As the VC winter season casts its chilling effect on the startup ecosystem, it’s more important than ever for startups to stand out from the crowd and secure their place in the market. In the competitive world of Asian startups, there’s one secret weapon that can make all the difference: Public Relations (PR). The truth is, a solid PR strategy can propel a startup from obscurity to the limelight, ensuring survival in this harsh environment.

Don’t just take my word for it. Let’s dive into the reasons why startups at every stage need PR and how you can master the art of strategic communications to stay ahead of the game.

Pre-seed: Laying the PR foundation

In the pre-seed stage, you’re crafting your vision, refining your product, and maybe even seeking initial investments. But have you considered how to make an impact with your brand story?

PR at the pre-seed stage is all about laying the groundwork for your startup’s future reputation. It’s about creating a strong brand narrative that differentiates you from the competition and positions you as a thought leader. As the saying goes, “first impressions last,” and getting your story right from the start will make all the difference.

Seed: Fuelling your PR momentum

As your startup enters the seed stage, you’re looking to generate interest and buzz. It’s time to turn that brand story into a compelling narrative that journalists, investors, and early adopters can’t resist.

Now’s the time to build relationships with the media, engage with influencers, and fine-tune your messaging. Get your startup’s name out there by participating in events, speaking engagements, and contributing thought leadership content. Remember, a strong presence in the startup scene will not only build credibility but also create valuable connections.

Series A and beyond: PR power moves

So you’ve made it through the initial stages, and your startup is growing. Congrats! But don’t rest on your laurels just yet. As you scale, you need to keep PR at the forefront of your growth strategy.

Why? Because as you expand, you’ll encounter new challenges, competitors and even crises. PR is essential to maintaining your reputation, managing crises and staying in the public eye as you grow. It’s also crucial for attracting top talent and fostering a positive company culture.

Also Read: Dear tech startups, it’s never too early for PR!

PR tips and tricks for startups

Here are some pro tips to get your PR game on point:

• Know your audience: Understand who you’re trying to reach, and tailor your messaging accordingly.
• Be human: Authenticity and transparency resonate with the modern audience. Don’t be afraid to show the people behind the brand.
• Leverage data: Use data-driven insights to inform your PR strategies and measure the impact of your efforts.
• Stay relevant: Keep an eye on industry trends, and be ready to pivot your PR strategy when needed.
• Collaborate: Work closely with your PR team or agency, and ensure they’re aligned with your vision and objectives.

PR is non-negotiable

Startups are no strangers to the necessity of hustle, and PR is no exception. Regardless of your startup’s stage, a strategic approach to PR can make or break your success. So, get out there, embrace the power of PR, and watch your startup take the world by storm.

And remember, PR isn’t just a one-time thing; it’s an ongoing process that requires attention, investment and innovation. As the VC winter season threatens the startup landscape, the importance of a robust PR strategy cannot be overstated. Embrace it, and you’ll not only survive but thrive in this competitive environment.

Now that you’ve cracked the PR code, it’s time to leverage your newfound knowledge and turn your startup into an unstoppable force. As you forge ahead, remember that strategic communication is the key to unlocking your startup’s full potential. With effective PR, you’ll have the power to create a cult following for your brand, captivating investors, customers and industry influencers alike.

So, gear up for the journey ahead and keep your PR game strong. In a world where startups rise and fall with alarming speed, PR will be the secret weapon that separates the legends from the has-beens. Seize the opportunity, and claim your rightful place among the startup elite.

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

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

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Use our special promo code: GO for 75% off your Echelon tickets!

The 2023 Echelon Asia Summit is happening at the Singapore EXPO on 14-15 June 2023. Are you a startup founder, investor, corporate, or tech enthusiast? Don’t miss out on one of the most anticipated tech conferences in the region! For more information, visit the official Echelon page.

In today’s dynamic business landscape where innovation and expansion are crucial for the long-term success of any company, growth equity has emerged as a key financing strategy for businesses aiming to scale rapidly. Growth equity is a form of private equity investment that focuses on providing capital to established companies with high-growth potential. Unlike traditional venture capital, which typically targets early-stage startups, growth equity is anchored towards companies that have already achieved a certain level of stability and revenue generation.

The importance of growth equity in businesses today cannot be overstated. It serves as a catalyst for accelerating growth, enabling companies to capitalise on market opportunities, expand their business either operationally or geographically, and help realise full business potential. By injecting capital into established businesses, growth equity investors offer more than just financial resources. They bring expertise, industry connections, and strategic guidance to help companies navigate complex challenges and maximise their growth trajectory.

The key differentiators of growth equity

One of the primary benefits of growth equity is its ability to fuel expansion without diluting the ownership stakes of existing shareholders. Unlike raising funds through an initial public offering (IPO) or venture capital, growth equity allows businesses to access substantial capital while maintaining control over their operations. This flexibility empowers companies to execute strategic initiatives such as product development, geographic expansion, mergers and acquisitions, or technology upgrades, without compromising their vision or long-term objectives.

Moreover, growth equity investors provide more than just monetary support. They often contribute deep industry knowledge, operational expertise, and a network of valuable connections. Their experience in scaling businesses can help companies refine their growth strategies, optimise operations, and enhance their competitive positioning. By leveraging the expertise of growth equity partners, businesses can avoid common pitfalls, identify untapped opportunities, and achieve sustainable growth.

Also read: The first 15 startups that made it to this year’s TOP100

Another critical aspect of growth equity is its positive impact on employment and economic development. By infusing capital into companies with growth potential, growth equity investors facilitate job creation, stimulate economic activity, and foster innovation. As businesses expand and thrive, they generate employment opportunities, contribute to local economies, and drive technological advancements. This virtuous cycle of growth fuels economic prosperity and creates a ripple effect that extends beyond the companies themselves, creating impact on a broader societal scale.

However, unlike early-stage investments, when the goal of companies is to enter series C, this also requires more complex strategies that they may not be familiar with. As such, we turn to experts to understand the ins and outs and learn the ropes of growth equity funding, particularly in the Southeast Asian startup ecosystem.

What does it take to build an ideal growth equity platform for Southeast Asia?

With the goal of answering the question, “What does it take to build an ideal growth equity platform for Southeast Asia?” e27 will be speaking to experts from 500 Global and 500 Southeast Asia at the 2023 Echelon Asia Summit to discuss key trends and insights as well as strategies to take on growth equity funding in the region. The goal of the session is to help startups from the region gain unparalleled knowledge on how to engage with growth equity funding, to provide an insider understanding of the state of the region’s startup ecosystem, and to offer a glimpse at growth equity opportunities available today.

Helping e27 discuss the matter is, 500 Global, a venture capital firm with $2.7B in assets under management. 500 Global invests in founders that are building fast-growing technology companies. They focus on markets where technology, innovation, and capital can unlock long-term value and drive economic growth.

500 Global has backed over 5,000 founders representing more than 2,800 companies operating in over 80 countries. They have invested in more than 50 companies valued at over $1 billion and over 150 companies valued at over $100 million (including private, public, and exited companies). Their over 190 team members are located in 28 countries and bring experience as entrepreneurs, investors, and operators from some of the world’s leading technology companies.

Their over 140 team members are located in more than 15 countries and bring experience as entrepreneurs, investors, and operators from some of the world’s leading technology companies.

Hear it straight from the experts

Saemin Ahn, Partner at 500 Global, will be serving as one of our esteemed speakers at this year’s Echelon. Saemin has taken on many hats across the broader venture capital ecosystem, serving as an investor and advisor for One Signal, GoTo Group, CodaPayments, and Honestbank, as well as a board member and partner for several other reputable companies including ViSenze, Carousell, and Rakuten Ventures, among many others.

