally, public engagement must be treated as essential infrastructure. Trust is built slowly and lost quickly. Sudden policy shifts, opaque studies or dismissive messaging can derail years of groundwork.

Also Read: The hard truth about Asia’s energy future: Why we need a new class of sovereign alternatives

A decision that cannot be rushed or avoided

Nuclear energy will not be right for every ASEAN country, and it may never move beyond the exploratory stage for some. But as energy security pressures intensify, it will not disappear from the conversation.

The question is not whether Southeast Asia should immediately embrace nuclear power. It is whether the region is prepared to have an honest, informed and transparent debate about its future energy needs.

Energy security may be forcing the question, but it is public trust that will determine the answer.

This article was co-authored with Husni Nassir-Deen, Director at Penta Group.

—

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. You can also share your perspective by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

The post Southeast Asia’s nuclear question: Is the region ready for a security-driven nuclear revival? appeared first on e27.

Thailand-headquartered online beauty marketplace Konvy has closed a US$22 million Series B round led by Cool Japan Fund (CJF), signalling a sharper push to export its omnichannel playbook across Southeast Asia.

Existing backers, including Insignia Ventures Partners, also participated in the financing.

The capital injection comes at a pivotal moment: Konvy has already entrenched itself as a major force in the kingdom’s beauty and personal care market, and now it wants to turn that domestic strength into regional scale, with the Philippines and Malaysia first in line.

A proven domestic engine

Konvy’s core advantage is its reach across multiple channels. The company combines its own e-commerce site with a presence on leading marketplaces, social commerce activity and offline retail. That omnichannel footprint has allowed it to assemble a catalogue of more than 20,000 SKUs from over 1,000 brands and to secure a position as one of Thailand’s most influential beauty platforms.

Also Read: How technology can influence the beauty and cosmetics industry

That market leadership is not merely about assortment. Konvy has invested in the data and logistics plumbing that knit together transactional channels and customer touchpoints, which the company argues helps it turn product curation into repeat sales and stronger brand relationships.

“We have built a strong leadership position in Thailand, and we are now focused on scaling that success across Southeast Asia,” said Qinggui Huang, Group CEO of Konvy. “With CJF as our lead partner, we are uniquely positioned to bring high-quality Japanese brands to the region while continuing to grow our own portfolio of private label products.”

The quote is revealing for two reasons.

• First, Konvy still pursues a hybrid strategy: it wants to be both a channel for third-party brands and a manufacturer of private-label goods.
• Second, the deal with CJF is explicitly strategic aimed at positioning Japanese beauty and health brands for faster growth in Southeast Asian markets.

Why Cool Japan Fund matters

CJF is not a run-of-the-mill investor. Established to promote Japanese culture and products abroad, it brings sectoral and diplomatic heft in addition to capital. For Konvy, CJF’s participation is less about the check and more about the pathway it opens to Japanese manufacturers and brand owners who want an on-ramp into Southeast Asia.

The partnership is bilateral. Konvy gains privileged access to suppliers and products; CJF gains a distribution partner that understands the nuances of Southeast Asian consumer tastes and the region’s varied commerce landscape. For Japanese brands, this is valuable: Southeast Asia’s demand for curated, higher-quality personal care products is rising, but navigating marketplaces, social commerce and offline retail across multiple countries is operationally complex.

Expanding into the Philippines and Malaysia

Konvy’s roadmap is to use the Thai playbook to scale in the Philippines and Malaysia. Both countries present attractive demand-side dynamics, rising middle-class consumption and a growing appetite for curated beauty offerings. Still, they also pose structural challenges such as fragmented distribution, payment preferences and language differences.

Also Read: Beauty’s next big bang: Why beauty tech collaboration holds the key to a US$590B future

Konvy plans to transplant its omnichannel model, but it cannot simply replicate operations wholesale. The company must adapt marketing, product selection and fulfilment to local tastes and logistics networks. That will require both local hires and partnerships with regional players, alongside investments in customer insights to avoid treating the region as homogeneous.

