In addition to Honestbee, we also have updates from UrbanClap, Venture Catalysts, and Indonesia’s financial services authority

Honestbee applies for court-supervised restructuring process – Deal Street Asia

Grocery and food delivery startup Honestbee announced that it has made an application to the Singapore High Court to commence a court-supervised restructuring process, Deal Street Asia wrote.

According to the report, the company intends to propose a scheme of arrangement to the court to restructure its liabilities and to seek a moratorium against enforcement actions and legal proceedings.

“Honestbee has taken this imperative step to protect and preserve the value of its businesses while it restructures its operations across Asia. The court-supervised restructuring process is in the best interest of Honestbee’s stakeholders as the company can focus on re-evaluating the business without interference; streamline operations, increase existing efficiencies and bring down the cost structure,” it announced.

India’s UrbanClap raises US$75 million – TechCrunch

Indian marketplace for freelance labour UrbanClap announced a US$75 million Series E funding round led by Tiger Global, TechCrunch wrote.

Existing investors such as Steadview Capital and Vy Capital also participated in the funding round.

The startup also announced that “some early investors” had sold portions of their stake.

Operating in India, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi, UrbanClap matches service workers (such as cleaners or beauticians) with potential customers.

It claimed to work with 20,000 service professionals with around 450,000 transactions taking place each month.

Also Read: Honestbee names Ong Lay Ann as new CEO

Indonesia shut down 826 illegal fintech services in 2019 – Bloomberg

Indonesia’s financial services authority (OJK) announced that it has shut down 826 illegal fintech startups this year alone, Bloomberg wrote.

The regulators admitted that they struggle to keep pace with the illegal services –who operate without a licence– as they operate on multiple platforms from websites, mobile apps, to social media.

It has turned to the police and the public for help in tracking them.

Venture Catalysts launches US$43M fund – Deal Street Asia

Startup incubator and accelerator Venture Catalysts announced the launch of an INR300 crore (US$43.4 million) 9Unicorns Fund, Deal Street Asia reported.

The fund is searching for early stage startups in various sectors such as electric vehicles, mobility, AR/VR, AI and ML, fintech, retail, and FMCG.

Venture Catalysts wants to invest in 100 companies every year.

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From IoT-based solutions to online organic grocery stores, these agritech startups support the country’s effort to increase high-tech farming production value

In a February 2018’s article released by Vietnam Investment Review, the country’s agricultural sector’s GDP contributions were reported to be in a modest state judging from the numbers.

It says that agriculture only accounts for 16 per cent of GDP, while labourers in the sector account for 42 per cent of the total workforce and up to 70 per cent of the population in rural areas.

There is quite a gap in the numbers shown, which often causes the harvest oversupplies with bumper crops that decrease price. This is something that the government has paid attention to, labelling it as “chronic disease of the domestic agricultural sector”.

In response to this situation, Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development reportedly has planned for 500 hi-tech agricultural cooperatives and to increase the high-tech farming production value by five times by 2020. The ministry planned that each province and city would have at least three hi-tech agricultural cooperatives.

Also Read: These are the 5 game-changers in Indonesia’s agritech sector

According to another report in January 2018 by Vietnam Investment Review, the ministry said it was important to develop a production value chain of high-added value farming products and to promote the linkage of cooperatives with enterprises, as well as to encourage technology transfer and provide preferential loans to agricultural cooperatives.

With Vietnam’s startup scene burgeoning, it made perfect sense for the country to turn into technology for solutions. In fact, there are five detectable agritech startups that have been making waves with their solutions to the number one problem the country’s facing in agriculture: fragmentation in household farming.

The five startups are:

Demeter

Pham Ngoc Anh Tung founded Demeter in 2017 after deploying a US$4.4 million Cau Dat farming project in Ho Chi Minh City. Tung did it while partnering with Intel Corporation to continue the expansion of their customer network.

At first, Demeter launched an Internet of Things (IoT)-based system at Cau Dat Farm, inspired by international farms overseas. The IoT system allows for automation that replace human involvement and was proven to be beneficial to farmers, helping farmers doing management work, maintaining productivity, and product quality.

The IoT system Demeter introduced at Cau Dat Farm consists of three main parts. The first one is Connected Edge, hardware that controls tasks such as pumps, irrigation systems, micro-climate control systems, drones, weather stations, camera systems, and sensor systems. It connects and pre-handle data through gateways before moving to the cloud.

The second part is storage, equipped with the processing and data analysis, turning data into insight on the cloud.

