Igloo, the Singapore‑headquartered insurtech building an insurance “Operating System” for Southeast Asia, has appointed Ramjit Lahiri as Country Head for the Philippines as it moves from embedded distributor to full‑stack infrastructure provider in one of its fastest‑growing markets.

The move signals an acceleration of a playbook that mixes deep platform partnerships and white‑label technology, a combination Igloo says will be crucial to closing the Philippines’s yawning protection gap and lifting insurance penetration from single‑digit levels. The substance, however, will rest on whether Igloo can translate platform reach into meaningful coverage for the Philippines’s informal workers, micro‑entrepreneurs, and climate‑vulnerable communities.

Also Read: MSIG takes stake in Ancileo to win Asia’s travel insurance battle

Rapid scale, limited penetration

Igloo reports more than 40 platform partners in the Philippines and over 55 tailored insurance products. Its recent tie‑up with motorcycle ride‑hailing operator Angkas highlights the model: personal accident cover worth PHP 650,000 (about US$11,500) and medical coverage of PHP 200,000 (about US$3,540) for more than 20,000 riders, at a minimum premium of PHP 1 (roughly US$0.02) per ride.

Those headline numbers sit against an insurance market that is expanding but remains shallow. Total premiums in the Philippines reached PHP 502.6 billion in 2025 (roughly US$8.9 billion), up 14.1 per cent year on year, according to the Philippine Insurance Commission. Yet insurance penetration has only inched up to between 1.78 per cent and 1.79 per cent of GDP, still beneath the regulator’s 2 per cent target and trailing most ASEAN peers.

GlobalData estimates a catastrophe protection gap of around 98 per cent in the Philippines, versus a global average of 58 per cent. That combination, rapid premium growth but low penetration and huge protection shortfalls, is the opportunity Igloo is betting on.

“This is one of the largest protection gaps in Southeast Asia, and also one of the most digitally engaged populations in the world,” Lahiri said. “The answer is to plug insurance into consumer‑facing apps, platforms, and financial services Filipinos already trust, and to make that experience as simple as buying a top‑up. That is what Igloo’s technology does, and that is what we will scale aggressively in 2026.”

What’s driving insurance growth in the Philippines

Several structural factors explain the dichotomy of strong premium growth and persistently low penetration:

Also Read: PolicyStreet’s US$21M raise signals a shift from insurtech hype to infrastructure reality

• Digital platform adoption: Widespread smartphone use, growing e‑wallet penetration, and entrenched platforms such as GCash, Shopee, and Lazada provide ready distribution channels for low‑ticket, embedded products.
• Rising middle‑class consumption: More Filipinos buying goods and services online creates cross‑sell opportunities for simple protection products.
• Regulatory momentum: The Insurance Commission’s 2 per cent penetration target and supportive policies for bancassurance and digital distribution create tailwinds.
• Acute climate and disaster risk: Frequent typhoons and floods raise demand for catastrophe and climate‑linked products, though supply and affordability remain barriers.
• Gig economy expansion: Millions of drivers, riders, and micro‑entrepreneurs need tailored, affordable protection, and platforms offer an obvious point of sale.

Igloo’s strategy of platform integration, micro‑premiums, and rapid product configuration through its tech stack is explicitly designed to exploit those drivers.

Lahiri’s playbook: marketplaces, finance, and productisation

Lahiri arrives with more than a decade of experience building digital marketplaces and finance partnerships across emerging markets, most recently as CEO of Carmudi Philippines, where he led the creation of an auto financial services marketplace. Before that, he headed operations at Lamudi Philippines and held commercial leadership at OYO Philippines and Treebo Hotels in India. He started his career as a software engineer.

Those experiences matter for three reasons.

• Distribution partnerships: At Carmudi and Lamudi Lahiri forged relationships with banks, non‑bank lenders and OEMs to make financing accessible to previously underserved segments. Igloo needs the same commercial muscle to place insurance into e‑wallets, banks and telco wallets.
• Product tailoring and pricing: Building vehicle finance marketplaces requires granular risk segmentation and pricing models, the same disciplines needed to break down catastrophe and gig‑worker risk into affordable products.
• Operational scaling: Marketplace success depends on integrations, reconciliation and operational controls. Igloo’s pitch is that its modular tech compresses product launch cycles; Lahiri’s operations background should help translate that promise into volume and service reliability.

“Ramjit’s experience building digital marketplaces backed by deep financial services partnerships is exactly what we need to lead this next phase,” Igloo co‑founder and CEO Raunak Mehta said. “Over the next two to three years, we expect rapid scale in the Philippines, and we will continue rolling out AI‑powered features that make insurance faster, more accurate, and more accessible.”

Igloo’s regional footprint and performance

Igloo says its proprietary platform processes over 80 million policies per month across six Southeast Asian markets and has facilitated more than 1.6 billion policies to date. The company lists operations in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and technology centres in China and India.

Also Read: Poni’s Cassandra Wee on why the most meaningful insurtech innovation will not come from operating in silo

In markets where Igloo has been active longer, its approach has produced scale through embedded products: low‑ticket travel, accident and device protection sold via e‑commerce checkout flows, telco top‑ups, and ride‑hailing platforms. Those markets have seen faster micro‑product adoption, though profitability metrics and loss ratios remain opaque from the outside.

Igloo’s announced commercial partners include Shopee, Lazada, Tokopedia, GCash, and Telkomsel, along with insurer partners such as Chubb and MSIG. The firm has also raised over US$100 million from investors, including Eurazeo, Openspace Ventures, and Tokio Marine, signalling investor confidence in its growth trajectory.

Regional insurance growth and the competitive landscape

Across Southeast Asia, insurance is growing at a healthy clip but from low bases. Digital distribution, bancassurance expansion, and regulatory encouragement have driven double‑digit premium growth in several markets, while insurtechs and incumbents race to embed simple products into payments and commerce flows. Climate risk is also forcing new product innovation, from parametric covers to layered catastrophe solutions.

