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E-wallet OVO launches SMEs-targeted financing service DanaTara to widen business access, improve potentials

Left to right: OVO’s President Director, Karaniya Dharmasaputra; Warung Pintar’s CEO and Co-Founder Agung Bezharie Hadinegoro; General Secretary Director of Regional Commerce for Indonesia’s Minister of Commerce, Syailendra; Minister of SMEs Teten Masduki; Deputy of Creative Economy, Entrepreneurship, and SMEs and Indonesia’s Economy Minister Coordinator, Mohammad Rudy Salahuddin; Tokopedia’s CEO and Founder William Tanuwijaya; SAHARA’s CEO, Farah Savira in the opening of Festival Gerakan Nasional (FGWN) in Lapangan Banteng, Jakarta, Saturday, December 14.

OVO, Indonesian digital payment platform, announces that it has launched financing services to address SMEs’ needs called DanaTara. The new offer aims to widen business access for SMEs as well as supporting them in improving business potentials.

OVO President Director Karaniya Dharmasaputra said that OVO DanaTara offers to be a solution for business expansion, balance stream management, and to be additional equity for Indonesian SMEs.

“This solution seeks to help address SMEs’ needs in getting business financing in an easier, simpler process. DanaTara has been made available for SMEs in e-commerce platforms like Tokopedia, Lazada, Shopee, and BukaLapak,” Dharmasaputra said.

OVO is also involved in Festival Gerakan Warung Nasional, a movement by Tokopedia and Warung Pintar, as a strategic partner to educate SMEs about e-payment and digital financial services for SMEs.

Also Read: OVO expands to P2P lending service by acquiring Taralite

The event also welcomed Indonesia’s Minister of SMEs Teten Masduki, alongside OVO President Director Karaniya Dharmasaputra; Tokopedia’s CEO and Founder, William Tanuwijaya; Warung Pintar’s CEO and Co-Founder Agung Bezharie Hadinegoro; and the Chairwoman of Indonesia’s Women Entrepreneur (INKOWAPI), Ir. Sharmila, M.Si.

Rumours have been circulated since earlier this year that Lippo Group would sell its stake in OVO as the company could no longer inject more funds into the fintech firm. Lippo Group was said to be paying around US$50 million to OVO per month.

However, OVO President Director Karaniya Dharmasaputra denied the rumours, saying that OVO was originally founded and developed by Lippo Group, as reported back in November 2019.

Finance Asia in its report in September cited a source that claimed OVO to have reached unicorn status through its latest funding round at US$2.9 billion valuations.

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5 things to stop apologising for if you want work-life balance without feeling guilty

 

The only certainties in life maybe death, taxes, and the presence of difficult people. Whether its co-workers or anyone you find hard to deal with, we all go through it.

Regarding the former, a study among 5,000 office workers titled “The Global Human Capital Report” indicated that 85 per cent of co-workers have to deal with interpersonal conflict of some sort at work.

Interacting with difficult people drains our energy, productivity, and even happiness. But those that are oil to your water don’t have to cause more anxiety then they need to. In Find the Fire, I discussed how to tackle this problem.

Here, I offer the best of that advice to apply immediately in dealing with tough co-workers or any difficult people in your life.

1. Stop wishing they were different

It’s critical to remember when dealing with difficult people that you’re trying to change the interchange, you’re not trying to change them. You have to give people the space to be themselves and start from a place of trying to really understand what makes them different from you.

When we’re interacting with someone, it’s so easy to put labels on them, “He’s not a good listener,” “She’s so spiteful,” “He’s an ego-maniac.” Maybe there are some wisps of truth to what you’re thinking but they may well be rooted in the person’s behaviour relative to you, not their true personae. It’s important to stay focused on the predicament, not the personality.

2. Get started fixing it–and start with you

I’ve coached many a person over my career on a difficult relationship they were having with a co-worker. All too often I’d notice that they were complaining about the co-worker and their acidic relationship, but they weren’t actually taking the initiative to do something about it.

Don’t wait for the other person, take the initiative to attack the issue immediately (it won’t get better through stagnation). And start with you in doing so. Ask yourself what you’re doing that might be setting off the other person. Ask if your ego is coming into play and causing you to escalate what otherwise could be innocuous exchanges. Talk to, not about, the other.

3. Understand the why

You can’t reach an understanding with a difficult person if you don’t seek to understand why they’re behaving in the way that’s grating on your last nerve. When we’re interacting with a difficult person it’s so easy to focus on counterpoints and deflating their arguments and noticing their flaws.

