Luxury lifestyle brand Oxwhite has raised RM5.02 million (US$1.2 million) via pitchIN to become the largest ever equity crowdfunding campaign in Malaysia.

The company raised the funds from 485 investors and also attracted the largest individual crowdfunding investment of RM1.09 million (US$260,000). Well-known digital marketer and entrepreneur Vince Tan also contributed.

With this, Oxwhite smashed the record of Commerce.Asia’s MR5 million raised via the same ECF platform in 2017.

CK Changr, CEO of Oxwhite, said: “The 485 investors who have come on board will help us push out our brand further into the market. We will be using the money raised to launch new products and I am certain that our new ECF investors will serve as our brand evangelists.”

Also Read: How top e-commerce platforms are fuelling Philippines’ online economy

As per a press release, the campaign that ran for just two weeks garnered over RM11 million in investment interest. It subsequently went live for seven days, during which it achieved its RM5 million funding target from RM3 million in ECF investments and RM2 million in private placements.

CK Changr, CEO of Oxwhite, said: “In just over a year, Oxwhite grew to nearly RM5 million in sales. We are growing very fast and capital was needed to fuel our expansion plans. Our first choice was equity crowdfunding with pitchIN because we wanted to give our loyal customers the chance to be part of our growth story.”

“Together with my fellow Co-founders ZiKang Tai and Jave Ho, we take this opportunity to thank the investors for the overwhelming support. We will build the next chapter of the Oxwhite story with them. Oxwhite will be launching new product lines that will strengthen our position in the industry,” he added.

Sam Shafie, CEO of pitchIN said that Oxwhite has set new standards in the running of successful ECF campaigns. “The Oxwhite campaign was well planned and skillfully executed. The response from interested investors was overwhelming. Oxwhite surpassed the previous most backed campaign by more than 120 investors; setting a very high bar for the next big ECF deal. Coming at the end of the year, the Oxwhite deal fittingly closes what has been a very explosive growth year for pitchIN. We have surpassed the targets we set ourselves for 2019 and credit goes to great companies such as Oxwhite.”

Also Read: This startup took only 38 minutes to achieve its US$720K crowdfunding target

The Oxwhite campaign is the 18th successful deal on pitchIN in 2019. Five deals are currently live on pitchIN, Malaysia’s leading equity crowdfunding platform.

In October last year, online marketplace for P2P financing Fundaztic raised RM3 million (approximately US$720,000) within 38 minutes of the launch of the crowdfunding campaign on pitchIN.

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Terra, blockchain payment network that offers a price-stable cryptocurrency, has marked its expansion to Singapore with the appointment of Rahul Abrol –Uber’s former APAC Head of Strategy– as Head of International and Strategy.

The new venture in Singapore will be its Southeast Asia hub; it will also hire locals to drive localisation. It plans to have a strong root in the country before branching out to countries such as Taiwan and Thailand in 2020.

Terra said that its expansion is its way to grow its on-the-ground network through strategic partnerships with local businesses. This builds on Terra’s existing e-commerce alliance, which includes 25 partners across Asia, such as with Carousell, Qoo10, and Rakuten-owned EBATES.

Terra will also launch its stablecoin-powered mobile payments app in Singapore in early 2020. Terra uses stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency which is price-stable and pegged to real-world assets such as the Singapore dollar, that can fund ongoing discounts without burning investor dollars like the usual investment models in most e-commerces.

Also Read: Blockchain startup Terra gets funding from HashKey Capital, to expand alliance in Asia

The global blockchain race

It is estimated that by 2027, 10 per cent of global GDP could be stored on blockchain technology, according to the World Economic Forum.

Responding to that, Abrol said in a press statement, “There is a global race among nations to embrace blockchain payments and Singapore has all the right elements to lead the charge. It is not only welcoming of the technology but created clear regulatory frameworks so emerging companies can thrive.”

He added, “My focus in 2020 will be to replicate our success in Korea internationally and Singapore is the perfect springboard to help us realise this. Beyond attracting key local talent, we also plan to acquire the applicable license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore under the Payments Service Act. We have already launched in Mongolia and aim to have operations launched in five or more countries within the calendar year for 2020.”

Recent moves from Terra

Terra co-founder Do Kwon explained to Bloomberg that its partnership with South Korean mobile payment app CHAI has resulted in transaction volumes of US$54 million within four months of its launch.

CHAI enables consumers to pay for items online by adding their bank account. It is available on TMON, one of the largest e-commerce platforms in the country, to all of Terra’s e-commerce partners.