Key rivals and alternatives in the Southeast Asian insurtech landscape include:

• Bolt‑on and platform players: In‑house platforms from e‑commerce giants and big telcos that build proprietary insurance stacks.
• Local insurtechs: Companies, such as PasarPolis (Indonesia), Qoala (Indonesia, regional), and Singlife (Singapore) that offer embedded or digital insurance products.
• Global MGA and tech vendors: White‑label providers and managing general agents partnering with local carriers.
• Traditional insurers modernising digitally: Incumbents such as AIA, Prudential, Chubb, and MSIG, who are increasingly investing in APIs, partnerships and digital channels.

Igloo’s differentiator is its claim to own a full‑stack, AI‑enabled technology layer that automates product configuration, underwriting, and claims adjudication. But in practice, winning requires deep local partners, cost‑efficient distribution economics, and product trust — areas where both incumbents and nimble local startups will press hard.

The road ahead: gig work, climate cover and credibility

Igloo’s 2026 priorities in the Philippines read as pragmatic and necessary: expand coverage for gig workers and micro‑entrepreneurs, build climate and catastrophe‑linked protection, and position its tech as the go‑to infrastructure for insurers launching products locally.

Success will depend on three tests.

• First, can Igloo keep premiums affordable while managing adverse selection and claims costs for high‑risk cohorts like riders?
• Second, can it convert platform reach into repeat engagement and durable customer relationships, rather than one‑off, low‑margin transactions?
• Third, can regulators, insurers and consumers trust an embedded model where distribution, technology, and underwriting are increasingly intertwined?

For now, Igloo is placing its bet on distribution — embedding low‑cost protection where Filipinos already transact — and on a leader whose history sits at the intersection of marketplaces and finance. If the company can convert platform scale into meaningful protection for those most exposed to disaster and income volatility, the Philippines could be one of the region’s most consequential battlegrounds for insurtech innovation.

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Salmon Group, a tech-driven financial company building a banking and lending platform across Southeast Asia, has secured US$100 million in a dual-tranche financing round, the company announced on Monday. The transaction was significantly oversubscribed, signalling strong investor conviction in Salmon’s growth story within one of the region’s most dynamic consumer finance markets.

The round is structured across two components: a US$60 million equity raise and a US$40 million public bond issuance—a configuration that reflects the company’s maturing capital strategy as it scales operations in the Philippines.

The equity tranche was led by Spice Expeditions and drew participation from Washington University Investment Management Company (WUIMC), Moore Strategic Ventures, FJ Labs, and a number of existing Salmon investors.

Proceeds will be deployed to accelerate product expansion, deepen Salmon’s distribution network across the Philippines, strengthen the capitalisation of Salmon Bank, and grow the group’s overall balance sheet capacity.

Pavel Fedorov, co-founder of Salmon Group, said in a press statement that the raise validates the company’s long-term vision. “This round is validation of what we have been building—an always-on bank and financial services super-app for every Filipino, run with discipline and a long-term mindset,” he said.

Also Read: From policy to capital: How development banks are driving the climate x health agenda

Fedorov highlighted that the Salmon App holds a 4.8-star rating on both the App Store and Google Play and maintains 99.9 per cent uptime. He added that Salmon Credit offers a grace period of up to 62 days and Salmon Bank provides an eight per cent term deposit rate, describing these as among the most competitive offers available in the market.

Alongside the equity component, Salmon Group issued US$40 million in public bonds priced at an effective yield of 13.7 per cent, within its existing US$150 million Nordic bond programme. The offering was placed with leading global fixed income investors and was executed during a period of heightened global capital market volatility, a context that makes the successful execution particularly notable. Bond proceeds will support the continued scaling of Salmon’s lending portfolio.

Why the dual-tranche structure makes strategic sense

The Philippines presents a compelling backdrop for Salmon’s expansion. The country has a large underbanked population and is experiencing rapid digital adoption of financial services. In just three years of operations, Salmon—which holds a BSP-licensed bank and an SEC-licensed financing company—has positioned itself as a challenger to legacy banks, emphasising customer experience, speed of execution, and product quality.

For a growth-stage fintech such as Salmon, the combination of equity and public debt is more than a financing convenience. It is a structural advantage that addresses the specific limitations of traditional venture capital as a sole funding mechanism.

Conventional VC rounds provide equity capital and signal market confidence, but they also dilute founders and early investors, and they are typically sized to runway rather than to the asset-generating needs of a lending business. Salmon is not simply a software company; it is building a balance sheet. Every loan disbursed requires funded capital. Equity alone, particularly at growth-stage valuations, is an expensive way to fund a lending book.

Also Read: Igloo appoints Ramjit Lahiri to lead high-stakes Philippines expansion

The US$40 million bond tranche directly resolves this tension. By accessing public debt markets through the Nordic bond program—a structure common among Nordic and emerging-market financial issuers—Salmon can grow its lending portfolio without further diluting shareholders. The 13.7 per cent yield reflects both the risk profile of an emerging-market fintech and the current interest rate environment, but it also benchmarks Salmon’s credit quality to institutional fixed-income investors who conduct independent due diligence.

The dual-tranche model also diversifies Salmon’s funding base across investor types and time horizons. Equity investors take long-duration, high-upside positions. Bond investors take shorter-duration, yield-oriented positions. Together, they create a more resilient capital structure, one less vulnerable to a single funding channel drying up, whether due to VC sentiment shifts or credit market disruptions.

For fintech companies operating in lending-intensive verticals, this hybrid approach is increasingly recognised as best practice. It mirrors the capital structures of more mature financial institutions while retaining the agility of a venture-backed company. The oversubscription of both tranches suggests that institutional markets—both equity and debt—are beginning to treat Salmon not merely as a startup, but as a credible financial institution in its own right.

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Image Credit: Salmon

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In the high-stakes world of enterprise software, a new rumor is sending ripples through IT departments from Singapore to Silicon Valley. Reports suggest that leadership within Microsoft, including Executive VP Rajesh Jha, may be exploring a radical shift in how the company extracts value from its software: moving from billing strictly per “human user” to a model that includes “AI agents” as billable entities.

While framed as a forward-looking AI strategy, industry skeptics are asking a tougher question: Is this a visionary move, or a sign of a giant feeling the heat of a changing kitchen?