With over twenty years of experience, Saemin brings an unmatched level of expertise when it comes to understanding the complex world of growth equity. With all the growth-stage investment opportunities in Southeast Asia, Saemin will be taking a close look at the region’s vibrant ecosystem and the opportunities available to today’s most exciting innovators. Not only that, he will be providing key strategies on how companies can move from early-stage to series C funding, given the complex differentiators that growth-stage startups must study and anticipate.

Also read: Harness the power of your location data to drive business growth

Speaking with him at the 2023 Echelon Asia Summit is Martin Cu, Partner at 500 Southeast Asia. Martin boasts an extensive background across the Southeast Asian business landscape, having previously worked as Country Head for the logistics platform, Ninja Van in the Philippines, as the Head of Acquisition Marketing for the on-demand streaming service, Hooq, as Marketing Director at the e-commerce platform, Zalora Philippines, and as Device Manager at the telecommunication giant, Globe Telecom.

With his operational knowledge having taken on executive roles at various companies across different verticals and his experience operating within Southeast Asia’s competitive business landscape, Martin will be imparting his unique understanding of the operational aspects of companies that could help them get a leg up as they pursue growth opportunities.

With their combined experience and industry knowledge, Saemin and Martin will be providing dynamic insights that can help the region’s most exciting startups explore opportunities for growth equity in today’s increasingly competitive fundraising landscape.

Moderating the session is Mohan Belani, Co-Founder and CEO of e27.

The 2023 Echelon Asia Summit

Get to know these experts and more at this year’s Echelon!

Echelon Asia Summit 2023 is happening on 14-15 June, at the Singapore EXPO. Featuring a slew of speakers, exhibitors, business matching sessions, pitching stages, and more, the event enables participants to connect, network, and engage with the larger tech startup ecosystem.

Also read: Echelon Asia Summit is back! Get to know our PR partner

At the Echelon Asia Summit, participants get the chance to attend a diverse range of sessions, including keynote speeches, panel discussions, and workshops, all exploring exciting topics like AI, blockchain, e-commerce, fintech, and marketing. You’ll also have the opportunity to join networking sessions and meet-ups where you can connect with fellow entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders.

To learn more about Echelon Asia Summit 2023 and sign up for the event, visit the official page here.

The post Echelon: Strategies for growth equity according to industry experts appeared first on e27.

Did you know there has been a 14x increase in AI startups since 2000?

Artificial intelligence used to be thought of as a futuristic technology reserved for sci-fi movies or the ultra-rich. Today, generative AI is approachable and can be used by anyone.

From students to artists, and even marketing and brand professionals have started utilising artificial intelligence in efforts to improve their content and take some of the stress off of constantly having to create.

Revolutionising content creation and business productivity

One popular program that has increased the accessibility of AI is ChatGPT. This is an artificial intelligence chatbot that is capable of interactive dialogue. Due to the many uses, one million people signed up to use ChatGPT in just the first five days after it was launched. This program uses 45 terabytes of information, an amount equivalent to one million feet of bookshelf space, and it is all found in this one small program. 

Similarly, Google launched the program Bard which is another conversational AI-powered program. 50 per cent of the training data used to program the system comes from public forums, making the dialogue it creates more conversational and less robotic. 

Aside from chatbots, generative AI can be used to create visual content as well. Dall-E is a popular program that is capable of creating stagnant images based on written prompts. More than 1.5 million users have used this tool worldwide to create pictures related to their names, feelings, and more.

Additionally, there are other tools that can be used to create videos from similar text-based prompts. These visual AI tools have three times higher quality and text representation than previous tools that were used for similar uses. To create these high-quality images, data is collected from various other avenues for the AI to ‘learn from’.

Also Read: How business leaders can utilise generative AI in employee communications

Speaking of data, this is how AI programs are “trained” to create the content they do. Generative AI is an algorithm that is fed existing content to create iterations with new content. The more data that is fed to the program, the “smarter” the program gets in creating similar content that is still fresh and unique.

These systems are able to pick up on patterns and create content that aligns with those patterns, which business owners have found to be very useful in marketing strategies. In fact, one of the main goals of marketing is to create a brand that people are always thinking about, and AI tools can be great companions in that task. 

Marketing professionals in major industries are finding ways to solve old problems using generative AI. From legal and professional services to retail goods, to the pharmacy and healthcare industry, generative AI has been used to enhance business productivity by up to 40 per cent. These systems can be used for email marketing, customer service routing, fraud detection, and service chatbots.

By using AI to complete these tasks, which can take up hours of a person’s day or even require full teams to tackle, marketing professionals are able to focus on other projects to improve their businesses. In fact, using personalised brand generative AI tools has been shown to boost marketing results anywhere from 60 per cent to 170 per cent.

While so many businesses are already jumping on the wave of artificial intelligence in marketing, there is still much on the horizon. Despite the rapid growth of AI, specialists explain that it is still in its infancy. It is predicted that as more businesses realise the benefits of generative AI, there will be a greater reliance on it.

It is even estimated that 22 per cent of marketers will use marketing automation and AI intelligence to personalise offers, emails, customer messages, and even paid ads. Small businesses will also have more accessibility to these systems, with 46 per cent reporting they will create new marketing roles in the future. 

It is time to broaden your business’s marketing horizons. With the ability to create written words, videos, music, and more, generative AI is the future for brands’ marketing capabilities. As more businesses look towards the many uses of artificial intelligence, there is no telling what the future of this technology will bring to the way we market and run our businesses. 

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

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

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Eight e27 Connect investors participated in the investment rounds of just two startups — Jenfi and ORA — this week.

Below is a brief profile of each VC firm, with the details of their focus verticals, cheque sizes, and more.

TNB Aura

A Singapore-headquartered firm, TNB Aura uses data-driven methodologies to identify and invest in select companies that are primed for the future and ready to change the very face of their categories. An approved co-investment partner of Enterprise Singapore, it invests US$2-10 million in Series A and B startups.

It is sector-agnostic and invests in pre-Series A/bridge, Series A, and Series B startups across Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand.

The average cheque size is US$1M to US$10M.

Antler

Antler empowers early-stage founders to find a co-founder or access capital to build and scale startups faster. It partners with people across six continents to launch and scale high-potential startups that address meaningful opportunities and challenges. It has offices in 25 cities, including Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, New York, London, and Berlin.

It invests in all verticals in pre-seed, seed, pre-Series A/bridge, and Series A companies. The cheque size is US$125K to US$5M.

Gobi Partners

Founded in 2002, Gobi is a VC firm with its headquarters and incubation centre in Shanghai, additional offices in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Tianjin, as well as an overseas office in Singapore. A leading investor in early-stage digital media and technology companies in China, Gobi has funded dozens of early to traction-stage companies and continues to invest actively in the region.

The focus verticals are advertising, Big Data, consumer, e-commerce, education, entertainment, finance, healthtech, ICT, media, SaaS, and travel.

It invests across seed, pre-Series A/bridge, Series A, Series B, Series C and above.

Kairous Capital

Kairous Capital is a Malaysia-based regional VC fund specialising in cross-border tech investment between Greater China and Southeast Asia. It focuses mainly on pre-Series A to Series B companies, helping them expand regionally.

The focus verticals are AI, consumer, e-commerce, education, finance, healthtech, insurtech, smart cities, and travel.
The investment locations are Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, China, and Hong Kong.
The focus stages are seed, pre-Series A, Series A, and Series B. The cheque size is US$500K to US$5M.