Also Read: How Terra aims to get people to use its price-stable cryptocurrency

According to a separate statement by Terra, CHAI’s approach is similar to the user experience of PayPal. It already partnered up with 15 major local banks to facilitate convenient fiat on- and off-ramp.

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Image Credit: Terra

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It is common knowledge that 90 per cent of startups fail due to a range of reasons: misreading market demand, weak founding team, poor communication, wrong product, wrong time; and or running out of funding or personal money are a few of these.

What do the 10 per cent of startups that succeed have in common, though?

Success factors of startups are timing, team/execution, idea, strength of business model, and funding, respectively. One of the common characteristics of startups that succeed is joining accelerator programs.

Last week, after spending over two months at AppWorks, I experienced Demo Day as batch #19 graduated. I observed 18 startup founders pitch their ideas in front of 1000 people from around Taiwan and SEA, from corporate leaders to investors, and the media industry.

This Demo Day gave me a chance to observe the change in founders and their teams from the early days of the accelerator program.

Here are my key takeaways

• Be passionate about what you do and show that you care, as founders are the most important factor in whether a startup grows or stops growing. Business models, markets, customers change; only founder qualities are the constant. Founders that can execute tend to be: Motivated, passionate, decisive and exhibit humility.
• Be proactive. Help is always there, you just have to reach out for it. People are willing to give feedback and share their own experiences. Alumni network connection, mentorship from industry experts, coworking space, recruitment, and many more resources provided for free can take your startup to the next level.
• Get a mentor as early as possible. They don’t require any monetary benefits and they are willing to guide you through your entrepreneurship journey. One-on-one mentorship provided by partners helps you focus on things that matter, find the right connections and urge you to think bigger and motivate you to do more. I saw teams improve dramatically as a result of the right mindset.
• Build long-lasting relationships. Being a founder is a challenging path with lots of ups and downs. The environment of like-minded startup founders helps you overcome obstacles of entrepreneurship. Not only local founders but also founders from other countries felt home in Taiwan because of building meaningful connections with people in this ecosystem.
• Work and have fun in an environment where people are valued. Whether you are a successful startup founder or a first-time entrepreneur, local or a foreigner, you are treated with the utmost respect and great hospitality when you work in an accelerator. Every Friday night founders come together as one big family over dinner and fun activities. This results in building strong bonds, connecting with new people, and feeling respected. People don’t naturally do this if there is no focus on values. It’s instrumental to socialize in this way where your core values are being addressed.

Based on what I have personally witnessed, I agree that startups have higher chances of succeeding after joining accelerators.

Also read: Why dyslexia makes me a better entrepreneur

The teams I met with every day learned from other entrepreneurs, were guided by experienced mentors, and leveraged resources provided to grow their businesses. They were exposed to media, potential partners and investors on Demo Day, but they were also nurtured with access to all of these tools even before the big moment. This constant exposure and the constant ability to calibrate and focus their aims is instrumental to their success, in my opinion.

Most importantly, they learned about the entrepreneurial mindset and made long-lasting friendships with like-minded people. Just like the minerals that take stressful compression of billions of pounds of pressure and develop it into a valuable resource, these founders emerged from their accelerator period ready to shine like diamonds, too.

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On an estimation, there are 582million entrepreneurs in the world. This count keeps increasing every day with the rapid growth of technology, trends, and inventions. While science is taking its steps towards 5G, Internet of Things, BlockChain, Artificial Intelligence, and Deep Learning, people are moving forward in entrepreneurship.

In the year 2016, around 25 million Americans were found to be business owners or startup entrepreneurs. Currently, 62 per cent of US billionaires are the best example of the word ‘entrepreneurship.’

The web has fascinating statistics and stories on the success of these doers. About 22.5 per cent of these failed during their startups. With such facts, newcomers earn motivation to climb the stairs of success.

Kickstart entrepreneurship

The main goal of entrepreneurship is being successful and never stopping at anything. It does not emerge from starting a venture and making it work in the very first attempt. You cannot get over every hurdle from the start. In the world of today, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, and J.K. Rowling are the inspirational examples of entrepreneurs.

Fame comes with struggle, and starting a new business can be extremely difficult without the right plan. None of these could be iconic stars without following proper strategies.

The rise of this word comes up with the idea of starting a personal venture that one can own. While you begin to dream passionately about something, you often try to make it possible. Serious people always estimate their dreams, and entrepreneurs make sure to afford them as well.

