Global payments and banking platform Airwallex has closed its Series E extension round with US$100 million in funding.

The investors in this round are Square Peg, Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia Capital China, Lone Pine Capital, Hermitage Capital, 1835i Ventures and Tencent.

Australian industry superannuation fund HostPlus and an unnamed North American pension fund also participated.

This brings Airwallex’s total funding to more than US$900 million and its valuation to US$5.5 billion.

Founded in Melbourne in 2015, Airwallex provides integrated solutions for business and personal cross-border transactions. It facilitates international money transfers through payment collection, foreign exchange, remittance and security settlement.

Also Read: Airwallex and MongoDB partner with e27 to meet the up-and-coming companies in the region

The company accelerated its international expansion in 2021, extending its reach across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. It serves three of the largest e-commerce markets in the world: China, the US, and the UK.

Airwallex said its customer base more than doubled and revenue increased by 184 per cent YOY. Multiple new products and services are also being planned in its 2022-23 roadmap, including improvements to its expense management platform and a credit solution.

Jack Zhang, Co-Funder and CEO at Airwallex, said: “The market environment remains challenging in the foreseeable future, and while we remain well capitalised, this additional runway allows us to continue our growth plans, product expansion, and hire some of the best talents in the world. By strengthening the breadth of our global reach and product offering, we can better empower our customers to unlock new market opportunities.”

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Today’s consumers have evolved over the last few years; they have higher expectations, look for more meaningful conversations with brands, and seek instant gratification.

In fact, meeting customer demands on their preferred channels and at their preferred times is now considered the bare minimum by them. Instead, they look for the ‘X-factor’ in their interactions with brands; they are quick to appreciate them on social media but quicker to publicly express their disappointment with them.

A whopping 84 per cent of Southeast Asian consumers expect brands to respond to their queries within 24 hours, and 87 per cent expect them to solve their problems in less than three interactions without having to repeat themselves. Their mantra: “Say it quickly but say it well.”

This behavioural shift certainly keeps brands on their toes, with Customer Experience (CX) becoming the top C-Suite priority.

Brands are not oblivious to the challenges they face in their mission to deliver optimal CX to their customers, as they’re increasingly turning to technologies to navigate these challenges and improve their CX.

With the increased adoption of CX automation, voice has emerged as an important channel for engaging with customers. Even customers are gravitating towards the convenience, accessibility, and personalisation offered by voice AI.  In fact, we’ve also observed an astronomical jump of 300 per cent in the number of voice AI agents on our platform. 

Voice AI agents are seeing increased deployment in industries such as BFSI, healthcare, retail, and quick service restaurants (QSR) as brands aim to build a “hyper-personalised” relationship with prospective and existing customers. 

What is the primary factor behind this increased adoption? Voice is native to how humans interact.

As such, it appeals to the emotions, instincts, and intentions of the customer, thereby giving them the sense that the voice AI agents, powered by Conversational AI, understand their query, bringing in the “human” element of having a “voice” to interact with them. Also, in certain situations, customers feel more comfortable interacting with voice AI agents about their mental health challenges or other intimate matters.

Also Read: ‘Neobanks can create a better digital CX by leveraging AI, blockchain’: banco CEO

This is because while they deliver an experience akin to talking to a human, at the same time, they facilitate a judgement-free environment that helps eliminate customers’ inhibitions.

From zero-wait times to increased self-serve, voice AI agents enable it all

Currently, brands are adopting both an inbound and outbound voice-first strategy to effortlessly implement customer-centric activities, including ordering, payments, query resolutions, information gathering, feedback surveys, etc., to meet increasing demands efficiently.

With round-the-clock instant responses and accurate query resolution, brands can leverage voice AI to deliver a true, hands-free and convenient experience to their customers. Also, voice AI enables the next level of hyper-personalisation when it comes to engaging with customers in their preferred languages, from Mandarin to English to Malay.

In addition to benefits like having more calls answered, increased first call resolution, and room for more complex issues to be dealt with through brands’ customer service agents, self-service customer support via voice AI agents is also more scalable and customer-centric.

When implemented correctly through the deployment of automotive multimodal customer support systems, the self-service model drives significant value in terms of ROI and customer satisfaction for the business.

In fact, at Yellow.ai, we’ve seen up to 60 per cent call deflection with automated responses to repetitive queries, thereby freeing the customer service agents’ bandwidth to focus on more complex and high-value conversations.

