Southeast Asia’s gaming industry loves a headline number. And the headline number everyone reaches for is this: mobile accounts for roughly 70 per cent of the region’s total gaming revenue.

It is a clean, compelling statistic that has become the intellectual shorthand for an entire investment and market-entry thesis. Build a mobile game, localise it loosely, run some ads, and tap into a population of nearly 290 million gamers. Job done.

Also Read: Gaming in SEA: Understanding the growing opportunity for SMEs and payment providers

Except it is not that simple. A closer reading of a gaming report by Southeast Asian gaming marketing agency Ampverse reveals a market that is simultaneously larger and harder to monetise than the headline suggests, and one that is generating billions of dollars in downloads while leaving significant revenue on the table.

The scale-monetisation gap is real, and it is widening

In 2025, Southeast Asia’s gaming market generated approximately US$6.6 billion in revenue, growing at roughly 9 per cent year on year. Mobile gaming alone is projected to generate approximately US$4.8 billion by 2028, with PC and download games contributing a further US$1.5 billion. The broader ecosystem, incorporating advertising, creators, esports, and live services, could reach US$14 billion by 2030.

Those are extraordinary numbers. But here is the problem: Southeast Asia also ranked among the top two regions globally for mobile game downloads, recording nearly two billion installs in a single quarter. Two billion installs. And yet the region’s revenue does not come close to matching that install velocity in proportional terms.

The disconnect comes down to average revenue per user (ARPU). Across most of Southeast Asia’s six core gaming markets (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Singapore), ARPU remains structurally low. The exception is Singapore, which has the smallest gamer base in the region (approximately four million) but the highest ARPU of any market. Singapore functions less as a consumer gaming market and more as a regional headquarters for publishers and platforms making bets on the rest of the region.

Vietnam offers perhaps the starkest illustration of the gap. With 55 million gamers, it is the second-largest market by player count, behind only Indonesia. The Ampverse report describes Vietnam as “price-sensitive but highly engaged”, a combination that is catnip for install metrics and a persistent headache for monetisation teams.

Players in Vietnam are deeply invested in their games; they are simply not converting into paying users at the rates publishers need to justify the cost of acquisition.

Free-to-play is not a monetisation strategy; it is a starting point

The dominance of free-to-play models in Southeast Asia is often cited as evidence of the region’s accessibility. That is true. But free-to-play also creates a structural ceiling on revenue that publishers and startups are only now beginning to dismantle seriously.

Also Read: How a US$14.8B SEA gaming market is turning tournaments into media ecosystems

The Ampverse report notes that gaming revenue is “expanding beyond traditional in-app purchases into content, communities, and brand ecosystems.” That is a significant shift. It signals that the primary monetisation lever for the next phase of Southeast Asian gaming growth is not in-app purchases; it is the broader economic activity surrounding the game itself.

This includes livestreaming revenue, creator-driven commerce, tournament prize pools and sponsorship, branded in-game activations, and the emerging space of user-generated content (UGC) that blurs the line between player and producer.

In markets like Thailand, which the report describes as one of Southeast Asia’s most monetised gaming markets with strong e-sports infrastructure and high acceptance of premium brand activations, this ecosystem-level monetisation is already more advanced than in neighbouring markets.

The platform story is more nuanced than mobile vs everything else

It would be a mistake to read the mobile dominance numbers as evidence that PC and console are irrelevant. The Ampverse report notes that the console remains niche but is growing in affluent urban centres across the region. More importantly, many of Southeast Asia’s most engaged gamers are not single-platform users; they move fluidly between mobile and PC depending on the game, the time of day, and the social context.

For startups building gaming-adjacent businesses (infrastructure tools, analytics platforms, creator monetisation products, and social layers), this cross-platform behaviour is commercially significant. A player who starts a game on mobile during their commute and continues on PC at home is a different kind of user than the pure mobile demographic that install-volume figures suggest dominates the region.

What the data actually tells investors and founders

For investors evaluating gaming or gaming-adjacent opportunities in Southeast Asia, Ampverse’s data points to a market in the middle of a structural transition, from a downloads-and-installs economy to a retention-and-monetisation one. The startups most likely to win in this environment are not those chasing install volume, but those building the infrastructure that converts engagement into durable revenue.

That means community platforms, creator monetisation tools, live event technology, regional analytics products, and brand-to-gaming partnership intermediaries. The US$14 billion 2030 projection is not a passive forecast; it is a roadmap of the commercial infrastructure that needs to be built to make it real.

Also Read: AI in gaming: How Southeast Asia became the testing ground for virtual companions

The mobile-first thesis is not wrong. It is just incomplete. Southeast Asia’s gaming economy is mobile by default and complex by nature, and the entrepreneurs who understand the difference between those two things are the ones who will build the companies worth watching.

The post The mobile-first myth that is costing SEA’s gaming industry billions appeared first on e27.

Southeast Asia is one of the most exciting regions in the world for founders. With a fast-growing middle class, accelerating digital adoption, and a wave of ambitious entrepreneurs building across borders, the energy is undeniable. And yet, for every startup that cracks the APAC market, there are many more that struggle.

The difference usually isn’t the product. It isn’t the funding. It’s the execution.

It’s a gap that Jenga Anderson Global was built to close. Founded by Iris Xu, the firm works with growth-stage startups and fast-moving companies navigating the complexity of scaling across Southeast Asia and the wider Asia-Pacific region.

Why APAC is harder than it looks

Southeast Asia is not one market. It’s ten countries, hundreds of languages and dialects, and a dizzying mix of regulatory environments, payment preferences, cultural norms, and consumer behaviors. What works in Singapore doesn’t automatically work in Indonesia. What flies in the Philippines can fall flat in Vietnam.

According to Iris, the most common mistake founders make is treating APAC as a single block and building one strategy for all of it. The second is moving too fast before validating product-market fit in even one APAC country.