For this reason, you often find characteristics that build up men and women entrepreneurs. Of these categories, some are essential.

Characteristics of entrepreneurs

You may come across enormous characteristics of startup men and women entrepreneurs. Being passionate and flexible is essential for anything that you do. However, an overview of these can help you know if you can grow quickly or not.

• It is crucial to be self-motivating, for no one comes up to push an entrepreneur rather than you. You can only be successful if you know how to get up after every failure.
• An important point involves the estimation of one’s own self. You need to make sure of your abilities and provisions. Unless you are assured of what you are offering, you may not be able to stand at the right point in the market.
• Being risky for an entrepreneur is logically necessary because some strategies you apply for the first time. At the start of the business, you may take little steps but later on, you sometimes make a jump for better results.
• An entrepreneur is dependent on networks and connections a lot. You cannot move across the market without increasing your circle. Individuals connected together in a startup need to communicate for better working.
• Having enough knowledge about the market carries weight. It is because one needs to know the right plans for investing money. You may only be successful after an investment if you know where to invest.

How to become a successful entrepreneur

Mixing up between characteristics and strategies is not considerable. Every startup entrepreneur does not succeed for the first time due to different reasons. The rate of new entrepreneurs in the US from 2000-2017 is varying.

This rate is increasing every day with a maximum number of failed startups. You can find every individual working hard but tactics are crucial for the growth of a business.

Making sure of separating the personal and business account is essential for professional deals. If you work on a startup for shopping deals in UK, and your shopping revenue gets deducted from your official account, cost estimations can go confusing. Moreover, you may come across a situation that can be cost-inconvenient.

Manage your money

Rather than leaving everything on your bookkeeper, try to keep a record of every purchase. Men and women entrepreneurs need to make sure if their accountants are getting proper information about the business. Once you miss the records of some transactions, it is messy to catch up with the current dealings.

Financial clearance and understanding is the most important part of a business. Entrepreneurship demands responsibility, and so does a startup venture. Learn to analyse the finances of your business for solving them if a situation occurs. Keep a daily, weekly, and monthly check for better results.

Opting for cheap is opting for expensive

Using discounts and vouchers for shopping is acceptable; however, utilising these to invest less in your own business is wrong. Opting cheap items can be costly when an entrepreneur has to proffer them to a customer who trusts. It is necessary to estimate your budget and then select the business you wish to start.

Value in the market adds to success in the industry. Entrepreneurs need to estimate their value proposition. Once you realize how your business is going to add value to the customers, only then will you be able to market your provisions. Always vend something impossible to find elsewhere.

Customer service

Every business individual must keep customers as the utmost priority. Henceforth, work on your customer service. Frequenters often return back if they are treated pleasantly during their very first visit. The team of a startup entrepreneur must fulfill every desire that a customer comes up with.

According to Statista, about 70 per cent of startup companies fail due to different cited reasons. 42 per cent of these were not needed in the market, while 17 per cent lacked a business model. It results due to the scarcity of planning and wrong decision making. Being an entrepreneur is not difficult at all. But sometimes, it comes up as easy as falling off a log.

The most successful entrepreneurs started from scratch only to come up with Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, and much more. Therefore, there is a lot entrepreneurship can give you only if you opt for the right way.

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Ruangguru, Zenius and IniBudi are dealing with the country’s education challenges head-on and taking steps for a better future

Access to quality content is one of the biggest challenges in the Indonesian education sector. Whilst students from upper-middle-class families in Jakarta can afford private schools with excellent facilities and well-qualified teachers, their peers who go to underfunded public schools have to be content with outdated facilities and underpaid teachers.

Meanwhile, university entrances are getting more competitive each year. Going to cram school –known as bimbingan belajar or bimbel – has become the obvious next step. Studying in bimbels operated by a big franchise cost about IDR 10 million to IDR 30 million (US$708 to US$2,125) per year, a sum not afforded by the middle- and lower-middle classes.

So, how have startups answered this clarion call?

Zenius.net is one of the most notable names in providing study material via desktop and mobile devices. Bringing the bimbel experience online, Zenius has free and paid membership for students who wish to study without having to sit in a classroom. It offers free material in the form of PDF files containing a compilation of problem sets, whilst the paid materials are videos explaining basic concepts.

When it comes to teaching methods, Zenius stresses the importance of understanding, with an aim to provide a ‘great learning experience’ for students.