Instead, put your energy into saying more thoughtful things and asking better questions to get to a deeper knowledge of where they’re coming from.

You might discover they’re behaving the way they are because they have different reward systems than you do, because they have a serious personal situation in the background, or they have underlying insecurities driving the way they approach you. Knowing any of that would change your exchange.

4. Stop making assumptions about intent

When you’re constantly subconsciously (or quite consciously) assuming the worst about a difficult person’s intent, your interactions are doomed to fail. The truth is, difficult people often don’t see themselves that way.

Don’t let this assumption derail you. Think of times when someone misunderstood your intent–it’s frustrating and naturally leads to further conflict. But it doesn’t have to.

5. Build small bridges

No one is saying the difficult person has to become your bridge-playing pal. But there is opportunity for you to take small steps to close the gap in what separates you. Find small, genuine compliments to give. Build on commonalities.
Show you can be trusted. Acknowledge, don’t argue. Regarding workplace conflicts, psychologist Andy Selig says “Most of the time, all protagonists involved feel like the victim.” So work to lower their defenses slowly over time.

6. Choose not to let them have power over you

Ultimately, despite all your best efforts, that difficult person still might cause you some anxiety. But the truth is, you decide if you’re going to give someone undue influence over you in your life. Do your level best to improve the relationship than level of the impact they have on you.

Difficult people don’t have to be so difficult. Apply the above and get to mending.

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Grab launches electric vehicles pilot in Indonesia with the government’s support

Grab_EV ecosystem_Indonesia_electricvehicles_Softbank

Grab has gained the Indonesian government (Coordinating Ministry of Maritime and Investment)’s full support in the launch of Electric Vehicle (EV) Ecosystem Roadmap that aims to accelerate EV adoption in the country and bring a more environmentally sustainable transport network.

Grab launches Four-Wheels and Two-Wheels Electric Vehicles (EV) pilot projects in Jakarta with support from carmakers to help build up Indonesia’s EV ecosystem. The move is also the unicorn’s answers to government’s target of 2 million EVs by 2025, something that SoftBank has committed to support through its US$2 billion investment into Grab back in July.

Grab also announced partnerships with automakers Hyundai, Astra Honda Motor, and Gesits to launch four- and two-wheel electric vehicles pilots in the Greater Jakarta region.

Ridzki Kramadibrata, President of Grab Indonesia said: “The joint effort is in line with our commitment to accelerate digital infrastructure development in Indonesia, will help us to come up with solutions that will achieve higher cost efficiencies and spur more people to adopt EVs not just in Indonesia but also across the rest of the region.”

Also Read: Grab teams up with Singapore Power to roll out 200 electric vehicles

“We are very grateful for the initiative that has been done by Grab as this in line with the current regulation in further developing the EV industry as well as accelerating the use of environmentally-friendly transportation modes in Indonesia,” said Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Coordinating Minister of Maritime and Investment Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia.

“This can also support the government’s initiative to reduce the air pollution issue in Indonesia, especially in Jakarta,” he continued.

Grab reportedly has been expanding its EV ecosystem by collaborating with governments and partners like automakers and electricity providers, to drive up EV adoption. By gaining insights on how to better operationalise and expand EV fleets, Grab seeks to co-develop policies with governments with the aim of making EVs more affordable, thus encouraging driver-partners and fleet owners to adopt EVs.

Grab claimed to already own one of the largest fleets of electric vehicles in Southeast Asia, with 200 Hyundai KONA models operated on Singapore roads in a pilot project, launched in January this year.

Grab is also partnering Singapore’s energy utilities provider, SP Group, to use its public EV charging network for Grab’s EVs.

Also Read: Grab raises US$250M more from Hyundai, Kia; plans for electric vehicle adoption

In Indonesia, Grab has inked an agreement with state-owned electricity provider Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) to co-build a network of electric vehicle charging stations.

On two-wheel front, Grab has partnered with Astra Honda Motor (AHM) and Gesits to launch EV bike pilots, all to test the viability of using EV bikes across Grab’s ride-hailing, food and parcels delivery business in greater Jakarta area.
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Picture Credit: Grab

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How startups in APAC are tackling the last mile in-destination

From L to R: Bobby Healy, Founder & CEO, Manna.aero; Rod Bishop, CEO, Jayride; Panhavuth Heng, Chief Commercial Officer, BookMeBus

For many commuters or travellers, Google Maps is the first stop when it comes to planning travel routes; it automatically crunches the time it would take for various transportation types, as well as the costs if you are booking rides from some of the more popular ride-hailing apps.