Delivering highly targeted and hyper-personalised consumer campaigns

Voice technology enables brands to run highly-targeted multilingual, hyper-personalised campaigns that drive better leads and conversions. Through leveraging smart insights on customers’ persona profiles, voice AI agents are capable of speeding up the process of qualifying leads.

In addition, qualified leads can be obtained by setting up a specified set of questions as a gateway, utilising voice AI. For instance, a voice AI agent for an insurance brand can be leveraged to proactively reach out to a customer whose car insurance is about to expire: “Hello, I’m Tay calling from insurance company X. I’ve noticed that your car insurance will end in two weeks. Would you like to extend it?”

According to the response, the voice AI agent can tailor the response and choose the next course of action. Not only that, voice AI agents enable the full automation of communication for the entire sales cycle, from awareness to delight, as these agents are capable of assisting customers with prompts throughout their journey.

Marketers and sales representatives also benefit from this automation, as voice AI agents can streamline interactions by automatically scheduling meetings with qualified leads and instantly pushing them down the sales funnel. With these features, brands can gain an edge over their competitors by delighting customers with a zero-effort conversion process.

The utilisation of voice tech to transcribe text also enables brands to gather increasingly accurate data and analysis, which then provides insights that can be utilised to further optimise operations and CX, even to the point of anticipating customers’ needs and the best time to contact them.

Bringing scalability, reduced operational costs and increased productivity

Deploying voice AI agents can help brands save costs in multiple ways. Firstly, the number of queries resolved by a voice AI agent is much higher at a very low cost. Secondly, the passive effects of their deployment include higher customer satisfaction, which saves the cost of acquiring new customers.

Also Read: How AI and automation can shape the future of farms

Furthermore, they save customer service teams a lot of working hours that are usually devoted to doing mundane, repetitive tasks. Voice AI agents increase the team’s productivity by taking care of all repetitive queries and enabling them to focus on critical queries, saving a lot of time and money for the business.

In fact, with our customers, we have recorded up to a 70 per cent reduction in operational costs due to deploying voice AI agents as part of their CX automation strategies.

Next in voice tech for CX elevation

Today, advanced voice tech features such as interruption handling, configuring pre-post speech pause duration, recording pause-resume feature for customer-sensitive information, and custom models for decoding alphanumerics accurately enable voice AI agents to deliver more human-like experiences to customers.

In particular, the ability to create branded voice AI agents in a specific language or even dialects, accents, pitch, and tone is opening up new and unimagined avenues for hyper-personalisation. So much so that, going forward, customers would not need to select their preferred language. The voice AI agent will automatically identify and respond in the language that they are speaking.  

In order to remain competitive and relevant in an increasingly digital world, it is necessary for brands to stay abreast and open to the immense potential of voice technology.

Consumer expectations will only continue to rise and change dynamically, so brands will quickly need to acknowledge that relying solely on call centres and customer service agents will not be enough to provide the best experience for their customers.

Essentially, it’s not about human or voice AI technology but about the collaboration between human experts and voice AI agents to achieve the end goal of serving the customer better and supercharging their experience.

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At e27, we are kickstarting a new articles series to know startup professionals and their lives beyond working hours.

Vinod Raman is the Chief Product Officer at Endowus, a leading digital wealth platform in Asia. Raman brings priceless institutional finance and product management knowledge and experience to Endowus.

In his current role, Vinod is in charge of product management, data and design functions and is responsible for driving product strategy, roadmap and execution at Endowus.

Before Endowus, Raman spent more than two, years at Stash heading the Invest and Crypto product and business areas. He previously worked for eight years at Fidelity Investments, where he held various roles in the internal strategy and product management functions.

In this candid interview, Raman talks about his personal and professional life.

How would you explain what you do to a 5-year-old?

Product management is like taking all of your Lego bricks, building something, and then sharing it with your friend to see if they can figure out how to use what you’ve built. That is probably the best way to explain it!

What has been the biggest highlight/challenge of your career so far?

The opportunity to work at different types of organisations has been a great learning experience – large established firms like Fidelity and IBM and young and upcoming startups like Stash and Endowus. Unique challenges, very different geographies and great learning experiences.

How do you envision the next five years of your career?