The third part is the identification of all agriculture tasks based on analysed information and data.

The system all depends on the equipment, providing actionable information that’ll help users understand what their production status is.

Also Read: 7 Asian startups putting the spotlight on agriculture

Nine months after introducing the IoT system, it was reported that the farm started to see positive signs, with flowers, green tea, fruit and vegetables reaching productivity targets without compromising quality.

The focus of this startup is now to do expansion to countries such as Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand.

MimosaTEK

MimosaTEK was established in October 2014 by Nguyen Khac Minh Tri after he resigned from his position as the CEO of the Saigon Institute for Techniques and Technology.

In e27’s coverage, MimosaTEK is described as a cloud-based system that lets farmers control and manage farms with the use of sensors that communicates through radiofrequency waves to monitor the environment, alerts on unfavourable environmental factors, crop progress monitoring, crop database, and remote irrigation execution through mobile phones. With such implementation, the system allows farmers to manage crops and farm plan based on collected data on daily environment and historical crop database.

The company offers two key parts of its large farms’ management solutions: the sensor equipment to measure parameters and a smartphone app that helps to show water levels and providing advice to farmers on planting.

MimosaTEK was the winner of Vietnamese round of the Seedstar World Competition and has competed at the Seedstars Summit in Switzerland back in March 2017.

One of MimosaTEK’s users for more than a year, Nong Phat High-Tech Agriculture JSC, said that it managed to save 10-15 per cent in total water and fertiliser used for eight hybrid muskmelon hybrid greenhouses. MimosaTEK’s application also allows just one worker to cover all the 2,100sqm greenhouses, instead of eight workers.

With up to 70 per cent of the population in Vietnam lives in rural areas doing largely manual and experience-based farming practices, MimosaTEK said it seeks to have one or two per cent of the proportion use their service.

Sero.ai

Sero.ai is the AI-based startup that seeks to overcome erratic crop production problem by connecting farmers and agriculture experts through mobile internet. It works by tracking the plant’s health and detects pest diseases using pictures.

Also Read: Meet the 10 agritech, foodtech startups pitching for Future Food Asia’s US$100K grand prize

Described itself as a crop intelligence company, the company that was founded in 2016 collects in-field data throughout the entire growth stage with images and sensors to provide preventive recommendations via computer vision technology, and production insights via partnerships with farmers and exporters.

There are not many activities around the AI-based startup thus far, but it did mention the latest investment deal it received, which was worth US$20,000.

Naturally Vietnam

Based in Hanoi, Naturally Vietnam was co-founded by husband and wife Mai and Patrice Gautier. Mai grew up in Hanoi and quickly realised that there was no transparency in where food comes from and how certifications were mostly suspicious.

So Mai and her husband created Naturally Vietnam, a platform that provides traceable food products, sourced from six farms in the city’s Soc Son district. To make it happen, the startup even helped build the farms up from scratch by offering startup loans of over US$2,000.

In an article by Forbes, Naturally Vietnam claims that the livestock farms are veterinarian-supervised, use chemical-free processes and are easily traceable in terms of food origins and processes.

Naturally Vietnam provides an online grocery shop and within-24 hours delivery allowing customers to shop from a total of over 300 products of fresh fruit, meat, and poultry paid with direct bank transfer or cash-on-delivery.

It puts the name of the farm they sourced from on the packaging and equips their staff with products knowledge to assist customers. The farms are also open for visiting.

Hachi

Hachi helps vegetables planting via smartphone using an IoT system. The crop app was founded by CEO Dang Xuan Truong, claimed to be suitable for customers living in the city.

The IoT-based application helps reduce risks in the planting process, such as drought and a lack of soil nutrition. “By controlling these aspects, productivity increases from 30 to 50 per cent compared to traditional planting methods,” said Truong.

Also Read: Taking a glimpse into agritech startups in Thailand

Hachi works by allowing Farmers entering data about the status of their rice through a smartphone app. The data is sent to the processing unit that will cultivate information about soil, climate, and plant growth into a quick summary with advice.

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Managing a creative team means finding harmony between the irrational creative process and careful planning

It’s creativity what sells your products. Beautiful designs, catchy headlines, innovative solutions, convenient features, and so much more.

Doing creative work is a complex process that includes more than just coming up with brilliant ideas.

The final result of your creative teams’ work depends on how the process is organized, and the manager needs to be aware of what encourages creativity and what ruins it.

The phrasing “creativity flow” suggests that it’s a barely manageable process, but it’s not quite so.

