The household name insurance enters into partnership with the digital healthcare provider based in Singapore, Whitecoat

WhiteCoat, the Singapore-founded on-demand telemedicine service provider, announced that it has been appointed by AIA Singapore to be its telehealth provider.

With the partnership, WhiteCoat will extend further its corporate client reach to AIA’s 1.2 million corporate base and its dependant access to qualified Singapore-registered general practitioners (GPs) in the form of a one-stop service covering diagnosis, treatment, medical referrals, and delivery of medication.

Furthermore, AIA and WhiteCoat will also co-create a digitally integrated platform in Singapore which facilitates claim processing for telemedicine services, presenting unprecedented convenience for the global insurer’s corporate clients and their employees and dependents.

WhiteCoat’s telemedicine services are done via video calls and have been dubbed as a solution to overcome both rising healthcare costs and hectic work schedules faced by employees in Singapore.

WhiteCoat’s mobile application allows users to video call any of WhiteCoat’s Singapore-registered GPs from wherever and whenever.

Also Read: (In photos) India’s Droom is your dream workplace

The approach offered is eliminating travel time and reducing waiting times to see a doctor.

“We are honoured to partner AIA as its exclusive telehealth provider for its corporate clients. We are dedicated to simplifying complicated processes reliably and safely, and making it easy for patients to navigate the intricacies of the healthcare system to make informed medical decisions early in order to prevent disease progression,” said Bryan Koh, CEO of WhiteCoat.

WhiteCoat’s target market includes travelers, especially those who visit places where language may be a challenge. WhiteCoat presents itself as a trusted doctor to be consulted with anytime, anywhere.

“Next, aside from continuing to put our patients first, our plan is to materialise our vision toward transformative care utilising data-driven technology to make WhiteCoat the everyday go-to digital health provider for all healthcare needs,” Koh added.

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Mental health and wellness is a real problem in the startup world and these four Echelon speakers want to provide some advice

Already excited for Echelon? Buy your tickets here! 

As with most of our social media life, the life we see online is a curated — and often inaccurate — version of ourselves. This is even more true for a Founder, who needs to maintain a certain public perception in order to benefit the company.

The crazy part of this is its also a job with a ton of pressure, a lot of stress and bouts of incredible loneliness.

This life can lead to serious bouts with depression, troubles with anxiety and a general mental health that is far from ideal. Thankfully, it is a fairly well-discussed topic in the Southeast Asian startup scene.

The ecosystem seems to be trying to find  solutions and genuinely wants to be supportive of people who are struggling during their entrepreneurship journey.

At Echelon Asia Summit 2019, we will have four fantastic speakers on stage to discuss the topic. Let’s meet them!

Panel: Why it is dangerous to be a “rockstar entepreneur” 24/7: The importance of mental wellness

Moderator: Zi En Wong, Co-founder, Hasiko

Wong is a veteran of the startup ecosystem, having Founded a startup that connected corporates and startups named Detecq. Her startup was acquired in 2017. During her time as the Founder of Detecq, she also Founded the Singapore branch of Founder Institute, a global pre-accelerator company from the Silicon Valley.

So she clearly has the startup chops, but what makes her unique to host this panel is her time as the Co-founder of Hasiko, a company that mixes physical, mental and emotional wellbeing to help people live a sustainable lifestyle.

The company believes that a well-balanced life is a key to success, and Hasiko works to help people find this place in their lives.

Panelist: Bjorn Lee, Founder, MindFi

During his time as a Product Manager for the Zopim-Zendesk acquisition integration, Lee discovered firsthand the risks of a high-stress no-sleep lifestyle.

Lee decided to pursue meditation and went on a deep-dive into the practice. As he puts it, it was a fantastic experience, but it isn’t overly sustainable in our day-to-day lives. So, in an effort to help regular people integrate meditation into their schedules, he Founded MindFi.

MindFi is a meditation app that helps people pursue active mindfulness. This may mean learning how to be mindful during meals, finding a post-work meditation practice or learning useful breathing exercises.