Yet, there is a gap in the market; and Google, surprisingly enough, does not have all the answers – especially when it comes to helping travellers with their ‘last-mile’ in-destination. “Google wants to suck all these transportation companies into their map, but so far, they have got only five or six [such as Grab, Lyft and Uber], they haven’t got it all,” said Rod Bishop, CEO of Australia-based startup Jayride.

Furthermore, Google does not provide transportation booking services itself.

Bishop spoke at a panel discussion about moving transportation online at the WIT Innovation Stage this week as part of WiT Singapore 2019. He was joined by Panhavuth Heng, Chief Commercial Officer of Cambodia-based startup BookMeBus, with Bobby Healy, Founder & CEO of Ireland-based startup Manna.aero, moderating the panel.

Bishop’s startup focuses on price comparisons for airport transfers across 81 countries, covering over 1,500 airports, so travellers no longer have to scramble around multiple airport transfer service booths to find out who gives the best deal (or get haggled by other external operators outside the airport, for that matter).

He gave a rather humorous anecdote to emphasise his startup’s USP (unique selling point) that also acted as a great metaphor for the pain points surrounding last transportation mile for travellers. “A lady in L.A. was in front of me and she was downloading every ride-hailing app, and when I asked her what she was doing, she said ‘I’m going to…find out which one’s cheapest, and then that’s the one I’m going to use.’”  It highlighted the niche gap that the travel industry has to step up and tackle.

Also Read: KiotViet gets US$6M Series A funding from Jungle Ventures, Traveloka, eyeing expansion

Healy posited that bigger OTA companies could outspend and out-strategise the smaller startups on this front (imagine if TripAdvisor integrated a similar airport transfer feature within their platform instead of having its users crowdsource answers on its platform).

Heng, whose startup, BookMeBus, provides online digital management systems for bus operators in Cambodia and surrounding markets, is not fazed. His focus, he said, is about building a full-fledged ecosystem for transport companies, including content, online payment and invoicing, and ads. This enables the transport operators to upscale their offerings and provides a full-fledged service to travellers.

For example, a customer can use BookMeBus to arrange for airport transfers to hotels as well as ground or ferry transport to places of interest all on one single transport platform.

These startups, however, still face threats from ride-hailing unicorns like Grab and Uber, which provide not only transport but also food delivery, among other services. For example, some travellers will stick to just one provider because it caters to all their needs. To that point, Healy asked the panellists whether their startups would consider broadening their product base, or if they are satisfied with just focusing on a single vertical.

Bishop said that the key thing is identifying what the traveller wants. If a person books an airport transfer, do they necessarily need food delivery? Probably not. The key point is providing the right value to the customer, which in Bishop’s case, is getting right airport transfer for their needs at a good price point.

It’s a difficult case to fight for sure. At the end of the day, with enough commitment and capital, large corporations like Google could very easily launch a far superior transport booking platform for travellers, eroding the USP of smaller players.

But if there’s one element that is not easy to compete with, it is localisation – the secret sauce of any startup’s winning game.

“We work closely with the ground operators… we speak the local language and culture. Cambodian people are very skeptical… trust is a huge factor,” said Heng.

“It’s about customer service that provides the extra mile so you are no longer anxious about travelling,” said Bishop It’s not just about transportation but fundamentally rethinking what it means to provide a quality travel service.

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This article was first published on WiT.

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The warlord in the park: how ex-Googler Andy Cheng used constant problem-solving to deliver better products and grow his startup

 

First attempts at startup products usually fall short. This can be really frustrating, but early-stage founders don’t often realise that these false starts are real opportunities.

Why? When founders give this product to new users, they are trying to help a new customer fare better than those “normal” people who do things in what founders consider the “old way.”

Most people using a new feature or a product for the first time are used to doing business or experiencing something in what they consider the normal way. They are not like the founder, who has dreamed up a vision of how things should be done. When a founder gives this new product to a potential customer, she is trying to do three things: 1. Sell the product! 2. Integrate this new vision into the customer’s reality. 3. Solve a problem that often a potential customer didn’t even know they had.

This new approach takes time to understand and appreciate. It’s almost like taking someone and plopping them down in a new culture, or in a different era somewhere far into the future.

By giving these potential customers something very new, they will approach it with some scepticism, some doubt, and some reasons why it won’t work.

As a result, it’s inevitable that a first trial will end in incremental data and not much customer acquisition.

But this new confrontation with tech is a chance to seek feedback. This feedback creates a cycle of improvement. This is why founders who struggle with their own problem first usually have a better chance of finding product-market fit.

I will tell you a story about a founder who went through the AppWorks Accelerator and launched his own product successfully to demonstrate this point.