“Founders often think APAC expansion is about moving fast. It is, but only if you move in the right order,” says Iris Xu, founder of Jenga Anderson Global. “Too many teams copy their Singapore playbook into Indonesia, Vietnam, or the Philippines without first testing payment habits, trust signals, local partners, and regulatory assumptions.”

The other pattern she sees repeatedly is overbuilding too early. Teams set up entities, hire local staff, and enter arrangements before the operating model is clear. That creates avoidable cost and restructuring further down the road. “In APAC, the winners are not just the fastest movers. They are the founders who sequence well,” she adds.

The founder behind Jenga Anderson Global

Before starting Jenga Anderson Global, Iris built her career across private equity and consulting, focusing on growth, investment, structuring, and cross-border business strategy. She also led technology, media, and telecoms investment efforts under a multi-family office, work that put her in close proximity to founders, investors, and fast-moving technology businesses across the region.

That background shaped a particular way of thinking about expansion. “Growth is not just about capital or market opportunity,” Iris says. “It’s about turning ambition into an executable structure with the right jurisdiction, governance, banking, hiring, tax, and compliance foundations in place.”

The idea for Jenga Anderson Global crystallized from seeing the same gap play out repeatedly: founders with strong businesses who struggled with the practical execution of expanding across jurisdictions. They needed more than a service provider to file documents. They needed someone who could help them think through structure, compliance, banking, and hiring in the right order.

The firm’s name is deliberate. “Jenga reflects how I think about building a business,” Iris explains. “It is about using limited pieces efficiently to build the highest possible tower. Every piece matters, and sequencing matters. Sometimes the tower may fall, but in business, as in the game, you can always learn, rebuild, and start again, ideally with better structure and judgment each time.”

Also Read : Top 3 popular GEO monitoring tool for SEO optimisation targeting service industry in Singapore

The APAC ecosystem right now

Despite global headwinds, Southeast Asia continues to attract serious founder and investor attention. The fundamentals are strong: a young, digital-native population, rising consumer spending, and a startup ecosystem that is maturing fast, with more local talent, more local capital, and more locally-grown success stories than at any previous point.

What’s also shifting is how founders are building. Iris sees a generation of APAC companies that are regional from day one. Rather than thinking about one domestic market first and international expansion later, they are designing their companies, teams, payment flows, and investor story with cross-border growth already built in.

AI is accelerating the timeline. Smaller teams are moving faster, serving more markets, and automating operations that once required much larger headcount. But Iris thinks founders may be underestimating what that speed demands structurally. “As companies become more AI-enabled and cross-border, questions around data, tax, employment, licensing, payments, and governance become more important, not less,” she says. “The opportunity in APAC is very real. But the winners will be founders who combine speed with discipline: strong product, clear market sequencing, and a structure that can actually support regional scale.”

How Jenga Anderson Global helps startups scale

Jenga Anderson Global works with growth-stage startups and fast-moving companies that are serious about expanding in Southeast Asia and beyond. The firm helps founders use Singapore as a base to establish, operate, and scale across the region, supporting them across corporate structuring, governance, compliance, tax and accounting coordination, HR and work pass solutions, banking readiness, and ongoing operational execution.

The approach goes beyond strategy. “What clients value most is that we don’t just give advice from a distance,” Iris says. “We help them connect strategy with execution, turning expansion plans into the right structure, process, and trusted local support on the ground.”

Also read : Ecosystem Roundup: Digital on the surface, cash underneath

Case study: From strategy to scale

One client was a fast-growing technology company using Singapore as its international base. They had strong investor interest, but their corporate structure wasn’t ready for cross-border growth. Jenga Anderson Global helped align incorporation, governance, banking readiness, hiring, work passes, tax and accounting coordination, and future fundraising considerations into one practical roadmap. The result was a structure that could support real global expansion, not just a paper presence.

What separates the ones who make it

After working with founders across different markets, industries, and growth stages, Iris has identified a few things that consistently set successful APAC expansions apart.

First: intellectual humility. The founders who do well are the ones who walk in curious, not convinced. They ask questions before they make decisions. They hire locally, listen locally, and adapt quickly.

Second: execution discipline. APAC rewards founders who can move fast and stay organized: clean financial setup, clear accountability, and systems that can scale.

Third: the right partners. Founders don’t have to figure out Southeast Asia alone. The ones who scale fastest find the right people early: advisors, operators, and local hires who have already navigated the terrain.

On what ultimately separates those who make it from those who don’t, Iris is direct: “The biggest difference is not just speed. It is learning speed. The founders who succeed in APAC move fast, but they also listen fast, adapt fast, and correct course fast. They don’t assume one playbook will work across every market. They stay close to customers, local teams, regulators, banks, and partners, and they build enough structure around the business so that speed doesn’t turn into chaos.”

Meet Jenga Anderson Global at Echelon Singapore 2026

Jenga Anderson Global will be exhibiting at Echelon Singapore 2026 at Booths M14 and M15. For founders thinking about expanding into Southeast Asia, or those already in the thick of it, it’s a chance to have a real conversation with a team that has seen the full picture.

Visitors to the booth can expect a practical expansion conversation covering market-entry sequencing, structuring, compliance, banking readiness, hiring, and local execution. Jenga Anderson Global will also be sharing a market-entry checklist to help founders assess what to prepare before expanding through Singapore or into other APAC markets.

Southeast Asia remains one of the biggest opportunities in the world for ambitious founders. The question isn’t whether to be here. It’s whether you’re set up to win.

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Featured Image Credit: Jenga Anderson Global

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At Echelon Philippines 2025, Carlo Almendral, CEO and Co-Founder of AIFirst, delivered a compelling keynote speech on the second day of the event, painting an optimistic picture of the Philippines’ place in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Drawing on the country’s unique strengths, Almendral highlighted the immense potential the Philippines holds in embracing and advancing artificial intelligence. He outlined how strategic implementation of AI technology could unlock transformative opportunities across key industries, positioning the nation as a competitive player on the global stage.