A few days ago, TNB Aura, Antler, Gobi Partners, and Kairous Capital invested in Singapore-headquartered telehealth platform ORA’s US$10 million Series A funding round.

Monk’s Hill Ventures

Founded in 2014 by entrepreneurs Peng T. Ong and Kuo-Yi Lim, Singapore-based Monk’s Hill Ventures (MHV) invests in great entrepreneurs who will change millions of lives through technology. The firm invests in early-stage technology startups throughout Southeast Asia, mainly Series A. It takes a first-principles approach and is sector-agnostic, investing across industries and sectors, including healthcare tech, edutech, fintech, and logistics.

The focus stages are pre-Series A/bridge and Series A.

Korea Investment Partners

Korea Investment Partners, a Korea Investment Holdings company, is a private equity company specialising in small- and mid-cap businesses.

The focus verticals are hardware and SaaS, and the stages are Series C and above.

The investment range is US$8M to US$20M.

Golden Equator Capital

Golden Equator Ventures invests in high-growth technology startups in Southeast Asia. Based in Singapore, Golden Equator Ventures is a subsidiary of Golden Equator Group. It is sector-agnostic, with focus stages being Series A, Series B, Series C and above.

Atlas Ventures

Atlas Ventures is an early-stage VC fund investing in verticals such as cybersecurity, enterprise solution, entertainment, gaming, HR, marketplace, media, productivity & CRM, and SaaS. The investment locations are Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines.
The focus stages are seed, pre-Series A/bridge, Series A, and Series B.

The investment range is US$500K to US$5M.

On Tuesday, Monk’s Hill Ventures, Korea Investment Partners, Golden Equator Capital, and Atlas Ventures joined the US$6.6 million pre-Series B funding round of Jenfi, a fintech startup specialising in revenue-based financing.

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Echelon Asia Summit 2023 is bringing together APAC’s leading startups, corporates, policymakers, industry leaders, and investors to Singapore this June 14-15. Learn more and get tickets here.

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The post The e27 Connect VCs that invested in Southeast Asian startups this week appeared first on e27.

The Singapore government recently announced several business support measures to help businesses defray the costs and risks of innovation as corporate purse strings tighten. The enhancements to the National Productivity Grant, newly minted Enterprise Innovation Scheme, and other initiatives announced during the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s Committee of Supply debate underscore the importance of businesses remaining competitive to stay resilient in an uncertain economic climate.

As Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong mentioned, an “era of zero-sum thinking has begun”. In the race to become resilient, many businesses default to cost-cutting measures, tightening spending and reducing investments in innovation efforts to focus on short-term operational efficiency. However, marginalising innovation is likely to be detrimental to long-term business success.

Organisational resiliency need not come at the cost of innovation. By learning to evolve and adapt to new ways of working quickly, businesses can develop the necessary organisational muscles to withstand changes in the environment to survive and thrive, even in difficult times. 

Beyond resiliency to antifragility

“Antifragile” is defined as a category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. Made popular by a book of the same name by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, being antifragile is beyond resilience and robustness. A resilient business resists shocks and stays the same; an antifragile business improves, evolves and becomes stronger.

Also Read: Harness the power of your location data to drive business growth

In applying the “antifragile” concept to organisations, it is apparent that there are many areas that they can improve on, including the diversification of products, services, and channels, acceleration of digital transformation efforts that include the automation of processes and manual tasks, and establishing an innovative, agile data practice that harnesses data to inform quicker learning during innovation loops for better business decisions at all levels within the organisation.

An antifragile business is always learning from the environment it is in. The more data it can gather, the better its ability to harness them to make better decisions. To do so requires an effective data strategy that allows the organisation to derive key actionable insights from data in a timely, accurate, secure, and manner for data-driven decisions that can help drive operational efficiencies and improve business outcomes.

Treating data as a strategic business asset with its own comprehensive strategy aligned to business priorities can help businesses adapt and evolve regardless of the market condition to achieve true antifragility. 

In the digital era, data is ‘the new gold’

Enterprise data is growing at an explosive rate, driven by accelerated digital transformation and increased customer touchpoints. By 2025, IDC predicts that 80 per cent of data collected worldwide will be unstructured, presenting immense opportunities for organisations to store, analyse, collect and gain insights and potentially monetise the data. 

According to Cloudera’s Enterprise Data Maturity report, 91 per cent of IT decision-makers believe that their organisation’s data strategy was key to increasing resilience. A well-considered data strategy identifies the main challenges or opportunities that the organisation is trying to solve, while including a set of guiding principles or policies for dealing with them and a coherent set of actions. It is also aligned with the organisation’s cloud and digital strategies and outlines the modern data architectures needed to leverage data across the organisation’s hybrid multi-cloud environments.

To effectively execute the data strategy requires tools equipped with modern technologies that can manage disparate data sets in a consistent, secure, and governed manner across the entire data lifecycle, no matter where the data resides. Being able to do this while providing shared security and governance features across different cloud environments is critical.

A robust hybrid data platform guided by a deliberate data strategy is essential in building trust that the data is fit for purpose to provide business leaders with the confidence in using the data to guide business decisions. 

Data powering growth opportunities

Together, a data strategy backed by a hybrid data platform leveraging modern architectures can help organisations uncover new growth opportunities, by applying technologies like automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning for increased time to insights. 

For example, one of the largest financial services groups in Southeast Asia saw the opportunity to leverage data and machine learning to deliver innovative banking services that catered to consumers’ preferences for digital-first banks.

Also Read: Revolutionising fintech in Southeast Asia: AI and ML empower businesses with data

They built a centralised platform that uses machine learning to analyse real-time contextual data from customer conversations to identify the most relevant information for each customer and curate personalised experiences across communication channels.

The bank also used machine learning to predict several bank systems’ potential time to failure, ensuring that information technology teams could take preemptive decisions to keep data centres always up and running. The machine learning models have helped the bank to reduce the risk of losing sensitive customer data, such as financial details, and avoid costly regulatory fines from downtime. More importantly, it created a faster and more efficient transaction experience for its customers.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Getting value from data can be both complex and complicated. Data often needs to be brought together from multiple sources, secured, curated and processed. This needs to be done at scale, across rich datasets and increasingly in real-time. Having a clear, unified and reliable view of all data assets is foundational to having informed decisions with high degrees of confidence.

Furthermore, being able to implement modern data architectures such as Data Fabric, Data Mesh and Data Lakehouse across public clouds and on-premises provides the greatest flexibility to organisations. These qualities are core principles of the Cloudera Data Platform (CDP).

The challenges and obstacles from evolving external factors present opportunities for businesses to harness one of their most valuable and underutilised assets, data, to make informed decisions and flourish in any market condition.

A strong data strategy and the ability to innovate effectively and respond quickly are foundational to the antifragile organisation. I believe that technology and agile innovative data practices will play an important role in supporting this in 2023 and beyond.

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

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

Image credit: Canva Pro

The post Building antifragile organisations: Harnessing data strategy and for resilience appeared first on e27.

Use our special promo code: GO for 75% off your Echelon tickets!

Featuring the TOP100 stage, the 2023 Echelon Asia Summit is happening at the Singapore EXPO on 14-15 June 2023. Are you a startup founder, investor, corporate, or tech enthusiast? Don’t miss out on one of the most anticipated tech conferences in the region! For more information, visit the official Echelon page.

