We are at a critical tipping point where truly intelligent technology has evolved to augment the knowledge workers’ abilities not just to drive productivity, or make things faster, better and cheaper, but scalable and more impactful

Data, analytics, automation and the rise of AI have been hot topics over the past 12 months. David Sanderson founder and CEO of data storytelling platform Nugit shares his insights on what marketing organisations, publishers and enterprises should be focussing on for success in 2019.

1. Using Automation to improve people’s experiences with data

As we transitioned from human to machine reporting, the quality of insight and storytelling in marketing reports has regressed. Telling stories has been replaced with slick dashboards. Previously, marketing analysts would share campaign performance results in well structured PowerPoint and Excel presentations that included annotations, key insights and recommendations. While this manual process placed a massive burden on analytics teams and dozens of hours required to process data, visualise and build these stories for each activity, the outputs were usually pretty good.

Enter automated dashboards a few years ago which offered a tempting alternative to alleviate this time suck, however it created new problems. While dashboards have undoubtedly driven efficiencies, the data is left to the client or reader to interpret for themselves and the story around the results has all but vanished.

The dashboard is considerably more appealing to an analytics teams (the report producers) than to the end business user (the consumers). Therefore, a more balanced consideration between driving productivity through automation and meeting and exceeding the needs of the end user is required for automation to succeed. After all, the report is built for readers, so make sure it’s what they need. This shift in thinking might seem nuanced, but it means a lot in terms of impact. I believe with maturity of automation technology will lead to a shift in focus from analytics technologies being all about the analyst and productivity enablement, to be focused on delivering a more complete story for the people that rely on this information to make informed decisions.

2. Tech will change marketing roles and AI will begin to bite

There has been a lot of hyperbole about the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning driving job losses. However, it’s actually really difficult to find examples of where this has lead to actual job losses thus far. In the coming year, this will start to change and marketing is likely to be one sector where it could be felt most. Particularly in agencies with reduced fee structures, productivity economics is front and centre in company planning. Teams are expected to manage more output per head, and one of the only places left to find margin is is reducing man-hours.

Also read: 5 blockchain and crypto predictions for 2019

Automation and new technology will also lead to massive changes in the nature of existing jobs. For agencies and marketing organisations this means questioning the skills and experience needed to fulfil these evolving roles. For example, in 2019 you can be an amazing analyst without knowing Structured Query Language (SQL) or programming language Python, but to be successful you must be a great communicator and storyteller. From what I can see, communication and presentation skills was at best a nice to have when filling data analytics roles in 2018.

These trends might be disruptive, but they shouldn’t be feared, they’re driving a lot of amazing opportunities. If you’ve been considering a new career path for a while, this could be the right time. There will also be more jobs created that haven’t existed before. Head of AI, Automation, Innovation, Data Storytelling, or some other buzzword are popping up everywhere. Because there isn’t a ready talent pool of people who’ve got five years plus experience, to find candidates employers will need to be much more open to transferable skills. What aptitudes and skill sets overlap from other fields? what are the critical requirements in the role to be successful vs. are just boilerplate requirements that have existed since the job description was first crafted? Most importantly, why do you need to have worked in an industry or vertical before? While the overhead of training is a bit higher than having someone hit the ground running, imagine the new ideas and thinking that can be introduced into the business with people from more diverse backgrounds.

3. Test and learn with automation

Businesses need to decide if they are going to embrace automation, or just react to it. Embracing it means not just talking about it and putting it on slides, but setting aside real budget to develop proof of concepts and experiments within the company. Even if it’s a modest investment, it will be vital in generating organisational learnings and build skills within the company. There are a lot of early adopters who are building this experience into their marketing functions now and it will be these organisations that will ultimately gain the biggest advantage as the technology matures. Sure there will be failures along the way. The key here is to plan for these failures, make sure lessons are learnt, and incremental knowledge is gained.

For example, we are running Jasmine by Saleswhale, an automated sales agent that often follows up with visitors to our website, helps schedule product demonstrations and shares content. She’s a key part of our sales team, doesn’t require a desk and does amazingly well covering all time zones. While Jasmine doesn’t always get it right, through the setup and management of this technology we were able to collect and view data that refined our customer lifecycle, together with optimising our messaging and content served to each user segment. She’s also improving every month and has the data to back up her performance.

4. Automation to drive increased transparency

One of the most dominant issues this year has been transparency. Marketers are rightly demanding increased accountability and evidence of return on campaign investment more than ever before. Automation, with machines sharing data, and making decisions, helps drive transparency and objective insights. Telling a preferential story is much harder to achieve with an automated system of data management than it is when humans are involved. As more marketers move to automated data analytics this will have a significant impact on investment decisions and overall marketing strategy.