Providing an environment that encourages creativity while complying with requirements and timelines is the main part of a creative team’s manager.

Also Read: Creativity is humanity’s only advantage against AI, but can bots be creative in their own right?

So, how do you align the creative and business processes?

Traits of creative people that matter at work

It’s hardly possible to lead a team without understanding the personalities of the people that you manage. Of course, creative people can have various traits, but there are several work-relevant features that they have in common.

Managers need to take these traits into account when communicating with their teams and organizing work. Creative people are:

• curious and open to exploration;
• constantly pushing the envelope and prone to taking risks;
• emotionally sensitive and especially sensitive to aesthetics;
• easily adaptable and comfortable with chaos;
• more autonomous than many other types of employees;
• often nonconforming, sometimes radical in expressing their opinions, and tend to question and challenge rules;
• they rarely have leadership skills or ambitions;
• they don’t tolerate boredom, don’t see any value in rigid work processes, and struggle with formal procedures.

The do’s: steps to build an efficient management process

Organising an efficient management process on a team of creatives is mostly about maintaining a comfortable environment that doesn’t restrict creativity, and ensuring delivery of expected result.

Here’s what a manager needs to pay attention to when organizing work on a team of creatives:

• Set boundaries and goals

A blank slate leaves so much room for a creative process that you never know what the final result will be.

Be clear with your team about what outcome is expected. Provide workflows, specifications, and style guides to comply with. Also, share the big picture with the team: it will help them understand what’s the right direction of their work.

• Communicate

Being more autonomous than other workers, creative professionals sometimes tend to make decisions on their own and ignore (or forget about) requirements and timelines.

Inform your team on the plans, roadmaps, and time-bound milestones. Encourage your team members to escalate possible problems to you, and don’t be forgiving to delays.

• Ensure quality

Make sure it’s clear to your team members that they’re creating art for the sake of the business, not for the sake of the art itself, and that certain level of quality is required.

Don’t accept subpar work, and if the result doesn’t meet the specifications, provide constructive feedback on how exactly it doesn’t match set requirements and how to correct that.

Also Read: The smart way to harness creativity

• Plan for inspiration

It’s not possible to come up with great ideas constantly, or at least within a predictable schedule. Managers need to take this into account on work planning steps.

Allocate time for thinking, finding inspiration, generating new ideas, and trying out new concepts. Be as flexible as time and resource limits for your team’s tasks allow: plan necessary time in advance and make sure it’s sufficient for finding the best solution to the task.

Consider including an inspirational part in your team’s work processes: brainstorming, coaching sessions, workshops, etc.

• Minimize control

Constant control invites frustration and demotivation – not only for creatives.

That’s why it’s reasonable to limit monitoring to what’s really important. Boil down regular control to the general roadmap, important milestones, and deadlines, and avoid checking in every now and then.

• Combine talents

Creatives struggle with formal processes and routine operations.

So if a task requires both a creative solution and attention to details, it’s worth organizing groups or tandems of creative individuals and employees who tend to focus on details, operational procedures, and organizational side of the work process.

They will complement the abilities of each other and achieve the necessary quality of the end result, as they’ll be performing work they are best at.

• Show recognition and appreciation

Appreciation means not less than money for creative individuals. Anyone invests emotionally in their work, but creatives tend to see the work process as bringing ideas to life, and they want to see it valued.

Make sure your appreciation is visible to both individuals and the entire team – this will work as a powerful motivator for everyone.

• Encourage collaboration

Creative team members are usually more autonomous and less collaborative, so make sure their activity is aligned with the team’s goals. Organize active communication on the team and reserve time for exchanging ideas and thoughts.

Matching each individual’s activities with the general goal is however not the only reason why communication matters: talking to others and sharing ideas is also a great source of inspiration for all participants.

The don’ts: common mistakes

Any project or team manager has lessons they learned the hard way. While some mistakes are inevitable (sad but true), being aware of the most common ones helps to avoid major pitfalls and achieve better results. Here’s the list of the main don’ts for management of a creative team:

• Don’t micromanage

Nothing kills creativity faster than someone looking over the shoulder, so micromanagement, frequent check-ins and constant oversight are a no-go.

Don’t be the helicopter boss who hovers over the team the entire time: not only you’ll undermine your authority – you will also impair team performance and jeopardize the satisfactory outcome.

• Don’t allow creative chaos

It’s a common misbelief that creatives deliver best results when their work scope is a blank sheet.