The TOP100 program is an annual project spearheaded by e27 with the goal of recognising the most promising and innovative startups in the Southeast Asian region and beyond. The program is a highly anticipated event that provides a platform for exciting new startups to showcase their ideas, gain exposure to investors and potential partners, and receive valuable feedback from industry experts.

Through the TOP100 program, startups have the opportunity to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges comprised of investors, corporates, and industry giants. The judges evaluate each startup based on various criteria, including innovation, market potential, team strength, and overall execution.

Also read: Echelon: Strategies for growth equity according to industry experts

Winning the TOP100 program can have a significant impact on a startup’s growth trajectory. The program has helped many startups secure funding, gain media attention, and expand their customer base in the regional market.

With its rigorous selection process, 100 startups get to pitch their products and services at the TOP100 stage of the Echelon Asia Summit slated on June 14-15 at the Singapore EXPO. Top contenders will proceed to the TOP100 finals where winners will be selected.

Without further ado, here is the second batch of startups that will be competing at this year’s TOP100!

15 more semifinalists for the 2023 TOP100 

Hello3Dworld

Hello3Dworld is a Metaverse platform where users can create their own 3D Avatar from a single photo in just a couple of seconds.

Through Hello3Dworld, users can easily create their own Metaverse with only a few keywords and, through that Metaverse, participate in activities that replicate real-world experiences, such as shopping, entertainment, working, studying, and travelling, among others.

Staying true to their slogan, “Real World on the Internet”, inside Hello3Dworld’s Metaverse platform, users will have their own houses and assets; Brands will have their own offices, showrooms, real estate projects, malls, schools; and Governments can bring landscapes, tourist sites, museums — all within the Metaverse.

Castomize Technologies Pte. Ltd.

Castomize is revolutionising medical devices with 4D-printing technology, starting with orthopaedic casts and splints. Castomize’s 4D-printed casts provide a myriad of benefits to both doctors and patients. For doctors, they reduce the amount of manpower, time, and tools needed to apply and remove casts. For patients, they provide unprecedented comfort and ease of care throughout the healing journey.

As a pre-revenue spin-off from the Singapore University of Technology and Design that was established in late-2022, Castomize has progressed quickly in terms of traction, being in several feedback loops with orthopaedic experts from 5 different hospitals in Singapore and Korea. They have also gained market traction and interest, having signed several Sales and R&D LOIs and MOUs with organisations in the Asia-Pacific, including an upcoming clinical trial at a national hospital in Singapore. Additionally, they have been awarded several non-dilutive grants and awards from organisations such as the National Research Foundation of Singapore and have been onboarded on several incubators and accelerators such as Shinhan Square Bridge, SMU BIG, Temasek Launchpad, and SUTD.

FLEXWAVE CO., LTD.

FLEXWAVE builds an embedded PV energy harvester for IIoTs with 75% more power, which can reduce the size of the device and make the “wireless” come true.

Flexwave offers an innovative optical method to overcome the limits, naming the fibre-like technology as Flexible Waveguiding Photovoltaics. According to the nature of the waveguide material, PV panels can collect photon energy from a wider angle. Flexwave aims to solve the energy crisis of IoT endnotes. There will be trillions of IoT devices in the next decade, resulting in batteries that require huge maintenance costs. Flexwave provides an embedded energy harvester which gives 75% more power than the traditions.

Paladium Technologies

Paladium Technologies acquires and analyses first-party purchase data to help B2C merchants increase revenue with strong market intelligence. They are an up-and-coming data company that is focused on the collection and processing of consumer data, with analytics as an added layer to provide greater value to Consumer-Facing Businesses.

They offer actual monetisation of the consumer’s data to the consumer — a unique proposition unheard of in Developed Countries (DCs) within Asia Pacific, where consumers are starting to be aware of how the Big Tech Companies are exploiting their data without consent. Through this, they also enable consumers to monetise their personal data.

The venture is also privately invested.

eMobily

eMobily provides a mode of electric transportation to underserved communities and cities. Specifically, they exist to serve the e-bike and e-scooter community by providing sustainable transportation in the EV industry. Under its belt, eMobily develops technology based around micro-electric vehicle infrastructure, such as charging and security port stations for micro-mobility to organised fleets, including developing a localised machine learning/AI geolocation sensor that can help riders and robots pinpoint the exact location needed during trips in large areas that are not accurately listed on their maps.

eMobily is an all-in-one stop solution for the EV Market. It has a consortium group of specialities to solve manufacturing, distribution, and global expansion for accelerated electrification.

GeeTest

GeeTest, the leading bot management vendor and the creator of the SlideCAPTCHA, is the most intelligent and robust solution that frees your website, mobile apps, and APIs from malicious traffic.

For 10 years, GeeTest has been focusing on the field of cybersecurity, polishing innovative products and ideas to strongly promote the development of this industry. GeeTest believes that the imminent challenges perturbing the Cybersecurity landscape are the challenges between improving the quality of traffic (managing the proportion of fraud traffic) to enable companies to efficiently monetise traffic and combating the hidden and profit-driven bot threat.

The H2 World Inc.

The H2 World Inc. produces longer-duration energy storage and monetisation solutions for renewable energy. Their turnkey H2 solutions provide cleaner, more flexible lower cost energy independence and security.

With more renewable energy and electrification, electrical grids are more strained and less reliable. Fuels in widespread use such as natural gas emit far too much CO2e. As such, The H2 World Inc. provides affordable turnkey hydrogen generation through electrolysis and methane transformation, storage, and energy systems, pods for homes/small businesses, and containerised packs for larger customers. Their systems provide the lowest cost hydrogen, with near Co2e. 

ERP360 (PT ERP SAAS INDONESIA)

ERP360 delivers Integrated Real Estate ERP Cloud in Indonesia, specialised for real estate developers and enhanced with Automation & Business Intelligence, all at an affordable price.

In 3-5 years, the company is poised to have BIG DATA Real Estate Analytics created by Artificial Intelligence (based on real data transactions), that provides insight to real estate mapping price, customer behaviour, buying capability, supply and demand in each area, and many other data or statistics all over Indonesia. If they can make this happen, the Big Data will create many other business opportunities such as feasibility study, consultancy, and even real-time available unit property portal, while also collaborating with other giant proptech like PropertyGuru, among others.

NextPay

NextPay empowers MSMEs to automate collecting, sending, and managing of money — all from one powerful platform. NextPay provides easy-to-use financial services without high fees and barriers to entry.

Since 2020, over 3,000 Filipino entrepreneurs have trusted NextPay to help them simplify their financial operations. It is their mission to build the right financial tools and technology so local businesses can thrive and scale. NextPay’s simple and affordable set of business banking services where business owners can easily sign up to start include Collecting Money: sending digital invoices, accepting payments via links and QR codes, automated reminders; Sending Money: salary payouts, supplier payments, etc; and Managing Money: real-time reporting, possible integration with HRIS and accounting systems.

Lokéin

Lokéin is a full-suite social commerce platform to easily help digitise and digitalise business owners, brand owners, and MSMEs including second-hand goods merchants while at the same time, managing their business easily, anytime, and anywhere. With their solution, those MSMEs can simply digitalise and digitise their businesses with a no-code omni-channel social selling software that enables MSMEs to sell seamlessly and manage their businesses efficiently.

The software includes an e-commerce storefront, full-suite seller dashboard, custom landing page builder, built-in marketing tools with AI assistant, Bahasa Melayu Chatbot AI assistant, affiliate system, and e-POS manager. The solution is a lightweight, fast, responsive e-commerce software that comes with a pre-fixed template where users can set up their store in just seven minutes.

