‘Never waste a good crisis’: Winston Churchill.

Every crisis is an opportunity to reflect and replan. For startups, it is an opportunity to restructure and reboot the business.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a debilitating impact on startups the world over. Unable to withstand the onslaught of the virus, and with no light visible at the end of the tunnel, hundreds of startups ceased their operations.

But could they have waited for the dust to be settled?

“You believe in what you’re trying to build and you never have to shut down. You will shut down only when you lose that belief. You can always pivot if you don’t have a product-market fit; you can always switch if you don’t have or are unable to find alternatives,” says Joseph Phua, a noted entrepreneur and founder of Paktor, which is known as Southeast Asia’s Tinder.

In his view, shutting down is never an option for startups. Companies shut down not because of crises but only when founders give up.

“Even if you go bankrupt, there is still no need to shut down a company because you can always restructure the business. That’s why people go into bankruptcy protection because you want to restructure it so that you can pay off your debts and continue. You will shutter only when you give up,” he says.

In essence, giving up is not an option for the smartest — even if they are in dire straits. They would have hundred reasons to not put the curtain down. They would explore options such as pivoting of the product before resorting to the last step.

Here are the four startups from e27 Luminaries that have successfully restructured/pivoted their product/business model to tide over the crisis and reaping the benefits.

Greenhouse

Co-founded by Drew Calin, Vicknesh Pillay and Viktor Kyosev, Greenhouse is a curated B2B services marketplace. A free service, it matches customers to the most relevant service providers who can deliver on their unique project needs.

The Singapore- and Indonesia-based company provides market research and validation services, market expansion services and business support services for businesses.

Also Read: ‘Companies shut down not because of crises but only when founders give up’: Joseph Phua of M17

In its earlier avatar, Greenhouse operated co-working space in Indonesia. “The writing was on the wall for co-work well before COVID-19 struct. The industry was extremely commoditised, making it difficult to build a profitable business,” said Drew Calin, CEO of Greenhouse, about the pivot.

“Fortunately, we discovered a pain point amongst our members entering Indonesia from abroad — they all seemed to struggle to navigate the local landscape and source high quality, but reasonably priced, business services (i.e. legal, incorporation, accounting, tax, payroll, etc.. etc…). We’d felt the pain ourselves, being based in Singapore but setting up an operational entity in Indonesia,” he explained.

The company started connecting buyers and sellers of these services offline, taking a small margin in 2019, and went all-in in 2020 when it realised that scaling businesses would be more in need of digital services than ever before.

“Naturally, the pandemic has accelerated our use of digital mediums and outsourced B2B services. More than two thirds of businesses (globally) outsourced services last year. 2020 was a staple year for Greenhouse.co, as we grew our supplier network by 4x, transaction volume by 4x, and our revenues by 3.4x. Today, we’re regions largest curated B2B services marketplace with more than 150 service providers, across 16 countries,” he claims.

He further added that Greenhouse is on a mission to accelerate global mobility through tech, for the greater good. “Not only are we an ecosystem by nature, but we prioritise sustainability by planting trees for every new customer, supplier, and partner in our network. To date, we’ve planted more than 3k trees all across the world…and hope to plant many many more in the coming years.”

RewardNation

It is a peer recognition tool for growing employee engagement at enterprises and startups. The RewardNation app lets you set up a points-based system for team members to publicly recognise good work and reward each other.

The company was started in 2019 as a bespoke travel curator (known as Anywhr then), which planned your journeys to lesser-known places worldwide, personalised for you. Anywhr was started to help people explore and experience more of the world, even in less common places they did not expect to visit.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Anywhr hard, with countries across the world imposing restrictions on travel and leisure. Leong and team were left with no option but to switch to a whole new product.

“Being in the travel space, our business was significantly impacted. The shift to remote work also led to team morale and engagement falling. Everyone was working hard and trying to stay positive, but we were all cooped up in our own homes during the lockdown,” founder Zelia Leong told e27.

Also Read: Pandemic or not, here’s why pivoting is good for your startup

During this time, Anywhr founders tried many ways to keep the team bonded. They found that a peer recognition and rewards system worked best in keeping the team members engaged and motivated. Team members can send public recognition messages to praise each other at work, which made individuals feel ‘seen’ and know that their work makes an impact.

“This solution worked well for us, and it turns out that many other companies had the same problem. Thus, after a few months of research and prototyping, we launched RewardNation as an official pivot. We hope to help more companies keep their employees engaged and motivated even remotely, through the benefits of Peer Recognition,” she added.

Sqreem Technologies

It is an Artificial Intelligence company to find patterns and digital footprints across the internet. Sqreem wants to map out human behaviour based on the online data they provide.