Market observers note that social commerce is particularly potent in the Philippines, where influencer-led buying and chat-based transactions remain central. Malaysia, meanwhile, presents a multicultural market with diverse regulatory environments for cosmetics and supplement categories. Konvy’s stated intention to combine marketplace listings, social commerce and offline retail suggests it understands these nuances; execution, however, will determine success.

Private labels and exclusive distribution

Part of Konvy’s pitch is its ambition to scale private-label brands through exclusive distribution agreements with established partners. Private labels offer higher margins and tighter control over assortment, but they also carry inventory and brand risk. Scaling private labels across countries means mastering local regulatory frameworks for product formulation, labelling and claims.

Exclusive distribution plays to Konvy’s strengths in logistics and marketing. By offering select international brands a single point of entry into multiple Southeast Asian markets, Konvy can simplify expansion for brand owners. The firm claims it leverages proprietary consumer insights to help partners grow efficiently. If true, those insights, not just stock and channels, will be the sustainable moat.

Competitive landscape: crowded and fast-moving

Konvy is not the only player racing to aggregate beauty demand in Southeast Asia. Regional marketplaces, global platforms and a wave of vertical-first startups are all vying for consumers’ attention. Social commerce specialists and live-streaming vendors add another layer of competition, particularly for trend-driven and lower-priced items.

To carve out a defensible position, Konvy will need to convert Thai dominance into durable network effects: exclusive brand relationships, loyal customer cohorts and logistics economies across borders. The CJF tie-up could help lock in supply-side advantages, but it will not shield Konvy from competition on pricing, speed and marketing innovation.

Capital allocation and execution risks

US$22 million provides runway, but expansion across multiple countries, scaling private labels and beefing up fulfilment are capital-intensive tasks. Konvy’s playbook will likely require spending on warehousing, local teams, regulatory compliance and marketing, especially in markets where brand recognition is low.

Also Read: Thai beauty e-commerce firm Konvy bags US$10M from Insignia Ventures

Execution risks include misreading local product-market fit, underinvesting in payments and returns infrastructure, and failing to recruit credible on-the-ground partners. Rapid geographic expansion has sunk many once-promising e-commerce plays; Konvy must balance ambition with disciplined market testing.

What success looks like

If Konvy hits its targets, the company could become the default gateway for Japanese beauty brands entering Southeast Asia, a position that would create recurring revenue streams from exclusive deals and private labels, plus valuable consumer data. That would also make Konvy an acquisition target for larger regional platforms or strategic investors seeking category-specific distribution assets.

But success is not guaranteed. The company must demonstrate that its Thai model translates to countries with different cultural tastes, spending power and commerce behaviours. The winning formula will likely combine bespoke local product mixes, aggressive social commerce strategies, and frictionless logistics for both B2C and B2B clients.

Strategic bet, not a fait accompli

Konvy’s Series B is a strategic bet: leverage Thai success, partner with a Japan-focused fund to secure supply, and expand where rising middle-class demand meets digital commerce opportunity. The US$22 million will buy time and capacity, but the real test comes in execution.

For Southeast Asia’s beauty ecosystem, the deal matters because it signals continuing consolidation and the increasing importance of curated, omnichannel distribution models. For Japanese brands, Konvy’s rise offers a plausible route into regional markets without the headaches of building local distribution from scratch. For competitors, it raises the stakes: the marketplace is getting more selective about which partners can translate local leadership into regional influence.

The post Konvy bags US$22M to bring more Japanese beauty brands into SEA appeared first on e27.

There was no funding announcement. No government mandate. No corporate strategy deck. Just borrowed rooms, called in favours, and a recurring observation that Singapore’s AI builders had nowhere to collide.

That was the origin of 65labs, now Singapore’s largest grassroots AI builder community with more than 5,000 members. Since its founding, the community has outgrown every venue it has ever been given. This reveals that the demand for such a platform had always been there; what was missing was the occasion.

“The gap was infrastructure,” says Sherry Jiang, co-founder of 65labs and CEO of AI finance startup Peek, in an email interview with e27. “The invisible machinery that Silicon Valley has built over decades — the third spaces, the casual collisions, the culture of showing up for each other without an agenda. Singapore didn’t have enough of it. So we started building some.”