I don’t like to plan my career. Learning new things, taking risks, and growing personally and professionally are all important ingredients in my work life.

What are some of your favourite work tools?

Looker/Mode/any other analytics tool, Figma and Google Docs in the same order.

Also Read: What Pierluigi Cau loves most about working at GitHub

What’s something about you or your job that would surprise us?

I am an introvert, but my job requires me to be more extroverted! That’s an ongoing process!

Do you prefer WFH or WFO, or hybrid?

Definitely hybrid. In today’s world, flexibility is key. However, working from the office is critical to get together every so often to brainstorm/problem solve or to bond/build relationships.

What would you tell your younger self?

Failure is okay if it makes you wiser in your next attempt.

Can you describe yourself in three words?

Optimist. Relentless. Explorer.

What are you most likely to be doing if not working?

Travelling and exploring new cultures.

What are you currently reading/listening to/watching?

Reading – Listening to a whole bunch of podcasts. I am mostly reading books to my kids!

Watching – Started watching ‘Breaking Bad’ one more time!

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Be a part of the e27 contributor community of thought leaders and share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

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If there’s one thing that startups need the most in this post-pandemic era, it’s resilience. Of course, survival remains a priority, especially for early-stage startups left staggering as they find potential investors willing to take risks in the current landscape. On the bright side, however, many promising startups are driven enough to adapt to the new normal.

Ever-changing business landscape

COVID-19 changed consumer behaviour, limited workforce movement, and disrupted supply and demand, forcing emerging and aspiring startups to shake up their processes and operations to stay afloat. These days, digital communication and relationship-building skills, new marketing strategies, flexible business plans, and creative use of technology are integral in raising funds.

Also read: Echelon: A founder’s approach to fundraising at different stages

In addition, investors want to know how startups keep it going. Maintaining teams intact and effectively tapping talents’ potential are some ways to demonstrate a startup’s strength, and so does continuously interacting and nurturing its customers amidst the pandemic’s impact.

What’s great about Singapore’s startup ecosystem is its lasting vibrancy that allows the industry to heal by turning the crisis into an opportunity to expand beyond traditional capital raising. The post-pandemic era is a high time for innovation, redesigning worn-out strategies, and letting go of things that no longer work in the present. 

How startups should approach fundraising

Learn how to move forward from a panel discussion on “The evolution of early stage investing and fundraising in Southeast Asia” at Echelon Asia Summit 2022. The panel, moderated by ScaleUp Malaysia Co-Founder and General Manager Aaron Sarma, aims to answer critical questions about the challenges companies face in fundraising in a post-pandemic world and the platforms and tools they can use and maximise. The panel will include experts Hsu Ken Ooi (Iterative), Shiyan Koh (Hustle Fund), Shao-Ning Huang (Angelcentral), and Tiang Lim Foo (Forge Ventures).

Also read: Echelon 2022 to discuss the state of the SEA startup ecosystem

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Echelon Asia Summit 2022 (October 27-28) returns after a three-year hiatus. It aims to gather the most influential decision-makers and industry leaders from the Southeast Asia tech and startup ecosystem.

Register for Echelon Asia Summit 2022 now!

Photo by Mikhail Nilov via Pexels

The post The evolution of early-stage investing and fundraising in SEA appeared first on e27.

Singapore-based food delivery software startup klikit has announced the completion of US$2 million in pre-seed funding led by Global Founders Capital and Wavemaker Partners.

Gentree Fund, AfterWork Ventures, Reshape Ventures, Nordstar, Pentas Ventures, Uber alumni syndicate Moving Capital, and Gojek Co-Founder Kevin Aluwi also participated. 

Other angel investors involved include NasDaily’s Nuseir Yassin, YouTuber LazarBeam, Radish Fiction Founder Seung-yoon Lee, and unnamed executives from Gojek, YouTube, and Flash Coffee.

klikit will use the funds to help restaurants across Southeast Asia grow their business with the more efficient food delivery and extra revenue from virtual food brands.

Also Read: Cloud kitchen startup CloudEats raises US$7M to expand to more SEA markets, develop its brands

Established in 2021 by Christopher Withers, a former executive with Gojek and UberEats, klikit aims to help restaurants operate more efficiently through its SaaS platform, klikit Cloud, which aggregates and analyses all of a restaurant’s food delivery orders on a single mobile device.