His address served as both an inspiration and a call to action for Filipino innovators and business leaders alike.

The post Echelon Philippines 2025 – The future is Filipino: Opportunities in AI appeared first on e27.

For the past few years, the public image of artificial intelligence has been shaped almost entirely by the chatbot. People type questions; AI answers. People ask for summaries, emails, scripts, ideas; AI produces words.

This is genuinely powerful. But it is prologue.

The real future of AI is not conversation. It is action, and the distance between those two things is wider than most people appreciate.

LLMs are powerful, but they are mostly passive

Large Language Models are extraordinary instruments of language. They explain, translate, summarise, code, and communicate with a fluency that would have seemed miraculous a decade ago. But for all their sophistication, most LLMs are fundamentally passive.

They wait for instructions. They respond to prompts. They produce possibilities. They do not naturally perceive the physical world, test hypotheses in real environments, or improve through direct consequence the way humans and animals do.

Consider the difference in kind, not just degree:

A chatbot can tell you how to run a marketing campaign. An action-based AI system can launch the campaign, monitor performance, adjust targeting, swap creatives, reallocate budget, and learn which combination works best.

A chatbot can explain inventory management. An action-based AI system can do it, predict demand, place orders, negotiate with suppliers, detect shortfalls, and optimise warehouse movement in real time.

A chatbot gives advice. The next stage of AI executes.

That is the shift: from answering to acting.

Intelligence is not just knowing, it is doing

Human intelligence was never primarily linguistic. We do not become capable simply by reading books or holding conversations. We become capable by acting in the world and absorbing the consequences.

A child learns by touching, falling, adjusting, and trying again. A trader learns by watching how markets respond to their decisions. An athlete improves not through theory but through thousands of repetitions and the relentless feedback of performance. A driver becomes skilled not by memorising the highway code but by driving in actual traffic, with real stakes.

Real intelligence is grounded in consequence.

Also Read: Generalist or specialist? Building future-proof skills in the age of AI

This is precisely where LLMs hit a ceiling. Trained primarily on the accumulated record of human knowledge, they are exceptional at pattern recognition within language, but they do not automatically build a deep, grounded understanding of causality, physical reality, or long-term strategy. They know the map. They have not walked the terrain.

Action-based AI needs something different. It needs world models and reinforcement learning.

World models: An internal simulator for reality

A world model is an AI system that learns how the world works, not just how it is described. It learns cause and effect. It simulates possible futures. It can reason about what is likely to happen before committing to action.

This is categorically different from predicting the next word in a sentence.

A world model does not merely store the fact that dropped glasses break. It learns the relationships between objects, force, space, timing, and consequence. It can run mental simulations. It can ask: What happens if I do this? And explore the answer before anything has moved.

This matters enormously for real-world action. Before a robot moves through a space, it must model that space. Before a self-driving car changes lanes, it must model traffic. Before an AI agent manages a supply chain or deploys capital, it must understand how one action reshapes the situation it will face next.

This is the core problem that research teams are working on. Companies like QuantumAtlas.ai are building the reasoning infrastructure that sits beneath action, giving AI systems a structured, updatable picture of the world they are operating in.

If LLMs are AI’s voice, world models may become AI’s imagination.

Reinforcement learning: wisdom through consequence

Reinforcement learning trains AI not through data alone, but through experience, reward, feedback, trial, error, and iterative improvement.

This is how practical mastery actually develops. A salesperson improves after hundreds of client conversations. A portfolio manager sharpens instincts after watching markets respond to their choices. A product team learns which features matter after watching users encounter them in the wild.

Reinforcement learning gives AI a mechanism to improve based on outcomes rather than information. This is why it is indispensable for autonomous agents, robotics, logistics, financial optimisation, and any domain where the goal is not a correct answer but a better result.

An LLM can describe ten strategies. Reinforcement learning can test ten thousand, and discover which one actually works.

Also Read: Building the ASEAN AI archipelago: How Southeast Asia can secure its place in the global AI value chain

The next AI winners will be outcome companies

The first wave of generative AI built tools that help people get answers faster. That is genuinely useful. It is also, by itself, insufficient for a durable competitive advantage.

The next wave is organised around outcomes.

Businesses do not ultimately want more text. They want more revenue, lower costs, faster operations, better service, safer systems, smarter pricing, and higher productivity. They want results.

This is where action-based AI becomes qualitatively more valuable, and qualitatively harder to replace.

A company delivering an AI chatbot helps users save time. A company delivering an AI system that measurably improves revenue, reduces waste, or makes better decisions becomes embedded in the core of the business. The question shifts:

“What can this AI say?”

becomes

“What can this AI achieve?”

That is a much larger and much more defensible market.

Conversation will become the interface, not the product

None of this means conversation disappears. Natural language will remain one of the most important surfaces through which humans interact with AI. But it will become the interface, the doorway, not the destination.

Behind a simple instruction, AI will be connected to tools, data, software, sensors, robots, financial systems, supply chains, and business workflows. Consider what this actually looks like:

A user says, “Improve our customer response time.”

The AI does not offer suggestions. It analyses support tickets, identifies bottlenecks, rewrites response templates, routes urgent cases, monitors resolution time, and reports results.

A user says, “Find me the best investment opportunity.”

The AI does not explain asset classes. It scans data, models risk, simulates scenarios, monitors changes, and helps execute within defined parameters.

A user says, “Grow my marketplace.”

The AI does not produce a marketing plan. It identifies high-value sellers, optimises onboarding, personalises campaigns, monitors conversion, and improves retention.

The conversation is the instruction. The real value is everything that follows it.

Action requires memory, feedback, and responsibility

Moving from conversation to action demands more than capability. It demands accountability.

Action-based AI needs memory to understand past decisions and evolving context. It needs feedback loops to learn from what it did. It needs access to tools to execute, not just recommend. It needs safety controls to avoid acting blindly in high-stakes environments. And it needs a model of consequences to reason about risk before committing to a course of action.