The park

It was a spring day in Taipei around the year 2011 and then-Googler Andy Cheng was looking for a house to buy. Married and with a young son, Andy wanted a property his family could grow into. A real estate agent showed him a house in a desirable neighbourhood. A stretch of the park just behind the house meant this was exactly what he was looking for.

Andy nearly made an offer. Then he found out that the park was slated for school construction. Rushing to close, the broker hid this from Andy. The seed of an idea was planted in Andy’s mind.

“I thought, ‘Man, what else have you not told me,’” says Andy, as he looked back at how he developed foundi (AppWorks #8), a real estate listing platform.

The first thought Andy had had when he set to work was not: How could he solve the problem of a culture of manipulation and secrecy that seemed endemic to real estate brokers?

He only sees that his startup could make an impact in that area in retrospect. Like many founders, Andy’s MVP alone didn’t help the real end-user — at the time, house buyers — but it started a process that eventually got him there. And this is really important for early founders to understand.

Also Read: The perks of using YouTube to take your startup marketing to the next level

A new product alone is never enough to create scale and customer growth. You have to do a whole lot of digging to get there.

How it started

From Andy’s perspective, there were so many houses to choose from, so wouldn’t trust and honesty be the winning factor for an agent closing a contract?

Andy learned that relatively low-paid real estate agents live off of commission, and in doing so, they often worked in ferocious competition against each other, even in the same agencies. In contract bidding — even before negotiations — the potential future sale of a home often goes to the agent that creates the most perfect too good to be true contract. House sellers want a good return, so agents will find ways to make their pitch of the future contract as lucrative as possible.

It doesn’t matter if the price is true, or if it accurately reflects the true conditions of the house. It’s every man for himself.

It gets worse!

Since every agent is motivated by commission, agents who are first to find the listing will also try to hide the listing info from other agents, making it nearly impossible for other agents to pitch a contract.

This unethical weirdness became more than an engineering puzzle for Andy, who was quite proficient with software programming and maps. Previously, he had worked as one of Google’s first hires in Taiwan, managing a team of engineers in the maps division.

Code and problem-solving are in his wheelhouse. “I always go to the computer to code, to figure things out,” he says. But to tackle this problem, he had to go beyond the screen.

He created an early version of foundi. House sellers and buyers would use that version to find information about listings. But they took this info back to agents and used it to try to haggle

better deals. This put burdens on the buyers of houses, though; this was exactly the position Andy was in before and didn’t want.

He booked meetings with influential agencies and set up face-to-face consultations. He discovered that real estate agents were typically not the best performers in school. They are also technology-averse. It explained a lot.

With the right technology, they wouldn’t have had to be dishonest to compete. By sitting down and walking through foundi features with early adopter agents, Andy finally got to a point where he was able to convince more of them to use the product.

Like an arms dealer selling his weapons to different cartels, Andy started to spread his tool to different agencies. Whereas previously agents in the same agencies would be pitted against each other, teams began to perform at a higher level. Other agencies saw agencies doing better, and wanted the same tool.

“I felt like I was a warlord,” Andy jokes.

Has he made the market more transparent? It’s hard to say this early in the game. But according to Andy, this counterintuitive outcome holds promise.

By taking away the old things that made agents competitive — their secrecy and manipulation — he has actually made real estate agents more competitive. Therein lies a fundamental concept of startup building, and the core reason why data drives product development. Early-stage founders might take note of this technique.

Now, Andy’s customer’s number about 12,000 agents of the total 40,000 in Taiwan, who rely on foundi to serve their customers better and in turn maximize their income. Andy takes a long-term approach to this door-to-door sales effort.

If a founder has a good head on his shoulders and is passionate about what he’s doing, he will eventually build something that people need, in a market people didn’t know could exist. No newly launched product can do this immediately. It’s always a process, and it involves founders stepping away from the computer and even leaving the building, to get it right.

Answers and your product exist in people’s heads and hearts, whether they know it or not. As a founder, you are quite simply the enabler that will help them experience that by delivering a

“For [what will be] a hundred-year-old tree, I will say we are now at the stage of ‘small tree,’ but strong and healthily growing up,” says Andy.

Tangible good that unlocks a mental model. Think of it as a game, with a constant state of going on side quests. Without quests, you cannot complete the journey.

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How forming an LLC protects your business

 

A limited liability corporation (LLC) is a hybrid legal entity that combines the tax benefits of sole proprietorships and partnerships with the liability protection of corporations.