PETSKITA

PETSKITA is a one-stop solution multi-brand e-commerce platform for all pet care needs with personalised “pet profile” features, transforming the way pet parents shop.

Some of the major problems being faced by the pet industry in Indonesia and Southeast Asia are the hassle that pet parents face, having to navigate through many different platforms. It’s also hard to access trusted and quality products and services, which makes the overall buying experience for pet products inconvenient. Currently, Indonesian pet parents are still getting their products from conventional pet stores or general marketplaces. There is still no trusted online platform specifically for pet parents, like Chewy (www.chewy.com) in the US or a large pet store chain in Indonesia.

PETSKITA is solving those problems by building the first integrated pet ecosystem in Indonesia. Making PETSKITA a household name by being a pet care brand that people love and that resonates with Millennials and Gen Z. PETSKITA aims to be the “Chewy” of Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

ALGOGENE FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY COMPANY LIMITED

ALGOGENE is the next-generation investment platform for learning, developing, testing, executing, and investing trading bots. They provide tick-level multi-asset, multi-event data for model development, backtesting, live simulation, portfolio analytics, and risk monitoring. Through ALGOGENE’s global exchange network, users can easily manage and deploy their trading strategies to multiple broker accounts. They also incubate outstanding trading algorithms by providing seed funding for pilot tests and building track record on the path to launch a hedge fund or fintech product with users.

Through their patents-backed web platform, users can easily create any algo strategies, and connect to multiple brokers/exchanges for live trading. They can also learn from ALGOGENE’s trading community and copy their winning strategies into their portfolio!

DIFISOFT Viet Nam JSC

Difisoft Viet Nam JSC (Digital Finance Software) is a fintech company founded in 2018 that is developing financial solutions and content for major financial institutions in Vietnam, such as VCSC, KIS Vietnam, KB Securities Vietnam, Mirae Asset Securities Vietnam, and KB Fina.

Based on the technology and experience in the financial IT sector, Difisoft is currently developing a community-based investing platform to serve more retail investors in Vietnam, Paave (coined from the words “Passion” and “Wave”. As a social investing platform with the mission of serving more retail investors in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, they pave the way to make financial freedom possible for everyone especially the Millenials.

kamilas4am Inc

Helping business owners scale their short-video content, Kamilas4am is connecting business owners and marketers who need short-video content with UGC creators — the next evolution of Influencer Marketing.

Unlike influencers who are leveraging their following, UGC creators are leveraging their capacity to create studio-quality and ready-to-post video content from home. Business owners use these short videos in their everyday posting on social media (eg Tiktok, IG reels, Youtube shorts) and in their social media ads.

Instead of spending hours, kamilas4am has shortened the process of engaging with UGC creators to 10 minutes. No more hours of finding the right creator, negotiating contracts, and endless back-and-forth to explain the project brief. With a click of a button, brands can book a creator to work within their platform of 1,000 creators.

SECHA

Aiming to ease secondary home purchases, SECHA provides home improvement solutions to help buyers get qualified and move-in-ready houses at no extra cost for renovation.

SECHA exists to help homeowners sell houses at market price without renovation cost cuts, agents to generate leads and close deals faster, and home buyers get their dream homes hassle-free. Their platform equips agents with the tools that have been proven to increase buyers’ intention to purchase by 35% through their platform consisting of a Shareable Digital Catalogue, Auto-Generated Digital Proposal, and House Unit 3D Viewing.

To be battled out at the 2023 Echelon Asia Summit’s TOP100 stage

Watch out for these exciting startups as they battle it out on the TOP100 pitching stage at the 2023 Echelon Asia Summit happening on June 14-15 at Singapore EXPO.

Also read: See how GHARAGE is empowering travel and retail at Echelon

The Echelon Asia Summit is a leading technology conference that brings together experts from around the world to discuss the latest trends and innovations in the industry, share expert knowledge, and provide opportunities to network with peers. The event is a must-attend for anyone in the tech industry looking to stay ahead of the curve.

Catch these startups and more at this year’s TOP100 stage! To learn more about Echelon Asia Summit 2023 and to sign up for the event, visit the official page here.

The post 15 exciting startups make it to the 2023 TOP100 appeared first on e27.

Grab losses shrink 43% in Q1, revenue surges 130%
Net losses narrowed to US$250M from US$435M reported in Q1 2022; Deliveries were the star of the show for the company, contributing US$275M in revenue.

East Ventures closes US$250M fund for portfolio firms
The Indonesia-focused VC firm will continue to invest in early-stage and growth-stage companies through its seed and growth funds, which have been extended to have a corpus of US$585M.

MetLife, Khazanah join insurtech startup bolttech’s US$196M Series B round
The funds will be used to explore inorganic opportunities; bolttech works with insurers, telcos, retailers, banks, e-commerce and digital destinations to embed insurance into the customer journeys at the point of need.

Vietnam’s VNG eyes US$100M funding round
The company. whose businesses include online games, payment, cloud services, and Zalo, is working with Maybank on the fundraising; GIC, Temasek, and B Capital are its existing investors.

Ex-Spenmo CPO denies firm’s embezzlement rumours
Spenmo Indonesia is suspected of embezzling US$895K intended for the acquisition of two financial service providers, namely multi-finance company Beta Inti and remittance firm Aryadana.

Malaysia’s Signature Market delays domestic IPO after profit decline
The e-commerce firm wants to make healthier food products more accessible and affordable in Malaysia and the rest of SEA; Its profit has been dropping in the past two years due to consumers shifting back to offline shopping.

Venturra aiming for 8 to 12 deals in 2023
The firm has completed 29 investments since 2019, with the majority of them in seed-stage companies; Venturra prepares to launch a new fund – its third one – in the coming months.

Ex-Zalora CMO’s telehealth platform ORA secures US$10M Series A
The investors include TNB Aura, Antler, and Gobi Partners; ORA is a house of healthcare brands; Its brands include Modules (prescription skincare), OVA (women’s health) and andSons (men’s health).

Jenfi nets US$6.6M to expand its revenue-based financing business in SEA
The investors include Headline Asia, Monk’s Hill, and ICU Ventures; The fintech firm plans to expand its presence in Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia while expanding into new markets across Southeast Asia.

Northstar, Golden Gate join US$4.3M round of SG AI firm Locofy
Locofy helps designers automate front-end code directly from their designs and integrate them with existing workflows, leveraging AI to convert designs into coding languages to save time.

Gojek, Dat Bike partner to roll out two-wheeler EVs in Vietnam
Dat Bike will provide Gojek driver-partners with Weaver++ motorbikes to use for GoRide, GoFood, and GoSend orders; Drivers can charge their Dat Bike battery for free at community charging points in Ho Chi Minh City.

Taiwanese enterprise firm Profet AI eyes SEA expansion
Profet AI uses machine learning to boost operational efficiency by allowing clients to create customized apps and AI-powered programmes; It mainly offers its services to electronics, semiconductor, and chemical manufacturers.

UK fintech firm 3S Money to apply for Singapore payment license
This is as part of efforts to expand its offerings in Asia; The firm helps its clients scale globally by offering business accounts with local details in markets like the EU, the UK, and the US.

‘Co-working spaces should introduce new tech tools to cater to hybrid, remote workers’
Co-working spaces, which used to be identified as ‘startup-friendly’, now have transformed into ‘business-friendly’, says Infinity8 Co-Founder and CEO Lee Sheah Liang.