The venture delivers products and services to over 40 commercial and public sector customers world wide. Its clients include Nissan, KPMG, MetLife, Guardian Life, HSBC Bank & Insurance, SOMPO, UBS, and Ogilvy Advertising.

When COVID-19 broke out and when many companies struggled to stay afloat, Sqreem’s founders sensed an opportunity in the crisis.

In the early period of the virus spread, the firm launched Channel Sqreem, an AI-driven real-time contact-tracing and communication system, available only for government agencies. It was built to assist governments with contact tracing and direct engagement with people who were potentially at risk of having contracted COVID-19.

The platform functioned as a proximity locator that did not infringe on an individual’s privacy. And it didn’t require users to download an application for their devices. Data on the platform was handled strictly by the government agencies, while Sqreem worked as the platform provider and didn’t at any point have access to the data.

Travelhorse

Travelhorse was started out with just an idea to build a luggage logistics platform connecting users to local shops and businesses for temporary storage, allowing tourists to explore the cities free and easy.

However, the rapid spread of the virus around the globe derailed the founders’ plans, as the pandemic greatly limited the movement of people and goods around the country, heavily impacting the core business.

Also Read: Why startup founders should be open to pivoting anytime

Travelhorse has since evolved to include a dash service enabling merchants in Singapore for their deliveries.

“The year 2020 has brought unforeseen challenges and changes for everyone and Travelhorse is no different. Changing lanes from a luggage logistics platform connecting users to local shops and businesses for temporary storage to a logistics platform connecting businesses with its customers was just a way for Travelhorse to adapt to the new normal,” it says on its website.

Travelhorse revolves around the concept that home-based merchants should enjoy a more convenient and reliable way of last-mile logistics. Through genuine community spirit, it creates a friendly environment for goods to be delivered efficiently.

Accredited by Enterprise Singapore, Travelhorse is now part of the Food Delivery Booster Package to support F&B businesses making the transition from offline to online sales.

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The e27 Luminaries is an initiative by e27 to celebrate the unsung heroes of the SEA startup ecosystem. Discover these notable companies and individuals here.

Photo by Matthew Osborn on Unsplash

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UN Women’s WeEmpowerAsia programme has announced the launch of a new accelerator.

Funded by the European Union, UN Women Care Accelerator aims to support female entrepreneurs in the care industry to come up with innovative solutions that can ultimately help create jobs and income for women.

The virtual programme will run over a period of six months from June 1, wherein selected candidates will be provided with tailor-made training, mentorship, funding support, and help to develop and scale up their business models.

Seedstars, a global venture capital fund, along with Bopinc, a social enterprise, will co-lead the training, exchange and mentorship.

Also Read: Rise of the she-economy: 11 femtech companies and organisations aiming to empower women in SEA

Five applicants will be selected for the programme and the deadline to apply is May 10, 2021.

“It’s about time we recognise the important role care work plays in our society. We must pay attention to the industry as a whole and empower entrepreneurs in the care sector by providing more growth opportunities,” said Anurag Maloo, Head of Partnerships (Asia-Pacific) at Seedstars.

“As a public-private sector partnership, we should prioritise investment in care work for a more equal and gender-inclusive economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic,” Maloo added.

“Our initial research has shown an emergence of innovative business models that can (partly) address unpaid care work and acceleration of these innovative models is required to ensure they can grow and be replicated,” shared Emile Schmitz, Managing Director at Bopinc. “UN Women’s Care Accelerator is a great opportunity to bring entrepreneurs together and jointly scale entrepreneurial solutions to unpaid care work.”

According to a report by the Asian Development Bank and UN Women, even before the pandemic, women in Asia Pacific did (on average) four times as much unpaid care work as men did each day and in some countries up to 11 times more. This has widened the gender gap in earnings and prevented women from fully participating in the economy.

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Image Credit: UN

 

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Quan Tran, a full-time blockchain engineer at a Vietnam-based technology development service provider, is receiving three other well-paying job offers at the same time. Those come from foreign teams in France, America, and India, requesting Tran to remotely work for them during his time off.

“I work four more hours a day for two to three outside projects with foreign companies,” Tran said. “Many asked me to quit my current job and work remotely for them as a full-timer.”

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As companies around the world scrambled to pivot in response to the pandemic, one department that emerged as a largely unsung hero is HR. 

Typically tasked with back-office or support operations (with the occasional seat at the table), HR professionals played an important role in implementing the drastic and unprecedented changes of 2020. This included transitioning an entire workforce to WFH almost overnight, with all its operational psychological implications.

Over the next few months, as organisations looked down the barrel of a potential economic downswing and damage to business continuity, HR departments provided the support and infrastructure that employees needed to stay productive and bring their best selves to work – even if that work happened in a virtual space. 