A vague description of what needs to be done might be an exciting opportunity for self-actualization, but in terms of work, it’s misleading.

This applies to unclear processes too: they create disorganization and frustrate team members that have to spend their time trying to sort out organizational flows instead of actually working.

• Don’t be bureaucratic either

No one professional, focused on their creative process, is interested in filling in multiple documents, describing all minor and unnecessary details, and accounting for every small action they take at work.

And while a certain level of control and documentation is necessary, assigning too many mundane tasks to creative professionals or charging them with administrative work demoralizes them by drawing their attention away from their actual work.

• Don’t stick to the “one size fits all” approach

It can seem sometimes that a talented professional would be a great manager. In reality, it’s not always true, even when an employee themselves wants a management role.

It’s common among creatives to not have leadership traits, so be mindful about assigning new roles on the team. Also, consider the necessary amount of training required: it’s very likely that a creative person will need more training hours than anyone else.

• Don’t be afraid of failures

Any manager has faced failures at some point in their career, and the most common lesson learnt from them is, unsurprisingly, taking fewer risks.

When minimizing risks related to creative work, make sure you’re not out if tune with your team: remember that risk-taking is one of the prerequisites for finding creative solutions. Discouraging this in the fear of failure reduces innovation and frustrates creativity.

Also Read: 6 ways to inspire creativity in your office

Summary

When organizing work, make space for inspiration, exploration and failure. Combine different talents to get all aspects of the work done properly.

Be mindful of what motivates your team, and create a comfortable and productive environment for creative professionals.

 

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Join our e27 Telegram group here, or our e27 contributor Facebook page here.

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An edutech startup and a service that helps you to cut down the queue line share the throne for Startup of the Month in July

Can’t believe this actually happened. We asked the e27 Community to vote for the Startup of the Month winner on our Telegram Group and Twitter handle, and we came out with two winners!

The first one is AI-powered school administration platform Edusuite, which had recently announced an over US$235,000 seed funding round from the Manila Angel Investors Network (MAIN). Two of the startup’s clients –Batangas Eastern Colleges (BEC) and Sumulong College of Arts and Sciences– also participated in the funding round.

Edusuite stole our attention for providing a service that helps schools optimise their resources and make smart decisions.

The other winner is QueQ, a Thai startup that aims to help customers queue for their spot in a dining or retail outlet with the touch of a button –from the comfort of their own home.

QueQ has recently raised a US$2.8 million Series A funding round from True Incube and Bon Angels Venture Partner.

Also Read: Startup of the Month, June: Indonesian tech-enabled coffee chain Kopi Kenangan

The startup stole our hearts with their unique service and rapid expansion move –it already has a presence in Malaysia and Thailand and is looking forward to entering Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong.

For the runner-up, this month we also have two startups vying for the same spot — Brunei’s Memori and Malaysia’s Naluri.

Memori is a legacy-planning platform that has recently raised additional seed funding round from an undisclosed member of an Asian royal family.

Naluri, a healthtech startup founded by former iflix CEO Azran Osman-Rani, has recently raised a US$1.5 million oversubscribed pre-Series A funding round led by Global Founders Capital.

Congratulations and best of luck to the companies!

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In addition to Didi Chuxing and BP, we also have updates from Progcap, the Indonesian government’s electric car ambition, and ByteDance

Didi Chuxing, BP to build e-vehicle charging infrastructure in China – TechCrunch

Ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing and British oil and gas giant BP today announced the formation of a joint venture to build electric-vehicle charging infrastructure in China, TechCrunch reported.

The service will be available for both Didi and non-Didi drivers.

BP’s first charging site in Guangzhou has already been connected to XAS (Xiaoju Automobile Solutions), a platform that was launched by Didi in April 2018 for all its vehicle-related services.

The announcement of the joint venture came in just a week after Didi announced a US$600 million funding from Toyota Motor Corporation, which enabled Didi to set up a joint venture with GAC Toyota Motor to provide vehicle-related services to Didi drivers.

India’s Progcap raises US$5M funding led by Sequoia – Deal Street Asia

Delhi-based fintech startup Progcap has raised a US$5 million Series A funding round led by Sequoia India, Deal Street Asia reported.

The funding round also included the participation of MV Nair, chairman of Credit Information Bureau (India) Ltd (CIBBIL); Sandeep Tandon, co-founder of Freecharge; as well as existing investors GrowX Ventures Fund and Somak Ghosh.