Also Read: AI’s tipping point: Why 2026 will separate the leaders from the laggards in financial services

This is the architecture that matters most right now, and it is what separates serious infrastructure plays from surface-level AI wrappers. The most capable AI systems will not be chatbots. They will be intelligent operating systems for action, systems that perceive, reason, decide, execute, and learn.

The biggest opportunity is in the real economy

The largest AI opportunities are not in writing, image generation, or chat. They are in the industries that shape how the world actually functions: healthcare, education, logistics, construction, manufacturing, real estate, agriculture, finance, transportation, and government services.

These sectors do not need better conversation. They need better decisions and reliable execution.

A real estate AI should not only answer property questions. It should understand buyer intent, match listings intelligently, predict demand, support agents, manage leads, analyse pricing, and improve closing rates.

An automotive AI should not only describe vehicles. It should assess condition, predict resale value, recommend financing, detect fraud, and optimise dealership operations.

An e-commerce AI should not only write product descriptions. It should forecast demand, prevent fraudulent listings, improve delivery, recommend pricing, and build buyer trust.

These are not language problems. They are action problems. And solving action problems requires a grounded, dynamic model of the world, not just a fluent command of words about it.

From words to outcomes

LLMs changed the world by giving AI a voice, by making machine intelligence accessible to ordinary people in a form they could immediately use and understand.

But the next stage is larger.

The future of AI is not a machine that talks fluently. It is a machine that acts intelligently, one that can simulate reality, make decisions, test strategies, absorb feedback, and deliver measurable results in the world that matters.

The infrastructure for this future is being built now, quietly and carefully, by teams focused not on the next demo but on the next decade.

Conversation was the beginning. It opened the door.

Action is what happens when you walk through it.

The organisations, entrepreneurs, and investors who understand this shift earliest will hold a genuine and lasting advantage. The next AI revolution will not be won by whoever builds the most elegant chatbot. It will be won by whoever builds AI that can understand the world, act in the world, and make the world measurably better.

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The post The future of AI is not conversation, it is action appeared first on e27.

For decades, the architecture of international education ran in one direction. Asian families sent their children west, and the financial plumbing followed. Tuition flowed out of emerging markets into the bank accounts of universities in London, Boston, Sydney, and Toronto. The infrastructure was built around that single assumption.

It no longer holds. Students across Asia are increasingly choosing to study closer to home. Singapore is drawing record interest from South Asian applicants. Hong Kong’s universities, openly naming Singapore as a rival, are moving to lift their non-local enrolment ceiling to 50 per cent of local places. Malaysia, Vietnam, South Korea and Japan are all positioning themselves as destinations rather than only sources. None of this is a temporary post-pandemic blip. The pivot east is structural, not seasonal, and it is moving faster than the headlines.

Asia is no longer just a source of international students. It is rapidly becoming a destination for its own.

The payment rails carrying tuition between Asian families and Asian universities were not built for any of this.

The scale and the shift

The numbers are not small. India alone sends over a million students abroad each year. China has a similarly large outbound population, spread across more than 80 countries. Southeast Asia adds another 350,000-plus, making it one of the fastest-growing source regions globally. HolonIQ values the international education market at US$196 billion annually, projected to reach US$433 billion by 2030.

For most of these families, funding an overseas education is the largest cross-border transaction of their lives. Tuition, accommodation deposits and administrative fees get bundled into a handful of high-value transfers, executed under tight timelines and complicated regulation. Increasingly, both ends of that flow sit inside Asia. The infrastructure carrying it does not.

A system optimised for the wrong thing

The payment stage is where an offer-holder becomes an enrolled student. A failed transaction here is a lost enrolment. As a result, most institutions and payment providers optimise for a single outcome: whether the transaction goes through.

That is the wrong test. A payment going through is necessary; it is nowhere near sufficient. Conversion is the floor. It should not be mistaken for the ceiling.

Also Read: SEA’s SMEs aren’t lazy, but their payments infrastructure is

What families actually need is something harder to measure. They need to feel confident throughout. When a household is moving the largest sum of money it has ever moved, often for the first time, into a foreign banking system on a deadline tied to a visa, the absence of confidence is itself a failure mode, even if the money eventually arrives.

Asia’s payment paradox

The gap is particularly striking in Asia, home to some of the world’s most advanced domestic payment ecosystems. India’s Unified Payments Interface processed a record 21.6 billion transactions in December 2025 alone. Alipay and WeChat Pay have made cash close to optional across urban China. QR-based mobile wallets have rewired everyday commerce across Southeast Asia in under a decade.

Almost none of this translates across borders.

A Vietnamese family paying tuition to a campus in Singapore, or an Indian family wiring fees to Japan, is moving money between two digitally sophisticated payment economies, and still falling back on slow, opaque bank rails. Transfers route through multiple intermediaries. Foreign exchange costs are difficult to understand. Visibility into when funds will arrive is limited. The result is a fragmented experience layered on top of otherwise advanced financial systems.

Where friction becomes risk

For most families, this is not a transaction. It is a commitment, often the largest single transfer they will ever authorise, tied to a child’s future and a deadline they cannot move. And it is happening at a moment when households across the region are scrutinising every outgoing dollar.

The Chinese economy is in its longest stretch of consumer caution in two decades. Indian families are weighing rupee depreciation against rising overseas tuition. Across Southeast Asia, the post-pandemic squeeze has not fully lifted. In that context, an opaque foreign exchange margin is not a minor cost. An unexplained two-day delay is not a minor inconvenience. These are the moments where a family begins to wonder if they made the right choice. Some end worse: a missed enrolment deadline, or a switch to an informal channel that is faster but less safe.