For these reasons, 95 per cent of CHROs agree that HR played a leading role in their organisation’s response to COVID-19. As an ally during the period of challenge and change, HR’s role spread across facilitating business continuity in the early months, gauging employee sentiment and therefore the ideal organisational response, and intervening with the right technology at the right moments. 

The business continuity imperative

The early months of the pandemic were arguably the hardest, given the uncertainty ahead of us and the fact that several employees were unfamiliar with the dynamics of remote work. EngageRocket’s Employee Experience Transformation Survey revealed that 78 per cent of respondents felt more productive working at home this past year, compared to 57 per cent in April 2020. 

Slack’s report on Remote work in the age of COVID-19 revealed that experienced remote workers experienced a stronger sense of belonging (+20 per cent). HR deployed regular communication, change management strategies, and agile technology implementation to bridge this gap. 

Our own research has also found that 80 per cent of employees in the APAC region were confident about their company’s future. In the coming months, employers must build on this trust and confidence that their workforces have displayed and lay the foundations for an even stronger rebound. 

Also Read: PropertyGuru promotes Genevieve Godwin to Chief Human Resources Officer

Renewed focus on the voice of the employee

One of the key focus areas that emerged was the Voice of the Employee (VoE). Like Voice of the Customer in the sales and marketing world, listening to employees in the workplace seeks to capture genuine employee sentiment and intent in order to plan more effective and targeted organisational strategies.

This is a critical requirement in 2020-2021, as organisations must maintain engagement and drive productivity, all the while optimising available budgets. Employee listening gives you essential insights so you can pivot towards more lean HR practices without any compromise on impact.

Market data and analysing historical records don’t always surface these more hidden insights, which is why continuous employee listening is so important. 

There are several ways to achieve this, from the old-school suggestion box reinvented in a virtual avatar, to more sophisticated tools like running sentiment analysis on the unstructured employee feedback you receive. 

Purpose-built technology to solve unprecedented challenges

This was among the major determining factors for organisational continuity and success in 2020. Digital transformation could no longer be relegated to the back burner, and HR helped to bring about transformations until the very last mile. 

There were three major impact areas: 

• Self-paced learning solutions to continue skill development – Employee upskilling cannot come to a standstill during a crisis – in fact, it was advisable that teams used idle time and any freed-up business hours to elevate their skillsets, helping to hit the ground running in the rebound. KPMG found that over 3 in 10 employees would need to be reskilled after the pandemic, particularly in vulnerable sectors like governments, education, and hospitality. Self-paced online learning tools help to accommodate restructured productivity schedules with upskilling ambitions. 
• Collaboration tools to maintain interconnectedness and engagement – This was among the first action items tackled by HR in collaboration with IT and middle management. KPMG’s research also found that 53% of HR departments have invested in new collaboration tools to support remote working. Not only is this central for productivity, but cloud-based collaboration and communication was an essential lifeline for many, as we faced extended and repeated lockdowns. 
• HR data solutions to drive organisational decisions – The ability to access and analyse HR data proved to be a key differentiator in 2020. In addition to VoE insights as mentioned, HR must regularly check on the impact of different employee initiatives, the state of eNPS (Employer Net Promoter Score), and performance indices across milestones like the first month of WFH, first-quarter post-lockdown, etc.

An employee listening strategy

A lot has been written about the art of employee listening as one of the most effective crisis management strategies you could adopt as an organisation. It allows you to glean insights on work arrangements, wellbeing, support (or the lack thereof), business results, and HR policies and their impacts.

Also read: How can you build an employee-first company?

While employee listening was applied as part of HR’s reaction to the pandemic and its consequent response, in the following months, it can help to say a step ahead of workforce expectations even amid more unprecedented changes.

An employee listening strategy uses rapid-outcomes tactics such as pulse surveys, to understand the employee experience and purposefully involve your workforce in decision-making. 

Undoubtedly, HR professionals have done an incredible job so far, facilitating digital transformation at a scale requirement that was once thought insurmountable and easing change as much as possible.

Yet, there is a challenging road ahead, with Gartner’s December 2020 HR survey suggesting that 90 per cent of organisations plan on permanent WFH even when vaccination is possible and a new era of skill demands.

A close ear to the ground – listening in on your “Voice of the Employee” regularly and adapting on time – is crucial to success as we navigate the rebound and come out on the winning side. 

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Global VC firm 500 Startups is teaming up with Enterprise Singapore (ESG) to launch a new virtual programme, called 500 Ignition Singapore.

This initiative will help emerging entrepreneurs in the city-state build innovative ventures from scratch by helping them assemble founding teams, validate potential opportunities and create a product roadmap and business plan.

Set to run for 12 weeks, 500 Ignition Singapore aims to help selected startups by connecting them with industry experts for mentorship, finding the right co-founders, and providing them with shared resources that can help facilitate their startups’ long-term growth.