Progcap is a platform that aims to facilitate debt capital for underserved micro and small businesses in India. It was founded in 2017 by Pallavi Shrivastava and Himanshu Chandra.

The funding will be used to strengthen its operations, support product development, and accelerate pan-India expansion.

Also Read: Today’s top tech news, Feb 14: China’s Didi Chuxing injects US$100M into OYO

Indonesia to incentivise electric-car manufacturers and ownership – Bloomberg

Indonesia is planning incentives for electric-car manufacturers and drivers in order to help bolster a sector that has already lured investment from Toyota Motor Corp and SoftBank Group Corp, Bloomberg reported.

Citing a draft government strategy that is awaiting approval from President Joko Widodo, the plan is said to include lower taxes for manufacturers and buyers.

It also included benefits for owners such as special parking areas.

ByteDance to build a search engine to compete with Baidu – Kr.Asia

ByteDance has begun the recruitment process to build a general search engine for all internet users, Kr. Asia wrote.

Citing a WeChat announcement from the company, the move is seen as a plan to compete against Baidu

The search engine will be built by the same team that has built search functions inside ByteDance’s apps such as Jinri Toutiao and TikTok.

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How you design your pitch deck gives investors an insight into how you plan on building your business

 

Creating a good pitch deck is hard, creating a great pitch deck is even harder.

Investors look through applications from startups: a lot of them are great, some of them…not so much. Why?

One of the main reasons is that the pitch deck is incorrect or incomplete.

Here are a few hints and guidelines on what is expected from a pitch deck. That way, you can increase your chances of leaving a lasting impression.

By the end of the pitch deck, the following questions will be answered:

• 1.   Why you?
• 2.   Why this?
• 3.   Why now?

We often see simple mistakes, such as missing information, overcrowded slides, a lack of research, confusing or contradictory statements, typos, etc.

Also Read: How to impress with your startup pitch

Take extra care to avoid these blunders, please! This will help us and especially you!

How can you avoid this?

Do your research and create a sound structure for your pitch deck.

Take the investors on a journey.
Show them all the aspects of your company that they want to and should know about.

A great place to start is to include the following dimensions and answer the following sample questions:

• 1.   Problem → What problem are you addressing?
• 2.   Solution → What solution do you offer?
• 3.   Product → What is your product?
• 4.   Vision → What’s your vision today, in a year, in five years?
• 5.   Market size → How big is your (addressable) market?
• 6.   Competition → Who are your competitors (direct and indirect)?
• 7.   Business Model → How does your business work? How do you plan to make money?
• 8.    Status and roadmap → Where are you today? What key milestones do you want to achieve in the next 12 months?
• 9.    Team → Who are you? Why are you the right team to build this?

Last but not least, the pitch deck design matters.

It is not expected from you to have your corporate identity completely figured out – or even having a simple logo.

However, you must prove to the investors that you have a good feel of the business. After all, an image is worth a thousand words.

Also Read: Pro pitch deck tips for beginners

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Join our e27 Telegram group here, or our e27 contributor Facebook page here.

Image Credit: Campaign Creators 

 

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Joshua Agusta shares how MDI Ventures made its calculated moves as an Indonesian VC firm long before it was cool to do so

Indonesian corporate venture capital (CVC) firm MDI Ventures has been reported to be in fundraising mode for its third vehicle. This time, the firm –which also has operations in Silicon Valley– aims to tap external investors.

In 2016, MDI Ventures launched a US$100-million single-LP fund from Indonesian state-owned Telkom Group, followed by a US$40-million fund in partnership with Telkomsel, the telco giant’s subsidiary.

In this interview with e27, Joshua Agusta, who is Vice President (Investment) at MDI Ventures, talks about the fund’s local operations which had witnessed three back-to-back exits within just a single month.

The early days

In the venture capital space, the term ‘exit’ is used to describe a point at which an investor sells its stake in a firm to realise gains or losses. For MDI Ventures, the three back-to-back exits it witnessed in a span of one month represent healthy capital gains.

According to him, it is not common for Indonesian VC firms to get exits as fast as MDI Ventures did, let alone in an overseas company. Agusta says that MDI Ventures managed to achieve this feat thanks to a carefully mapped-out move, crafted since its establishment in 2016.

“Basically, our strategy in the early days was to have a quick win. We will shadow the more established and seasoned VCs to learn from them as well as participating in their portfolios’ funding,” he explains.