“Every child is born with the intrinsic motivation to learn,” says Wisnu OPS, CEO of Zenius.

“But this motivation is somehow lost in our current education system … Taught by teachers with no better understanding of the concept than them. We want to bring it back by encouraging fun learning, and to make sure that they really understand the concept, not just memorise things,” he adds.

Similarly, IniBudi.org (“This is Budi”) also provides online content that students can access for free. Named after a popular character that seems to appear in every textbook, the website has its own team that produces videos explaining concepts as taught in schools, but in a fun and engaging way.

Apart from content based on the national curriculum, IniBudi also creates videos of professionals talking about their jobs. “If you visit schools across the country, and you ask students what they want to be when they grow up … The answers are most likely ‘a policeman’ and ‘a doctor’. Not that it is bad. But we want to show them that there are many more options out there,” says Wilita Putrinda, Managing Director of IniBudi.

Putrinda also explains how the startup complements its digital activities with offline engagement by talking to teachers and parents about educational issues, and most importantly, how to use the products.

“In the future, we would also like to branch out to mobile apps and paid content,” Putrinda adds.

Meanwhile, Ruangguru.com (‘Teacher’s room’) takes on a different angle in helping students achieve desired results. Started in 2014 as an online marketplace for private tutors in various school subjects, the company now brands itself as an end-to-end solution provider for educational needs.

“We are about to launch an online test platform for students undertaking final examination and public university entrance tests. It has always been a challenge to find a comprehensive collection of past exam question lists [for students to practice with]. We are planning to distribute it for free first, in order to make it accessible to everyone,” says Ikhsan Rahardian, Business Associate of Ruangguru.

Also Read: “If you can make it in Indonesia, you can make it anywhere in Southeast Asia”

It takes a village

The 2010 census revealed that 50.21 per cent of Indonesians live in rural areas. As remnants of the centralistic New Order regime, there is a wide disparity of development between Jakarta as the centre of all economic activities and many other places across the archipelago.

To be able to reach out to students in rural areas is certainly one of the challenges startups have. IniBudi answered it by creating ‘Dukung Belajar’, a programme where it distributed flash disks containing study material to students in the Western Southeast Maluku regency.

The flash disks were gathered through crowdsourcing, whilst the distribution was conducted in partnership with Indonesia Mengajar, a non-profit movement that recruits, trains and assigns volunteers to work as school teachers in rural Indonesia.

“We have the content, in (the) form of videos … These videos cannot be played without (the) Internet and there is very limited Internet in the area. The government had this programme where they installed WiFi in schools, but the router only works for 30 minutes a day. Meanwhile, Indonesia Mengajar knows these areas well, and they know how to reach these students. It was a very great form of partnership,” Putrinda explains.

By utilising the Internet, Zenius too is able to reach out to students in rural areas. The CEO could not contain his excitement as he told this author about a photo tagged by one user on Twitter. It was of a young girl working on a laptop in what seemed to be a paddy field.

“Our survey showed that we are able to reach about 20-30 rural areas. Mobility definitely helps people to get Internet access, even with our current phone penetration number,” he says.

But how about those with no Internet access?

Putrinda painfully recalled the time when the team visited a village in Ujung Kulon, Banten province. After talking to a group of students about IniBudi, one student raised her hand only to tell her, “But the Internet cafe is too far away, ma’am!”

Lack of Internet access is not only a problem for those living in rural areas. In an interview with BBC Indonesia, Teguh Hartanto, Head of Poverty and Development Study, Institute for Economic and Society Study, Faculty of Economics, University of Indonesia, stated that migration has caused a shifting of lower income citizens from the rural to urban areas. This indicates that even in big cities such as Jakarta, there would be students who would be too poor to own even a feature phone.

Rahardian admitted that in answering this particular challenge, Ruangguru has to begin by taking small steps. By partnering with a government-run child sponsorship programme, the company gives a percentage of its revenue to help support education for needy students.

“We keep on thinking of new ways to contribute,” he promises.

This leads to a concern that startups can only contribute as far as the nation’s infrastructure can allow them. “In order to make the programme succeed, it has to be supported from the offline side. We cannot rely on the online side alone,” says Putrinda, stressing the importance of a 360 degree approach.

Also Read: Indonesia wants to accelerate its gaming industry

Does this mean that there is no happy ending for the story?

Apparently not.

In May 2015, Indonesia’s Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Rudiantara, announced that the government will continue the Universal Service Obligation (USO) programme after a brief hiatus. The programme, which consists of providing phone and Internet services to rural areas, is a means to narrow down development disparity between each region in the country.