Why Doctor Anywhere believes that the future of healthtech lies in preventive healthcare
In this interview, Doctor Anywhere Founder & CEO Lim Wai Mun reveals plans to acquire more companies in the healthcare sector.

‘Global firms are paying closer attention to SEA’s tech talent pool’: Glints CEO
Oswald Yeo says there is an industry shift towards the ‘make profits, sustain, and grow’ model and the concept of blitz scaling is mostly foregone.

How climate tech companies in Asia measure the impact of their work
To answer this big question, we reached out to climate tech companies in the Asia Pacific and get them to explain the details.

Echelon: Strategies for growth equity according to industry experts
Let these experts from 500 Global weigh in on what strategies companies in Southeast Asia must explore to pursue growth-stage funding.

Unleashing women’s potential: How tech companies are leading the way
Developing a healthy workplace culture that supports women is not only the right thing to do, but it is also a strategic imperative for Malaysia.

Cracking the PR code: A PR blueprint for startups
Unlock the world of PR for startups and take advantage of the techniques that can propel your startup to the top.

How are Singapore SMEs taking a proactive stance towards sustainability?
SMEs in Singapore have the ability to be proactive and be well-prepared for the inevitable inclusion of Scope 3 emissions as a business cost factor.

Singapore’s security industry: Why condos ‘peace of mind’ should be resolved with technology?
Singapore’s security industry is transforming to meet global demands through new technological advancements.

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Echelon Asia Summit 2023 is bringing together APAC’s leading startups, corporates, policymakers, industry leaders, and investors to Singapore this June 14-15. Learn more and get tickets here.

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The post Ecosystem Roundup: Grab cuts Q1 losses by 43%, revenue spikes 130%; East Ventures closes US$250M fund appeared first on e27.

The TOP100 program, organised annually by e27, aims to showcase and honour the most promising startups in the dynamic Asia-Pacific region.

This prestigious initiative invites innovative startups from across the Asia-Pacific region, embracing their groundbreaking ideas that disrupt industries and surpass conventional boundaries. The selection process for the TOP100 is rigorous, carefully evaluating each startup’s product or service, team, market potential, and traction.

Also Read: The first 15 startups that made it to this year’s TOP100

The chosen startups will have the chance to present their business ideas on the grand stage of the Echelon Asia Summit, taking place on June 14-15, 2023, at the prestigious Singapore Expo.

But that’s not all – the TOP100 program goes beyond just pitching. It opens doors to a world of possibilities by connecting participants with investors, mentors, and potential partners. This invaluable exposure propels the growth of these startups, helping them expand their networks within the global tech ecosystem.

Year after year, the TOP100 program has solidified its position as the most esteemed startup competition in the region, attracting thousands of applicants eager to gain visibility and support. It’s a platform where the most promising startups shine and receives the recognition they deserve within the thriving Asia-Pacific startup scene.

The 12 startups competing for a spot in the TOP100 program

In the buzzing tech startup scene of the Asia-Pacific region, where amazing startups are popping up left and right, we’re thrilled to introduce you to the next 12  standout frontrunners. These awesome startups are getting closer to their shot at competing in this year’s TOP100. Get to know them better right here!

Bizbaz

Bizbaz offers comprehensive customer intelligence and risk assessment solutions that analyse and assess the lifestyle and social as well as financial data of an individual. 

TUBUDD

Tubudd is an online travel marketplace that showcases and connects local buddies to travellers.

Smudg

Smudg is a hyper-personalised beauty product and routine discovery and shop app. Smudg eliminates the guesswork, empowering people to discover, match, and shop right, minimising product wastage and saving them time and money spent on product trials. 

Sensegrass

Sensegrass is making the first Smart Soil Sensing NPK Sensors for pesticide and fertilizers detection using IoT and AI algorithm-based prediction software.

Meatiply

Meatiply is a Singapore-based cultivated meat start-up aiming to produce safe, sustainable, authentic and tasty cultivated meat cuts with a strong focus on Asian cuisines.

Adirelounge

Adirelounge is transforming agricultural waste into sustainable textiles. They are committed to addressing the issue of banana waste by producing premium-quality, eco-friendly textiles from discarded banana stems and leaves.

Hangles  

Hangles, a Resale Fashion Community with a mission to make zero-waste fashion possible.

KarmaV 

KarmaV enables organisations of any scale to build their employer brand, simplify the recruitment process, and measure and improve the effectiveness of core recruiting metrics and workplace diversity goals.

Wizher 

Wizher is a digital laundry management platform that streamlines operations and improves the overall laundry experience for both shop owners and their customers.

TradeMonday

TradeMonday is the AIaaS Low-code Platform enabling the product, tenant and shopper recommendations for retailers, brand owners and shopping malls.

Weavair

WeavAir harnesses advanced sensor technology, algorithms and predictive analytics to manage high-value HVAC systems, improve indoor air quality, save energy & streamline operations.

Cocotel

COCOTEL is a chain of one-three-star hotels, resorts, and beachfront properties that provides quality rooms at a fraction of the cost. From overnight stays to long weekends, come and enjoy the scent of salty sea air and the comforts of a cool, clean beach haven.

Taking the next step to TOP100

Moving ahead after a careful evaluation, these startups have taken another stride towards qualifying for this year’s prestigious TOP100.

If you’re one of the founders of these amazing startups, expect a message from e27 soon. Our team will be reaching out to discuss the next steps in your application process. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or need assistance. We’re here to help!

Also read: Why your startup deserves to take part in the 2023 TOP100

Got an awesome startup with mind-blowing ideas that can outshine the competition in the region? Well, here’s your chance to join the 2023 TOP100 and strut your stuff in front of top-notch investors at this year’s Echelon Asia Summit! Don’t wait for another second—register for TOP100 right here and let the world see what you’ve got!

The post Meet the next 12 frontrunners for this year’s TOP100 program appeared first on e27.

In April, ShowHeroes Group announced its plan to acquire Singapore-based adtech company Intelligent Video Solutions (iVS) for an undisclosed value. This acquisition is part of the organisation’s plan to expand into the Asia Pacific (APAC) market, including Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Japan.

Prior to the acquisition, iVS served over 208 million unique users each month through its programmatic marketplace, made up of Asia’s independent publishers, advertisers, broadcasters and DooH providers. The company leverages machine learning to enable monetisation and consumer engagement through its AVOD platform, proprietary video player and smart technology.

The acquisition transformed iVS CEO Milan Reinartz to the role of ShowHeroes SVP, APAC.

“We were already market leaders in Southeast Asia (SEA). Now, we have our sights set on firming up our position, growing revenue, and moving into new markets, such as Japan,” explains Reinartz.

“ConnectedTV (CTV) is a key focus for 2023 and 2024. We’re going to be bringing programmatic advertising into the over-the-top (OTT) environment, something that’s still in its nascent stages in SEA.”

The company also aims to introduce its Better Media ethos into the Asian ecosystem, a framework that includes sustainable media, responsibility over carbon emissions, data ethics, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

To understand more about what this acquisition means for the future of ShowHeroes in the region, e27 writes to Reinartz and ShowHeroes Group CEO and Co-Founder Ilhan Zengin.

Also Read: iVS rakes in US$3.2M led by Tin Men Capital to expand its video ad platform beyond SEA

What this M&A means

Reinartz says that he and Zengin first got in touch to discuss forming a partnership, but they quickly realised the ways that both companies “overlapped and synergised”. He explains how the acquisition is going to make a difference in how the company operates.