Key mentors joining the programme include Leesa Soulodre (General Partner, R31Ventures), Jin Tanaka (co-founder and Managing Partner, Shogun Capital), Jaspreet S Dua (Entrepreneur-in-Residence, 500 Startups), Mimi Aminah Wan Nordin (CEO, Constellation Ventures), Anurag Rastogi (Member of the Board, FinCode), and Garry Huang (Entrepreneur-in-Residence, 500 Startups).

The programme will take place in three phases.

Also Read: Tribe raises funding to expand its accelerator programme globally

In the first phase, participants will be divided into teams to learn best practices on how to gather insights to craft compelling value propositions for their products and services.

The second phase will include helping startups develop a minimum viable product (MVP) and the third phase will have teams learning other core components that make a successful startup like marketing, sales, etc.

While the applications for the first cohort of 500 Ignition are already closed, individuals can apply for its second cohort from today until May 21.

500 Startups is currently running another Ignition programme in Cambodia and intends to run similar programmes across ecosystems with emerging startup talent, desiring to engage with youth in entrepreneurship and aiming to stimulate new job creation.

“The past year has witnessed significant disruption across myriad sectors and hence fresh ideas are needed to meet ever-evolving demands. We are thrilled to partner with Enterprise Singapore in this endeavor to provide aspiring founders with the foundation and mentorship they need to launch a business,” said Ee Ling Lim, Regional Director of APAC, Business Development, 500
Startups.

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Image Credit: 500 Ignition Singapore

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Hangry, a culinary startup with a cloud kitchen and multi-brand concept in Indonesia, today announced that it has closed its “oversubscribed” funding of US$13 million in an Alpha JWC Ventures-led Series A round.

Atlas Pacific Capital, Salt Ventures, and Heyokha Brothers also joined.

Hangry plans to use this capital scale its business and open more than 120 outlets in total, with the aim of launching 20-plus dine-in restaurants across Indonesia in 2021.

Also Read: Yummy Corp bags US$12M Series B to grow its cloud kitchen brand in Indonesia

Founded in 2019 by Abraham Viktor, Robin Tan and Andreas Resha, Hangry follows an asset-light business model wherein it produces “quality food at affordable prices” to cater to the urban, mobile-first consumers in the archipelago.

It has launched multiple brands with large culinary varieties, such as Moon Chicken (Korean-inspired fried chicken), San Gyu (authentic Japanese cuisine), and Ayam Koplo (a new take on traditional ayam geprek and various chicken delicacies).

The prices range from IDR 15,000 – IDR 70,000 (US$1-6) per portion.

Hangry’s in-house brands’ menus are available on GrabFood, ShopeeFood, GoFood and on its Hangry App.

Today, Hangry runs more than 40 outlets in Greater Jakarta and Bandung. In 2020 alone, it opened more than 35 outlets and claims to have grown 22x over the course of the year.

According to the founders, Hangry managed to not only survive but also thrive amidst challenges brought by an economic slowdown and government-imposed social restrictions following the onset of COVID-19.

“There are not many global food chains with gourmet-quality dishes, let alone one originating from Indonesia. That’s what we aspire to be. We’ll start from home and will continue to expand across Indonesia as well as to neighboring countries soon,” co-founder and CEO Viktor said.

Hangry received its first institutional funding of US$3 million from Alpha JWC Ventures and Sequoia Capital through the latter’s Surge programme in 2020.

“In the span of 1.5 years, they launched multiple brands across a myriad of tastes and categories, and almost all of them are amongst the best sellers list with superior ratings in multiple platforms — tangible examples of product-market-fit. This is only the beginning and we can already foresee their growth to be a top local F&B brand in the country,” said Eko Kurniadi, Partner at Alpha JWC Ventures.

Also Read: All female-led MadEats ropes in Tinder co-founder as investor to scale its internet food brands in Philippines

“Hangry’s exceptional business model has been proven to withstand the crisis. Despite the pandemic, Hangry has shown phenomenal growth, opening more than 35 outlets in 2020 alone,” says Danny Sutradewa, Managing Partner at SALT Ventures.

Of late, the concept of cloud kitchen has received great attention in Southeast Asia, and the onset of COVID-19 has further accelerated the growth of the industry.

In Indonesia, Yummy Corp. is another cloud kitchen startup that in September raised US$12 million in Series B funding, led by SoftBank Ventures Asia.

The Philippines is the other fast-growing market for cloud kitchen, with several of its startups such as Kraver’s Canteen, CloudEats and MadEats attracting investment.

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Image Credit: Hangry

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COVID-19 has introduced the world to a new working culture — ‘work from anywhere’. Although the culture has always been around, it has never been adopted more widely that this before.