Panelist: Desmond M. Koh, Managing Director, Southeast Asia, BNP Paribas

In the world of wealth management, Koh is an important person, helping BNP Paribas achieve the designation as the top bank for sustainable finance in 2019, according to EuroMoney.

But the reason he is on this panel is his passion for wellness. He is part of two organisations — Mind Warrior and Compassion Capitalist — that work to help people find the balance in their lives that they need to achieve their full potential.

Koh works to evangilise his ideology of ‘mindful flow states’ to help people achieve the correct balance between mind, body and spirit. His hope is that his sharings will help make the world around him a better place.

Panelist: William TOV, Associate Professor of Psychology, Singapore Management University

William TOV is a psychology expert, having received a Phd from the University of Illinois in 2008. But more relevant for this panel are is specific research interests.

TOV has spent a lot of time looking into the impact that well-being and personality make on our everyday lives.

This includes how social media affects our wellbeing, the social implications of certain personality traits, how culture and society impacts the individual and policy measures governments can pursue.

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Already excited for Echelon? Buy your tickets here! 

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Five examples of AI in healthcare and how this collaboration will grow more important in the coming years

The healthcare industry is undergoing a tumultuous period of change where it’s being forced to evolve in the face of rapidly growing consumer demand.

With an increasing global average lifespan, rising healthcare demands have pushed modern hospitals and healthcare providers to their limits and forced to call upon any tool that can help them provide positive patient outcomes.

Over the past few years, it’s become obvious that AI has become nearly unrivalled in its ability to help hospitals and medical experts heal patients while cutting costs.

Here are five powerful examples of AI in healthcare, and why this technology will only grow more important in the forthcoming years.

1. Flagler Hospital is using AI to create health-enhancing Clinical Pathways

For those who doubt the ability of hospitals around the nation to innovate and make use of AI, look no further than Flagler Hospital, where healthcare professionals have harnessed the power of intelligent machines to create care-enhancing clinical pathways.

They have also drastically cut the costs of providing healthcare. The Saint Augustine, Florida-based hospital has decided to use AI to help improve the treatment of pneumonia, sepsis, and other high-cost conditions to wondrous effects.

The AI program analyzes clinical pathways for patients with high-cost conditions and recommends the most efficient option for doctors; it’s already expected to save at least US$1,356.35 per pneumonia patient.

As hospitals become swamped with more and more patients, they’ll find it necessary to follow in the footsteps of Flagler Hospital and employ AI programs that help them deal with high-cost conditions.

Ultimately, expediting the treatment process and saving hospitals money could be the most impactful way that AI comes to change the future of the healthcare industry.

2. Machine learning is supercharging the medical diagnostics process

Medical diagnostics are about to get a lot easier than ever before thanks to the help of machine learning applications, which are supercharging the ability of healthcare professionals to comb through huge reams of patient data in pursuit of crucial insights that could mean the difference between a healthy patient and a suffering one.

According to the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, diagnostic errors contribute to approximately 10 per cent of all patient deaths. This means that any innovation to help make the diagnostics process more efficient is sorely needed in the modern healthcare system.

Hospitals can use AI for a wide range of purposes when it comes to diagnostics; chatbots, for instance, can have friendly conversations with patients over the phone or computer before they actually head into a hospital, and thereby prevent any hospital errors later on.

This will cut down the number of people who needlessly head into the ER when they’re only suffering from a minor condition, and chatbots could also help lure in patients who are otherwise untrusting of doctors and medical experts.

3. AI is making analysing patient records easier

Combing through a huge sum of patient data is never easy, as any medical professional can attest to. In the future, this process could be greatly expedited by injecting AI into the works, as a number of healthcare providers are already finding machine learning techniques useful when it comes to analyzing patient records.

A recent research report demonstrates that systems like IBM’s Watson can be used to screen literally millions of patient records for clues to identify who may be at a higher risk for cancer.

More hospitals and medical researchers will doubtlessly come to view the application of machine learning to patient records as an essential part of digitising their operations and moving headfirst into the 21st-century healthcare environment.