The “agent” inflation

The proposed strategy suggests that as MS Copilot takes over more tasks, these “digital workers” should be counted alongside human staff in licensing agreements. On paper, it’s a logical evolution of the “Copilot” metaphor. In practice, it feels like a tactical move to bolster a stagnating seat count.

For the better part of two decades, Microsoft has maintained its grip on the corporate world through the Windows ecosystem and a formidable vendor lock-in strategy. But as enterprise clients become more cloud-agnostic and AI-savvy, the old tricks are losing their magic. If the massive $13 billion investment in OpenAI doesn’t result in a vertical spike in productivity soon, Microsoft may be forced to innovate its billing department faster than its engineering department.

Also read: The architecture of atrophy: Why MS Copilot’s reliance on the LLM wrapper model led to its 2026 stagnation

The pressure of the OpenAI bet

The industry consensus is shifting. The initial “wow factor” of GPT-integrated tools is facing the cold reality of corporate ROI. Many organizations find that while MS Copilot is a helpful assistant, it hasn’t yet delivered the “technological breakthrough” promised to justify its premium cost.

This has led to whispers that Redmond is in a quiet “panic mode.” When a flagship investment doesn’t immediately “steer the ship” toward a new era of dominance, the fallback is often to squeeze more from the existing user base. By charging for “agents,” Microsoft could theoretically multiply its revenue without adding a single new human customer.

A string of bad luck

The timing of these pricing rumors couldn’t be more awkward. Following recent high-profile service disruptions—including the much-discussed Outlook connectivity issues that plagued teams during high-stakes aerospace simulations—Microsoft’s image as the “unshakable foundation” of enterprise is wobbling.

When your core tools face reliability questions, asking clients to pay for “AI agents” on top of human licenses starts to look less like a strategy and more like a gamble. The “viral” nature of these criticisms on professional networks suggests that the enterprise world is losing its patience.

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

The clock is ticking

Microsoft’s reliance on its legacy ecosystem has served it well, but the “lock-in” is no longer an unbreakable chain. Competitive pressure from agile, AI-native startups and open-source alternatives is mounting.

If the “human + AI agent” model is indeed the path forward, Microsoft must prove it’s offering genuine value, not just a creative way to pad the invoice. Enterprise clients are looking for a reason to stay, but with little perceived “breakthrough” tech in recent years, the window to course-correct is narrowing.

Microsoft has long been the master of the “safe” choice. But as the “heat” rises, the question remains: Can they innovate their way out of this, or will they simply try to charge for the air in the room?

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Prosecutors in Bandung have asked for a 10‑year prison sentence for Gibran Huzaifah, founder of Indonesian agritech unicorn eFishery, in a case that has quickly become one of Southeast Asia’s most damaging startup scandals.

The allegations that senior executives manipulated revenue figures for years, costing investors roughly US$300 million, have reopened a region‑wide conversation about governance, valuation narratives, and the limits of investor faith.

Also Read: “There’s no excuse”: Aqua-Spark calls out eFishery’s deception

The demand was read out at the Bandung District Court on April 15. Alongside a decade‑long custodial term, prosecutors seek a fine of IDR 1 billion (about US$58,000) and threatened to seize assets or impose an additional 190 days in prison if the fine is not paid.

Two former executives face similar penalties: Angga Hadrian Raditya with a 10‑year demand and Andri Yadi with an eight‑year demand.

What happens next and whether Huzaifah will actually serve a decade behind bars with no chance of parole depends on several legal and practical steps still to unfold.

Could he be jailed for 10 years with no parole? Not necessarily

A prosecutor’s demand is not a sentence. Indonesian courts will weigh evidence, defence arguments and legal precedents before passing judgment. If convicted and handed a 10‑year sentence, Huzaifah could still pursue appeals, and there are mechanisms within Indonesian criminal law for sentence review and parole. However, eligibility and timing depend on the final sentence, behaviour, and judicial discretion.

A likely scenario is a contested trial verdict followed by an appeal process; an outright 10‑year sentence without any subsequent legal avenues is possible but far from automatic. In practice, lengthy trials and appeals can stretch over months or years, offering routes to reduce punishment or convert parts of a sentence into fines or community penalties, depending on the court’s findings.

The clearest “way out” for Huzaifah is legal: mounting a vigorous defence, demonstrating lack of intent to commit fraud, or arguing that the matter belongs in civil rather than criminal courts.

Also Read: How eFishery lost control of its narrative

Pragmatically, cooperation with investigators, restitution to harmed investors, and negotiated settlements if allowed by prosecutors, can also influence sentencing and post‑conviction outcomes. None of this guarantees acquittal, but it highlights that the legal endgame will be complex rather than immediate.

Chronology: how the episode unfolded

• 2017: According to court evidence, the idea to manipulate financial reports surfaced in 2017, when eFishery’s cash balance reportedly fell to US$8,142.
• 2018-2024: Prosecutors allege sustained manipulation of revenue figures during this period as the company tried to sustain operations and attract capital.
• 2025-2026: eFishery’s collapse and the discovery of alleged irregularities reverberated through its investor base; backers exposed include SoftBank, Temasek, Peak XV (formerly Sequoia India) and Aqua‑Spark.
• April 15 2026: Prosecutors read out sentencing demands at Bandung District Court.
• April 22 2026: Defence is scheduled to deliver its plea.
• End of April 2026: A final verdict is expected by the end of the month (court scheduling permitting).

That timeline shows a long period where questions about liquidity and bookkeeping allegedly coexisted with aggressive fundraising and a high valuation: eFishery was once valued at over US$1 billion.

Regional and global precedents of inflated revenue

Instances of startups overstating financials are not unique to Indonesia. Globally, the Wirecard collapse and the Luckin Coffee scandal are textbook examples. Wirecard’s fabricated revenues and missing funds led to insolvency and criminal charges in Germany; Luckin Coffee admitted in 2020 that it had inflated sales figures, triggering investor losses and delisting.

In the region, cases are rarer but not absent. Zilingo, a Southeast Asia‑adjacent fashion commerce startup, faced allegations of accounting irregularities a few years ago, leading to senior departures and investigations. Such episodes show a common pattern: rapid growth narratives, pressure to meet investor expectations, and opaque accounting practices can create systemic risk.