As people shifted from offline to online, remote working brought with itself its own set of unique challenges. For example, managers began facing difficulties like hiring, bringing in better workplace management, burnout, and keeping away from home distractions.

To solve these problems, many companies began looking for solutions in the market that would solve their own remote working challenges.

While there are many players in this sector, in honour of International Workers’ Day, e27 is rounding up six of the most notable startups from Southeast Asia that are making remote working easy.

Here is a snap-shot of the seven startups:

(The information for this article was collected from the e27 Startup Database  as well as other platforms such as HRtech map and Tracxn)

HR management

Gimo

According to the World Bank’s Global Findex Database 2017, nearly two-thirds of Vietnam’s adult population do not own a bank. Often, they must rely on costly financial services such as long-term, high-ticket-size bank loans or high-interest-rate loans to take care of their cash flow emergencies.

To solve this problem, Gimo provides transparency and convenience of payroll to local workers without a bank account. Users can request income payment in advance and track earnings through the mobile app that is integrated into their companies’ human resource management and payroll systems.

The startup aspires to tap into millions of workers who have limited access to financial services and help them alleviate their financial stress and security.

Country of Origin: Vietnam

Total funding: Undisclosed

Investors: ThinkZone Ventures, and BK Fund (an investment fund of the Hanoi University of Science and Technology)

Pulsifi

Pulsifi provides companies with a people analytics platform that uses predictive models and Machine Learning to automatically generate holistic profiles of each potential or current employee. Through this information, business and HR teams can make better-informed, data-driven decisions on hiring, teaming and development.

Also Read: Eliminating hiring on gut feeling: How Pulsifi bridges data and hiring

Founder Jay Huang claims the platform has over 90 per cent accuracy when predicting the outcomes of people at work.

Country of Origin: Singapore

Total funding: US$4 million

Investors: Kairous Capital

Swingvy

An all-in-one HR cloud-based software for small and medium-sized businesses in Southeast Asia. Swingvy connects crucial HR information like payroll and benefits, and automates administrative tasks all in one platform. The company serves over 5,000 companies and has offices in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Taipei and Seoul.

“Our vision is to be an Operating System of companies. We will build a new type of organisation management platform to create a workplace where work empowers people. We’ll face a paradigm shift in the way people work, and the platform should evolve before the shift arrives,” says Swingvy co-founder Jin Choeh.

Country of Origin: Malaysia

Total funding: US$7 million

Investors: Samsung Venture Investment Corporation

For talent acquisition

IoTalents

An online community and platform for hirers to connect and transact with permanent or contract niche candidates in the IT sector. To make the task easier for hirers, IoTalents sources talents through its own profiling technology, algorithmic matching, and talent mapping solutions.

Country of Origin: Singapore

Total funding: Undisclosed

Investors: Undisclosed

JobWiz

A tech job portal that helps talents find jobs based on company perks and salary ranges. Individuals can also filter jobs based on perks like flexible hours, work location, days off and learning budget.

Also Read: Swingvy co-founder and CEO: I only hire people who are smarter than me

Country of Origin: Singapore

Total funding: Undisclosed

Investors: Undisclosed

Hireplace

One of the major problems of hiring is over-relying on CVs and overly-crowded career fairs. Hireplace aims to solve the problem through its unique online speed-dating interview format.

To use the feature, employers need to create an event on the Hireplace website and send calendar invitations to the shortlisted potential candidates. The event will then takes place as rapid video interviews on mobile and laptops.

Country of Origin: Singapore

Total funding: Undisclosed

Investors: Undisclosed

For talent rewards

Reward Nation

Talk is cheap, and Reward Nation helps team members give each other recognition through a points system which they can later collect to buy something nice.

The way it works is that each member of a company team has a set of points to give out to one other. Reward Nation then tallies the total reward points of each individual and allows them to redeem their points and buy something nice.

Rewards include vouchers for flight tickets, restaurants and transport.

Country of Origin: Singapore

Total funding: Undisclosed

Investors: Undisclosed

UpLevel

A learning platform that helps companies upskill their python and data science talent of all levels (from beginner to pro) to improve their coding skills with hands-on training projects. The projects not just help learners develop hard skills such as coding, but also improves their soft skills like problem-solving and algorithmic thinking.

Also Read: DarwinBox bags US$15M to expand its enterprise HR-tech platform in SEA

Country of Origin: Singapore

Total funding: Undisclosed

Investors: Undisclosed

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In today’s digital world, one of the biggest goals for startups is being recognised and trusted by their core audience through the art of brand awareness. Whether engaging with influencers, partnerships or simply posting content, social media is a powerful tool for building trust. 

Businesses can use social media to maintain and strengthen existing customer relationships, while also having the opportunity to generate new leads. Forty-nine per cent of our global population uses some form of social media, and that means a big portion of their prospective buying audience is on social media. 