Also Read: Digital payments: Adapting to a changing world

The institutional side wears the same friction differently. Tuition is high-value and compliance-sensitive. Every payment has to be reconciled against a student record, audited, and often chased through three or four intermediaries before it can be matched. Finance teams burn capacity on exception handling that legacy infrastructure was never designed to absorb at this scale.

A business-model problem dressed up as a technology one

Yes, capital controls and FX limits shape these flows. Mainland Chinese students operate under a US$50,000 annual personal quota. India’s remittance regime carries its own reporting obligations. Most emerging-market currencies come with constraints of some kind.

But these have always existed, and they do not explain the friction. The infrastructure to move money across borders, within these rules, already exists. What has been missing is any commercial reason to design it around the user, around a family in Surabaya wiring US$30,000 to Singapore, rather than around a global bank’s correspondent relationship in New York.

The challenge is less about whether payments can be completed and more about how they are experienced. Can the sender see where the money is at each stage? Are the fees and exchange rates legible? Does the confirmation arrive in time to matter? These are not edge cases. They are what trust is made of.

The metric no one is tracking

Payment success rates show up in every dashboard. Confidence does not. Yet confidence is what families remember.

A student who pays successfully but spends three days uncertain whether the money has arrived carries away a different impression of the institution than one who experiences clarity throughout. Across Asia, where decisions about where to study are shaped by agents, family WhatsApp groups and word of mouth more than by rankings or marketing, those impressions travel. Quickly, and across borders.

Also Read: SEA’s digital payments boom has a dirty secret: SMEs still run on cash

A market the incumbents were not built for

Cross-border education payments are a strange overlap: high-value, recurring, family-led, compliance-heavy, and increasingly intra-Asian. The legacy players solved a different version of this problem, one that ran from emerging markets to Western universities, in a world that no longer exists. The space is still shaped by their assumptions even as the flows move away from them.

Improving outcomes from here is not about adding more payment methods to the existing stack. It is about rethinking what visibility, trust and usability look like when both ends of the transaction sit inside Asia.

Raising the standard

As Asia’s role in global student mobility expands, the standard for the payment systems underneath it has to expand with it. A transaction that completes is no longer enough. The question worth asking is whether the system delivers confidence to the family on the other end.

A simple audit, for any institution or fintech reading this: at every stage of an inbound education payment, what does the family actually see, and what do they not?

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The post Asia’s student boom is exposing a hidden weakness in global payments appeared first on e27.

Singapore Management University (SMU) has launched a US$10 million co‑investment fund to accelerate early‑stage deeptech startups focused on urban sustainability across Asia.

The Urban SustaInnovator (USI) Fund will invest in ventures emerging from SMU’s USI accelerator and the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition (LKYGBPC) pipeline, aiming to speed the route from validation to real‑world deployment in Asian cities.

The fund is anchored to SMU’s Urban SustaInnovator accelerator, a 12‑month, hybrid, zero‑fee and equity‑free programme launched at the 12th edition of LKYGBPC in September 2025. The vehicle is being positioned as one of Southeast Asia’s first university‑anchored co‑investment vehicles dedicated to urban solutions and sustainability.

Also Read: Singapore university unveils Urban SustaInnovator accelerator for global deeptech startups

SMU says the fund will co‑invest with established venture capital partners on prevailing market terms, providing capital that aligns with the long deployment cycles common in physical and infrastructure‑adjacent technologies.

For catalytic capital and market traction

Professor Sun Sun Lim, SMU’s Vice‑President (Partnerships & Engagement) and chair of the USI Programme Management Committee, framed the fund as a pragmatic response to a persistent financing gap. “Urban sustainability innovation often fails not for lack of ideas, but for lack of capital that understands early‑stage risk and long deployment cycles,” she said. The USI Fund, she added, will “co‑invest with leading venture capital partners and back deep‑tech startups from SMU’s robust global pipeline, providing targeted early‑stage capital to help founders scale proven solutions into Asian urban markets.”

SMU has positioned the fund as catalytic: it will not typically lead rounds but intends to partner with lead investors to provide follow‑on and anchor capital that can de‑risk pilots and first commercial deployments. The university expects the first investments to come from the inaugural accelerator cohort, with deployments slated to start by the fourth quarter of 2026.

The fund’s stated remit covers a broad set of urban sustainability themes — decarbonisation, energy transition, the built environment, mobility and circularity — which reflect both technological opportunity and city policy priorities across Asia. SMU also highlights the fund’s integration with its “Singapore Inc” Advisory Board, a collective of VCs, corporates, scientists and regulators designed to give startups sectoral guidance and market access.

A built‑in deal flow from LKYGBPC

SMU is leveraging the LKYGBPC competition as a deal funnel. The competition drew more than 1,500 applications from over 90 countries, from which seven startups were selected for the USI accelerator’s first cohort. That cohort has already demonstrated commercial movement, according to SMU, suggesting the fund will have privileged access to companies with traction and sector fit.

Several cohort members have recorded visible wins. Malaysia’s Qarbotech, which develops photosynthesis‑enhancing nanomaterials for agriculture, won the Grand Prix at SusHi Tech 2026 and secured a pilot with Tokyu Fudosan Group. UK‑based Mimicrete, a developer of self‑healing concrete, has started a pilot in Singapore with The GEAR by Kajima. Both startups are reportedly in the process of establishing or expanding operations in Singapore, reinforcing the city’s appeal as a regional staging post for deep tech commercialisation.

Also Read: Urban solutions, sustainability take centre stage at SMU’s LKYGBPC startup challenge in 2025

The cohort also includes diverse technologies: US‑based MacroCycle is chemical upcycling PET plastics and has drawn institutional capital from Volta Circle; Singapore’s Inviscid AI claims eightfold revenue growth after joining USI by applying physics‑informed neural networks to thermodynamic simulation; Sesame Sustainability, an MIT alumni‑founded industrial decarbonisation software firm, has secured paid pilots with ABB; Smart Tire Company is piloting airless tyres developed from shape‑memory alloys with links to NASA programmes; and French Pronoe is pursuing modular ocean alkalinity carbon removal arrangements with Frontier, the carbon‑removal market platform backed by Meta and Google.