Also Read: Indonesian digital payment startup Kredivo secures financing from Telkomsel’s VC arm, MDI Ventures

He speaks of the firm’s decision to invest in Whispir, an Australian cloud-based email, text messaging, and web chatting platform, which he dubs as a learning process.

In investing in Whispir, MDI Ventures followed the footsteps of Telstra. The local telco giant is already a seasoned investor through its VC arm Telstra Venture; by participating in the same round, MDI Ventures was able to establish a good rapport from early on.

Given that MDI Ventures’s LP at that time was Telkom, the decision to back a company that was already backed by an established telco entity made a lot of sense, says Agusta.

“We, of course, have a responsibility to show our LP that we can have a quick return, hence the venturing out overseas,” he stresses.

These are the three back-to-back exits from the VC:

Whispir

Whispir has commenced trading on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on June 19, following an oversubscribed IPO that raised AU$47 million (US$32 million) via the issue of 29.4 million shares at AU$1.60 (US$1.10) each.

The IPO comprised of a primary raise of AU$27 million (US$19 million) and a secondary sell-down by existing shareholders of AU$20 million (US$14 million).

At the IPO listing price, Whispir had a market capitalisation of AU$163 million (US$113 million).

According to Agusta, MDI Ventures was confident in backing Whispir because it has recorded a more than 100 per cent net negative monthly recurring revenue churn since 2013.

“For any SaaS company, this is a very impressive stats to have,” he says.

As for quality aspect, Agusta vouches that Whispir’s founding team members were solid and persistent, shown by the company’s ability to land multiple sales contracts from Fortune 500 companies and partner with world-class names in enterprise communications.

Red Dot Payment (RDP)

Singapore-based RDP is a fintech firm best-known its product RDP Connect, which focusses primarily on the hospitality industry. With RDP’s tools, clients such as hotel chains can introduce their own booking sites without the need for other booking engines or aggregators.

Naspers’ fintech company PayU announced that it had acquired a majority stake in RDP on July 5, as part of its expansion into Southeast Asia. While the details remain undisclosed, PayU has confirmed that it values RDP at US$65 million.

Also Read: Naspers unit PayU forays into Southeast Asia by acquiring Singapore startup Red Dot Payment

“For RDP, since 2016, the company has been growing its revenue at a double-digit rate month-on-month, with a healthy gross margin compared to other payments companies,” says Agusta regarding the VC’s investment in the company.

In terms of quality, RDP consisted of ex-banking industry veterans who mostly worked for Visa. For MDI Ventures, this showed a deep level of domain expertise, which is important for a highly-regulated industry such as payments.

Wavecell

On July 22, 2019, MDI Ventures announced that another exit was made from the acquisition of Singaporean cloud-based communication platform Wavecell by US-based 8×8 (NYSE: EGHT) as a part of its market entry strategy across Asia. The deal was worth approximately US$125 million.

Established in 2010, Wavecell helps businesses enhance customer experiences by offering SMS, chat apps, video interaction, and voice solutions for any platform.

The startup operates in key Southeast Asian markets such as Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Hong Kong.

The deal brings MDI Ventures to a total of three successful portfolio company exits in 2019, all of which have taken place simultaneously during the month of July.

The firm can now claim that it has cultivated a total of five success stories since the fund’s first investment in 2016.

“Wavecell is a great example of our firm backing a company based on a founding team with deep industry know-how, who are aiming to solve a real problem, in a relatively untapped space, at just the right time,” stresses Agusta.

MDI Ventures’ playbook

Agusta highlights that MDI Ventures is an independent entity with its own funding processes. It “combines a VC model with services in providing companies from Telkom Group with access to operational assistance and help in building startups’ growth engine after making a financial investment.”

When considering to invest in the company, MDI Ventures always approach the assessment from both the qualitative and quantitative side.

“On the quantitative side, strong traction and growth in their key operational metrics were important to us,” he explains.

In Whispir’s case, for example, some things that MDI Ventures considered were whether the business actually upsells and by how many per cent.

“They have a spread out footprint and their clients returned to use their offers,” Agusta says.

The first investment MDI Ventures made was in Japanese company Geniee. It is a platform to enable users to deliver ads to earn maximum revenue from pure advertisements, demand side platform (DSPs), real-time bidding through ad exchange, multiple ad networks, and affiliate ads.

True to its “quick win” strategy, Geniee exited in 2017 and is now listed in Tokyo Stock Exchange Market.

In the future, MDI Ventures plans to diversify its portfolio, particularly by backing up-and-coming unicorns in Indonesia, such as fintech startups Finaccel and Kredivo.