These examples underline that headline valuations and growth metrics are fragile when governance, independent oversight and internal controls are weak.

Impact on startup investment in Indonesia and Southeast Asia

The immediate impact is two‑fold: reputational and practical.

• Reputational cooling: High‑profile fraud probes erode trust. Limited partners and institutional investors will ask tougher questions about due diligence, governance and reporting, especially for capital‑intensive startups with outsized valuations relative to revenue.
• Practical tightening: Expect more conservative deal terms, deeper audit requirements, lower upfront valuations, and staged milestone‑based capital. Investors may demand stronger board oversight, independent audit committees and escrow mechanisms that tie payout to verified performance.

The effect will not be uniform. Investors with higher risk appetites or sectoral conviction may continue to back promising teams, but the broad market will likely witness a period of recalibration. For Indonesia and the broader region, where capital has flowed freely in recent years, the scandal could slow deal velocity and raise the cost of capital, at least temporarily.

What lessons startups and investors should learn

• Governance trumps narrative: Growth stories are seductive, but without robust boards, independent directors and clear audit trails, they become liabilities. Founders must build controls before scaling, not after.
• Transparency is a competitive advantage: Clear accounting, timely disclosures and independent audits reduce friction with investors and regulators. Short‑term concealment creates catastrophic long‑term risk.
• Investors must perform forensic due diligence: Beyond pitch decks and KPIs, underwriters should probe core data, cash flows, customer contracts and accounting policies. Reliance on management narratives is insufficient.
• Align incentives: Structures that reward short‑term growth at all costs encourage risky behaviour. Vesting, clawbacks and performance‑linked milestones can limit perverse incentives.
  Regulatory preparedness: Startups should expect regulators to step in when investor losses and public trust are at stake. Proactive compliance and cooperation reduce legal exposure.
• Whistleblower channels matter: Internal reporting mechanisms and protected whistleblowing paths can surface problems early — preventing escalation into systemic collapse.

A cautionary tale for a maturing ecosystem

The eFishery saga is a wake‑up call. Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem has celebrated rapid scale and unicorn valuations; the region now needs equally rapid improvement in corporate governance and investor discipline.

Also Read: eFishery founder held by Indonesian police over alleged embezzlement

Otherwise, the price for unchecked growth will be lost capital, ruined careers and a chill on investment that hurts the very founders and markets investors claim to want to support.

Huzaifah’s courtroom comments that “I knew it was wrong. But when everyone else is doing it and they’re still fine and never get caught, you start to question whether it’s really wrong” are telling: they expose a culture where competitiveness can corrode ethics. Courts, regulators and investors will now decide whether that culture changes through punishment, reform or a mixture of both.

For founders and backers across the region, the stark lesson is simple and painful: scaling a company without the guardrails of honest accounting and independent oversight is a risk that, sooner or later, becomes existential.

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We have spent two decades glorifying speed. The mantras are relentless: “Done is better than perfect,” “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version, you launched too late,” and the ubiquitous, damaging directive to achieve a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

The MVP framework has metastasised into something toxic: the pursuit of Minimum Viable Competence (MVC).

MVC is the cultural mindset where founders, desperate to hit an artificial launch date or secure a seed round, rush a product to market with just enough functionality to demonstrate viability, but with a foundational layer that is fundamentally and recklessly incompetent. This isn’t bootstrapping; it’s self-sabotage.

This rush creates a hidden, crippling liability that I call Competence Debt. It is more insidious and harder to repay than technical debt, and it is the single greatest reason why promising startups stall and collapse violently when they attempt to scale past the 10 million ARR mark.

The anatomy of competence debt

We all understand Technical Debt: the deferred cost of choosing a quick-and-dirty implementation over a better, more robust one. Competence Debt is the systemic equivalent, and it permeates the entire organisation, not just the codebase.

Competence Debt is incurred in three critical areas:

• The codebase and infrastructure (the hidden sinkhole)

The first version of the MVC product is often held together by duct tape, hasty third-party integrations, and code written by a single, exhausted founder or an inexpensive offshore team. The systems are non-compliant, non-secure, and barely documented.

The debt is incurred when this poor foundation is celebrated as a “lean” approach. When the company hits scale, the system begins to buckle. Simple feature updates take weeks instead of days. Security audits become catastrophic. The inevitable need for a rewrite, forcing the team to stop building new value and spend 12-18 months simply digging the company out of a self-made hole. This halts growth, burns capital, and destroys team morale.

Also Read: Why easy money kills startups

• The hiring and culture (the competence ceiling)

In the MVC rush, founders prioritise “bodies in seats” over quality talent. The first 5 to 10 hires are often friends, generalists, or candidates who accepted low salaries because the founder prioritised runway over excellence.

This creates a competence ceiling. Once the company needs specialised talent (a Head of Engineering, a VP of Sales), the existing incompetent leadership structure pushes back, either actively resisting change or passively stifling the growth of the better talent. The company can only scale to the lowest level of its existing leaders’ competence. The founder must then fire the people they started, or let the company stagnate.

• The customer promise (the broken trust)

The MVC approach forces a founder to sell a product they know is fundamentally incomplete. They over-promise functionality, stability, and support. This is a debt of trust.

When scaling, the customer experience becomes defined by outages, data errors, and the inability of the rushed infrastructure to handle volume. The resulting churn and brand damage are disproportionate to the early-stage “speed” advantage gained. The reputation that took 18 months to build can be destroyed in a single, prolonged outage caused by a brittle MVC-era server configuration.

Also Read: From shell to startups: Why scenario planning matters in volatile times

The imperative of over-engineering the foundation

The counterintuitive truth for founders seeking disruptive growth is that you must over-engineer the foundation.

Instead of MVC, the approach must be the Maximum Viable Problem (MVP) strategy: Build a product that is ruthlessly focused on solving one massive, complex problem for a tiny, elite group of early users. The solution, even if initially expensive and slow to build, must be structurally perfect, secure, and infinitely scalable from day one.

Why? Because the problem you are solving is the only constant. The code, the features, and the marketing are variables. If the solution to the Maximum Viable Problem is fundamentally sound, the company can pivot its features, its price, or its market, but it never has to stop building forward to repay a crushing Competence Debt.