While an LLC does provide significant protections for business owners, the protection offered is not complete. If you are considering forming an LLC, you should take the following five aspects of liability protection into account:

1. Personal liability for the LLC’s debts

The most powerful protection an LLC offers is that it generally shields owners from liability for the debts of the LLC. In a sole proprietorship, if your business becomes insolvent or ceases to operate, you may be liable for all of the debts of your business.

This means that creditors could seize your personal assets, including your bank accounts, vehicles and home to satisfy the debts of your business. With an LLC, creditors of the LLC can only pursue the assets of the LLC and not the assets of the owners. However, this protection may not apply in cases where you have personally guaranteed debt. 

2. Personal liability for the actions of co-owners and employees

If your business has more than one owner and one of the other owners becomes liable for damages due to their negligence or misconduct in the course of operating the business, they may be held jointly liable with the LLC, but creditors will not be able to pursue your personal assets if you were not involved in the wrongdoing.

This also applies to damages caused by the actions of your employees. 

3. LLC’s liability for personal debts

The LLC structure provides many protections for business owners from the liability of the LLC, but it also protects your business from being dissolved by creditors due to the personal debts of the owners. In most cases, creditors can not seize the assets of an LLC to satisfy the personal debts of owners.

However, in some states creditors may be allowed to obtain a charging order, foreclose on an owner’s interest share or get a court order to have the LLC dissolved so that it’s assets can be sold off and used to pay creditors. It may be wise to consult with an attorney to determine which of these remedies are available to creditors in your state.

4. Personal liability for your actions

An LLC will generally not protect you from liability for your actions. If you cause damages due to your negligence, malpractice or other wrongdoing in the course of operating your business, both you and the LLC can be held liable for those damages.

This means that both the assets of your business and your personal assets can be seized to satisfy any judgments against you. 

5. Piercing the corporate veil

In certain circumstances, courts may choose to ignore the liability protections afforded when you start an llc. This is called “piercing the corporate veil.” Courts generally do not like to pierce the veil but may choose to do so when attempting to force a corporation to comply with a government program, when a business has been found guilty of manipulating bankruptcy laws or committing other types of fraud when businesses have deliberately maintained low levels of capital that are insufficient to pay employees or shareholders and in situations where owners have not sufficiently separated their personal affairs from the affairs of the business.

When the corporate veil is pierced, any owners or shareholders found personally liable for the wrongdoings of the business can be held liable for any judgments against the business. 

Forming an LLC does not provide you with complete protection from liability incurred by your business. However, it does have some significant advantages that are worth considering. It may be a good idea to consult with an expert before determining if this business structure is right for you.

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Why should universities teach blockchain to students?

 

Blockchain – there is very little chance you did not hear about this technology. It can certainly be dubbed one of the most innovative and useful latest technological advancements of the XXI century. According to the data from Statista:

“Worldwide spending on blockchain solutions is expected to grow from 1.5 billion in 2018 to an estimated 11.7 billion by 2022.”

Blockchain brought a wave of decentralization with it, which was not around before – and while some have jumped on the bandwagon of innovations that came with blockchain, there are so many people in the world that still have very limited understanding of what blockchain really is. 

Why learn about blockchain?

Thanks to the numerous unique and extremely useful features of blockchain, including decentralization, this nascent technology are here to stick. Already, hundreds of thousands of modern companies are working on blockchain-fueled solutions that are going to improve our way of living in one way or another. 

With the abundance of real-world use cases, blockchain has surprisingly low adoption at the moment – barely any governments have deployed blockchain-based solutions for the public sector.

One of the key reasons this happens is the low level of knowledge about blockchain among the general public. As a result, some of the world’s leading nations are lagging behind due to the inability to solve some of the lingering issues with the power of blockchain. 

Luckily, many governments started looking in the right direction. The first step towards a wider blockchain adoption in countries comes with changes in the education program. In fact, according to the Coinbase, currently, around 56 per cent of the world’s top 50 universities offer at least one course that focuses on blockchain or cryptocurrencies. This figure went up from 42% in 2018 – this shows slow but steady progress.

Another piece of data that shows the demand for this kind of initiatives is also presented by Coinbase:

“Twice as many students report having taken a crypto or blockchain course than they did in 2018”

Today, universities all over the world are introducing blockchain courses to their students as they realize the importance behind the technology. Some of the countries that have universities with courses on blockchain include Switzerland, the USA, Canada, Denmark, Singapore, Cyprus, Spain and more. 

One of the first universities to introduce blockchain-focused courses to its curriculum is Cornell University in the US. Many Cornell alumni are leading successful blockchain and cryptocurrency projects. 