5. Enterprise needs to be startup friendly

Many of the advances in AI and intelligent software are being driven by startups and for enterprises this poses an interesting question. Are they prepared to be startup friendly? Being open to work with startups is more than just doing a hackathon or starting an innovation centre, it requires a coordinated effort across business units, legal and procurement to create fast lanes for startups to engage with enterprises in limited capacities, before they have to go through the full rigor: This reduces project risks and helps projects move faster. It’s also less of a burden on the startups with limited resources so they can spend more time doing what they do best. .

We’re seeing this with some enterprises that now have short and friendly contracts for SaaS software, in place of the rigid and one-sided Master Services Agreements that we’re common place only a few years ago. This makes total sense and enables these organisations to quickly onboard cloud software, and gain efficiencies in legal and procurement as well as the business teams.

Another way enterprises are becoming startup friendly is through Innovation centres. it’s great to see these traditional organisations embracing open spaces and design thinking in sourcing new solutions to drive their business forward, however they still have fundamental problems to work through. In quite a lot of experiences with these centres, success is measured on the number of meetings held, number of startups they meet, or the number of introductions they make, but crucially, and frustratingly for business who participate in this very tempting form of business development, it’s difficult to get further than that because the innovation centers seldom hold budget and the traditional business teams are not working at the same pace.

We get invited to ‘pitch’ to the innovation teams at companies from telcos, finance and FMCG. In the vast majority of cases there’s a lot of introductions and excitement, but little decision making ability or budget to back it. Ultimately its unproductive for all concerned. If enterprise are truly investing in innovation they should be also backing their sourcing teams with enough investment to let them do the job, fund POCs directly, and not rely on core business teams that worry more about the day to day to fund activities. Only then will real innovation begin. A business getting this right is Singapore’s DBS Bank. Recognising the increasing headwines of technology disruption and the threat of being disintermediated, it started a digital transformation process, with data at its heart in 2013. But rather than platitudes, DBS has embarked on a company wide process of data and digital transformation that is being reflected across the culture of the organisation. As technology continues to advance at speed, many organisations will need to take a leaf out of DBS’ playbook if they want to maintain and grow their market share.

Also read: e27 AMA with David Sanderson, the Founder and CEO of Nugit

As we close out 2018, we have a lot to look forward too in terms of how technology can make our working lives better. We are at a critical tipping point where truly intelligent technology has evolved to augment the knowledge workers’ abilities not just to drive productivity, or make things faster, better and cheaper, but scalable and more impactful. While it’s natural to fear the changes happening in the business world, I hope you can embrace automation and a world where man plus machine work together in new and exciting ways. Knowledge workers still have so many advantages over these systems, and adding automation to your skill set is surely going to position you well for career growth and success.

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David Sanderson is founder and CEO of data storytelling platform Nugit.

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Photo by Phi Hùng Nguyễn on Unsplash

 

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UMG Idealab is a corporate venture capital of UMG Myanmar, a manufacturer and distributor of agricultural heavy equipment

UMG Idealab aims to invest in up to 20 early stage startups in Indonesia next year.

In an email interview with e27, UMG Idealab Managing Partner Achmad Syaefi revealed that the corporate venture capital (CVC) firm is looking for startups in the internet-of-things (IoT), big data, voice recognition, and artificial intelligent verticals.

“The startups got to be innovative and [their work] got to have a social impact. We are also in favour of startups that help small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) digitised their work process, such as Aruna and Crowde,” he explains.

Aruna and Crowde are two of the 11 Indonesian startups that the firm has already invested in from their fund; Aruna raised a seed funding round in April 2017 while Crowde raised their funding round as recently as last October.

Though they declined to reveal the exact size of their fund, UMG Idealab plans to invest between US$50,000 and US$1 million in each startup.

According to Syaefi, there are several benefits that the firm can provide to the startups who are working with them.

“Coaching, networking with shareholders such as VCs, startups, and incubators, as well as expansion to Asian countries,” he says.

Also Read: Pay-as-you-go energy startup SolarHome raises US$10M in debt financing to accelerate Myanmar expansion

From Myanmar to Indonesia

UMG Idealab’s story began in Myanmar as one of the subsidiaries of UMG Myanmar, a producer and distributor of agricultural heavy equipment. Currently run by a team of 5,000 employees, the company is one of the biggest companies operating in the country.

Seeing the impressive growth of Southeast Asian tech industry, UMG Myanmar Founder Kiwi Aliwarga then initiated the founding of UMG Idealab.

UMG Idealab’s business lines are being divided into two parts: An incubator in Myanmar that helps startups begin their businesses, and a CVC in Indonesia that helps startups with seed funding investments.