In fact, 54 per cent of consumers say they use social media to find new products or brands. With social media acting as a powerful channel to connect with customers, it’s crucial that business leaders understand how to unlock their full potential to drive success.

However, knowing where to begin can be a daunting task, particularly if you’re a startup with a small marketing team or a sole trader wearing several operational hats. Building public awareness and trust in an oversaturated social media marketplace is no easy feat.

However, there are some simple social media best practices that startups can adhere to, allowing them to maximise their efforts, campaigns and budgets. Here, we explore the social media best practice that startups of all types can use as a guide to drive customer engagement and brand recognition. 

Analyse the audience

The first social media best practice tip? Learn everything you can about your audience. If you don’t know who your audience is, you can’t give them what they want. Whether you’re targeting baby boomers, millennials, sports fans, new parents and every intersection in between, it’s best to drill down on audience demographics to increase engagement. 

You may have already built out your buyer personas, so you can use that as a foundation for your social media strategy. Otherwise, you can use native social media analytics to understand your audience demographic. Social media analytics can help you to gain a deeper insight into your audience demographic, including who they are, where they’re located and how engaged they are. 

Also Read: Circus Social secures US$1M to help businesses make decisions from real-time social media conversations

Demographics can tell you a lot more about your customers. You can gain an even deeper understanding of who they are through social listening. This social practice will help you to find out what your customers are talking about, how they’re talking about your brand and products — and what kind of topics they care about. 

The average person spends two hours and 25 minutes on social media per day, so social listening allows you to harvest key insights to fuel different aspects of your social media strategy, from the way you approach customer service to publishing. 

Build a customer-first social media strategy

Creating meaningful connections with consumers on social media can be a difficult task. We’re often told of the importance of seeking out your audience on a diverse range of channels and creating unique content that speaks to consumers in the cluttered landscape. One of the best ways to do this is by building a customer-first social media strategy. This means designing a strategy that’s centred around your customers and is chiefly focused on fulfilling their needs and meeting — if not surpassing — their expectations.

For example, rather than posting content whenever you feel like it, post content that appeals to your customers at an optimised time to ensure maximum reach. This is bound to attract and engage consumers more effectively, in turn boosting your social media performance and customer relationships. 

Drawing on one of Metigy’s customers as an example, Share with Oscar is an on-demand platform for booking a private parking space. Instead of predictable posts relating to parking pain, Share with Oscar ties its content to cultural moments, such as a visit from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle; the platform posted a tongue-in-cheek article about the Royals not being able to find parking at Bondi Beach.

Also Read: Watch out, these startup social media marketing strategies are bullshit

The Share with Oscar team then used Metigy’s AI tool to help identify the best time of day to post the content in order to deliver optimal results — and the post generated more than 13,000 views with a spend of just AU$10. Showcasing the true power of well-timed content.

The majority of marketers believe that their efforts through social media marketing have been ‘somewhat effective’ or ‘very effective’ for their businesses, so it’s clear that startups building a customer-first social media strategy will ride the wave of successful social media marketing. 

Personalise the experience

It’s not enough to know what your customers are saying, but you also have to respond appropriately at the right time to strengthen the relationship. In most cases, this means responding as quickly as possible to let the customer know you’ve heard them and that you’re working to find a suitable solution or response.

Social media has become a new interface for customer service. Nearly six in 10 consumers would unfollow brands on social media because of poor customer service, while 29 per cent would unfollow them if they ignore posts or mentions from people. 

Regardless of the channel, social media connects people with their family and friends. So, even when consumers interact with brands over social media, they want to feel comfortable as if they were talking to a friend. This is exactly why you should always try to keep your responses and conversations as personalised as possible. 

In addition to using their first name, you should apply a friendly tone that would make consumers feel comfortable and welcome. If you have multiple teams or employees monitoring your social media accounts, it’s best practice to create a style and tone guide, to ensure consistency across communications. The overarching goal is to make the interaction as humanised as possible, mirroring a face-to-face interaction.

Tap into trust and transparency 

Trust is at the heart of every strong relationship, especially the relationship between brand and customer. Transparency is critical to this. After engagement, transparency is the second most important factor that makes a brand best in class on social media. 

So, the lesson to startups is that if you make any mistakes, own up to them. If you’re making changes or updates to your business, let your customers know. If there are any problems with your product or service, keep your customers notified and let them know that you’re working on resolving them.

People trust other people, so a customer-first social media strategy can also mean putting a human face to your brand to win people’s trust. Make sure you regularly publish content that showcases your employees or C-suite executives to remind your customers about the humans behind the business.

Also Read: Achieve your social media marketing goals with these 4 strategies

This could mean showing what’s going behind the scenes of your brand, how your employees work or showcasing snapshots of company events.