Demand for blockchain education is rising

Blockchain statistics from Coinbase show that 70 per cent of blockchain and cryptocurrency classes are taken outside of computer science – including economics, humanities, and law.

This signals that the majority of modern students are interested in learning about blockchain irrespective of their key focus of studies. The increased interest in decentralized technology comes from a distrust in the modern financial system. 

Data from a survey of 735 students from the US unveiled that they believe that the current financial system is “inefficient”, “unstable”, and “slow-moving”.

Another big factor that contributed to the growing interest in cryptocurrencies is the rising price of virtual currencies in 2017. Aside from a monetary point of view, students are interested in knowing the value and features of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. They are particularly interested in real-world use cases. 

For those that study law, the blockchain challenges traditional legal terms and categories, which can be extremely relevant in the coming years. For students from economy and business schools, blockchain and cryptocurrencies are a subject of interest from the perspective of the nature of money. Some even see Bitcoin as the next step in the evolution of money. 

In addition, some schools’ classes focus on how decentralization can aid data storage and decision making processes in the future. 

Considering the abundance of blockchain use cases in the current market, students are guaranteed to have a lot of learning material. The below graph shows blockchain technology use cases throughout global organizations in 2019.

Statista, 2019.

Emerging economies show progress

Despite lagging behind developed countries in terms of some parameters, emerging economies show a lot of potentials when it comes to the adoption and development of innovative technologies, such as Blockchain. 

One of the developing countries that have been increasingly active in regards to blockchain and cryptocurrency adoption in Indonesia. Being the most populous Southeast Asia (SEA) nation, Indonesia offers a wide area of opportunity to introduce blockchain technology to the market.

One of these initiatives took place back in April 2018, when the Indonesian government launched the Making Indonesia 4.0 Roadmap in efforts to prepare the country for Industry 4.0. 

This project has provided a solid ground for successful blockchain adoption in Indonesia. In fact, one of the Indonesia-born blockchain projects, Tokoin, decided to step forward to introduce the technology to students through its Campus Meeting Event series. 

The key message and focus of the event series are to educate the young generation about the ins and outs of blockchain technology and increase cryptocurrency adoption rates among students.

As a part of the Campus Meeting, Tokoin is introducing Tokoin BITS (Blockchain Integrated Transaction System). This useful feature helps users split the bill or pay the bill partially by card and cash – a situation that is faced by the majority of the global population on a daily basis.

In the course of its Campus Meeting Events, Tokoin has been visiting a number of universities across Indonesia in November as a way to build a strong foundation for blockchain education in the country. 

On November 6, Tokoin visited Perbanas Institute in Jakarta. Following this, on November 16, the team paid a visit to the University of Indonesia (UI). Tokoin has collaborated with the Student Executive Board of the Faculty of Economics and will take part in the event “EXCITE 2019” with the theme “Get ready to be active, adaptive and successful in the era of 4.0 industrial revolution and digitalization”. 

The Executive Vice President of Sirclo, Rhinaly Tjhin, Head of Business Development at GrabFood, Rizkie Maulana Putra and The General Manager of Tokoin, Ignasius Michael will all take part in presentation for students, highlighting the unique use cases of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

In another episode of its Campus Meeting Events, Tokoin team has paid a visit to the Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology in Surabaya, East Java. This university is known for its strong focus on scientific, engineering, and vocational education system.

Tokoin plans to continue its journey across Indonesian educational venues in an effort to make a change and bring blockchain technology closer to the students.

Final words

With Tokoin leading blockchain education initiative in Indonesia, the level of blockchain technology adoption in the country is set to rise, prompting a wave of innovative projects. 

As more universities and projects invest in getting the young generation familiarized with blockchain principles, uses, and benefits, we can be sure that the future of the global economy is in safe hands. 

Who knows, maybe soon enough, the majority of nations will accept blockchain technology as something that is worth including in the mandatory education system.

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5 growth hacking tips you must consider for your business

“A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth.” – says Sean Ellis, the growth hacking guru. 

Here are 5 growth hacking tips that you must consider for your business’s success and thank me later!

Your product must be perfect

The only way to grow your business is to have more people use or talk about your products and services and that can only happen when you whole-heartedly meet up with the needs and preferences of your targeted market/audience.

A product-market fit must be your first and foremost priority as a growth hacker whilst having a strong analysis of your competitive-market research. If you are able to fight off that competition, it will work as a catalyst for the growth of your business.

Also Read: 3 types of hobbies every growth-minded individual needs to cultivate

To make your product perfect, go out on the ground and be receptive to your customer’s feedback. Let them criticise, object and compare your product with your competitors – you instead, must be an active listener with an intention to improve your product.