4. Medical image interpretation is about to get better

Interpreting medical images, x-rays, and scans aren’t easy, yet it’s a crucial part of monitoring patient health and ensuring that diseases are detected early on.

As another recent research paper on AI and its application into various areas uncovered, images of brain tumours can be analysed by machine learning programs that learn to recognise common trends and can recommend useful insights to researchers.

Also Read: Solidifying Singapore’s standing as a leading global blockchain hub

The future of medical image interpretation is going to become dominated by intelligent machines – human workers in this area can legitimately fear automation, as software is likely to prove much more efficient at image analysis and pattern recognition than the human brain.

5. Robots are becoming surgery assistants

Perhaps the starkest example of AI in healthcare is how robots are slowly but steadily becoming surgery assistants. While some healthcare professionals dismissed the idea of AI being useful in the operating room, a number of medical procedures have already been conducted with AI-assisted robotics playing a key role in the process.

The New York Post has already reported on one of the world’s earliest examples of micro-surgery conducted with the assistance of AI, and these instances are only likely to become more common as the tech becomes cheaper and more widely accessible in the medical industry.

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The e-scooter startup plans to expand regionally, starting with local presence in Singapore

Lime, the mobility service startup that provides e-scooter for an easier commute, announced a new headquarter set up in Singapore that will be officially opened in the third quarter of this year. The new headquarter will be the hub of its Asia Pacific operation, as reported by The Straits Time.

Lime chose the Republic as its strategic location due to its “strong potential for growth” and high existing adoption rate of personal mobility devices.

Lime said it plans to expand local capabilities by including government relations, partnerships, brand, and operations from its central business district-located hub.

Lime is following its electric scooters pilot with Ascendas-Singbridge group back in November 2018. The pilot then continued with an investment in in-house research and development for new e-scooter models which it said: “meet local safety and usage needs”.

“The country’s strengths in terms of infrastructure readiness, macroeconomic status coupled with the presence of progressive government support and regulation made this decision an easy and natural one,” said Ashwin Purushottam, Lime’s general manager for Singapore.

Also Read: Space sustainability company Astroscale receives US$30M funding, expands to US

Lime said it also has collaborated with various stakeholders to promote a sustainable and responsible riding culture throughout the city to kickstart its expansion.

“This development will help set the groundwork for the firm’s Asia-Pacific expansion as it is geographically well-positioned as a communications touchpoint to support and connect the firm’s regional offices,” said Anthony Fleo, Lime’s regional general manager of APAC.

The American company currently operates in more than 100 cities across at least 20 countries, with over 10 million sign-ups on its app and over 34 million rides taken.
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Aiming to launch with a “perfect” version of your product is a blatant waste of time

I’m the co-founder of The Kint Story, an online platform dedicated to rebranding second-hand clothing so that they’re no longer seen as second best.

Currently, we are in a pre-accelerator programme, The Start, run by the organizers behind Startup Weekend. This 12-week long programme commenced in January this year.

Here’s what I learnt so far.

Being in The Start has rapidly accelerated our learning and progress. Even though both my co-founder Elisa, and I have worked in several startups and were also part of National University of Singapore’s Overseas Colleges (New York), this is the first time we are running a business of our own. From this programme, we’ve managed to get help in many areas.

For one, The Start provides us with mentors that are relevant to our business, and are able to give us valuable advice. Many times we commit mistakes that these successful entrepreneurs have made earlier on in their own journeys and being able to get advice from them helps to steer us back to the right path.

1. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. People want to help you.

There is no need to shy away from asking for help because you’re afraid that you might appear inadequate. The journey of every entrepreneur is never smooth sailing. There are so many entrepreneurs out there who have been through your struggles and are more than willing to advise you because they fully understand the situation that you are in.

Also Read: Space sustainability company Astroscale receives US$30M funding, expands to US

2. Your product does not have to be perfect when you launch.

Aiming to launch into the market with a “perfect” version of your product is a waste of your time.