Today, social media has become an absolute must for startups of all shapes and sizes. However, without following social media best practice it can be difficult to drive strong results. It’s possible to build an engaging and successful social strategy if you put social engagement at the centre.

The main focus should be applying a customer-first approach and working towards better understanding your target audience and discovering what makes them tick. 

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. This season we are seeking op-eds, analysis and articles on food tech and sustainability. Share your opinion and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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

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The Founder-on-Founder Podcast series is a weekly podcast hosted by Olivier Raussin, managing partner at FEBE Ventures, an early-stage Venture Capital fund supporting outstanding entrepreneurs in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. The podcast features tech entrepreneurs with a focus on Southeast Asia’s innovation business and tech landscape.

The podcast highlights stories from outstanding entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia on their journey, revealing previously unknown insights and offers advice on running a tech company.

Featured in this episode is Vidush Mahansaria, a technology entrepreneur with several years of experience in the tech and finance industries across the US, Europe and Asia.

 

“I started working for Grab under Ming, the president of Grab. It was an amazing experience, getting to see the launch of food delivery, mobile payments, the acquisition of Uber and more. After that experience, I decided I needed to spend more time with other best-in-class companies founders around the world to broaden my perspectives.

So I hopped over to the other side and joined ICONIQ Growth, which is a large tech investment fund in San Francisco. After meeting a wide variety of entrepreneurs and understanding their companies, I decided a year ago that it was time for me to make my own leap of faith. Thus, I became a founder and started Vara with one of my best friends from college.”

Also Read: War of warungs: Decoding the race to win the warung game in Indonesia

Vara’s product, Bukugaji, is revolutionising the labour market in Indonesia. The truth is that the vast majority of companies globally employ less than 20 staff. In fact, most of these companies manage their employees and payroll completely manually.

Bukugaji is a powerful and lightweight staff management platform that caters to both small companies as well as their staff. It has also recently been selected as one of the four startups in Southeast Asia to be in the Lightspeed Extreme Entrepreneurs 2021 cohort.

Starting up during the pandemic

After growing up in Thailand and studying and working across the US, Europe and Asia, Vid decided to start up back in his home region of Southeast Asia. The unfortunate circumstance and timing of the pandemic resulted in a 12,000-mile gap between him and his co-founder.

And that hasn’t been the only challenge: “Building for a language that we don’t speak, in a culture that we’re not familiar with, in a geography that we’ve never lived in is hard enough, anyway. Doing that from a distance while not being in the same room has been an undeniably challenging experience. At the same time, however, it’s led to incredible personal discoveries around creating and scaling a product-led company by leveraging global best-in-class talent.”

Discovering an exciting market opportunity

As any former investor would, Mahansaria entered the Indonesian market with “a thesis in mind, a product that we wanted to build, and a problem we wanted to solve.” This initial foray into the startup world was met with challenges when his initial ideas fell flat.

This led to an “entire process of pivoting, trying, building and experimenting with deliberate iteration.” Over time, by “listening to your users and what the market wants” compounded to an exciting market opportunity “for whom we can truly innovate and build around.”

Growth is also important, he said. “It’s important to make sure that the baseline of what you’re building is strong, because you don’t want to be filling up a leaky bucket. As a result, focusing purely on growth is a dangerous game because at some point that growth needs to be sustained. If you’re not retaining your users, for whatever reasons, you will not be able to compound your growth efficiently.”

Mahansaria also goes on to share his experience with fundraising (Vara is backed by Sequoia), team-building, and other interesting insights. “Dive deep with core market insights and establish a strong perspective of what the world should look like. The stronger your determination  in the future you want to create, the more likely it is that your narrative with investors will reflect that passion and vision.”

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. This season we are seeking op-eds, analysis and articles on food tech and sustainability. Share your opinion and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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

Image credit: Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The post Early-stage learnings from former Grab employee on building a startup to help labour in Indonesia appeared first on e27.

Over the past quarter, the e27 Memberships team has been working tirelessly to bring onboard a prestigious list of Experts onto the e27 platform. These Experts come from varying areas of expertise from different industries and verticals.

The goal of the e27 Experts Program is to create a platform for mentors and coaches to share knowledge with their fellow peers and members within our e27 ecosystem through private 1:1 sessions.

We hope to equip every aspiring individual with relevant mentorship, useful feedback and open up more partnership opportunities for everyone to up-skill themselves and attain their individual goals.

Check out these 5 verified Experts that you can connect with for advice, mentorship, and other partnership opportunities:

Geoffrey Handley
General Partner at Haitao Capital
Advisory Boards | Principals & People | Strategic Architecture

Geoffrey is the General Partner of early-stage, cross border investor, Haitao Capital. He is also an EiR at SOSV’s Chinaccelerator (#2 angel & seed-stage investor globally – Crunchbase) and a 5x founder with multiple exits including 2x IPO & acquisitions.