The goal of the early stage isn’t speed; it is structural integrity. You are not building a paper prototype for a demo; you are laying the foundation for a skyscraper. If you build your skyscraper on a foundation of sand, it doesn’t matter how beautiful the lobby is. It will eventually crush the occupants.

We need to stop celebrating the founder who rushes a shoddy product to market. We should celebrate the founders who took an extra six months of relative silence, not to perfect the UI, but to build an unassailable engineering core.

When you receive that first major VC term sheet, are you prepared to show the investors the financial model, or are you secretly terrified of showing them the technical architecture that will support it? Are you building a business designed to look good for three years, or one engineered to survive thirty?

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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.

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Algorithmic bias isn’t an ethics debate. For APAC startups, it’s actually a customer acquisition problem.

Picture this: you’re a founder running campaigns on Google or Meta, using an AI-powered optimisation tool your team swears by. The dashboard looks healthy, the algorithm is working, and it’s confidently serving your ads to urban, English-literate, smartphone-native consumers: the same segment other well-funded competitors in your space are chasing.

The algorithm isn’t broken, not really. It’s doing exactly what it was trained to do, and there lies the problem.

Most AI marketing tools were built on data that reflects who has historically converted, and in most cases, that customer profile was shaped by Western markets, existing financial access, and majority-language behaviour.

So when an APAC startup plugs in without asking questions, it inherits a very specific worldview of who your customer is supposed to be.

You don’t need a machine learning degree to understand the core mechanic. AI marketing tools learn from patterns: who clicked, who converted, who stayed.

And unlike a recruiter you can brief, the algorithm doesn’t tell you when it’s working from outdated assumptions. It just keeps optimising in the wrong direction.

More than a bias problem, this is a CAC problem

Here’s the reframe that matters for founders: the segments that AI tools tend to deprioritise are often the ones worth fighting for.

Underserved audiences in APAC are typically less saturated, and fewer competitors have bothered, which means lower costs to reach them.

They’re often faster-growing, representing first-time digital finance users, rising middle-class consumers, and gig economy workers entering the formal economy for the first time.

Also Read: AI didn’t invent bias, it inherited it

And once acquired, they tend to be more loyal. When you’re the first brand to reach someone in their language, on their terms, with a product that actually fits their life, you don’t lose them easily to a competitor whose algorithm never found them either.

The startup optimising only toward algorithmically “safe” audiences is competing on the most expensive, most crowded ground available. Meanwhile, the segment the algorithm flagged as low-converting might just be low-converting for the incumbent that trained the model.

Consider the trajectory of something like GCash in the Philippines or GoPay in Indonesia. The dominant narrative around their growth tends to focus on product. But a significant part of what made them work was a willingness to reach customers that existing financial infrastructure – and by extension, existing marketing logic – had written off.

Three things to do before you trust your tool’s outputs

• Ask where your tool was trained before you trust what it surfaces

Most vendors won’t answer directly, but the question is worth asking. Look at which audience segments the tool constructs automatically versus which ones you have to build manually. The defaults reveal the assumptions.

If the tool’s “recommended audience” looks nothing like the customer your product was built for, that’s not a good recommendation.

• Seed your own first-party data early and deliberately

The fastest way to correct for training bias is to give your algorithm a better signal. That means running intentional top-of-funnel campaigns to underserved segments: not to convert immediately, but to start generating behavioural data your tool can actually learn from.

It’s a slower start, but compounds significantly over time. The startup that builds a proprietary data advantage in a segment their competitors have algorithmically abandoned is the one that wins.

• Treat “low-converting segments” as hypotheses, not verdicts

When your tool tells you a segment underperforms, ask why before you cut it. Is the creative wrong for that audience? Is the landing page in the wrong language? Is the call-to-action built around a behaviour your customer doesn’t have yet?

The algorithm can’t tell the difference between “this segment won’t convert” and “this segment hasn’t been spoken to correctly,” and only you can make that call.

Also Read: The hidden dangers of AI bias: Where it can go wrong

The competitive case for equitable marketing

Building marketing infrastructure that works for the actual APAC customer, not the default archetype your software recognises, is a growth strategy.

Take the opportunity of the segments being systematically underserved by algorithmically-biased tools, because these are the market your competitors have outsourced the decision to a tool that was never trained to see them.

Equity by design, in marketing terms, is the unsexy work of auditing your stack, questioning your defaults, and deciding whether the “optimised” audience your tool serves up is actually your audience. The algorithm will always find you a customer. The question is whether it’s finding yours.

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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 AI marketing tools you’re using were trained on your competitor’s customer, not yours appeared first on e27.

Bitcoin and traditional equity markets moved in a tight, synchronised dance fuelled by a sudden thaw in geopolitical tensions. Bitcoin climbed 0.86 per cent to reach US$74,813.22, almost perfectly mirroring the 0.88 per cent gain across the broader cryptocurrency sector.

This movement appears deeply tethered to the S&P 500, with an 86 per cent correlation, suggesting that the digital asset is currently trading as a high-beta proxy for global risk appetite. Investors are clearly looking past previous volatility, focusing instead on a massive return of institutional capital and the possibility of a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the Middle East.

The primary driver of this price surge is a dramatic reversal in institutional behaviour toward spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. After a period of cooling interest, these funds recorded net inflows of US$411.5 million on April 15. BlackRock led this charge through its IBIT fund, which alone accounted for roughly US$214 million in new capital. This represents the second-largest daily inflow for April and serves as a powerful signal that institutional smart money is stepping back in to provide a robust floor for the market.

When large-scale buyers commit hundreds of millions of dollars in a single session, it creates a supply-demand imbalance that naturally forces the price upward, reinforcing the narrative that Bitcoin is no longer just a retail playground but a core component of modern portfolio management.

This resurgence in digital assets cannot be viewed in isolation from the record-breaking performance of the US stock market. On April 16, 2026, the S&P 500 gained 0.80 per cent to close at a historic peak of 7,022.95, while the Nasdaq Composite jumped 1.59 per cent to end at 24,016.02. This marked an impressive 11-session winning streak for tech-heavy indices.