Set actionable goals

A growth hacker’s only focus is growth. As Neil Patel says, “the power of a growth hacker is in his obsessive focus on a singular goal. By ignoring almost everything, he can achieve the one task that matters most early on.”

Hence, it is extremely important for your business that you set precise and focused goals, that will help you achieve growth with maximum time investment and through effective approach refinement. Make sure your goals are practical, actionable and realistic.

Keep a log of your day-to-day progress.

Invest in your team

Investing in your startup requires you to have the right skills and expertise on -board to make it work in the longer run. Most startups, overlook the idea of hiring a team with sharpened skills and actual, practical knowledge of their areas of interest – however, with those skills, you can hit a dynamic customer base filling your cup of advantages not just internally, but outside as a growth hack. Investing in a good team today will bring you a long-lasting outcome tomorrow.

Having inexperienced, enthusiastic employees will require an internal effort to first, train them and make them capable of the work that is required from them, and testing whether they would be fruitful or not. As a growth hacker, you are not here to test, you have to perform and raise the competitive bar with tangible results.

Leverage social media as a go-to strategy

Social media is the perfect platform for start-ups to get in progress with their marketing campaign especially for targeting millennials as they are the largest consumer demographics and are available readily on social media.

The best way to leverage social media for your small businesses and startups is to join relevant groups and build up a network for rapport-building among your targeted customers.

With that, you will be able to analyse the needs and wants of your target markets. Make sure, once you have your own representation on social media through a page or a group, you engage your audience and target customers to help build a community for your business that would stay loyal to you for long-term.

Keep a track of your progress

When you have just started climbing the stairs of growth, it is very important to keep track of your foot-steps. One of the ways to measure your effort is through effective monitoring sales channel, future predictability of revenue streams and the consumer engagements through marketing campaigns.

Through this tracking procedure, you would be able to make better decisions for yourself in the future and having a data-driven approach will help you create sustainable and measurable outcomes.

Also Read: Can social impact be growth hacked?

Taking the first step of launching a start-up is daunting but beyond that, it is an effort, which can be surrounded by risks and failures, but leveraging the available opportunities whole-heartedly will help your business grow in the long-run. 

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How to optimise adtech for the next decade

adtech

With digital media advertising spending expected to account for nearly half of global advertising spend this year, adtech’s importance for any business has never been greater. For companies to leverage the latest advertising technology, they must first understand the trends and why the industry is moving towards various advancements.

As a leader in adtech, I’ve outlined below movements I am seeing in the industry to help marketers better capitalize on their ad spend.

Moving to mobile

As desktop internet usage falls and mobile use outperforms TV for overall time spent, marketers are utilizing their resources to adhere to their target audiences’ medium of choice: mobile. As such, marketers are looking to break into mobile apps’ untapped potential and hope it serves as the next gold mine of previously untapped revenue and potential customers for advertisers.

Near-instant machine learning

Adtech companies provide data that help marketers properly A/B test and determine what resonates with a target audience. However, with the increase in competition, speed is a close second to data in terms of importance. AI and Machine Learning’s presence in the industry is quickly increasing as technology can outpace humans and more efficiently optimize ad campaigns to ultimately increase revenues.

A native ad experience

The rise of the “super app” is point-proven that users seek a seamless online experience; they don’t mind ads, as long as it doesn’t interrupt their in-app user experience. As such, marketers are relying more heavily on programmatic advertising to create more refined and user-specific targeting. Spamming users with unrelated, clunky or invasive ad placements can become detrimental to a brand’s reputation.  It is not about the number of impressions; it is about reaching the correct users and integrating ads seamlessly onto apps.

Mobile data, coming soon

Web-based advertisers had decades to perfect measuring the success of ads on their platforms. At the moment, mobile doesn’t have the capabilities to compete with the data that web ads provide. The good news, however, is that adtech companies are pushing to create these tools and create a more measurable experience for marketers on mobile platforms. Moat— an analytics and measurement company that offers viewability, attention, and brand safety solutions— was developed to help provide a solution to mobile’s lack of ability to measure viewability on the screen, and companies are pushing to create more advanced technology to provide advertisers the proper tools to better address various methods of ad fraud.

Rise of Walled Gardens

The rise of consumer privacy concerns is leaning towards a cookie-less industry, opening the door for large publishers to maximize their value through walled gardens. A walled garden in advertising allows large publishers to build an entire marketing infostructure around their platform, utilizing their data and services, and empower small and medium-sized businesses to customize this walled garden for their own marketing efforts. By allowing anyone with a publishing position to transition into their own walled garden, more companies can maximize the monetization and the value that they propose. Before referring to the traditional adtech structure and finding supply partners, they can create their own network operations and monetize their data from within.