“By far there are at least 50 regencies that have not been reached by optical fibre network. Not only in the Eastern part of Indonesia, but also across the nation,” explains Rudiantara. “Using the budget for USO, we encourage operators to contribute in this programme,” he adds.

Good news also comes from the other side. “I have recently been informed by Google Indonesia that there is a 200 per cent increase in views for educational videos on YouTube. There is indeed a strong interest from the public to see more of this (initiative),” concludes Putrinda.

There is definitely hope for the future.

Image Credit: Flickr

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Sometimes, the worst part about being ill is not the illness itself.

It is being discharged from a hospital with a medical bill filled with unexpected charges here and there. Even with the existence of insurance, these surprises might provide an extra burden for patients, making their recovery process harder.

To solve this problem, Singapore-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup UCARE develops a platform that they named the AI-Powered Pre-Admission Cost of Hospitalisation Estimation (APACHEÔ) system.

Using AI and machine learning algorithms, APACHEÔ analyses various parameters specific to an individual patient to predict the patient’s bill size –from pre-admission until his eventual recovery.

The platform accounts for dynamically changing factors during the hospitalisation journey, such as disease aggravation, unexpected complications, or unplanned surgeries to generate personalised healthcare bills. That way, patients will be able to receive a more accurate prediction of how their bills will look like by the end of the treatment process, enabling them to make better preparation for their recovery.

Also Read: uCare raises Series A funding to bring its AI-powered predictive solutions into healthcare

UCARE says that its system has an 82 per cent accuracy rate on average.

Stealth mode

Founded in 2016, UCARE went through a period of being in stealth mode for two years, before resurfacing with an undisclosed Series A funding round in May 2018.

The funding round included big names such as global venture capital firm Walden International, local insurance company Great Eastern, philanthropist and investor Peter Lim as well as law firm WongPartnership’s startup initiative WPGrowth Ventures.

Prior to founding the startup, CTO and Founder Neal Liu had worked at various leading tech companies such as eBay, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. Leaving Google in 2016 to start UCARE, Liu assembled a team of experienced data scientists and machine learning experts to build its proprietary real-time AI engine.

Liu holds an MBA from Wharton, University of Pennsylvania, and a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.

Meanwhile, UCARE CEO Christina Teo has 20 years of experience in the private equity field.

Also Read: Clik secures US$2M seed funding, soon to launch in Cambodia

Prior to serving as the CEO of uCare in 2016, she was the Director of Mint Media, Managing Director at L Capital Asia (LVMH), and held other senior investment positions at Affinity Equity Partners, Deutsche Bank’s Strategic Investments Group.

Teo holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BBA (Honours) from NUS Business School.

Hand-in-hand with partners

Earlier this month, UCARE announced a partnership with the private healthcare provider Parkway Pantai. Under the partnership, UCARE’s APACHEÔ system will enable four hospitals operated by the group to offer fixed prices for certain medical procedures.

Under Parkway Pantai’s Price Guarantee Programmes (PGP), patients will be guaranteed prices for six common medical procedures: Removal of piles, breast lumps, ovarian cysts, gallbladder, thyroid and tonsils. The scheme applies even when complications arise and require additional treatment for up to seven inpatient days.

“Core to our mission is the ability to help healthcare providers leverage AI to provide better patient experiences at every stage of the hospital journey,” says Liu in a press statement.

“Looking ahead, we will continue to roll out more AI systems and services to benefit patients globally,” he stresses.

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Image Credit: UCARE

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Ruangguru reportedly raises a US$100 million round led by General Atlantic [DealStreetAsia]

Indonesia-based edtech startup Ruangguru has reportedly raised a US$100 million funding in a round led by General Atlantic. The newest investment put the company’s valuation at US$500 million, DealStreetAsia reported.

Speaking to DailySocial, Co-Founder and CEO Ruangguru Belva Devara declined to comment further.

Ruangguru’s previous funding was a Series B funding in 2018, closed in 2019, led by UOB Venture. SoftBank was rumoured to be a potential backer but backing out.

In July 2019, the company marked its 5th year with its Vietnam’s expansion “Kien Guru”.

WeWork raises US$1.75 billion from Goldman Sachs [Tech In Asia]

US-based co-working space startup WeWork announced on Tuesday that it has received US$1.75 billion letters of credit from Goldman Sachs.