When we first joined The Start, we had set a goal of launching with this ideal version of our website. It was only after our consultation with the mentors that made us realise that what we already had was good enough. After all, the first version of your product will rarely hit the nail on the head.

Your product will always have to go through several rounds of reiteration based on the feedback you get from your consumers because what they want will often be vastly different from what you had hypothesized. Instead, launch your product with the core features that you want to test out and work things out from there.

3. Listen to advice, but always remember what you stand for.

Everyone that you speak to will perceive your business differently because they come from different industries and are shaped by their own experiences. Being in The Start has given us the opportunity to speak to so many outstanding mentors, and each of them had varying views on our business.

What we’ve learnt is to take all these advice with an open mind, but to also always remember what we started The Kint Story for and the vision that we have, which is to reduce textile wastage.

4. All the resources you need are already out there waiting for you.

It is very easy to feel like the problem you are facing in your business has no solution. That is absolutely not the case. Being exposed to entrepreneurs working on different businesses has taught us to creatively implement solutions from other fields to our business.

Also Read: E-scooter company Lime to enter APAC region with Singapore headquarter

Therefore, do not limit yourself to the industry you are working in, instead, speak to the people around you because you never know what you might discover. If you are in need of money, there are many grants out there that you can apply for, you just have to be proactive in searching for them. This also ties back to our first point- do not be afraid to ask for help.

5. Always remember to have fun.

We received this valuable piece of advice from one of our mentors at The Start. He said, “Always remember to have fun because when you enjoy what you’re doing, your customers will be able to tell.” This really resonated with us.

It is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you have to stick to only one way of doing things when what you did manage to strike a chord with your consumers. But doing things repetitively will not make your business mundane for you, but for your customers as well.

I think — especially when you’re still a young startup — it is a great time to be experimenting and introducing features that you yourself are excited about because you never know what might be the next big thing for your business.

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About The Start’s Pre-Accelerator Demo Day

15 April 2019, at Developer Space @ Google Singapore. This is the day when we will be showing potential investors and partners what we have worked on over the past 12 weeks in this programme.

RSVP now here.

About the Kint
We devote a lot of effort to changing the negative perception towards preloved clothing, by recreating the first-hand experience you get when you shop for brand new clothing. Each piece of clothing you see on our website has been carefully curated, washed, modelled for, and will be delivered to your doorstep after you make a purchase.

Visit us here, and follow us on Instagram!

Image by samuraitop

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Singapore-based VC PSA unboXed signs an agreement with Israeli company theDOCK Innovation Hub, seeking to benefit port, maritime, and supply chain sector

Singapore-based VC arm of PSA International, PSA unboXed, has entered into an agreement with Israel-based startup theDOCK Innovation Hub, global ports, shipping, and maritime logistics hub, that will see both parties leveraging technologies to benefit the port, maritime, and supply chain sector.

The agreement notes that theDOCK will facilitate for PSA unboXed in scouting, screening, and investing in promising startups that focus on providing solutions addressing specific challenges cited by PSA.

The partnership itself will be marked with a first-ever maritime tech Hackathon in Israel, dedicated to a list of challenges which reflect the digital transformation needs in the port and shipping sector.

The call for applications for the Hackathon will be published in the coming weeks and the event itself will take place in June 2019.

“We are excited by the prospects of engaging creative ideation and solution providers to tackle the transformation of this sector. The specific interest will cover areas such as ports and its adjacent spaces including maritime, logistics, supply chain, and all that is associated with containerized cargo flow,” said Nir Gartzman, Co-Founder and COO at theDOCK.

Also Read: Space sustainability company Astroscale receives US$30M funding, expands to US

theDOCK connects creative startups with worldwide maritime corporations by matching its technology solutions with the challenges and needs of its corporate partners.

“We believe that this strategic partnership with theDOCK will help PSA benefit from Israel’s innovation ecosystem, and improve the dynamism of the industry as we strive to become the go-to partner in the startup ecosystem for ideation, co-creation, and validation of technology and solutions for the port, maritime, and supply chain spaces,” said Elton Fong, Vice President of PSA unboXed.

