Garnering corporate partnerships is often a coveted goal for many startup founders. Still, it may not always be perceived as an immediate strategic priority, given the relative differences in scale of business operations, thereby giving a perception that possible intersecting priorities are thin to nil. However, in a conversation among Southeast Asian startup founders at Echelon, along with e27 and SAP, key insights about emerging use cases where corporate-startup partnerships in the region have served to be a compelling avenue to drive more significant business value were shared.

Tackling the topic of how startups can scale sustainably and enter new markets through corporate partnerships, the panel speakers were Raunak Mehta, co-founder and CEO of Igloo, Junkai Ng, co-Founder of Janio Asia, Shamir Rahim, founder and Group CEO of Versafleet, and Aaron Ang, SAP head of Southeast Asia mid-markets. The conversation was moderated by Justin Chin, head of business development at e27.

The conversation focused on what they did to prepare and secure corporate partnerships, how they navigated associated challenges and overcame them, as well as insights on how to effectively forge long-term collaborations with corporates.

Corporate-startup collaboration

Touching on the mindset needed when deciding to work with corporates, Shamir, who runs a transport management software that digitalises business execution and last-mile route optimisation, shared that it was a challenging journey at the start.

Initially starting out with SMEs as their primary client pipeline, their team eventually faced pains associated with inconsistent sales cycles, not to mention encountering partners with misalignments in innovative mindsets. From their seventh year of operations, they gathered the courage to target corporates. While they had to grapple with going through long contracts and questionnaires, they persevered. Getting their first corporate client gave them the confidence and experience in their playbook to win more corporate partners. These now include Resorts World Sentosa, Watsons, and Indofood.

Expanding on the massive potential of corporate-startup collaboration, Aaron elaborated SAP’s strategy to build value and sell to, through, and with startups, “You can no longer ignore the proliferation of tech moving the market and changing trends. Rather than solving everything, partnering is always the way to go”.

Aaron is excited about partnering with startups, citing Versafleet as a successful case study wherein they have developed APIs and intellectual property through the SAP Innovation Platform and have since reaped substantial business value through catering to more corporate clients via this avenue. Providing the leading enterprise software in the market at its core, SAP also serves as a platform for startups to be connected to other enterprise clients globally and access this as a compelling business development channel.

Also read: Optimising business solutions through customer-centricity

Overcoming challenges and building strategies

On the challenges involved in forging corporate partnerships and overcoming them, Raunak, who runs a regional insurtech company spanning Southeast Asia with a vision of insurance for all, emphasises the importance of having clarity in the fundamental aspects of every deal and being deliberate on your ability to deliver promises. This may entail saying no to fluid sets of requirements, in order to commit to things that your startup can deliver on and deliver well. 

Junkai reiterated this insight and urged other founders to consider the costs of client acquisition versus the costs of losing them. He emphasised the importance of focusing on what you do really well, staying true to the fundamentals, and treating the rest as noise. As most things are already digitalised, it is not hard to find direct and indirect competitors for your solutions in the market. Therefore it is important to focus on solving the core pain point well. They embodied this case recently and have had to cut 500 clients and instead focused on delivering compelling value to their over 60 clients while retaining 90% of revenues.

Also read: Supercharging B2B startups with SAP’s enterprise collaborations

Helping startups navigate the market

As for advice to startups on driving growth for their companies as they navigate through more VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) environments, Shamir shared, “Think of distribution. Partnering with corporates is important for new markets.” Versafleet has adopted this themselves as they leveraged SAP’s collaborative programmes where they got to work with SAP executives across continents, learned how to integrate out of the box with SAP, and eventually accessed wider networks and strategic partnerships. Due to this, Versafleet now enjoys having a larger corporate business development pipeline within the ecosystem. 

Raunak emphasised this and shared, “find platforms that have enough captive audience, requisite network effects, and piggyback on what they offer”. It is practical to identify platforms that give you substantial access to your target customers, rather than having to work on the distribution piece first-hand. He also urged startups to focus on strong business fundamentals, looking at the business financial statements as guidance to weather through macroenvironmental changes. He encourages leaders to build 12-18 months of runway, and look beyond P&L to focus on ensuring that margins are liquid, and power through by having a good spread on working capital.

Junkai reiterated the advice to focus on what is controllable versus what is not. Ultimately, the economic climate is a business cycle, and the focus is to survive this slump. Therefore it is important to get rid of the noise, focus on the business, build value for customers and meet payroll.

He shared, “the market doesn’t care if it’s startups or corporates offering, but the value you bring. There are two main principles of focus: cost and speed of distribution. Once put in place, the rest will follow.” They have the same perspective when it comes to their clients as well as to their suppliers and partners. Ultimately, it’s about providing value at scale, speed and efficiency.

Harnessing the power of SAP

Aaron encouraged startups to never stop innovating and to always share solutions that can help startup founders to manage various situations, including the good, bad, and ugly. SAP has supported startups in their growth in various ways, by either being a technical partner or a consumer of their tech solutions.

Rather than being stage-specific, SAP focuses on the value that startups bring, and how they disrupt markets and differentiate themselves through their products and innovations. “Startups can develop their IP, integrate with SAP solutions, making their IP sellable”, Aaron shared. With this, startups that become tech partners of SAP can tap 440,000 customers across 180 countries.

SAP looks forward to bolstering its provision of value through strategic partnerships with leading startups in the Southeast Asian region. Apart from Versafleet, they have collaborated with other innovative businesses in SEA such as Opsis which offers emotion and facial-recognition based AI business applications, F&B businesses like Jumbo Group, and e-commerce businesses like Love Bonito.

For more information, visit https://www.sap.com/sea/index.html and https://sap.io/startup-programs/.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by SAP

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