To date, the startup claims to have facilitated over US$2.8 million in food delivery orders across 150 brands in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Australia.

Klikit is also partnering with creators and consumer brands to develop limited-time offerings of virtual delivery-only food brands sold to fans. The initiative will kick off in the Philippines and Australia with two “creator drops” and digital collectibles later this year.

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27 will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon.

The 2022 Echelon edition will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

The post Singapore’s klikit raises US$2M to bridge restaurants and creator economy appeared first on e27.

The acceptance of digital wealth is growing exponentially in Asia, with retail investors, high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) and even private banks starting to use robo-advisory tools for wealth management, according to Ned Phillips, Founder and CEO of Bambu, a robo-advisory platform for financial institutions.

“When we started Bambu in Singapore six years ago, many said people wouldn’t save digitally and that robo-advisors were only for first-time investors and wouldn’t catch on with mass affluent, high-net-worth individuals,” said Phillips. “But the high growth of companies like StashAway has proved them wrong. This means the resistance to wealth being digital has almost disappeared. Although digital wealth is still only a few per cent of the market, the speed at which it grows is exponential.”

He, however, added that Southeast Asia — particularly Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand — is still an immature market compared to Europe and North America when it comes to using tech solutions for wealth management. Singapore is an exception, where many HNIs, mass affluent, mass retail investors, have access to products and advice they never had before.

Also Read: Are retail brokerages really democratising finance for individual investors?

“That being said, there is far greater adoption of digital advice by mass retail customers now, especially during and after COVID-19. We are seeing phenomenal growth, with more and more people wanting to save digitally,” he said.

Launched in 2016, Bambu provides digital wealth technology solutions for B2B businesses. It uses Machine Learning tools to enable companies to make saving and investing simple for their clients. The firm serves businesses of every size and industry, from finance to commercial or even new disruptors.

Bambu is present in 11 markets around the world, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India, the UAE, and Germany, and is growing rapidly in the US and the MENA region. Its clients include Standard Chartered, Franklin Templeton, and CIMB (Malaysia).

The company recently partnered with True Global Ventures-backed German AI asset tech and portfolio management firm quantumrock to enhance its cloud-based robo-advisory solutions.

In Phillips’s view, the advent of digital-only banks bodes well for Bambu. They bring a lot of data. Digital banks, which start with savings accounts, lending and wealth trading, have great opportunities in wealth management as they grow.

“Over the years, many traditional banks have focused on what they traditionally do: holding people’s cash, opening savings accounts, and lending. Many started as product companies selling loans or funds, whereas digital banks are customer companies. For digital banks, the keyword is wealth automation. Robo-advisors can analyse customers’ data and tell how much their monthly leftover, credit card bills, etc. So digital banks need technology from companies like us. It is hard to build the wealth platform we’ve built.

Phillips also believes that the popularity of digital assets like crypto won’t make much impact on robo-advisory. “Crypto is just another asset class like a stock, ETF, and mutual fund. It makes no difference to robo-advisory, which is about helping people achieve their financial goals.”

In July 2021, Bambu acquired Singapore-based Tradesocio, a developer of wealth management software for advisors. Two years earlier, Bambu closed US$10 million in a Series B funding, co-led by Franklin Templeton and PEAK6 Strategic Capital.

“We are not raising more funds now as we are getting close to being profitable. That is our goal for now,” Phillips concluded.

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According to statistics, over US$612 billion in venture capital activity was invested globally in 2021, a 108 per cent increase in 2020 despite the pandemic challenges. Investments rose in every major region, with North America and Europe seeing investment activity more than double in 2021. Yet, for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) markets, the growth trend is even stronger, with investment value increasing by 165 per cent in 2021 as compared to 2020.

Although most PE and VC investments still originate from North America, the MENA is rapidly gaining traction. More startups and institutional investors, and PEs choose to reside in the region. We are also seeing increasing inbound investment and activities from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds.

Meanwhile, the actions of governments and certain characteristics of the region have contributed to this rise.

The strong government supports

MENA-based startups attracted over US$1.2 billion in the first half of 2021, representing 64 per cent year-on-year growth, among which 71 per cent was invested in the UAE (mainly through the various financial centre free zones, such as the Dubai International Finance Centre and the ADGM), Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia have implemented fiscal reforms and unleashed large-scale programmes to privatise assets, increase public-private partnerships, unlock value by monetising real assets and infrastructure, improve public benefits and services, develop social and human resources, and optimise government operations.