Aside from PSA unboXed, theDOCK’s partners include Wartsila, Lloyd’s Register, Kirby Corporation, DSV, Maersk, Cargotec, and others.
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Tik Tok is not as sticky as it seems, but more important, Bytedance isn’t going all-in

Let us begin this article with an anecdote. A quick survey of the young employees at e27, my teenage cousin, and my friend’s kid all resulted in the same word when asked about Tik Tok.

“It’s so cringe-worthy.”

This is true, but it is also part of the charm of the app. It is a place to enjoy watching people making fools of themselves and being rewarded for giving up their ‘cool’. As everyone eventually figures out at some point in their mid-20s, being cool is a gigantic waste of time and energy. In life, it is far better to be Phil Dunphy than Michael Bluth.

The earnest sweetness has helped the company cross 500 million users. It has clearly become the next ‘best bet’ social media startup to dethrone Facebook — and, more importantly, its incredibly valuable Instagram property.

Instagram is twice the size of Tik Tok (it claims over one billion monthly active users), but 500 million people on Tik Tok is enough to strike fear into the heart of Zuckerberg.

Plus, it has the much desired demographics. Two-thirds of the platform is used by people under the age of 30; it may be the most successful Chinese startup in the US and it is seeing huge growth in India. So, theoretically, it could control huge user numbers from the world’s three biggest countries by population.

Also Read: Warung Pintar CEO: How my grandmother inspired our vision for Indonesian mom-and-pop shops

Tik Tok grew by over 400 per cent between 2017 and 2018 and is now a mainstream app. The question is, will this explosion continue? Or, are we approaching the ceiling whereby user growth will flatten a la Snapchat and Twitter?

Unfortunately (there, my rooting interests have been revealed), I think we are reaching the ceiling. Tik Tok does not represent a true threat to Instagram and the reason is fairly simple:

The product is not conducive for content creation and Bytedance will not go all-in on challenging Facebook.

Creating content

Instagram attracts so many users thanks largely to the dramatic increase in smartphone camera quality. For most people, it is very easy to grab a picture in 30 seconds, throw it through some filters or third party apps and publish a photo of reasonable quality.

Instagram Stories is even easier. Just lift up the camera, pretend life is awesome, ad a poll or gif and voila! You are now Instafamous.

Tik Tok is an entirely different beast.

While it has the same ‘pretty people’ advantage as any social network, Tik Tok also has a significantly higher barrier to entry for content creators. Currently, my feed includes teenagers jumping off their balcony onto a beanbag chair, acrobats doing front-flips over their cars, and a time lapse of a fantastic piece of artwork.

This videos are all fantastic, but they require A LOT of effort. Not minutes, but hours. If we include transitions, music, editing, costumes, make-up, dancing, and trends, the platform becomes intimidating for new users.

It is fun to scroll through these videos for a half-hour every now and then, but it eventually becomes repetitive and loses its stickiness after awhile.

Statistically, only 29 per cent of users open the app once per month. A data point that backs up the eye test.

Instagram works because, after the inevitability of getting bored with the lives of others, the next step is to bore others with your life. Then, visiting the app is more about checking up on how the latest post performed.

Tik Tok has similar qualities, but again, it takes at least an hour to create a video that has any chance of getting traction. More likely, it becomes a half-day project. That is a lot of effort to put into a few likes.

Then, to circle back around, there is the cringe-worthiness of it all. It is pleasant to watch someone pretend they can get a boyfriend by turning on the faucet and then flicking their bathroom lights on and off. It is an entirely different proposition to convince the average person to do this themselves.

Fly in the ointment

Recently, in the US, something has happened that does significant damage to this argument. It is called “Old Town Road”, a song by Lil Nas X that has absolutely exploded and will certainly be the most hated song in the country by the end of 2019.

It also was made popular almost entirely through Tik Tok, a platfrom Lil Nas X told The Verge he was quite familiar with.

Lil Nas X uploaded the song for free on Tik Tok, so technically he gets zero dollars out of the song’s virality. However, the song became so popular it began to leak beyond Tik Tok, where it eventually gained the attention of mainstream channels and is now, easily, the most popular song in America.