What makes 65labs genuinely unusual is who is running it. Every co-founder holds a full-time role elsewhere. The community is built in the margins: between jobs, on weekends, after hours.

Interestingly, this is not seen as a limitation. Instead, Jiang argues that it is the point.

“Grassroots means you don’t wait for permission,” Jiang says. “No one handed us a mandate or a curriculum. We saw a gap and started filling it.”

Also Read: Konvy bags US$22M to bring more Japanese beauty brands into SEA

In practice, that philosophy shapes everything about how 65labs operates. There are no certifications, no headcounts reported upward, and no KPIs tied to a government grant. The community programmes from the bottom up, watching what questions its members are actually asking, which problems they are stuck on, and building events around that signal.

The people who turn up reflect that approach. Agrim Singh, a co-founder of the 65Labs community who is also the CTO and co-founder of Niyam AI, describes the range as genuinely surprising: NUS and NTU students at their first technical event sitting next to engineers with three decades of experience; a father who arrived at a 24-hour hackathon with his two teenage children and competed alongside seasoned founders; mid-career professionals from finance, law, and healthcare using 65labs as an on-ramp for reorienting their careers around AI.

“What they have in common is that they’re not here to talk about AI,” Singh says. “They’re here to build with it.”

No panels, no speculation

65labs made a deliberate early decision about which events it would and would not run. No panels where people speculate about AI’s future or keynotes from people who are not close to the work. If you take the stage at a 65labs event, you are showing something you actually built: what worked, what broke, what you would do differently.

“That standard filters the room naturally,” Singh says. “People who come to be seen at an AI event stop coming after the first one. People who come to learn and build keep coming back.”

The results of that filter have been visible enough to attract serious outside attention. OpenAI chose 65labs to run its first official Codex hackathon in Singapore. Cursor held its first Singapore event through the community. And now, 65labs is hosting AI Engineer World’s Fair — the world’s leading conference for AI engineers, backed by OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Cursor, Vercel and Z.ai — when it makes its first-ever Asia stop in Singapore from May 15 to 17.

Also Read: Hiring creatives in the AI age: Skills over titles

Singapore’s unique position

Jiang draws a sharp distinction between what 65labs is building and what top-down initiatives can offer. She invokes an unlikely historical parallel: the Homebrew Computer Club, the garage gathering founded in 1975, where a then-unknown engineer named Steve Wozniak first showed up and went home to begin designing what became the Apple I. The club never had more than a few hundred members, but its cultural legacy is incalculable.

“That’s what grassroots actually means,” she says. “The room exists because we built it. Everyone in it chose to be there.”

Singapore’s geographic and political position, she argues, makes 65labs something more than a local success story. Unlike San Francisco, which she describes as a cultural silo that exports ideas more readily than it imports them, Singapore is structurally wired to look both ways: East and West, emerging markets and developed markets, consumer and enterprise.

“The builders here are naturally exposed to product principles and engineering approaches that have worked across wildly different contexts,” she says. “Western companies are starting to recognise this. They’re not just coming to broadcast. They genuinely want to understand how different markets are solving problems they haven’t cracked yet. That curiosity is new.”

As 65labs scales, its co-founders are clear-eyed about the risks. Singh names integrity as the hardest thing to preserve, the slow erosion that comes from individually defensible decisions that accumulate into something unrecognisable.

“Every community that has lost its culture has lost it the same way,” he says. “We think about that a lot.”

The marker of success they keep returning to is deceptively simple: are the people who showed up before anyone was watching still in the room?

For now, they are. And the room, as ever, is full.

—

Image Credit: Nicholas Cheng (VideoPulse.io)

The post 65labs, the grassroots AI community that won’t stop outgrowing its venue appeared first on e27.

Many of us are already buying life in pieces. We ride-share instead of owning a car, rent co-working desks rather than committing to a long-term lease, and use cloud storage instead of a server. You don’t buy an entire cow to enjoy a glass of milk, and the same goes for markets.

Fractional investing, which allows an investor to buy a portion of a unit in a share or ETF as opposed to a whole share, can help investors turn spare change into market exposure. It helps level the playing field, as it turns markets from something reserved for those with six-figure salaries into something anyone can participate in. 