“The commercial benefits are very impactful. With more resources, global backing, and case studies for global advertisers, we have a far larger scope than before we were on board with ShowHeroes Group,” he says.

“We’re also merging our technology and operations. We’re consolidating features such as ad and video player formats to make an already brilliant tech stack even better along with integrating iVS’ SSAI technology into the ShowHeroes VOD and live-streaming products. With exclusive PMP deals for publishers, ShowHeroes Studios’ in-house video content production, and access to ShowHeroes’ global network of independent, premium publishers, it’s a very exciting time for us and our partners and clients.”

This acquisition will positively impact ShowHeroes’s growth strategy by increasing its efficiency while maximising the breadth and depth of its product.

“We now also have access to a global intelligence system through ShowHeroes, with all its learnings, rather than relying solely on our local expertise – in the principle of economies at scale, the cost advantages we’re seeing from this acquisition are brilliant,” Reinartz says.

Also Read: Monk’s Hill-backed iVS launches in-stream video ads marketplace; names new CTO, CRO

“Furthermore, evolving from a successful startup company – with all the work that entails – to now being part of a larger global company and team allows us to fully focus on our customers and partners, both old and new.”

But this acquisition is not without challenges, especially in an ecosystem such as SEA where exits remain a rarity.

“The operations team and I spent a lot of our time with our eyes firmly on all details concerning the acquisition and were unavailable for other day-to-day functions. It was important for us to stay closely aligned as a team and structure our goals in an OKR framework. This allowed us to run our business relatively smoothly during this intense period. There’s a saying, ‘Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast’. That was well worth bearing in mind,” he elaborates.

He also stresses that M&A does not have to be all politics.

“It’s more important to build a foundation of trust, cultural alignment, and a shared, long-term vision. Only work with people you like. Surprisingly, internal stakeholder alignment proved to be more cumbersome than external negotiations. Make sure to pay it forward and have your ship in order in order to move swiftly,” he says.

“Being in the C-Suite during an acquisition, you’ll receive hundred-and-one bits of advice. Filter that advice, and then follow your gut. Nobody knows better than you if the timing is right or not,” he continues.

Also Read: Why Southeast Asia’s locally owned adtech and martech industry will survive the recession

Seizing opportunities in APAC

At the same opportunity, Zengin explains the key strengths that drew them to iVS–now ShowHeroes.

“What stood out to us was the most important thing an acquisition could provide: their team and leadership. We felt great about our connection since day one,” he says.

He further explains the role the Asia Pacific (APAC) market plays in the company’s growth plan.

“APAC is one of the fastest-growing regions next to LATAM in terms of both economy and ad spend, with just over US$197 billion in total digital spend in all of Asia Pacific during 2023. The APAC market has enormous potential for digital media. We’re here to take it as far as we can with the full force of our connections, expertise, and technology,” Zengin says.

“What’s also special is that the APAC region’s potential is not relegated to publishers and advertisers within those countries themselves – a lot of campaigns from around the globe include the APAC market in their scope, so the market’s potential exceeds its local population.”

In order to win this market, M&A plays an important role in ShowHeroes’s growth strategy.

“ShowHeroes Group has had very strong organic growth since our inception – we’ve been out-performing the market at a high pace – however, we’ve long recognised that the digital media space is one of consolidation, not domination. Local presence is absolutely key in digital advertising and that’s best achieved through M&A. When done correctly, it builds a local presence effectively overnight with the newly-acquired experts who are deeply connected to that market,” he says.

He also reveals that ShowHeroes might acquire another company in the near future.

“As a company, we’re very opportunistic when it comes to growth – as long as we have the means, we won’t pass up brilliant opportunities to grow our Hero family,” Zengin closes.

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Echelon Asia Summit 2023 is bringing together APAC’s leading startups, corporates, policymakers, industry leaders, and investors to Singapore this June 14-15. Learn more and get tickets here. Echelon also features the TOP100 stage, where startups get the chance to pitch to 5000+ delegates, among other benefits like a chance to connect with investors, visibility through e27 platform, and other prizes. Join TOP100 here.

Image Credit: ShowHeroes

The post Following iVS acquisition, this is how ShowHeroes plans to win APAC market appeared first on e27.

Glints is one of the few companies that raised late-stage investment in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Singapore-based online career discovery and development platform has since grown fast. However, the current economic situation has brought some new challenges for the talent platform.

In this interview, Glints Co-Founder and CEO Oswald Yeo talks about the new challenges and how the company tackles them, the market, and the learnings the company made.

Excerpts:

How have the past 2-3 years been for Glints from a business growth perspective?

At Glints, we continue to help over 120 million people to grow their careers and to be the leading talent platform in Southeast Asia. We continue to double down on our efforts to grow our employer base globally and talent base in Southeast Asia, while focusing on creating deeper value for professionals and employers with product and talent innovation.

Since 2022, our employer base has grown to 60,000 global and regional startups and enterprise clients including AIA, Ikea, GetGo, KKday, and Gameloft. Our talent base has grown to 5 million.

The company also sees positive contribution margins across all major business units, with Indonesia and Vietnam markets continuing to be the biggest contributors. We have also been hiring (albeit more conservatively) for our product, engineering, and data teams.

Looking at the macros, we continue to be bullish on employers globally hiring talent in Southeast Asia given our strong talent community in the region and to save costs.

We also continue to see employers outside Southeast Asia looking to tap into our strong talent pool. In Hong Kong, China, Australia, and Japan, employers are looking to hire strong business development and tech talent overseas as they expand their business footprint and as the local talent pool becomes more competitive and costly.

This is reflected in encouraging trends in our data. On the demand side, Glints’s revenues have been growing at 88 per cent at a three-year CAGR. And on the supply side, our marketplace job applications are up 98 per cent y-o-y.

Also Read: Non-revenue generating jobs tend to be more affected in the current downturn: Glints CEO

We remain confident in the prospects and opportunities for the technology and human capital industries in Southeast Asia. As employers all around the world look to be more cost-efficient, remote and cross-border teams in Southeast Asia will be increasingly attractive.

Do we see an end to the raise-cash-burn-cash growth model and the emergence of the ‘make profits, sustain & grow’ model?

We certainly see an industry shift towards the ‘make profits, sustain, and grow’ model. The concept of blitz scaling is mostly foregone as VCs (and their LPs) need a clear path to profitability.

At Glints, we continue to stay true to our overall company strategy, though we like many other startups, need to adapt and be more disciplined in our approach. This means being laser-focused on being lean and operationally efficient.

What learnings can early or growth-stage companies make from late-stage companies?

The key learnings are:

1) It’s always who before what. Pay extra attention and time to get the people right at all levels.

2) Be disciplined and stringent in recruiting the right talent for every role at every level. Prioritise culture fit, mission alignment, and resourcefulness. As a startup, they may not check every box but if they demonstrate the ability to adapt and grow, this is more valued.

At Glints, we have a lengthy but highly effective A-Players (i.e. high performers) recruitment process. We also remind ourselves to not give in to urgency bias.

How is the mindset and cultural shift happening internally, since we are in a high-interest rate environment and funding isn’t going to be as easy as before?

Not unique to any startup, we’ve had to make hard decisions that impacted every team member. While we have always believed in persevering through challenges and being resourceful in the face of adversity, we are not immune to the current environment and needed to find ways to adapt our business.

In this process, we remained steadfast and understood the need to be as transparent and communicative to every one of our Glintstars as possible on where the business stands, where we are going, and why we need to make certain decisions.

How are startups tackling talent issues?