Market sentiment was lifted by renewed optimism surrounding peace talks to resolve the war in Iran. As the fear of a broader regional escalation eased, the CBOE Volatility Index fell 1.03 per cent to 18.17. This decline in market fear directly benefited Bitcoin, as traders felt more comfortable moving back into riskier assets that had been suppressed by the threat of geopolitical instability.

Also Read: Is Bitcoin’s geopolitical rally sustainable? The data says maybe, but there’s a catch

Technically, Bitcoin’s price action appears increasingly constructive as it holds above critical support levels. The asset successfully held above the 50 per cent Fibonacci retracement level at US$74,479 and its seven-day simple moving average of US$74,586. These levels are essential psychological and mathematical markers for traders.

Staying above them confirms a bullish structure and prevents the cascading sell-offs seen at the height of the conflict earlier this year. As long as Bitcoin remains above this US$74,479 threshold, the path of least resistance appears to be toward the recent swing high of US$75,409. If that barrier is breached, the market will likely set its sights on the US$76,559 extension level.

While the headline numbers on Wall Street and in the crypto markets suggest a period of euphoria, the underlying economic data present a more nuanced and complicated reality. According to the Federal Reserve Beige Book, the US economy is growing at only a slight-to-modest pace. The report highlights that the war in Iran remains a major source of uncertainty, leading many businesses to adopt a wait-and-see posture regarding hiring and capital investment.

Furthermore, preliminary April data show that consumer sentiment has plunged to a historical low of 47.6 per cent. This disconnect between record-high stock prices and record-low consumer confidence is largely driven by persistent inflation concerns, even as energy prices, such as West Texas Intermediate crude oil, cooled slightly to settle at US$90.69.

The corporate sector reflects this divide between growth and geopolitical pressure. On one hand, tech giants and financial institutions are showing remarkable resilience. Broadcom surged more than 4.19 per cent following an extended partnership with Meta on custom artificial intelligence chips, and Tesla rallied 7.62 per cent to lead the major tech players. Large banks also contributed to the positive market mood, with Morgan Stanley rising 4.52 per cent and Bank of America gaining two per cent after delivering earnings that surpassed expectations.

These companies seem to be navigating the inflationary environment and the higher-for-longer interest rate landscape better than smaller firms. Other sectors more sensitive to energy costs, such as the energy industry itself, struggled as crude prices dipped, with TotalEnergies falling more than three per cent.

Also Read: Bitcoin’s US$74K surge: Institutional conviction or macro mirage?

In the bond and commodities markets, the signals remain mixed but generally supportive of the current risk-on environment. The 10-year Treasury yield is trading near 4.26 per cent, and while the yield curve remains inverted, with the two-year yield higher than the 10-year, equity markets have largely ignored this traditional recession signal for the time being.

Gold, often a rival to Bitcoin for the safe haven title, edged up 0.82 per cent to US$4,829.37 per troy ounce. The fact that both gold and Bitcoin are rising simultaneously suggests that while some investors are betting on peace and economic growth, others are still hedging against the possibility that inflation and war-related uncertainties could return at any moment.

The Russell 2000 also joined the rally, rising 0.30 per cent to 2,713.66, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.15 per cent to 48,463.72. This slight underperformance in the Dow suggests that the market favour is heavily skewed toward growth and technology rather than traditional industrial components.

Looking ahead, the market outlook for Bitcoin remains cautiously bullish, though it is heavily dependent on the continued transparency and volume of daily institutional reports. The key trigger for the next major move will be whether the momentum of these massive spot ETF inflows can be sustained throughout the week.

If the daily reports continue to show hundreds of millions of dollars entering the space, the psychological resistance at US$75,400 will likely crumble. Should the inflows dry up or turn into outflows, a pullback toward the US$73,549 swing low becomes a very real possibility. Investors must remain vigilant, as the current rally is built on the twin pillars of institutional support and fragile geopolitical hopes.

Also Read: Beyond the US$70K level: Why Bitcoin’s real test isn’t price yet

The transition from a speculative asset to an institutional one is nearly complete. Market participants now treat Bitcoin as a legitimate barometer of liquidity and risk. Every tick of the clock brings more data from providers like SoSoValue or Farside that dictates the near-term trend.

For the rally to continue, the support zone around US$74,479 must be defended at all costs. A failure there would signal that the institutional appetite is not as deep as current numbers suggest. Analysts are watching for a daily close above US$75,409 to confirm the next leg of the journey toward the US$76,559 mark.

Ultimately, the events illustrate a world where Bitcoin is no longer an outsider but a central character in the global financial narrative. I will keep watching the market.

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Quick commerce has often been framed as a sub-sector: fast groceries, dark stores, and on-demand convenience. That framing is too narrow for Southeast Asia. What is happening now is not simply the rise of a new retail format. It is a deeper strategic shift in which e-commerce players are trying to capture a bigger share of everyday life, one urgent order at a time.

According to Ecommerce in Southeast Asia 2026 by MomentumWorks, quick commerce is becoming “a fight for user frequency, not a standalone business”. That is the right lens. The real prize is not a bag of milk, a phone charger, or late-night paracetamol. The real prize is habitual demand.

Also Read: Shopee, TikTok, Lazada: Three ways to win and no easy way in

Once a platform becomes the default place consumers go for the next one hour, four hours, or same-day purchase, it stops being a shopping app and starts becoming an operating system for urban consumption.

Why frequency matters more than basket size

Traditional e-commerce in Southeast Asia was built around planned purchases. Consumers searched, compared, waited, and often bought non-urgent items such as fashion, beauty, home goods, gadgets, and seasonal promotions. Quick commerce changes the rhythm completely. Orders become smaller, faster, more local, and more frequent.

That matters because frequency is one of the strongest levers in platform economics. A consumer who orders twice a week is more valuable than one who orders once a month, even if the average order value is lower. More frequent behaviour means more data, greater payment engagement, more wallet share, and a higher chance of cross-selling into categories once considered outside the scope of e-commerce.

This is why quick commerce is strategically significant even if the unit economics remain tricky. It is a habit engine.

Southeast Asia is producing multiple models, not one dominant formula

MomentumWorks makes an important point that is often missed when investors compare Southeast Asia with India or China: the region does not yet have a single dominant fulfilment model for quick commerce.