More than just lowering barriers, fractions change the way people think about money. Every small order becomes a building block and a step forward, and accessibility, affordability and diversification stop being abstract concepts and start becoming part of everyday investing. They’re very useful for building the right mix, but still, fractional investing can be risky if it leads to lots of small buys without a plan.

An affordable entry point into capital markets

For young investors and fresh graduates, fractional investing can be their first real entry point into capital markets. Instead of waiting years to build a large lump sum, they can start with a small amount and still own a slice of global companies or funds. Fractions remove arbitrary minimums and let people size positions to conviction, not to whatever one full share costs. 

Also Read: Digital wealth platforms hit scale in SEA as foreign investing apps outgrow local rivals

This accessibility matters as it helps turn investing from an intimidating task into a habit that grows with an investor’s income. Fractional investing is also an affordable way for investors to build exposure with just a few spare dollars each month, as exposure can be built step by step and scaled up over time. Instead of chasing cheap stocks to build a portfolio as quickly as possible, new and less experienced investors can use fractions to steadily shape a portfolio that matches their priorities and long-term plans without committing to whole shares. 

An opportunity to dip into inaccessible assets

Fractional investing is a great way to ease into big-ticket names that would otherwise be out of reach. An example would be Berkshire Hathaway’s Class A shares, which have never been split and still trade at hundreds of thousands of US dollars each (not to be confused with its more affordable Class B shares). As another example, many of us might be familiar with Booking.com, a go-to travel platform, whose parent company Booking Holdings trades above US$5,000 per share. With fractions, investors can start small in such stocks without breaking the bank.

Fractions can also serve as a way to “test the waters” with new ideas. By trying a small position first to see how it behaves and then scaling up only if it fits the plan, this can help investors to grow their confidence gradually, instead of rushing into trades they may not be ready for.

Diversification remains key

The catch is that while fractions make investing easier to start, they don’t remove the need for discipline. The risk is less about the tool itself and more about how people use it. Think of it like cai png (economy rice): you could take five scoops, but if they’re all meat dishes, you haven’t built a balanced meal, just different forms of the same thing. Diversification means mixing in some vegetables, tofu, or maybe even a fish dish. 

Also Read: From clicks to conversations: Why your next customer in Southeast Asia is an AI agent

In markets, US$30 across five tickers can look like a variety, but if they’re all the same theme (such as US mega-cap tech), you’ve built a single-factor bet with extra steps. The rules don’t change just because the tickets are smaller. After all, a risky company is still risky, and a well-diversified fund is still exactly that. 

For Singaporeans, the hard part isn’t access to investing, but how we assemble and maintain our portfolios. We like to say we’re kiasu and overly cautious, but the numbers tell a different story. Many Singaporeans are running barbell portfolios — very safe on one end and very bold on the other. What’s really missing is the middle: a steady, diversified core that compounds quietly. 

Fractional investing can help fill this middle without turning investing into a second job. Put simply, the edge isn’t finding the next big thing; it’s building a middle that survives the quiet, ordinary months. Decide the mix, set a monthly routine, review on schedule, fine-tune as you go, and ignore the noise in between. Let the fractions do the quiet work while you get on with the things that matter the most. 

The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not constitute financial, investment, or professional advice.

—

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.

Enjoyed this read? Don’t miss out on the next insight. Join our WhatsApp channel for real-time drops.

Image credit: Canva

The post Fractional investing: Turning spare change into market exposure appeared first on e27.

In the business cycles of the past, obsolescence was a slow process. A factory or a retail chain had decades to depreciate its assets before a competitor rendered them irrelevant. But in April 2026, the timeline of decay has collapsed. We are living in the era of the velocity of obsolescence.

For the modern enterprise, the most dangerous line item on the balance sheet isn’t debt to a bank—it is technical debt disguised as innovation. As a founder who spends my days dissecting Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) systems, I see a recurring pattern: companies rushing to integrate agentic AI and hyper-automation on top of brittle, legacy foundations. They are building skyscrapers on top of 19th-century plumbing. In 2026, this isn’t just an IT headache; it is a macroeconomic risk that can wipe out market caps overnight.