These initiatives, together with complementary legal and regulatory reforms and social changes, ultimately make these countries more attractive destinations for foreign capital with more diverse, efficient and sustainable economies.

The MENA markets recognise the importance of the venture capital sector to achieve higher economic aims. Government-led initiatives have therefore been a key driver of growth in the venture capital sector in the region, evidenced by the development of startup ecosystems.

The strong sector supports

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has been supportive of the ecosystem mission. PIF’s support of fund managers has also formed a key aspect of its strategy. For the sole purpose of promoting the development of a venture capital ecosystem, two years ago, PIF established Jada, a fund of funds company. By funding venture capital funds and private equity focused on the Saudi market, Jada’s mandate is to create a self-sustaining growth platform for local SMEs.

Also Read: How eWTPA is bridging emergent new markets and Chinese expertise

On the other hand, PIF’s Sanabil Investments commits approximately US$2 billion in capital per annum in private investments that include venture, growth capital and small buyouts.

With this commitment, Sanabil aims to partner with originators of good business ideas: entrepreneurs who harness the innovations of mind and matter to fulfil societal needs in ways that are scalable and sustainable.

Taking the newly-established eWTP Arabia Capital (eWTPA) as an example, the company launched its first fund (Fund I) in 2019, backed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, Public Investment Fund (PIF) and eWTP Capital (Alibaba Group and Ant Finance Group).

Within a short period of time, this US$400-million-fund has already invested into 16 companies across digital infrastructure, core technology and platform, and consumer and enterprise services which span enterprise services, cloud services, cyber security, fintech, cross-border supply chain, retail and consumer, e-commerce, logistics and digital entertainment and others, which are to work together and build a unique digital ecosystem in the MENA region. Currently, 13 out of the 16 portfolio companies are already operating and growing the MENA markets.

The unique MENA offering

Housing 7.5 per cent of the world’s total population, the MENA region has a predominantly young population. Of the 600 million people in the region, more than 50 per cent are under 25 years old. This enables a customer base that welcomes disruptive business models and a growing culture of entrepreneurship.

Traditionally, MENA also benefits from its geographical location as a gateway to both Africa and Asia. Given that one-third of the world’s population lives within a four-hour flight of Dubai, the region’s proximity to Africa and Asia is an attractive attribute for startups looking to capitalise on these vast emerging markets.

In H1 2021, 31 per cent of MENA-based venture capital transactions involved investment from outside the region. Some of the larger acquisitions in the Middle East by foreign investors in recent years have shown the extent of opportunities that exist there. These include Uber’s acquisition of MENA ride-hailing business Careem in 2020 for US$3.1 billion and Amazon’s acquisition of MENA online retailer Souk.com in 2017 for US$650 million.

These high-profile deals indicate an increasing strength in the underlying M&A market in the Middle East, creating more exit opportunities for both founders and investors. The challenge for the region is for local equity markets to mature so that listings on local exchanges such as the ADX or DFM become a viable and commonplace exit strategy.

Final thoughts

With the right balance between investment returns and startup potential, PEs and VCs are more intrigued by regions like MENA, which offers an interesting mix of investment options. We are also seeing another wave of startups of Chinese origin expanding into the region for the same reasons. Likewise, Southeast Asian countries which offer a similar welcoming and flexible environments also are attractive to investors and entrepreneurs.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page

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The post MENA on the rise with push and pull global economic drivers appeared first on e27.

Emerging businesses with innovative value propositions offer a myriad of opportunities to solve market problems and attain business growth. As a startup enabler, the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) helps Japanese startups in identifying key resources needed for market expansion and product development.

In partnership with JETRO, e27 is working to help connect startups with key players and mentors in the region with the goal of enabling more collaborations among Japanese and Southeast Asian businesses. Specifically, this partnership is a market entry initiative to bring Japanese innovations into key startup ecosystems in the Southeast Asian region, as well as have a deeper understanding of industry trends and strategic opportunities that are unique to these respective ecosystems.

Also read: Apps UP 2022: A platform for today’s leading mobile apps to shine!

The project is aimed at startups in various stages of development, from pre-commercialisation, all the way to startups who have launched their solutions to market and are ripe for further market expansion.