Taken together, the cohort illustrates the diversity and ambition of startups that the fund intends to support, from materials science and hardware to software and carbon removal.

Filling a financing gap for long‑cycle, capital‑intensive ventures

Investors and founders have long argued that deeptech ventures addressing urban systems face a distinct funding problem: they require patient capital and credible pilot pathways with corporates, utilities and municipalities, and often take longer to demonstrate commercial returns than software plays.

University‑linked funds, particularly those integrated with accelerators and research groups, attempt to bridge some of that gap by combining early capital with access to testbeds, expertise and talent.

SMU’s model emphasises a “teaching accelerator” approach: students are embedded in evaluation, due diligence and portfolio support activities so that learning and capital deployment are intertwined. Prof Lim said selected students will participate in startup evaluation, market analysis and diligence, gaining “venture literacy, climate and sustainability insight, commercialisation know‑how and applied decision‑making skills beyond the classroom.”

The pedagogical angle may offer dual benefits: students obtain practical training while the fund taps university resources for additional screening and advisory capacity. Critics, however, caution that university involvement must not substitute for professional investment management; co‑investment partnerships with experienced lead investors will therefore be critical to provide market discipline and exit pathways.

Regional ambitions and Singapore’s role

SMU is marketing Singapore as the launchpad for the USI Fund’s Asia‑wide ambitions. The city‑state’s strengths, regulatory stability, deep corporate networks, and a concentration of engineering and project partners, make it a logical base for pilots and Asia roll‑outs. The fact that several cohort companies are already establishing local footprints supports this narrative.

However, scaling urban solutions across Asia will require navigation of varied regulatory environments, differing infrastructure standards and fragmented procurement processes. Co‑investments that pair local corporate or institutional partners will be necessary to convert pilots into city‑wide deployments.

What to watch next

The USI Fund’s impact will depend on the speed and scale of its first investments, the quality of its co‑investment partners, and its ability to shepherd pilots into sustained commercial contracts. Observers will also watch whether the fund follows through on support beyond capital — for example, by facilitating regulatory approvals, municipal pilots, or industrial partnerships.

Also Read: 60 global startups to compete for US$2M prize at LKYGBPC grand finals

For the city’s startup ecosystem, the fund represents an experiment in combining academic resources, student learning and catalytic capital. If SMU can demonstrate that university‑anchored funding materially improves the odds of scaling urban deep tech in Asia, the model may be copied elsewhere. If not, it risks becoming another software‑oriented VC wannabe without the patient capital and bespoke operational support these ventures need.

The post SMU launches US$10M fund to fast‑track deeptech urban sustainability startups across Asia appeared first on e27.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of everyday business operations, with companies embedding AI into workflows, products, and decision-making. Large language models are central to this shift, enabling automation and insight at scale.

In Southeast Asia, adoption is accelerating, but many startups and SMEs still face barriers around cost, access, and implementation. This creates demand for solutions that make AI more practical and scalable across diverse markets.

Qwen, a family of large language models developed by Alibaba Cloud, is positioned to support this transition. By combining advanced AI capabilities with cloud infrastructure, it enables organisations to build and deploy AI applications more efficiently.

From experimentation to real-world AI adoption

The company’s focus on driving AI and cloud adoption reflects a broader shift from experimentation to real-world use. For startups, this means faster product development. For enterprises, it enables integration into existing systems without unnecessary complexity.

Meeting Qwen at Echelon Singapore 2026 offers founders, technical leaders, and operators a chance to explore how AI can be applied in practical ways. As a Bronze Sponsor and AI Workflow Competition Partner, Qwen is engaging directly with the ecosystem to support conversations around implementation and scale.

Also Read: Building real traction: Echelon Singapore 2026 introduces demo stage

Enabling AI workflows at scale

Qwen’s integration within Alibaba Cloud’s ecosystem provides access to both powerful models and the infrastructure required to deploy them. This reduces the need for organisations to build AI systems from scratch, allowing them to focus on application and outcomes.

Its approach centres on enabling real workflows, from automating internal processes to improving customer interactions. This makes AI more usable for businesses that need clear, operational impact.

Supporting ecosystem innovation

Through its role as an AI Workflow Competition Partner, Qwen is contributing to initiatives that encourage practical AI development. These programmes help startups and developers translate ideas into real solutions that address business needs.

At the same time, its platform supports experimentation and scaling, making it accessible to startups, SMEs, and larger organisations looking to expand their AI capabilities.

Meet Qwen at Echelon Singapore 2026

Qwen will be present at Echelon Singapore 2026, engaging with attendees across the exhibition floor. Visitors can connect with the team to explore use cases, understand capabilities, and discuss how AI can be integrated into their operations.

As Southeast Asia’s digital economy continues to grow, the ability to implement AI effectively will shape how companies scale and compete. Platforms like Qwen are helping make that transition more accessible across the region.

The region is evolving quickly, and Echelon 2026 offers the right place at the right moment to be part of what comes next. Register here to join the conversation.

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The post How Qwen is enabling AI adoption across Southeast Asia appeared first on e27.

Southeast Asia’s technology ecosystem is entering a new phase of growth, with startups and enterprises increasingly building AI-driven products, cloud-native platforms, and compute-intensive applications that require scalable infrastructure. As demand for artificial intelligence, machine learning, and high-performance computing continues to rise, access to powerful and efficient computing platforms is becoming a key factor in how companies innovate and compete across the region.

For many organisations, the challenge is no longer whether to adopt AI, but how to scale it effectively while managing performance, flexibility, and operational costs. This has created growing demand for technology providers that can support workloads across cloud environments, data centres, edge computing, and personal devices while enabling businesses to adapt quickly to evolving market needs.