The fragility of the AI wrapper

The last two years saw a gold rush of startups and enterprise features that were essentially wrappers around global AI models. At the time, it looked like rapid innovation. Today, it looks like a liability.

If your enterprise’s core intelligence is dependent on a third-party API that you don’t control, you have no moat. More importantly, you have no architectural resilience. When those underlying models update, pivot, or change their security protocols, your innovative feature breaks.

The risk here is systemic dependency. True enterprise SaaS in 2026 must be modular. It must allow you to swap your intelligence layer without tearing down your operational layer. At Prospero, we call this model-agnostic risk management. It’s the only way to ensure that your software doesn’t become obsolete the moment the next version of an LLM is released.

Identity as the new perimeter

In 2026, the network perimeter is dead. With the rise of remote work and decentralised AI agents, you can no longer protect your enterprise with a simple firewall. The new perimeter is identity.

Many enterprises are still struggling with fragmented identity systems. They have separate logins for their CRM, their HRIS, and their Risk Management tools. This fragmentation is a massive operational risk. A robust enterprise architecture requires a single source of truth for identity.

Also Read: Technology debt is the risk company boards keep deferring – until it becomes a crisis

This is why we obsess over seamless integration with protocols like LDAP and Keycloak. If your identity management isn’t integrated into your risk engine, you cannot automate safely. An autonomous AI agent is only as safe as the permissions it inherits. Without a unified identity layer, you are giving a “digital employee” the keys to the castle without knowing which doors they are opening.

The legacy AI crisis

We are now seeing the first wave of legacy AI—systems built in the 2023-2024 hype cycle that are now unmaintainable. They were built for demos, not for durability.

The risk of Legacy AI is twofold:

• Data toxicity: AI models trained on unvetted or biased data that now produce hallucinations in critical risk reports.
• Code bloat: Custom-built AI features that are so deeply hard-coded into the system that they cannot be updated without breaking the entire Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) stack.

This is why security-by-design is the only sustainable path. Risk management shouldn’t be a module you “add” to your software; it should be the framework upon which the software is built. If risk isn’t in the code, it isn’t in the company.

Macro-implications: The cost of inflexibility

From a regional perspective, the companies that will lead ASEAN in the next five years are the ones that can pivot their business models in weeks, not years.

Also Read: Atome lines up US$345M debt as Southeast Asia fintechs shun equity

If your technical architecture is a monolith of technical debt, you are macro-inflexible. You cannot respond to new OJK regulations in Indonesia, you cannot integrate with the latest regional payment systems in Singapore, and you cannot scale your risk protocols to a new market.

In 2026, inflexibility = insolvency. The market is moving too fast for companies that are held back by their own legacy software.

Closing thoughts: Building foundations, not just features

The message to the community is a call for architectural rigour. As founders and leaders, we must resist the temptation to ship flashy features that add to our technical debt. Instead, we must invest in the boring, difficult, but essential work of building integrated enterprise foundations.

We need systems that are modular, sovereign, and identity-centric. We need risk management that is baked into the architecture, not slapped on as a post-script.

The winners of 2026 won’t be the ones with the most AI bells and whistles. They will be the ones who built antifragile systems—platforms that can evolve as fast as the market, secure as an army, and transparent as a glasshouse.

Stop building for the demo. Start building for the decade.

—

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. You can also share your perspective by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

The post The velocity of obsolescence: Why technical debt is your greatest macro risk in 2026 appeared first on e27.

I did not have a big “AI moment.” No dramatic reveal. No boardroom decision where we said, “Alright, let’s replace this role with AI.”

It was quieter than that. Started with something small like scheduling.

At one point, we were juggling multiple client calls across different markets, time zones, and team members. It sounds simple, but it wasn’t. Back-and-forth emails, missed slots, reschedules, overlaps. It took time. And more importantly, it took attention.

So we tried using an AI-powered scheduling assistant. Nothing fancy. Just something to handle availability, propose slots, send confirmations, and follow up if needed.

And within a week, that task was gone from our daily thinking.