In line with this, these entities are keen to customise their respective product and market strategies as they implement their expansion into different territories with their own respective market contexts and regulatory considerations. JETRO-supported companies work with various partners in their expansion strategy. For example, a medical technology company is consulting with medical mentors to understand the health tech market and regulatory landscape in Singapore.

This year, JETRO, together with e27, is working with three leading startups that are seeking strategic business partners and mentors in the Southeast Asian region.

Sustainable alternatives

Times Bridge Management (TBM) developed a breakthrough ecological material that serves as a sustainable and viable alternative to plastic resin called LIMEX. Developed in Japan, LIMEX is a composite material made of over 50% limestone, an abundant resource. Its commercial use is as a plastic or paper alternative, thereby contributing to the reduction of GHG emissions and plastic waste. TBM has also developed a material circulation platform to collect and recycle used materials, which contributes to a circular economic process. Their other product, CirculeX, is a new material that has 50% or more recycled material such as biomass-based or fossil fuel-based resins with LIMEX. This promotes resource circulation and meets diverse customer needs through various applications in packaging, logistics, material handling and building materials.

While the cost of plastic resin has been steadily increasing, and existing plastic alternatives in the market are much more expensive, LIMEX can be more cost-efficient than plastic. LIMEX is economical as it is mainly made from limestone and the price is stable. Apart from its cost competitiveness, LIMEX as a patented technology in over 40 countries around the world also churns out higher quality bags with a more uniform filler dispersion compared to conventional bags with mineral fillers.

Also read: Get Privy for secure digital ID solutions

The great thing about LIMEX as a material is that plastic moulding companies do not need to invest in new machinery for manufacturing products using this material. They can instead use their existing moulding technology and machinery. TBM has various global customers, including Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and India. They opted to switch to LIMEX material in their shopping bags due to cost reduction and eco-friendliness. 

The company has since raised almost $200M in funding. Specifically, SK Group agreed on a $123 million capital and business alliance to accelerate the global expansion of LIMEX. TBM is looking for plastic manufacturing partners in the Southeast Asian region where they can supply their LIMEX material as a cheaper and more durable plastic alternative.

Expanding access to fintech solutions

Fintech startup Credit Engine runs an online lending system and automatic debt collection with data-driven optimisation. They offer both standalone and white-labelled software-as-a-service lending and digital debt collection solutions, that can be used by small and medium businesses as well as large enterprises to digitalise loan operations of banks, thereby benefitting from streamlined customer communications and reducing paperwork. 

Credit Engine is a seed stage startup with US$1M funding to date. It is seeking business partners in Singapore as they expand access to its solution that simplifies the online debt application and collection process through digitalisation. Financial and fintech entities who want to partner for outsourcing their non-performing loans through a debt collection system can stand to benefit from Credit Engine’s solutions. The company is also open to mentors, accelerators, VCs and consultants who can provide strategic advice and business linkages in the Southeast Asian region. 

Also read: The true cost of inaccurate addresses in a world of daily deliveries

If you are keen on connecting with any of the startups above, please reach out to Joel@e27.co.

It is e27’s mission to connect startups with the right resources, the right tools, and the right people not only to help them make individual impacts on the community but for the startup ecosystem as a whole to flourish and thrive.

The Japan External Trade Organization provides business support services to companies expanding to Japan. Since its founding in 2003, JETRO has supported more than 15,000 business investment projects and helped over 1,500 companies successfully invest in Japan. As a non-profit organisation, JETRO clients have gained support for their business in the fields of visa, immigration and HR matters, office space; identification of local government subsidies, and tailored market studies, among others.

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Photo by Mikhail Nilov via Pexels

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

We can share your story at e27, too. Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. Visit us at e27.co/advertise to get started.

The post Japanese startups seek strategic partnerships in Southeast Asia appeared first on e27.

ShopBack raises US$80M from Temasek-backed 65 Equity Partners
ShopBack has more than 35M users across 10 countries and powers US$3.5B in annual sales; The platform also facilitates 1M shopping journeys for over 10K merchant partners every day.

SG mobile app developer to list in US via US$2.5B SPAC deal
Asia Innovations Group will merge with Magnum Opus Acquisition, bringing in US$200M in cash to the firm; The deal is expected to conclude in Q1 2023; It also intends to raise up to US$150M in additional capital as part of the merger process.