“We are pleased that WeWork and SoftBank Group Corp. have entered into a commitment letter with Goldman Sachs for a new US$1.75 billion senior secured letter of credit facility,” said WeWork. The company said that the facility is still being syndicated to be available in January.

Also Read: Indonesia healthtech Halodoc raises US$65M funding from UOB Venture

The new line of credit is part of SoftBank’s US$5 billion pledged debt financing for WeWork, which was announced in October after the US company withdrew its plans to go public.

The US$9.5 billion bailouts from SoftBank includes up to a US$3 billion tender offer and a US$1.5 billion payment from SoftBank due next year, in addition to the US$5 million debt financing.

WeWork will not be asked to post cash collateral for the newest letter of credit, which is expected to free up about US$800 million in restricted cash.

Goldman Sachs is the owner of 1.4 per cent stake in WeWork, but the company said it lost US$80 million in its stake in the company in the third quarter.

Following its acquisition of British music and pop-culture media NME, BandLab Technologies launches the platform in Australia [Press Release]

Following its acquisition in May, Singapore-based music startup BandLab Technologies launched music journalism brand NME in Australia. The launch closely follows the announcement of the new and extended NME Awards which return in 2020.

NME also announces the introduction of new Australian awards categories to highlight and recognise Australian artists on a global stage.

Established in 1952, NME has been a music and pop culture benchmark. Launched as the New Musical Express, the brand has evolved to become the platform of breaking what’s new and what’s next.

Also Read: Indonesian edutech startup Ruangguru receives grant from MIT SOLVE programme

Meng Ru Kuok, CEO of BandLab Technologies said, “We’re excited to be opening a new platform for Australian artists, both established and emerging, as well as a channel for brands, to engage with an audience of music lovers in Australia and globally. With the launch of our stand-alone brand extension in Australia, our team’s best writers will be shining a spotlight on the artists and stories coming out of one of the world’s most compelling music scenes.”

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Image Credit: Ruangguru

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Access to funding and financial freedom are two of the most critical barriers that businesses fail to hurdle over, especially during their first few years in the market. When it comes time to expand, this hindrance can prove even more obstructive as lack of funding and investment in your business guarantees an untimely downfall. With more startups coming into the picture every day, it is essential to stand out and never limit yourself to a single locality.

Making the move abroad is a huge decision, but there are myriad ways to facilitate this transition and ensure further growth for your venture. After deciding on the foreign country in which you would like to market yourself, one of the first steps will be establishing a remote team of interpreters and business professionals to convey your message and offer your products on the foreign market.

Furthermore, in order to increase investment flow into your business, you must ensure that you are familiar with the rules of the foreign country in question. It would perhaps be wise to hire legal counsel and accounting experts to this effect. If your documents are not in order or foreign investors see that you are not complying with the relevant country’s laws, they will not take the risk of investing.

Lastly, seeking entrepreneur grant programmes (which are often equity-free and may even provide visas) both at home or abroad can give your company the boost it needs to succeed abroad while simultaneously aiding the local market and adding diversity to a previously unfamiliar culture.

Marketing team with interpreters

Hiring interpreters is paramount to any business venture taking their products and/or services to a foreign country where a different language is spoken. However, it should be considered that hiring interpreters specialising in marketing and business language could have a generous impact on your marketing capacity abroad.

Also Read: Top 6 newsmakers of 2019 in the startup world in Southeast Asia

Interpreting services will be critical to enabling clear communication of your company’s goals, message, and the products and services you provide. If this information cannot be provided to the general public in a language they fully understand, they will show no major interest. This also goes for investors and grant-providers abroad, which will likely be a priority for you in the first few years of your startup.

The power of language and marketing should not be underestimated as it will determine whether the customer or foreign investor will have their interest piqued by your overall business campaign.

Familiarise with foreign regulations and legal requirements

To put it plainly, a foreign investor will not provide financial support if they clearly see that your business venture abroad is unorganised or that you are not complying with local laws and regulations regarding business and marketing in the foreign country in question.

For this reason, it is not uncommon for businesses making the move abroad to hire legal counsel in the foreign country they wish to operate to ensure that their company does not cross any legal boundaries. When working between different currencies in an unfamiliar environment outside your native country, you must also consider the importance of accounting and bookkeeping to act as a safeguard in the case of any unforeseen financial dispute.