No one needed to “own” scheduling anymore. It just… happened.

That was the first moment it hit me. Not in a scary way, but in a very practical one. Something we had assumed required a human, such as coordination, communication, and judgment, was now being handled well enough by a system.

Not perfectly. But well enough that we didn’t feel the need to step in.

That’s when the question shifted.

It wasn’t “can AI do this?”

It became “how many things like this exist in our business?”

We started experimenting more intentionally after that. Research was next. Instead of manually pulling together insights for proposals or campaigns, we used AI agents to gather initial data, summarise trends, and even suggest angles. Again, not perfect. But it reduced the starting friction.

Outreach followed. Drafting first-touch emails, structuring follow-ups, even suggesting subject lines. The team would still refine and personalise, but the heavy lifting was already done.

Reporting was another one. We tested workflows where AI could pull campaign data, summarise performance, and draft a readable report before a human ever touched it.

Individually, none of these felt groundbreaking.

But together, they added up to something bigger.

A layer of work, the kind that used to take a team’s time every single day, was quietly being absorbed.

What surprised me wasn’t just what AI could do. It was how quickly we adapted once we saw it working.

The initial hesitation wasn’t about capability. It was about trust.

The team didn’t push back because they were afraid of losing jobs. They hesitated because they weren’t sure where they fit in this new setup. If the system could draft, summarise, and coordinate, what was its role now?

Also Read: The hire you almost made: Why workflow outlasts hype

That’s something I had to address early.

We had to reframe how we saw work. The goal wasn’t to replace people. It was to remove the parts of the work that didn’t need their full attention.

Once that clicked, things changed.

People stopped seeing AI as something that takes away and started seeing it as something that gives back time, headspace, and energy.

But it wasn’t all smooth.

There were moments where AI fell short, and those moments mattered.

Context was the biggest gap.

AI could draft a decent outreach email, but it didn’t always understand nuance especially in B2B conversations where tone, timing, and relationship history matter. It could summarise data, but sometimes missed what was actually important.

And when things went wrong, they went wrong quietly.

That was the risk.

A human mistake is usually obvious. An AI mistake can look correct at a glance until it isn’t.

So we kept human checkpoints in place. Not because we didn’t trust the tools, but because we understood their limits.

Another thing we didn’t anticipate was the operational layer that came with it.

Someone had to think about prompts. Someone had to decide what “good output” looked like. Someone had to maintain consistency across tools.

AI didn’t remove management. It changed what needed managing.

If I’m being honest, the biggest shift wasn’t operational. It was mental.

It changed how I think about hiring.

A year ago, if we needed more output, the instinct was to hire. More clients meant more people. More work meant more hands.

Now, that assumption doesn’t hold the same weight.

If I were building a team from scratch today, I wouldn’t start by asking, “Who do I need?”

I’d start by asking, “What actually needs a human?”

Because not everything does.

The roles that feel most secure aren’t the ones tied to execution anymore. They’re the ones tied to thinking, judgment, relationships, and ownership.

Things that require context. Taste. Responsibility.

Everything else is… negotiable.

Also Read: Breaking barriers: Reimagining SME growth with practical AI strategies

And I don’t say that lightly.

I’ve built teams. I care about people. I understand what jobs mean beyond just output.

But ignoring this shift doesn’t protect anyone. It just delays the adjustment.

The reality is, AI agents are already here. Not as a concept, but as quiet operators inside workflows.

They’re not replacing entire teams overnight. But they are reshaping what teams need to look like.

Smaller. Sharper. More focused.

Less about doing everything manually, more about knowing what should be done manually.

If there’s one thing I’d say to another founder thinking about this, it’s this:

Don’t start with replacement. Start with relief.

Find the tasks your team quietly dreads. The repetitive ones. The ones that drain energy without adding much value.

That’s where AI fits best.

Not as a headline. Not as a strategy.

Just as a way to make work feel a little lighter.

And once you feel that shift, even in a small way, you start seeing your business differently.

Not everything needs a human.

But the things that do matter more than ever.

The post Your next hire might not be human and that realisation changes everything appeared first on e27.