AMD addresses these needs through a broad portfolio of AI-optimised CPUs, GPUs, networking technologies, and software designed to support next-generation computing experiences. From cloud and AI infrastructure to embedded systems and gaming, AMD technologies power billions of experiences globally while helping organisations build scalable solutions for an increasingly intelligent digital economy.

Advancing AI infrastructure

AMD’s mission is centred around building technologies that accelerate innovation across AI, cloud, edge computing, and high-performance workloads. Guided by its “together we advance” principle, the company works closely with partners, developers, and ecosystem players to make transformative computing technologies more accessible across industries.

This approach is particularly relevant in Southeast Asia, where startups and enterprises are increasingly exploring AI applications in sectors such as fintech, healthtech, SaaS, and smart cities. As companies scale compute-intensive workloads, the ability to access flexible and high-performance infrastructure becomes increasingly important for supporting growth and experimentation.

AMD’s technologies support a wide range of use cases across cloud computing, AI infrastructure, enterprise workloads, and edge deployments. Its focus on full-stack AI solutions allows organisations to manage demanding workloads while maintaining scalability across different environments and applications.

Also read: From idea to impact: Startups redefining what’s possible in Southeast Asia

Ecosystem collaboration

At Echelon Singapore 2026, AMD is looking to engage directly with startups, ecosystem builders, investors, and enterprise leaders across Southeast Asia. The company is particularly interested in collaborations involving AI, cloud computing, high-performance computing, and data-intensive applications.

AMD is also focused on supporting startups through access to its technology ecosystem, including computing platforms for commercial clients, servers, and cloud environments. Its participation reflects a broader effort to strengthen partnerships across accelerators, venture networks, cloud providers, and innovation ecosystems throughout the region.

For founders and operators building AI-native products, conversations around scalable infrastructure, compute performance, and ecosystem partnerships are becoming increasingly important as regional markets mature. Events such as Echelon Singapore create opportunities for startups and technology providers to exchange ideas, explore collaboration opportunities, and better understand the infrastructure shaping the future of AI innovation in Southeast Asia.

Also read: 10 ecosystem players shaping how startups scale at Echelon Singapore 2026

Meeting AMD at Echelon Singapore 2026

AMD joins Echelon Singapore 2026 alongside founders, investors, corporates, and ecosystem leaders gathering at Suntec Singapore CEC on 3–4 June 2026. The event brings together Southeast Asia’s startup and technology community through content stages, exhibitions, networking opportunities, and knowledge-sharing sessions designed to support regional innovation and growth.

Attendees visiting AMD can learn more about how the company’s technologies support AI workloads, cloud computing, and high-performance applications across industries. AMD will also offer invited startup workshops focused on AI performance and scaling, alongside cloud credit sponsorship opportunities for participants in the workflow programme.

As Southeast Asia’s digital economy continues to evolve, technologies that enable scalable AI and high-performance computing will likely play a growing role in how startups and enterprises expand regionally and globally. Echelon Singapore 2026 provides a space for ecosystem players to explore these developments while building the partnerships that could shape the region’s next stage of growth.

The region is evolving quickly, and Echelon 2026 offers the right place at the right moment to be part of what comes next. Register here to join the conversation.

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The post How AMD is enabling the next wave of AI and high-performance computing in Southeast Asia appeared first on e27.

As Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem continues to mature, cross-border collaboration is becoming increasingly crucial for founders, investors, and innovation agencies seeking to scale beyond their domestic markets. Startups today are expanding internationally far earlier than previous generations, driven by growing investor appetite, regional digital adoption, and the need to build partnerships across multiple innovation hubs.

At the same time, governments and public accelerators are playing a larger role in helping startups navigate international expansion. Beyond funding, many ecosystem organisations are now focused on creating stronger pathways for market entry, strategic partnerships, and venture connections that allow startups to compete globally while remaining rooted in their local innovation ecosystems.

This growing emphasis on regional collaboration has created stronger ties between Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, particularly in sectors such as AI, deep tech, advanced manufacturing, content, and digital transformation. For organisations supporting startup growth, Singapore increasingly serves as a gateway into ASEAN markets, connecting founders with investors, enterprises, and ecosystem builders across the region.

SBA (Seoul Business Agency), the official public accelerator of the Seoul Metropolitan Government, sits at the centre of this movement by supporting startups and SMEs across industries ranging from AI and deep tech to gaming, beauty, fashion, and consumer products. Through funding initiatives, R&D support, and ecosystem-building efforts, SBA works to accelerate the global growth of Seoul’s startup ecosystem while strengthening Seoul’s position as a global innovation hub. At the heart of SBA’s supportive infrastructure is the ‘Seoul Startup Hub’. As Korea’s premier and largest startup hub, it brings together spaces, programs, and networks under one roof, empowering companies at every stage from initial launch to global scale-up.

Supporting startup expansion

SBA plays a key role in Seoul’s broader startup development strategy by supporting both early-stage founders and scaling companies through funding, acceleration, and ecosystem programmes. Seoul Metropolitan City and SBA co-manage the Seoul Vision 2030 Fund, which is targeting approximately US$3.7 billion in committed capital by 2026 across sectors including digital transformation, bio, advanced manufacturing, and creative industries.

Alongside investment initiatives, SBA also provides approximately US$31.5 million in annual R&D grants that support high-growth startups and emerging technologies. This combination of capital access, public sector support, and ecosystem connectivity allows Seoul startups to build stronger foundations before expanding internationally.

These efforts are reflected in Seoul’s growing global standing. As of 2025, Seoul ranks 8th globally and 2nd in Asia in startup ecosystem rankings, with a total ecosystem value of approximately US$112 billion. According to a February 2026 report by Korea’s Ministry of SMEs and Startups, 20 of Korea’s 27 unicorn companies are based in Seoul, underscoring the city’s position as the country’s most concentrated hub of high-growth ventures.