The importance of hiring legal counsel and accountants abroad is coupled with the overwhelming documentation and regulated requirements demanded by the regional justice systems. For example, every business must comply with employment regulations (including benefits, wages, fair labour laws, etcetera), banking and tax regulations, structural and organisational regulations, as well as norms that tend to be fairly consistent in the relevant region.

Also Read: Startups need to collaborate in order to build decentralised products that make an impact

Documentation is also key to maintaining a high standard of organisation and will help keep track of everything from prices to products to competition and more.

Entrepreneur grant programmes

Finding entrepreneur grant programmes abroad is not nearly as difficult as it may seem at first glance and can actually serve as the lifeline of your company’s success abroad. Such programmes can be found almost worldwide and vary in their levels of funding and support. To give you an idea of the global nature of these programmes, here is a shortlist of current entrepreneur grant programmes offering aid to startups taking their business abroad:

• SEED Brazil
• Colombia Startup
• French Tech Ticket
• Israel-Michigan Autonomous Technologies Collaboration Program
• Start-up Chile
• Start-up Mexico
• Start-up Peru
• Sirius Programme (UK)
• Arch Grants (US)

This is just to name a few, but there are thousands of these programnes present throughout major countries in the world, each catering to different business types, investment requirements, support systems, etcetera. This is an often-favourable option because these schemes, which are typically government-funded, tend to be equity-free and can even help guide you through the process of obtaining a visa in order to commence operations abroad.

Not only are you boosting the local economy by means of introducing your startup to the new region, but you are receiving free funding to do so! This allows you to live and work in a new, unique culture without the stress of having to worry about going under due to a lack of funding.

Also Read: How startups in APAC are tackling the last mile in-destination

As long as you properly market yourself and seek out the right help abroad, your startup will thrive and give the local economy of the foreign country you selected a major boost. Such a move also adds a new cultural element to the region and introduces new levels of diversity. The importance of taking your business abroad cannot be stressed enough and, through the right amount of planning, anybody can do it with success.

By breaking the language and cultural barriers, hiring competent teams everywhere you operate, and seeking beneficial opportunities both at home and abroad—such as the aforementioned entrepreneur grant programmes—you can be sure that you will leave a lasting impact on the new region while creating meaningful impressions and connections along the way.

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China’s economy, especially the consumer internet segment, is slowing down, prompting investors to look for opportunities in Southeast Asia and India, according to Renchuan Chen, Vice President of TH Capital, a boutique investment firm which also makes startup investments occasionally.

“The whole Chinese economy, especially the consumer internet segment, is sort of slowing down. While the mobile penetration rate in the country is relatively high, it has started to drop when compared to the fast growth in emerging markets. We can hardly find many great opportunities in the consumer internet segment in China,” he said. “Not many investors are looking to back consumer internet startups anymore. They are now shifting their attention to industrial internet.”

The logic is quite reasonable, according to Chen. There are fewer opportunities in the consumer segment because of the dividend of the population. Plus, the overall industrial internet segment in China is under-developed. It is just five to 10 per cent, compared with 50 per cent in the US.

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“If you look at the industrial internet segment, it’s much more underdeveloped compared to the consumer internet. We are most developed or one of the most developed consumer internet economies in terms of e-commerce penetration, third-party mobile pay penetration and online population penetration. But we’re one of the least developed industrial internet economies,” he elaborated.

While similar trends are also happening in Southeast Asia and India, their TMT (tech, media and telecom) infrastructure is still in the early stages of development, which offers massive opportunities.

“If you look at Indonesia and Vietnam, these two countries have registered dramatic improvement in the past three to four years. The overall underlying GDP or economic development in these countries are growing fast, but there is still room for improvement. This presents great opportunities to investors,” he remarked.

Talking about the overall PE/VC investments in China, he said in 2018, it was US$200 billion, but this year, it dropped significantly to less than US$100 billion. True that the overall PE/VC investments were relatively lower in emerging markets (Southeast Asia, India, South America, East Europe, the Middle East and Africa) also; in 2018, the total volume was only one-seventh or one-fifth of China. However, because China has dropped to half, those markets are growing, he said.

TH Capital, which expanded to India and Southeast Asia in late 2018, is bullish about these fast-growing markets. In his view, Southeast Asia is a group of developing countries with high-density population and social structure like China. Their TMT is growing fast.

He rejected the notion that there is a lack of supply in terms of good startups for investors to invest in India. According to him, the absolute volume for the entrepreneurs in India is perhaps less, compared with China. But because of the stable economic growth, the supply of good entrepreneurs is booming. It is developing in much faster speed as compared to China and even compared to Southeast Asia, he said.