Widely known as an early mobile visionary and published thought leader, he was the Global Board Director & Secretary of Mobile Marketing Association & Founding Director at AsiaPac Chapter. Some of his achievements include being listed under Entrepreneur.com’s Brightest 10 List, Gartner’s Mobile “Ones to Watch”, and W3C Mobile’s Most Influential.

Sign up here and Connect with him

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Jan Wong
Founder & CEO at OpenMinds
Branding | Bootstrapping | Digital Marketing

Jan Wong is an entrepreneur, youth advocate, and founder of OpenMinds; an 8 year old bootstrapped, data-driven martech company based in KL, Singapore and Hong Kong. Starting at the age of 17, he has ventured into eight businesses, a part-time lecturer at the Asia Pacific University (APIIT / APU), a certified e-commerce consultant, published an academic journal during his Master’s degree, sits on the Academic Advisory Board of KDU, Sunway College and Sunway University, a regional keynote speaker in events and conferences, a mentor for multiple startup communities including Techstars Global and NEXT50 Singapore, a regular contributor on BFM radio, a 2-time TEDx speaker, recognised as one of the top 10 new generation businessmen to watch in 2020, listed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2017 list and recently published his first book on Building Your Digital Net Worth.

Sign up here and Connect with him

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Rachel Wong
Counsel at Eugene Thuraisingam LLP I CEO of Founders Doc
Legal Advice for Startups I Legal Services I Consultancy Services I Legal Templates

Rachel graduated from King’s College, London (LL.B.) in 2013 with First Class Hons. Since then, she has worked as a corporate M&A lawyer in leading international law firms such as White & Case LLP, Hogan Lovells Lee & Lee and Allen & Gledhill LLP in Singapore and London. She is also a committee member of The Law Society of Singapore (Corporate Committee and the CPD Committee).

Whilst helping one of the founders in their series fundraising process in Singapore, she was impressed by how ‘founder-friendly’ certain venture capital funds and law firms in Silicon Valley were – in particular, Founders Fund. She also felt that the legal community in Singapore could do better in providing more robust legal support for the growing startup community in South-east Asia, whilst taking into account the cultural nuances and trends in this region. With this in mind, Founders Doc was born in 2021.

Founders Doc collaborates with Eugene Thuraisingam LLP, where she spearheads the Corporate Practice, to ensure that founders in South-east Asia get the full support that they need. Founders Doc is, in essence, an in-house legal service provider; whilst the law firm arm serves to support companies in more complex transactions.

Sign up here and Connect with her

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Frank Lee
Managing Director at Tech JDI
Investment | Scaling Tech Teams | Vietnam Markets

Frank is the Partner at TNF Ventures and Founder at Tech JDI.

In TNF Ventures, he manages all aspects of company operations, and portfolio management.
Till date, TNF Ventures has a total of 20 portfolio companies.

On the other hand, Tech JDI is a venture studio building startups and providing venture support services to help fast scaling Series A/B/C tech companies grow their 2nd tech teams in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He manages numerous teams, and has operations in 3 offices between Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang.

Sign up here and Connect with him

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Tamara Singh
Head of Asia Pacific, OMFIF

Following a decade in the United Kingdom and two years in Hong Kong, Tamara returned to Singapore in 2012. A multi-disciplinary Business Manager, her experience spans energy, financial services and fund management, covering trading floors in London, New York, as well as across Asia. Tamara recently departed GIC Pte Ltd, Singapore’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, to embark on a portfolio career as the Head of Asia Pacific for the Official Monetary & Financial Institutions Forum, whilst also fulfilling demanding commitments as a dedicated mother, Coach and Consultant. Tamara is a member of the UNDP’s Private Sector Advisory Group and UNESCAP’s Infrastructure Financing and Public-Private Partnership Network of Asia and the Pacific. She also works with industry groups to drive the adoption of solutions to reduce common challenges within the finance ecosystem and is currently experimenting with the roll-out of a purpose-led virtual community for anyone interested in gender inclusion.

Tamara has degrees in Law and in Applied Accounting, and attained an Executive Masters in Business Administration from INSEAD whilst pregnant with her second child, which she cites as being “efficient but not necessarily recommended”. Tamara is involved with organisations and causes that are focused on equality and education, including sitting on the Board of Conjunct Consulting, South East Asia’s first social change consultancy. She coaches clients including accelerators, social enterprises/not-for-profits and corporate decision-makers.

Sign up here and Connect with her

Happy connecting,
e27 Memberships Team

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Photo by fauxels from Pexels

The post Meet these 5 verified Experts that are ready to connect with you today appeared first on e27.