Transparent sourcing

Agencies are seeking more transparent platforms as ad fraud continues to remain a top-of-mind concern for publishers. As such, companies are building their own audience networks, utilizing premium, first-party data sources, such as e-commerce platforms and mobile apps with engaged audiences. The first-party data allows advertisers to leverage reliable audience insights and alleviate data privacy concerns.

Super Apps becoming super

Large apps have a lot of potential to grow into “Super Apps,” but aren’t yet tapping into that potential. Apps with large audiences typically start off making money on their technology that connects a consumer to something – a driver, a delivery service, a product. And once they receive investors and the opportunity to grow, they begin floundering; we’ve witnessed it with both Uber and Lyft. To ensure profitability, these apps need to turn to other revenue streams, such as advertising. Apps can make money from media buys, both from inside and outside their app. Apps can provide ad space within their platform, like Amazon, or they can remove themselves from the front lines and simply be used as a powerful source for data. Many major apps are sitting on an incredible amount of data that can help them grow.

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Productivity: What’s expected in the office vs what really happens

 

If you’re a fan of Shark Tank and Kevin O’Leary, you would have probably seen this video on CNBC. Also known as Mr Wonderful, O’Leary is a tough investor, persistent with a go-getter attitude that has gotten him global recognition as a trust-worthy entrepreneur. 

So it’s no surprise when O’Leary told CNBC Make It – “I work every day”. And he expects his employees to do the same. 

How employees see it

While it’s understandable, even acceptable on some levels for entrepreneurs, business owners and highly paid executives to be constantly tuned-in to work, most if not all employees aspire a work-life balance.

Employees are people and people are driven by different things, and those drivers aren’t necessarily money, fame, or accolade. On the other hand, flexible hours, options for remote working, commitment to health and wellbeing are just some of the findings revealed from the 2018 Global Talent Trends study by Mercer. 

No matter what drives you or the type of workplace culture you find yourself in, expectations are almost always to achieve more, with less. 

Meetings: by numbers

This doesn’t simply mean meetings, emails or phone calls are work-place hazards. In fact, it can be productive when applied in the right doses. Overdoing any of these, however, is significantly counterproductive. A Verizon Business  whitepaper reveals some startling discoveries about business meetings: 

Also Read: The millennial force: changing the workplace and its culture

1. Meetings dominate life in America. 37 per cent of employee time is spent in meetings.

2. Busy professionals attend over 60 meetings each month. However, most say they cannot attend all meetings to which they are invited due to the tremendous demands on their time. 

3. Most of the respondents (over 90%) admit to daydreaming, missing meetings or parts of meetings. 

4. Over 70 per cent say they have brought other work to meetings.

5. Almost 40 per cent say they have dozed off during meetings.

6. USD 37b in salary cost for unnecessary meetings for U.S businesses. 

Despite the existence of thousands of productivity and collaborative apps available at our disposal, the question remains – why are businesses struggling to improve employee productivity? How do we stop this madness?  

It’s not doom and gloom 

The truth is, no two businesses operate in the same way. What works for a start-up in Silicon Valley may not necessarily work for another located in Kuala Lumpur, nor the gridlocked city of Jakarta or the exuberant Ho Chi Minh.  

Asian businesses are unique. So are the people managing these businesses. Messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Line, and WeChat are widely used by employees to communicate with suppliers, colleagues, customers, etc. on a daily basis blurring the lines between work and personal messaging. 

Also Read: Sex in the office stairwells: the importance of company culture

While these apps were never built with true collaboration in mind (except for group chats perhaps?) more and more Asian businesses and startups have adopted various team messaging applications (Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc) to complement other productivity tools (Trello, Asana, Google Calendar, Monday, Click Up, HubSpot, etc.) over the last several years. 

Bottom line

Of the 2,319 knowledge workers using JANDI surveyed, the biggest problem cited at the workplace in relation to communication and effective collaboration is the use of personal or consumer messaging apps. 

When you put unproductive meetings, consumer messaging apps and emails in a typical work environment it’s no surprise there is a massive gap between expectation and reality in terms of productivity. 

Whilst emails and meetings won’t go away anytime soon, it’s in the best interest for start-ups or enterprises to look at ways to improve efficiencies and productivity. The future of work is here and now. 

A good place to start is looking at communication and collaboration tools that fits your team. Don’t let outdated messaging apps confuse busyness with productivity for your business. 

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