Malaysian graftbuster probes MDEC over US$4.9M in false claims
The anti-graft agency’s investigation is centred upon two undisclosed companies that were paid claims by MDEC amounting to more than 19M ringgit and more than 7M ringgit to run training programmes from 2016 to 2020.

‘From a cybersecurity perspective, the Asian market still uses legacy tools’
e27 talked to Daniel Bernard, CMO, SentinelOne, which recently launched a US$100M global cybersecurity fund, S Ventures Fund; The VC firm sees a trend for desired automation, consolidation, and cloud security.

JD.com founder settles lawsuit for alleged rape
A former University of Minnesota student accuses Richard Liu of rape in 2018; A lawsuit was handed to Liu in 2019, with the former student accusing him of six counts of false imprisonment, civil assault and battery, and sexual assault or battery.

Crypto lender Nexo in talks to invest in or buy more companies in Asia
These companies range from distressed ones and those facing difficulties for various reasons to businesses; The potential deals are aimed at either expanding its footprint in Asia or allowing it to move into new verticals within crypto.

NFT gaming startup Metastrike closes US$3.3M funding round
The investors are GD10 Ventures, Jump Capital, and Kucoin Labs; Metastrike is an FPS-RPG, featuring an array of digital assets that players can collect and trade on the open market, such as weapons, skins, and projectiles.

Terra co-founder Daniel Shin likely to testify on Terra collapse
While the subject of the probe was not made public, Shin will likely be questioned on the crash of the company’s TerraUSD and Luna, Terra’s native token; His co-founder Do Kwon is also under investigation by Korea’s police.

Membership-driven e-commerce platform for essential goods Cosmart raises US$5M
The investors are Lightspeed, East Ventures, and Vertex Ventures SEA & India; Cosmart has already partnered with over 80+ principals and 500+ brands and has delivered over 100,000 products in Indonesia.

No funding winter for early-stage deals in SEA, say VCs
While there’s been an overall decline in early-stage deals in SEA during the first nine months of 2022, most VCs feel the region has largely managed to beat the global funding winter.

500 Global backs HK insurtech firm Yas’s US$4.5M raise
Other backers are Noria Capital, Zemu VC, and JKL Capital; Yas offers blockchain-enabled insurance products that provide coverage for accidents and NFT investments.

Xend founder launches Philippine proptech venture builder
Bjorn Pardo will also be spearheading the venture builder AHG Lab’s push into “proptech+”, which he says is the use of proptech solutions to address the needs of surrounding communities in addition to the needs of real estate stakeholders.

Echelon 2022 to discuss the state of the SEA startup ecosystem
Catch leading experts and industry insiders at Echelon 2022 as they discuss the post-pandemic tech startup landscape; They will touch upon why startups need to pay attention to debt restructuring, expenditures, marketing, and fundraising.

MENA on the rise with push and pull global economic drivers
With the right balance between investment returns and startup potential, PEs and VCs are more intrigued by regions like MENA.

The profitability trade-off: How startups navigate uncertain times to achieve quality growth
As startups progress from seed to early-stage and then growth and late-stage funding, they must recalibrate between profitability and growth.

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27 will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon.

The 2022 Echelon edition will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

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Today, in the Asia Pacific, most startups and SMEs are leveraging technology-enabled business models, with a keen focus on regaining growth and gaining an edge over competitors. And in line with this urgent push toward digitalisation and innovation, the cloud has emerged as a core foundation of this renewed focus.

According to a report titled “The Future of Cloud in Asia Pacific” by Cisco and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the overall cloud spending in the region is expected to reach US$200 billion by 2024, with investments in cloud growing at a CAGR of over 20 per cent since 2018.

Getting clarity and some control over cloud expenses

Cloud has many benefits for businesses in a digital-first world, but it can be expensive.  Based on my observations, having worked with more than 300 digital native companies over the last six years, cloud costs contribute somewhere between 10-20 per cent of the overall operational spending (which can be even higher for SaaS companies).

Plus, there is an additional challenge – cloud cost wastage. Numerous surveys and reports conducted across APAC and beyond have shown that executives believe that over 30 per cent of their cloud spending goes to waste.

Furthermore, cloud costs might increase exponentially after IT upgrades or scaling an important workload. The cost increase might be a concern initially, but the workload enhancements could lead to more transactions and customers. To manage costs, establishing and adhering to metrics is vital.