Is this the future of Tik Tok? Is it the next YouTube? Which is more of a platform that creates stars rather than one where already-stars connect with fans.

Maybe Tik Tok is the place where nobodies can launch America’s ‘Hit of the Summer’.

Also Read: [Updated] Carousell raises US$56 million at valuation of US$550 million

Tik Tok seems to think so, as the South China Morning Post reported today, the company is working to launch a Spotify-type of service. While this is a more logical step than its Lark product (which I will discuss below), it points to a major issue for Tik Tok’s ability to compete with Instagram:

Bytedance does not appear to want to go all-in.

Focus, focus, focus

Bytedance is using its newfound success as an opportunity to expand into all sorts of verticals, and in doing so risks becoming a Master of None.

This month, the company launched Lark, a Slack-like productivity tool. As mentioned above, it appears a Spotify service in on the way.

It is attacking an entirely different user, and in doing so will need to shift resources away from Tik Tok.

Imagine if Slack decided to launch a social media platform? They would be pilloried by investors, the media, and their users. For some reason, Bytedance has largely avoided criticisms for its decision to launch Lark.

The company has found itself in a position to compete with the global giants Facebook, Snap Inc., and Twitter. Now it wants simultaneously build a product to compete with Google, Slack, and Apple?

At this point, Bytedance should just launch a food delivery service like the rest of the tech ecosystem.

As more and more stories come out asking if Tik Tok will replace Instagram, remind yourself that it will not. Here are the simple reasons.

1. Tik Tok is not sticky – only 29 per cent of users open the app once per month
2. Tik Tok is hard for newbies to build a following
3. Bytedance has not gone all in on Tik-Tok

Tik Tok may very well replace Snapchat, but Instagram? No way.

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Decentralising the agricultural value chain is China’s much-needed step

In stats once released by the FAO, over 60 per cent of the world’s population remains dependent on agriculture for survival. The importance of the global agriculture sector cannot be emphasised enough.

The industry’s value chain running from the producers (farmers) to consumers, make up for one of the largest industries globally for employment and transaction. With over 500 million agricultural producers, a global population that’s closing in on nine billion and global transactions totalling over US$300 trillion, there’s a lot the market has to offer and potentials that could boost the market.

Considering the world’s population is one that will constantly experience growth and with the level of dependence on agriculture, it is quite important to explore several ways that could enhance the sector whilst providing support to farmers.

The state of the industry

Highlighting the importance of the producers (individual, group or business that grows, processes or packs organic or conventional products) in the agriculture value chain is something that cannot be overlooked.

As hinted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), for each US$1 spent by consumers in the agricultural value chain, farmers only receive less than nine cents.

This is largely because the sector is filled with a myriad of middlemen — intermediaries who mostly have the dominating power in the industry.

Also Read: PSA unboXed partners with Israeli startup theDOCK to support maritime logistics tech

A huge portion of the profits go to these intermediaries with far less reaching the actual producers. A typical chain of distribution between the farmers and consumers consists of wholesalers, brokers, distributors, retailers, importers, exporters, sales representatives, and brands, many of whom take excessive profits on top of their operating costs.

These intermediaries wield a controlling power in the industry, creating a barrier around finance, marketing and communication, hence creating a huge gap between the actual producers and consumers.

Consumers are made to pay high prices for agricultural products with no transparent knowledge as to where the products are actually coming from. Producers, on the other hand, earn way less returns than should be obtainable.

In addition, the intermediaries provide no means of transparency to the farmers as to the distribution of products and the actual returns earned. Producers in other words only get what’s available to them.

According to Keith Agoada, agriculture industry entrepreneur and co-founder of Producers Token, “the disparity between what consumers pay for the produce and what actually trickles down to farmers is staggering.”

Also, the majority of local farmers, experience payment delays or discounted payment from the intermediaries which sometimes result in disputes that end up affecting the farmers’ returns negatively. Farmers then try to explore alternatives locally to ensure stable profit and enhance the development and expansion of their farms.