“We started off with capturing a quick win opportunity overseas, and now we have shifted focus to go after startups in Indonesia. It’s all a part of our portfolio mix. From a total of 32 companies we’ve backed so far, there are those that we’ve invested in to have a return, and there are companies that we believe will exit. It’s all pure strategy,” Agusta elaborates.

Also Read: Indonesian digital payment startup Kredivo secures financing from Telkomsel’s VC arm, MDI Ventures

Recent data shows that 2018 saw a surge in Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) activity worldwide. For the whole year, there were 2,740 deals on record, while roughly US$53 billion was disclosed in CVC funding for tech startups.

Asia attracted 38 per cent of all CVC deals in 2018, up from 31 per cent in 2017.

“What matters is that our investment thesis is working, and that Indonesian corporate funds can succeed not just on their home turf, but also throughout the region,” Agusta emphasises.

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Image Credit: MDI Ventures

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Everything you need to know after 5G

It’s time to discuss the next iteration of the mobile internet. I’m talking WiFi 6. 

WiFi 6 and 5G are popular topics these days, for good reason.

If you’ve stayed ahead of tech news for the last decade, you’ll remember that with each new version of mobile internet always comes a diverse whirlwind of internet-based industries. Notice I said industries, not just products.

Uber, Airbnb, and IoT aren’t simply services that got their start thanks to 4G and WiFi 5. They represent entire new industries that were impossible — and hardly imaginable — under prior iterations. 

This begs the question: now that WiFi 6 and 5G are imminent, what new industries and products can we expect in the near future? 

Also Read: The proliferation of 5G will transform businesses and societies: Here’s how

How will VR and AR be effected? 

Will social media foundationally change? 

How will everyday communication keep up?

The truth is, we can dream all day. But we won’t know the true possibilities until they begin to unfold before our eyes. But here are the features we know you can look forward to with WiFi 6:

Characteristics of WiFi 6

Faster overall WiFi speeds (obviously)

Let’s start with the obvious. Speed is by no means the most talked-about benefit of WiFi 6. But it’s still important and almost goes without saying. Some reports expect WiFi speeds to improve about 30 per cent

 
Better performance in crowded areas 

Tired of slow internet in crowded spaces? WiFi 6 improves internet performance for crowded areas like offices, sports stadiums, or hotels. It achieves this by increasing network capacity (thanks to higher throughput and transmit beamforming), as well by improving simultaneous communication between access points and multiple end-points. 

Also Read: These 7 startups will be early 5G adopters under the guidance of APTG Accelerator Programme

Here’s some of the technology that makes that possible: 

• OFDMA (Orthoganal Frequency Divisional Multiple Access): OFDMA gives access points the ability to divide channels into many sub-channels. This means access points can simultaneously communicate with multiple devices at a lower data rate.
• MU-MIMO (Multi-User Multiple-Input-and-Multiple-Output) capabilities – WiFi 5 was already using MU-MIMO for downlinks. WiFi 6 utilizes it for uplinks too, enabling access points to receive communication from multiple clients at the same time. 

The combination of OFDMA and MU-MIMO creates more efficient networks while reducing overall network latency. 

Make connected homes even more connected 

Internet of Things (IoT) is another incredible industry made possible through WiFi 5. WiFi 6 is expected to take IoT possibilities to a whole new level, enabling homeowners to connect and control many more devices.

It will also make it simpler to save energy. WiFi 6 supports a feature called “Target Wake Time.” This lets the access point put a device’s WiFi functionality to sleep for a defined period of time before it “wakes up” again to connect. The feature could significantly reduce the power usage of individual devices.

When will WiFi 6 become mainstream? 

Admittedly, WiFi 6 has had a tumultuous start.

Standards committees turned it down twice. This put access point vendors into an unusual predicament: in a bid to be first-to-market, they were forced to manufacture and commercialize their devices without knowing the approved standards. 

WiFi 6 access points are already commercialized. But the reason most of us haven’t used WiFi 6 yet is because of devices. Most devices on the market don’t support WiFi 6 yet. 

Here are a few exceptions: 

• The new Samsung Galaxy S10, released in March 2019, is the first WiFi 6 phone 
• Intel’s new 9th generation chips have (expensive) WiFi 6 capability
• Intel’s WiFi 6 adapters, released in April 2019, is already comprehensive, with major players like NetGear and Cisco already offering devices

Also Read: This IoT device can turn your regular speakers into WiFi-enabled ones

WiFi Alliance announced that a WiFi 6 certification program will begin in Q3 of 2019.