In his email, Syaefi dubs UMG Idealab as a sector-agnostic CVC, though startups in the agritech sector do have a special value for them.

In addition to Indonesia and Myanmar, the firm is also investing in startups in Thailand.

In Indonesia, apart from Aruna and Crowde, UMG Idealab has also invested in agritech startup MSMB, voice recognition platform Bahasakita, chatbot platform Botika, online book store Bukku, healthcare marketplace Prosehat, human capital management platform Netis, food products e-commerce platform Total Agri Mart, on-demand homecare service Perawatku, and air taxi service Frogs, which is currently under development.

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Image Credit: UMG Idealab

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Welcome to the e27 Tea Talk, where we talk about everything startup ecosystem. And this time, OURSELVES!

At our first-ever e27 Academy program in November 2018, we gathered over 150 founders of Southeast Asia startups from 16 countries to share their experience, network and learn from each other and from other successful figures in the ecosystem. It warms our hearts to receive positive feedback from our beloved founders who also shared how e27 has always been able to create a platform for startups to engage the audience through large-scale events and effective content marketing.

With that being said, events or content marketing should not be overlooked as a means to explore more business opportunities or to engage a wider audience. Actively showcasing your brand will not only boost your exposure to potential clients but also expand your network, giving you more access to investors, partners, and communities.

Wondering why reaching out through events and content marketing is important? Here are our key takeaways.

Events:

1. Market Research: Our knowledge is limited. With new information every day, each of us is evolving; and so is the market. Hence, it is crucial to go out there and speak with other entrepreneurs, listen to advice from investors, and share your experience with the community. By doing so, you are conducting an important, yet sometimes underrated, market research that is vital to the blooming of new ideas and the survival of existing businesses.
2. Networking: Put your brand out there. Actively take part in events to showcase your idea and make friends with like-minded people who might present you with opportunities that might be hard to look for anywhere else. Remember, the connections made during an event might last throughout your entrepreneurial journey, so don’t hesitate to expand your network.
3. Stop, relax and sharpen your axes: Everybody is familiar with the story of the two woodcutters. The lesson learned can also be applied to your startup journey. Stop and listen to feedback, have an open mind and sharpen your knife. This way, you can be sure that whatever you are doing is constantly changing, in a positive and holistic way.

Also read: 5 ways to improve time management within your team

Content Marketing:

1. Save cost and time: Engaging the audience through content marketing is precise in terms of target audience and is also cost-and-time-saving. With everything available at your fingertips, content marketing ensures your message reaches the specific audience in time and with good conversion.
2. A click generates revenue: A click is all it takes to convert a reader to a client with the right audience and content. Simple, fast and fuss-free.
3. Brand appearance: Selling by not selling is a phrase that has been beaten to death in the business world. Portray your brand with the right message and soon, you will find yourself with a higher conversion rate.

Events and content marketing are not foreign concepts, but these engagement options stay relevant even with the ever-changing environment. If you have just started your journey and unsure of how and where to go from there, we’d like you to know that help is out there at e27!

Yes, at e27, we have a strong media platform which you can employ to better reach out to your audience. ECHELON Asia Summit, TOP100, and e27 Academy are examples of events where you can showcase your brand and broaden your network. Check out how awesome this year has been in the ecosystem, to ECHELON and beyond!

Scratching your head over how to go about engaging through events and content marketing? Speak to us at engage@e27.co and our best consultants will be there to assist you!

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e27 Tea Talk is the column managed by the e27 Business Development Team. We hope to see you join in on stimulating discussions and constructive feedback as we navigate through the startup journey together. 🙂

This article is jointly written by Hung Nguyen and Farah Rashidi.

 

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Other breaking development in the region is the massive protest of Korean taxi drivers against a carpooling service that they say would destroy their jobs

Ofo has nearly 12M users waiting for deposit refunds [South China Morning Post]

Early users of Ofo were asked to pay a 99 yuan deposit, which was later raised to 199 yuan, before they could rent a bike through the service. Users could request a deposit refund anytime via the Ofo app but there was a waiting period of 15 working days for the refund to be received, according to deposit refund instructions.

However, earlier this week hundreds of angry users were seen lining up outside the company’s Beijing headquarters to ask for immediate deposit returns. Some said they queued in the chilly winter because they failed to receive refunds online even after the allotted waiting period and they had read news on Chinese media outlets that riders who personally went to Ofo’s office on Sunday were able to get refunds right away.

LetsTransport raises US$14.3M  [press release]

Bengaluru-based logistics marketplace for intracity deliveries, LetsTransport, has raised a total of INR 100 crore (US$14.3 million) from Bertelsmann India Investments, Fosun International and other investors.