As such, for small businesses and startups with low budgets, getting clarity on cloud expenses and figuring out how to optimise them is becoming increasingly critical. Startups are generally focused on creating product value and are thus often forced to choose between spending time implementing new functionalities and prioritising low-effort-high-impact architectural modifications to maintain momentum.

Also Read: How cloud computing is helping startups navigate the new normal

This is where modern technology consulting firms are stepping up to empower startups and SMEs to future-proof their businesses but just providing these solutions is not enough. Offering these solutions while helping startups and SMEs manage costs is the need of the hour, and at Searce, we are doing just that.

Lately, we see many businesses thriving on their DevOps (a set of practices, tools, and a cultural philosophy that automates and integrates the processes between software development and IT teams) to help keep cloud costs under control.

However, we think that FinOps or financial operations can be an ideal way to help startups control and manage their operating costs in a cloud environment.

What is FinOps?

FinOps is an operational framework that brings technology, finance, and business together to drive financial accountability. One of the main aspects of FinOps is to drive everyone to take accountability for their costs. To that end, every user of the cloud should feel responsible for their spending and empowered to take action to optimise it.

How FinOps is disrupting the approach toward cloud-led transformation

Reports suggest that the adoption of FinOps is swiftly advancing across APAC, and rightly so. There are multiple ways in which your company can cut down costs and benefit from the implementation of FinOps.

Reduced cloud costs

FinOps enable businesses to avoid big cloud bills and effectively cut cloud costs through visibility, cost optimisation, control and collaboration. On average, Searce customers have saved around 15-20 per cent after onboarding to their free cloud acceleration programme just by going through an assessment workshop where we highlight some obvious optimisations for these customers.

Generally, this is what a FinOps cycle looks like:

Inform Visibility and Allocation	Optimise Utilisation	Operate CI
Understanding the organisation’s resource consumption through context, data, budgets and forecasting.	Setting clear goals and targets by determining cloud costs through strategy, tracking, cost breakdown and cost growth boundary.	Aligning the organisation’s teams to business goals through drive and action with a keen focus on getting results for the organisation.

Complete transparency for better cost management and control

Through the principle of visibility in FinOps, you are able to identify organisational units, such as business units, teams, individual engineers, applications, cloud services and asset pools, and map them onto the cloud while preserving historical data for future trend analysis. As cloud resources are dynamic and constantly changing, it is important not only to capture the status quo but also to develop a process of getting visibility in dynamics.

Scope for cloud optimisation and improved performance

From analysing unused resources to VM re-flavouring (reviewing performance metrics from your VMs to see whether you need to choose less expensive flavours) and choosing the right instances based on business needs to storage and networking optimisation – cloud cost optimisation under FinOps covers a wide range of touchpoints.

Also Read: Desperate times, desperate measures: How to extend cash runway by reducing cloud costs

Implementing the principle of control in the FinOps process entails several items- creating dedicated budgets for granular items, setting TTL rules, creating clean-up scripts and so on.

Enables long-term optimisation and cost-saving processes

Lastly, collaboration in a FinOps cloud environment means cross-functional collaborations where engineers, operational, finance and executive teams are all involved. FinOps helps define cloud usage strategy, define and adjust cloud budgets, set cloud usage practices and review results and adjust if necessary.

Implementing FinOps

Now that it is clear how FinOps can help businesses manage cloud costs efficiently, it is also important to understand the ethos for the correct implementation of FinOps. Searce’s FinOps framework has been developed on the fundamentals of People, Process, and Technology.

People	Process	Technology
This aspect entails the team. The people who are responsible for FinOps practices, such as the core FinOps team and cross-functional stakeholders, use the cloud.	The Process dimension includes the steps (or Epics) you take to implement FinOps practices on the Cloud Platform.	Finally, the technology aspect consists of tools that can be leveraged to support the process.

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At Searce, dive deep into each of these pillars to analyse and establish one-time versus recurring actions, set clear goals and start measuring outcomes.

Cloud is an incredible solution that allows businesses to accomplish their goals and innovate at unparalleled speed. However, it requires methods to maintain financial discipline and ensure cloud costs don’t spiral out of control.

The mission of FinOps is to help businesses maintain this discipline while supporting their business goals. In other words, they preserve the reason the cloud is widely embraced in the first place – speed, flexibility, and capability. 

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