While that’s not too far off, the date suggests we shouldn’t expect a flood of WiFi 6 devices in the near future.

And as we all know, the early versions will likely be expensive and possibly buggy.

If you do decide to start implementing WiFi 6 routers and access points now, you won’t see a return on investment for quite a while. Even though we’re starting to see some compatible now, we probably shouldn’t expect widespread WiFi 6 devices until late 2020. 

Contact him directly at alexander.lewis@paessler.com

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Aspire provides SMEs with a 60-day, interest free credit line of up to S$100,000 to solve their working capital needs

Singapore-headquartered Aspire, a neobank for small and medium businesses (SMEs) in Southeast Asia, announced today it has secured US$32.5 million in Series A round of financing.

The round was led by Singapore-based Mass-Mutual Ventures (MMV) Southeast Asia, with participation from Silicon Valley’s Arc Labs and existing investors Y Combinator, Hummingbird Ventures, and Picus Capital.

The fintech startup will use the capital to boost its financial product offering and strengthen local presence.

This round comes exactly a year after Aspire raised a seed round of US$9 million from investors, including Insignia Ventures Partners, Mark 2 Capital, and Hummingbird.

Founded in January 2018 Andrea Baronchelli (former EVP and CMO at Lazada), Aspire aims to “reinvent SME banking in Southeast Asia”. The startup is serving a new generation of internet businesses with a mobile-first digital account across Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam.

The startup’s flagship product AspireAccount, targeted at digital merchants across the region, can be opened online in just few clicks. It is free and comes with an instant credit limit for daily business expenses, a virtual B2B payment acceptance and other tools to help SMEs manage their cash flow.

Aspire claims it provides SMEs with a 60-day, interest free credit line of up to S$100,000 to solve their working capital needs. Its goal is to provide business owners with fast and simple access to the funding they need to grow.

A business credit card is next in line and it will be available and linked to each business account as early as this year.

Aspire graduated from Y Combinator Winter 2018 batch.

“We are extremely excited about the problem we are solving for this fast growing generation of digital entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia,” said Andrea Baronchelli, Founder and CEO. “We have seen 30 per cnet month on month growth since we founded the company in January 2018 and expect to open more than 100,000 business accounts by next year.”

MMV invests in seed to growth stage companies in North America, Europe, Israel and Southeast Asia. Its key areas of investment focus include fintech, insurtech, cybersecurity, data analytics, digital health and enterprise software.  Today, MMV manages US$250 million across two funds based in Boston and Singapore.

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HOMI allows customers to customise their homes with devices that will include light switches, smart locks, and cameras through an app

HOMI SmartHome, a smart home managed services startup headquarters in Singapore, has raised a US$1.3M seed round, led by Singapore-based investors SeedPlus, AngelCentral, and Xoogler Angels.

The company, which also has an office in Hong Kong, will use the funds to scale up the smart home services side of the business with new installers and architects in Asia.

HOMI was created in 2016 by CEO Amar Dhillon, who felt that current smart home companies didn’t really address pain points for smart home customers that revolved around set up and support.

After receiving initial funding, Dhillon and team set out to create a set of devices that could be installed by a certified electrician in an Asian home in three hours or less. This would mean consumers would be able to dim their lights, turn on their air-conditioning before they get home, and have keyless access without lifting a finger on affordable payment plans, making a smart home more possible for any interested homeowners or renters.

Penetration rates for smart homes in Asia have always been low in comparison to North America and the company believes that it is due to the lack of smart home services and an unbuilt ecosystem of smart home devices for the region. HOMI plans to change this by offering customers an entire set of smart home products for the region with consultation, installation, and support for US$2 a day.

“A lot of the devices in North America don’t translate into products in Southeast Asia, that’s why we built a suite of devices for the Asian home,” said Dhillon. “The culture of Do-It-Yourself doesn’t really exist. Therefore, we decided to focus on providing smart home services to help bridge the gap for consumers interested in getting a smart home. We believe that smart home services are key to the entire experience.”

HOMI is planning to launch smart home products through affordable payment plans in the next quarter. This will allow customers to customise their homes with devices that will include light switches, smart locks, cameras, modules to control various appliances, and will all be controlled through a single integrated app.

Xoogler Angels is a business angel network gathering current Google and former Google executives based in Southeast Asia. SeedPlus is an early-stage Singaporean fund with a hands-on approach to working with portfolio companies.

 

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