Across the board, we are seeing startups being more conservative in who they are bringing onto the team even if they are in a financially strong position. Startups who are looking to stay default alive may expand existing team members’ roles. We’ve also seen founders taking on more operational roles, taking on the responsibility of product or business development officer.

In general, tech roles such as software engineering, product, and data science will continue to be sought-after in Southeast Asia. To fill the gap, we see three trends. One is that while salaries continue to increase, the growth rate will be much lower than in previous years from upwards of 30 per cent to 10-20 per cent per annum. So, for startups that are in a good position, now is a good time to hire strong tech talent.

Second, Singapore-based businesses are building teams to complement a Singaporean or Singapore-based core, usually at the more senior levels, with remote teams built in and around teams. At Glints, for example, we help a lot of employers based in the city-state to tap into both Singapore and the region’s talent pool to build such teams that can have a hub in Singapore supported by developers in Indonesia and Vietnam, customer service, or back-office in the Philippines and so on.

Third, global employers are paying closer attention to Southeast Asia’s tech talent pool, particularly in Hong Kong, China, Australia, and Japan. SMEs are looking to build teams to support digital transformation. We are currently working with employers to fill tech and business development roles as companies shift to the path to profitability.

Chinese companies we have been speaking to look to expand into Southeast Asia and looking to make their first sales and business development hires. The hires are either extensions of their headquarters team or these hires are used to expand regionally or globally.

How does the current global economic slowdown affect your business, and what steps have you taken to mitigate any negative impacts? Have you noticed any changes in customer behaviour or demand, and how have you responded?

At this time, we are confronted with two hard truths:

1) We don’t know when the market slowdown will end and 2) there will be a continued slowdown in hiring in the meantime as economic recovery is uncertain. How this translates is that employers will be more conservative and cautious in making hiring decisions and there is a shift to hiring revenue-generating roles such as business development, sales, and marketing.

At Glints, we are taking the following steps to support our client base.

Also Read: Tech companies lay off, now or never for smaller startup

First, as employers are becoming more cost-conscious, we are helping global and Singapore-based startups and SMEs across the region save costs by building remote teams across Southeast Asia (e.g. Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia).

Second, with digital acceleration due to COVID-19, we see increased demand from SMEs to build tech teams to support in digital transformation.

Third, for Glints, we continue to focus on strengthening our own core fundamentals to better support our clients.

How has your financial strategy changed in light of the current market conditions, and what measures have you taken to ensure long-term sustainability?

As the current market conditions become uncertain, our clients’ demands have been affected. We have become more prudent in our financial strategy with more focus on runway management and operational efficiencies.

We have taken measures from tightening budgets across different functions, reducing the cash proportion in our compensation, and rigorously reducing potential inefficient spending.

Can you speak of any recent fundraising efforts, and how those efforts were impacted by the current economic climate?

We closed our US$50 million Series D round in the middle of the pandemic (from investors such as DCM Ventures, Lavender Hill Capital, Monk’s Hill Ventures, and Fresco Capital), which put us in a strong cash position. However, we continue to take proactive steps to strengthen our core fundamentals and to be adaptable and disciplined in today’s environment.

We will use the capital to deploy more efficiently and strategically toward long-term investments such as product development. We also have more than enough runway to ride the current downturn to allow us to invest in the long term to serve our talent and employer base.

Can you discuss any cost-cutting measures you’ve implemented, and how those measures have impacted your business operations? Did you lay off employees to stay afloat in the market?

In response to the current market environment, we took immediate cost-cutting measures. We froze hiring, reduced perks and expenses and the entire management team took voluntary pay cuts. Yet, this was not enough.

While layoffs were our last resort, we realised that to adapt to the bear market and strengthen the resilience of our business, we must restructure and operate as efficiently and lean as possible.

As such, we conducted a restructuring exercise in December where we reduced our workforce by 18 per cent. This decision was not taken lightly and we have taken all measures to ensure this is a one-time occurrence and that there will not be another restructure shortly. Despite the short-term disruption to the business, our company has remained resilient and has gradually recovered as of today.

Have you adjusted your growth projections or other key performance indicators in light of the current economic climate?

We have adjusted our growth projections to focus more on growing efficiencies and contribution margins this year. We are more focused on efficiency uplift and paving the way to sustainable growth. At the same time, we continue to regularly review and have adjusted our phasing of expected growth given current market conditions. On the other hand, we will continue to invest in our products and diversify our revenue streams. We are also confident in our projections for user acquisition.

Can you speak of any market opportunities that have emerged as a result of the economic downturn, and how your company is capitalising on those opportunities?

We are seeing increased market opportunities from 1) global employers particularly in Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, and China looking to build remote teams in Southeast Asia to save costs and tap into a strong talent pool. These hires are either an extension of their headquarters team or part of the company’s expansion into Southeast Asia or globally, 2) Singapore-based businesses are building teams to complement a Singaporean or Singapore-based core, usually at the more senior levels, with remote teams built in and around teams.

At Glints, for example, we help a lot of Singapore-based employers to tap into both Singapore and the region’s talent pool to build such teams that can have a hub in Singapore supported by developers in Indonesia and Vietnam, customer service or back-office in the Philippines and so on.

We are helping companies in a few ways 1) helping them recruit for roles given our strong Southeast Asia network at 3-5x cost savings 2) our Managed Talent service where we support the onboarding process, administrative and legal requirements, and any other needs in onboarding and managing a remote team.

How do you balance the need for short-term financial stability with the long-term goals of your business?

Our long-term goal is to become the largest talent community and ecosystem in Southeast Asia. To do that, we still have to invest continuously in marketing and product development/innovations to realise our long-term goals. To balance the need for short-term financial stability, we are pacing our investments with care, keeping a close tab on revenue and customer acquisition costs.

Can you discuss any plans you have for diversifying your revenue streams or expanding into new markets in light of the current economic climate?

We have our geographical expansion plan to serve more employers in China, Australia, Japan, and Hong Kong. At the same time, we are also diversifying our revenue streams in Indonesia by expanding our online product suites which allow employers to have better access to our talents on the platform.

We are also diversifying our client base working more closely with SMEs and sectors that have been resilient during this downturn including FMCG and financial services.

How have you been able to maintain a strong company culture and keep your team motivated during these challenging times?

It is mission-critical for the leadership to constantly communicate and reinforce our core values at Glints. We also want to encourage employees at all levels to participate and provide their views on company direction to foster a sense of belonging. We encourage teams to also work from the office to connect and collaborate. We have since implemented a hybrid work-from-office arrangement across all offices. We continue to create more feedback loops and open dialogues to address any cultural shifts.

With this said, we openly share progress, plans, and challenges. At the end of the day, we focus on anchoring the team back to our mission and purpose. We share success stories and stories of the impact we continue to make on the 120 million lives and tens of thousands of employers we currently serve.

Can you speak of any innovation or new product development initiatives your company has undertaken in response to the current economic climate?

A key focus for Glints when it comes to product innovation in the near term is shifting towards a mobile-first, user experience. We’ve seen triple-digit growth in the last quarter alone in our mobile user growth and adoption.

To increase our talent pool, we are rolling out upgrades in candidates’ job search and job recommendation relevancy. We are launching chat-based application features, and also plan to introduce new features including video and interview scheduling on our platform.

For example, a new chat feature we will launch on our mobile app will allow talent to directly reach out to hiring managers, reducing the friction for talent to discover relevant job opportunities and connect with employers.

At the same time, we are ramping up our college partnership programmes in Indonesia, supporting fresh graduates with career discovery and job search tools to navigate the downturn.

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