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“When we came to India for the first time early this year, we talked to a data-driven early-stage investor. They had a database of about 1,000 to 2,000 SaaS entrepreneurs back then,” he noted. “When we came to India after six to seven months again, the total number had risen to 10,000 to 12,000. So it is booming and at a swift pace, supported by the TMT infrastructure. A lot of diversified investors are looking into this market right now. Given China’s stagnant consumer internet segment, there is a lack in China, not India,” according to Chen.

Since its launch in 2012, TH Capital has served 40-plus unicorns in China and helped 100-plus startups to raise more than US$15 billion in the primary market.

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Image Credit: TH Capital

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We tend to say that about the year, that is about to end. But this time, we mean it when we say that 2019 is game-changing for the Southeast Asian startup ecosystem for things will never be the same after this.

There are at least two major reasons why this happened, which led us to decide to publish this article as a series.

Today, we are going to start by talking about money– and burning them.

Watching money goes up in flame

Years ago, when I was a young Padawan, I published an interview with two ride-hailing giants in the region: Grab and gojek. In the article, representatives of the two companies talked about subsidising their marketing and promotional efforts.

This is a move that remains popular among the major tech startups in Indonesia. Walk into a typical mall in Jakarta and you will see all sorts of cashback offers by leading e-payment providers, including OVO and GoPay. In some cases, the cashback can even go as breathtakingly high as more than 50 per cent.

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Indonesia is not the only place where burning cash for customer acquisition is common. Even top-of-mind US-based companies such as Uber and Airbnb have been known for burning cash; they are considered “generously rewarded” in this article by Inc as their market share and revenue also grow with every cent they burned.

But in the middle of the year, something exploded. WeWork and its failure to launch an IPO had led investors to be more critical of overvalued tech startups. Under this scrutiny, there is a growing pressure for startups to justify their large valuation. Perhaps for once in their life, startups are pressured to act like a ‘real’ business.

Closer home, the nail in the coffin hit when Mochtar Riady –the founder of OVO-backer Lippo Group– publicly commented about the company’s money-burning habit.

It was interesting to see how these turn of events led to changes in such a quick time. Or possibly, the startup community has long seen this coming and decided that it was now time to take action.

Profitability, which was once seen as a good-to-have bonus, is now the name of the game.

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Recently, Indonesian e-commerce giant Bukalapak announced that Co-Founder and CEO Achmad Zaky is stepping down from his position. As a replacement, instead of promoting someone from within the company, Bukalapak appointed Rachmat Kaimuddin, who had a strong background in banking and business consultancy. We see this move as part of its effort to promote stronger financial management and most likely, profitability.

Carsome, who just announced a US$50 million Series C, also publicly declared its goal to be “operationally profitable” by the end of next year.

Another move towards profitability had become apparent since the end of 2018, particularly from the side of the investors. Newly launched venture capital (VC) firm Kinesys Group puts emphasis on having a path towards sustainability for its portfolio companies.

VC firms are investing in non-tech industries that have been known to have a more certain path towards sustainability such as F&B or hospitality, adding variety to their portfolio. In addition to growing their businesses, these F&B and hospitality companies are also looking forward to digitising their operations.

But I’m fundraising!

Yes, yes. We get how this can be scary for those who are in the process of fundraising. It is challenging enough to prove to potential investors that there is indeed a demand for your product; let alone having to show them how you can be profitable within a period of time.

So, how will this affect fundraising in 2020?

Our guess is that the scrutiny will be harder for companies that are in the later stage.

Basically, when considering a potential investment, VC firms are looking at different points between early-stage and later-stage startups. While investors tend to focus on the potentials and opportunities with early-stage startups, they would put more consideration on the growth aspect for later-stage startups. Yes, you have a product and people are using it.

But how fast is your growth? Any plans to expand to a new vertical or geographical region? Is there any sign of profitability? How can we work together to move this forward?

If anything, as confirmed by leading investors such as Vertex Holdings in this interview with e27, the early-stage investment will remain a “robust” asset class for next year.

In another interview with e27, the corporate VC arm of Salim Group also confirmed their preference for early-stage startups, which is seen as being more malleable or coachable.

If you are fundraising for a later-stage startup, this prediction is not meant to discourage you. In fact, these changes in the ecosystem are a trigger for startups to build a stronger, self-sustaining business.

In the end, we all want to see the companies that we are building thrive.

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