Currently operational in seven cities, the latest infusion of growth capital will be used for strengthening technology, adding new industry verticals to lock in marquee clients and for scaling up the company’s operations.

LetsTransport is a technology-enabled managed marketplace, which operates on an asset-light model wherein it partners to bring in operational efficiency for truck owners to cater to the within city logistics requirements. It claims its multimodal network of trucks clubbed with proprietary technology increases utilisation resulting in higher earnings for the trucks and a 30 per cent reduction in distribution cost for the client.

Its clients include Coca-Cola, Amazon, Metro Cash & Carry, Big Bazaar etc.

Qoo10 promises no more transaction and service fees on new QuuBe platform [ChannelNewsAsia]

Build it, and they will come. Or so the saying goes.

This appears to be the strategy e-commerce site Qoo10 is adopting as it looks to shake things up in the online shopping space.

The Singapore-headquartered online business is planning to officially launch its blockchain-based e-commerce site, QuuBe, in the new year. When it does, it said it will introduce a new way of approaching e-commerce as a business, removing the need for service or transaction fees usually imposed on online sellers.

Angry South Korean taxi drivers rally against carpooling service [Reuters]

Tens of thousands of South Korean taxi drivers walked off the job and held a rally on Thursday to protest against a carpooling service that they say would destroy their jobs and threaten their livelihoods.

The demonstration came days after the suicide of a taxi driver who set himself on a fire to protest against plans to introduce car-pooling service Kakao Mobility, a unit of mobile messenger operator Kakao Corp.

“If the service is implemented, my income will shrink by half. I’ll fall into poverty,” said driver Yoon Woo-seok, 62, at the rally in front of the National Assembly in the capital, Seoul.

NZ startup LearnCoach raises US$1.5M [DealStreetAsia]

New Zealand-based online education platform LearnCoach has closed a US$1.5 million seed round led by Eden Ventures. Other investors include Danny Chan, co-founder of ACG; and Andrew Preston, Founder of Publons.

Founded in 2012, LearnCoach creates video tutorials to teach subjects for students who can’t be in a physical classroom, or for those who want to extend beyond their classroom learning. About 150,000 students in New Zealand view the lessons more than a million times every year.

According to LearnCoach, the proceeds will be used to scale its education platform to reach more students and produce more tutorials.

 

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Swiggy’s latest fundraising round is the single largest in India’s food technology sector to date

Swiggy, India’s leading food delivery platform, announced today that it has executed definitive agreements for a US$1 billion Series H round of funding, led by existing investor Naspers, a global internet and entertainment group.

The round also includes participation from several existing investors, including DST Global, Meituan Dianping and Coatue Management, along with new investors Tencent, Hillhouse Capital and Wellington Management Company.

Also Read: Singapore Foodie channel’s Malaysian parent raises funding for expansion

Swiggy’s latest fundraising round is the single largest in India’s food technology sector to date. With this, its total funding raised so far has touched US$1.26 billion.

The Bangalore-based startup said in a statement that it will use the funds to bring more quality food brands closer to consumers and address gaps in supply through delivery-only kitchens under the ‘Access’ initiative for restaurant partners.

Additionally, it will hire top-notch talent, especially for Machine Learning and engineering roles across mid and senior levels. The company will further strengthen its technology backbone and focus on building a next-generation AI-driven platform for hyperlocal discovery and on-demand delivery.

“Swiggy has been at the forefront of elevating the potential of Indian food delivery with its industry-changing innovations and focus on delivering the best consumer experience to millions of Indians,” said Sriharsha Majety, CEO, Swiggy. “As we add more firepower to our vision of elevating quality of life for urban consumers by offering unparalleled convenience, we’re pleased that visionary global investors share our purpose and have made such a significant investment in our future.”

“We first partnered with Swiggy in April 2017 because we recognised the Swiggy team had built a sustainable, long-term business, that stood out amongst others in India. Now, nearly two years later, we have even more confidence Swiggy has the winning formula and will continue to build a leading business in the country” said Larry Illg, CEO, Food and Ventures, Naspers.

“Swiggy has 10x the number of orders per month since our first investment, has expanded throughout India to tier 1, 2 and 3 cities, and most importantly, is the most loved food delivery brand in India, providing the best service to consumers nationwide,” he added.

Founded in 2014, Swiggy has over 50,000 restaurant partners spread across 50-plus cities. Since the last funding round six months ago, Swiggy has expanded to 42 additional cities and doubled in gross merchandise value as it strengthened its leading market share along with industry-best repeat rates and net promoter score.

In May 2017, Swiggy raised US$80 million led by Naspers, with participation from existing investors Accel India, SAIF Partners India, Bessemer Venture Partners, Harmony Partners and Norwest Venture Partners.

 

 

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