In India, first-party dark stores have become the defining approach.
Southeast Asia looks messier. Shopee is using its on-demand fleet, often via ShopeeFood infrastructure, to pick up from e-commerce sellers for instant delivery. Grab is leaning on a partner-led model, integrating with existing supermarket chains and retailers. Lazada is pushing a more controlled first-party dark store model in selected areas, particularly through RedMart Now in Singapore. Foodpanda is extending pandamart. Independent players such as Astro in Indonesia, and FoodMax in Singapore are also still in the game.

That variety reflects the region’s structural reality. Southeast Asia is not one market. It is a patchwork of very different urban densities, retail systems, transport constraints, labour costs, and consumer expectations. A model that works in dense, affluent Singapore may not scale neatly in Jakarta, where traffic patterns, fulfilment complexity, and retail fragmentation create different constraints. Bangkok, Manila, Ho Chi Minh City, and Kuala Lumpur each add their own wrinkles.

Shopee, Grab, and Lazada are chasing different forms of relevance

The battle is not being fought by identical competitors.

Shopee’s push into instant delivery is defensive as much as offensive. TikTok Shop has changed how consumers discover products, but Shopee still has a strong logistics backbone and an embedded user base. By offering sub-four-hour delivery in five of six Southeast Asian markets, it is reinforcing a consumer proposition that users can feel immediately: speed.

Grab, by contrast, is extending an existing delivery ecosystem. Its expansion through GrabMart is less about reinventing e-commerce and more about monetising an installed network of riders, merchant relationships, and consumer trust around immediacy. For Grab, quick commerce is a natural adjacency to food delivery and mobility, not a wholesale bet on a new category.

Also Read: The future of social and quick commerce for developing countries

Lazada’s approach is more selective and may offer higher margins. RedMart Now in Singapore suggests that Lazada sees quick commerce as a way to deepen engagement with premium households and high-frequency grocery demand, rather than chasing volume everywhere.
Each player starts with a different asset base. That is why the competitive end state remains unsettled.

The real map of demand is shrinking

One of the smartest ideas in the report is that platforms are starting to segment demand by proximity. Hyperlocal demand can be fulfilled within an hour. Local demand can often be served within four hours. Country-wide demand still belongs to conventional parcel logistics and next-day or scheduled delivery.

This seemingly simple shift has large implications.

It means inventory strategy becomes more important than pure assortment size. It means retailers with well-placed stores suddenly matter again. It means delivery fleets, mapping tools, and dispatch systems become strategic assets. It means brands have to decide which products belong in fast delivery, and which should remain in standard ecommerce. It means the geography of a city starts to shape platform economics in a far more direct way.

In short, the competitive map of e-commerce is shrinking from a nation to a neighbourhood.

Retailers and brands now face harder choices

Quick commerce not only changes platforms. It forces trade-offs across the entire ecosystem.

Brands must decide whether to build their own fast-delivery capability or partner with dominant platforms. They need to rethink pricing: should quick commerce carry a premium because of convenience, or be priced at parity to drive volume and customer acquisition? They must consider inventory placement, assortment design, and the role of local stores versus central warehouses.

Retailers face a different dilemma. Their physical footprint, once considered an analogue legacy, can become an e-commerce advantage if used as a fulfilment layer. But store-based picking can disrupt offline operations. That creates a tension between asset utilisation and operational simplicity.

For service providers and startups, the question becomes even sharper: where is the defensible layer? Pure last-mile delivery is increasingly commoditised. The more durable opportunities may lie in routing software, store operations, inventory intelligence, cold-chain logistics, or merchant tools that help brands navigate fragmented fulfilment models.

Southeast Asia’s cities make quick commerce plausible

The infrastructure base is stronger than it was a few years ago. Delivery fleets are bigger, dispatch systems are smarter, and consumers are more accustomed to app-based fulfilment. Large cities across the region are congested, mobile-first, and full of need-based purchases that still happen offline. That is fertile ground for quick commerce.

Also Read: Shopee, TikTok Shop, Lazada now control 84% of SEA’s e-commerce market

But the winner will not simply be the platform that delivers fastest. It will be the one that uses speed to deepen frequency, improve retention, and reshape consumer behaviour at scale.

In Southeast Asia, quick commerce is not about selling groceries faster. It is about owning the next urban habit. And the platform that wins habit usually wins far more than the basket in front of it.

The post Why quick commerce is really about frequency, not speed appeared first on e27.

There is a conversation happening in boardrooms across Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo that almost never makes it into a marketing report.

Senior B2B marketers — the ones with the budgets, the data, and the track record — are quietly pulling spend away from digital channels. Not because digital doesn’t work. But because of their specific goal — getting in front of a CFO, a CTO, or a Chief Revenue Officer who actually controls the budget — it has become nearly impossible to break through.

I hear this every week. I run The Ortus Club, a B2B executive event agency that has hosted more than 2,500 invitation-only roundtable dinners, masterclasses, and summits across 40+ countries since 2015. Our clients are companies like Google, Visa, Meta, IBM, and Airwallex. And in the past 18 months, almost every single one of them has said a version of the same thing: digital is saturated at the top of the funnel. The executives we need to reach have stopped responding.

Our 2026 Event Marketer’s Playbook — which surveyed 295 senior B2B marketers across 30 cities — confirms what we are seeing on the ground. The shift is real, it is accelerating, and it is reshaping how the most sophisticated B2B brands in APAC are thinking about pipeline.

The executive attention problem is not going away

Let me give you the honest picture. A senior decision-maker at an enterprise company in Singapore receives, on average, somewhere between 100 and 200 unsolicited outreach messages per week across email, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp. Their EA screens calls. Their LinkedIn inbox is a graveyard of unanswered connection requests. Their email filters have become extraordinarily sophisticated.

The traditional B2B playbook — awareness campaign, gated content, MQL handoff to sales, SDR follow-up sequence — was designed for a world where digital channels were still relatively low-noise. That world is gone. What has replaced it is a senior executive who has essentially become unreachable through conventional means, and a generation of marketing teams who are still measuring success by the number of form fills.