The agency’s mission focuses on accelerating the global growth of Seoul startups by fuelling technological innovation, supporting high-potential ventures, and building stronger connections between founders and international markets. As regional startup ecosystems become increasingly interconnected, organisations such as SBA are helping bridge opportunities between Korean startups and Southeast Asian investors, enterprises, and technology partners.

Also read: From idea to impact: Startups redefining what’s possible in Southeast Asia

Cross-border collaboration

At Echelon Singapore 2026, SBA is bringing five promising Seoul startups to engage directly with Southeast Asia’s venture ecosystem. Its participation reflects a broader strategy centred around cross-border investment, commercial partnerships, and international market expansion.

The agency’s primary focus is to link startups with high-impact matchmaking opportunities involving venture capital firms, multinational corporations, and regional enterprises. Beyond investment, SBA is also looking to support proof-of-concept collaborations, open innovation initiatives, and commercial partnerships that can help startups establish a stronger foothold in ASEAN markets.

This approach aligns with broader regional trends, as startups increasingly seek partnerships that go beyond funding alone. For many growth-stage companies, entering Southeast Asia successfully requires local operational support, enterprise relationships, distribution partnerships, and market validation. Ecosystem organisations that can help facilitate these connections are becoming increasingly valuable as cross-border expansion accelerates.

Also read: Startups driving AI automation, fintech, and accessibility gather at Echelon Singapore 2026

Meeting Seoul Startups at Echelon Singapore 2026

SBA joins Echelon Singapore 2026 alongside founders, investors, corporates, and ecosystem leaders gathering at Suntec Singapore CEC on 3–4 June 2026. The event provides a platform for startups, accelerators, public agencies, and technology companies to exchange ideas, build partnerships, and explore new regional growth opportunities.

As Southeast Asia and South Korea continue building stronger innovation ties, organisations such as SBA are helping create pathways for startups to scale internationally while contributing to a more connected regional startup ecosystem. By visiting the SBA Seoul pavilion, attendees can connect directly with the innovative Seoul-based startups that SBA supports. Echelon Singapore 2026 offers an opportunity for founders, investors, and ecosystem leaders to explore how these cross-border collaborations could shape the next phase of growth across Asia’s technology landscape.

The region is evolving quickly, and Echelon 2026 offers the right place at the right moment to be part of what comes next. Register here to join the conversation.

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The post How Seoul Business Agency is connecting Seoul startups with Southeast Asia’s innovation ecosystem appeared first on e27.

In our hyper-competitive world, the mantra is hustle and grind. We treat constant activity as proof of productivity, seeing intentional rest as a luxury, or worse, a sign of weakness. This belief is the single greatest bottleneck to sustained high-level performance and long-term business growth. It leads to decision fatigue, creative stagnation, and burnout.

The most resilient and creative leaders know a powerful secret: the renewal advantage. They understand that intentional rest is not a break from progress; it is the secret fuel that accelerates progress. Short, deliberate pauses like daily stillness, weekly unplugging, or seasonal reflection actually restore the clarity, energy, and cognitive capacity needed for strategic breakthroughs. This allows leaders and teams to remain inspired, creative, and resilient over the long haul.

The math of diminishing returns

The human brain is not a machine that offers linear output. After a prolonged period of intense focus (exploitation), the quality of work decreases rapidly, even if the quantity of hours remains high. Trying to force strategic thinking or creative problem-solving when energy is depleted is an exercise in futility, as you are trading valuable time for minimal return.

Also Read: Board diversity 2.0: The strategic advantage Asian boards are still underestimating

The Renewal Advantage flips this equation. Intentional rest is the recharge phase, during which the brain actively engages in crucial low-level processing: consolidating memory, integrating new information, and most importantly, making connections between previously disparate ideas. The biggest leaps in strategy and innovation almost never happen while staring at a spreadsheet; they happen when the mind is allowed to wander, often during a deliberate pause.

Executive testimonials: The pause that paid off

Uplifting accounts from high-performing executives consistently credit strategic rest for their biggest breakthroughs. They have learned that time away from the problem is time spent solving it in a non-linear way.

One CEO, struggling with a major acquisition strategy, mandated “deep work silence” every afternoon. Instead of answering emails, he spent 30 minutes walking without his phone. He credits a solution that saved the company millions to a moment of clarity that occurred during one of those silent walks, not during a high-pressure board meeting.

Another executive requires her team to take a “seasonal reflection day,” a paid day off every quarter, with the single mandate to spend time in nature and reflect on the past three months without any work communication. She found this simple ritual led to a dramatic reduction in team conflicts and a 20 per cent increase in unsolicited, novel product ideas the following week.

These leaders treat rest not as something to be earned after the work is done, but as an input necessary for the highest quality of work.

Also Read: The digital economy’s broken promise: How tech restructured inequality instead of erasing it

Accessible rituals for sustained clarity

The good news is that accessing the Renewal Advantage doesn’t require a tropical vacation; it requires accessible, intentional rituals.

• The 15-minute daily stillness: Block 15 minutes in the middle of your workday for absolutely nothing. No phone, no music, no specific task. Just sit, close your eyes, and allow the cognitive dust to settle. This restores focus better than any cup of coffee.
• The weekly unplug covenant: Negotiate a clear, non-negotiable window (perhaps Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning) when the entire leadership team agrees not to send or check work communications. This creates psychological safety and allows everyone to fully disconnect, knowing they aren’t missing a critical fire.
• The transition ritual: Design a simple, physical act to mark the end of your workday. It could be changing clothes, listening to one song, or reading a chapter of a book. This signals to your brain that the high-intensity strategic phase is over and the recovery phase has begun, preventing mental capital from leaking into your personal time.

Intentional rest is not a sign of weakness; it is the ultimate expression of strategic discipline. By deliberately managing your energy and allocating time for deep recovery, you are fuelling sustained creativity, resilience, and the clarity required for making truly expansive strategic decisions.

Are you treating rest as a luxury to be squeezed in, or as a strategic fuel source to be prioritised?

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