What the data from 295 marketers actually shows

Across the 295 senior B2B marketers we surveyed for the 2026 Event Marketer’s Playbook, three findings stood out.

First, in-person executive events now rank as the single highest-ROI channel for pipeline generation at the enterprise level, ahead of paid social, content marketing, and outbound SDR programmes. This is not a soft preference — it is a commercial finding based on deal velocity and average contract value.

Second, the most cited reason for increasing event budgets in 2026 is not brand awareness. It is trust acceleration. Marketers told us repeatedly that a 90-minute dinner conversation compresses a sales cycle that would otherwise take six to nine months of digital nurturing. The decision-maker who sat across the table from your CEO at a roundtable last Tuesday is not the same prospect as the one who downloaded your whitepaper.

Also Read: Pre-launch marketing is a tease that works, how to get it right?

Third, the format matters enormously. Traditional conferences and trade shows are losing share to smaller, curated, invitation-only formats. The reason is simple: executives will not give up three hours of their time for a room of 500 people, but they will clear their calendar for a dinner of twelve where everyone in the room is relevant to them.

Why is this particularly true in APAC

Southeast Asia is not a monolith, and any B2B marketer who treats it as one will struggle. The relationship dynamics that govern enterprise purchasing decisions in Singapore are fundamentally different from those in Jakarta, Bangkok, or Kuala Lumpur. In most of this region, business does not happen between companies — it happens between people who have met in person, established trust, and decided they want to work together.

This is not a cultural observation. It is a commercial one. The B2B brands that have built the deepest enterprise pipelines in APAC over the past decade are almost universally the ones that have invested in face-to-face executive relationships — not the ones with the most sophisticated marketing automation stacks.

Digital channels are absolutely necessary for awareness and reach. But in APAC’s enterprise market, they are not sufficient for conversion. The gap between a warm digital lead and a signed contract is filled by human interaction, and the most efficient way to create that interaction at scale is through curated executive events.

What to actually do about it

If you are a B2B marketing leader reading this and your pipeline is heavily dependent on digital channels, here is what I would look at first.

Map your top 50 target accounts and ask honestly: which of those decision-makers have we had a real conversation with in the last six months — not a demo, not a webinar, an actual conversation about a problem they have? If the answer is fewer than ten, you have a relationship gap that no amount of retargeting spend will close.

Second, consider whether your events strategy is built for volume or for quality. A 500-person conference appearance and a 12-person invitation-only roundtable dinner are not the same thing. One builds brand awareness. The other builds a pipeline. You probably need both, but most B2B marketing budgets are still heavily skewed toward the former.

Third, think about what you are actually offering the executive when you invite them. The invitation-only format works because the value proposition to the guest is explicit: you will spend 90 minutes with 11 other senior leaders who share your challenges, in a pitch-free environment where you can speak candidly. That is a genuinely compelling offer. A webinar about thought leadership trends is not.

Also Read: Why traditional marketing fails for complex B2B and deeptech products

The harder truth

The brands that will struggle most in APAC’s B2B market over the next three years are not the ones with the smallest budgets. They are the ones that continue to optimise for the wrong metrics — click-through rates, MQL volumes, cost per lead — while their competitors are quietly building the executive relationships that actually convert.

The executives who matter most are not hiding. They are simply waiting to be approached in a way that respects their time and treats them as peers rather than targets.

That is a harder thing to build than a campaign. But it compounds in ways that a campaign never can.

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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 quiet exodus: Why APAC’s B2B marketers are ditching digital marketing for executive dinners appeared first on e27.

Every week, a founder somewhere in Southeast Asia sends a polished deck to an impact fund. The numbers are real. The mission is genuine. Three months later: silence.

They assume the deck wasn’t good enough. They tighten the narrative. Apply again. Same silence.

The deck was never the problem.

The myth: Impact funds are just VCs with a conscience

Most founders approach impact funds the same way they approach any VC, growth story, TAM slide, compelling founder narrative. That’s the first mistake.

Impact funds are not VCs with an ESG checkbox. They operate under completely different internal logic. Mandates tied to specific theories of change. LPs who care about measurable social outcomes, not just returns. Some can only deploy grants, blended finance, or catalytic capital, instruments that have nothing to do with equity.

When a founder sends an equity pitch to a fund that can only deploy grants, it doesn’t matter how good the deck is. The application fails before anyone reads slide two.

The reality: It’s a fit problem, not a writing problem

In my experience mapping 100+ impact programs across SEA, fewer than 30% are genuinely open to cold applications. The rest require a warm intro, a prior relationship, or a very specific instrument match that’s never published.

Here’s what most founders don’t know: impact funds rarely publish their real criteria. The website says “we invest in climate, health, and financial inclusion across SEA.” What it doesn’t say is that their last six investments were all health-only, all in Vietnam, all at Series B, structured as convertible notes with a three-year impact reporting requirement.

That’s not on the website. You learn it by being in the room.

Also Read: Why non-dilutive capital is the smarter first move for SEA founders in 2026

Three fit questions that actually matter, before you write a single word:

• Does your instrument type match what the fund can actually deploy?
• Does your geography and sector match their last five investments, not just their stated mandate?
• Is this fund relationship-first or application-first? (Some have never funded a cold application in their history.)

The fix: Do the work before the application

Before you open any application form, answer these:

• What instrument does this fund deploy, and does it match what you need?
• Who have they funded in the last 24 months, and do you look like those companies?
• Is there a warm intro available, or is this fund genuinely open to cold applications?
• What does their theory of change require you to prove, and can you prove it with your current data?

If you can’t answer all four, you’re not ready to apply. You’re ready to research.

The uncomfortable truth

The impact funding ecosystem in SEA has a discovery problem. The funds exist. The capital exists. The mandate overlap with what founders are building is real.

But the information is asymmetric. Funds know exactly what they want. Founders are guessing.

That gap, between what’s published and what’s actually fundable, is where most applications die. Not in the writing. Not in the pitch. In the research that should have happened before any of it.

The founders who figure this out stop chasing every fund that looks relevant and start treating fund selection like due diligence. Fewer rejections. More callbacks. And eventually, they stop wondering why the silence.

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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 Why SEA founders keep failing at impact funds (and it’s not your pitch deck) appeared first on e27.