Producers are thus, demanding better prices, faster payments, greater consistency, access to capital and more transparency up the supply chain. Consumers, on the other hand, demand greater access to fair-priced organic products with transparency to the source of production.

“The archaic business model employed throughout the agriculture industry is not only unsustainable, but also rife with antiquated bureaucracy, limiting producers’ earning potential and creating a monopoly — favourable only to the largest growers,” says Keith.

A decentralised solution: A case study of Producer’s Market

Clearly, the agriculture value chain needs some sort of facilitation to enhance and make things much better than they are currently. A solid framework needs to be adopted that will give farmers equal unrestricted chances, access to a larger market and a complete disintermediation to remove all existing barriers.

Blockchain technology appears to be the perfect fit that stands up to the challenge for the agriculture industry. Since the advent of blockchain and its distributed ledger framework that provides for transparency and disintermediation, several companies have leveraged the technology for various purposes in different sectors.

Keith also believes the same can be done for the agriculture sector by harnessing the potentials of blockchain in disrupting the agriculture value chain hence, Producers Market.

In the Chinese agricultural sector, there are over 300 million farmers, and Producers Market is thus implementing an ecosystem of digital technology solutions to achieve greater profitability and security for existing and future generations of Chinese farmers.

By leveraging blockchain technology, the company creates a new system of validation of farming practices, the origin of outputs, and legitimacy of the certifications accompanying the outputs. This is accomplished with a decentralised validation mechanism.

In other words, the creation of ‘blocks’ in a chain of logistics that is uploaded to the cloud using a smartphone device at each step of the value chain from harvest to the packing facility, processing facility, to the distributor (domestically and internationally) and finally to the retailer/food service provider.

This information is then made available to the consumer by accessing a QR code on the packaging or restaurant menu. The distributed ledger open accounting system can provide a validation of transactions as to the farming inputs purchased and used on the agriculture operations.

Also Read: Why Tik Tok is not a real competitor to Instagram

The new transparent value chain model leverages incentives and rewards to align the demands and concerns of end-consumers with the production operations of the farmer. The Producers Market marketplace app allows for on-boarded and vetted farming groups to profile their operations, connect more directly to the buyers that service consumer markets, and share with consumers via social media.

This efficient method of supply chain connectivity enables farmers to achieve a higher price for their outputs by going further up the vertical value chain, with the value of output being determined by the buyer and end-consumer and the determination of quality based upon validated data sets.

The current system is exploitative to many farmers who have to rely on ‘spot pricing’. The current spot buying system leads to an incredible waste of outputs. Also, there is uncertainty for producers who put months and years of hard work into creating a product, as to whether there will be a buyer for the output and the price worth of the outputs.

The digital technology solutions of Producers Market are designed and engineered to bring about a system of ‘contracts’ in which farmer outputs will have buyer commitments and formalised digital contracts in place prior to harvest.

Farmers’ confidence in the digital contract model for direct buying partnerships with domestic and international buyers encourage farmers to focus more resources and energy on expanding production and improving practices to meet consumer demands which also helps solve future food shortage concerns facing China and the world at large.

It is ready to usher in a new era of farmer empowerment in China that will connect the food safety and quality desires of consumers to transition the agriculture sector into a value chain built on transparency, confidence, trust, and proper stewardship.

Producers in the industry deserve the best of returns on products they distribute. Consumers, on the other hand, deserve the fairest of prices with an adequate transparent framework to confidently tell the origins of organic products.

Blockchain technology appears to be the tech to bridge this gap with every party involved gaining mutual benefits. It’s a new dawn for the agriculture sector as blockchain gives farmers a new wave of hope of better returns and fairness in the game.

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ZhongAn Tech Global Limited (Scale Innovation in Digital Insurance (“ZA Tech”) is the business entity for overseas technological exports formed by China’s first internet-based insurer, ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance Co.

Singapore-based NTUC Income (“Income”) has announced the partnership it forges with China’s ZA Tech Global Limited to speed up digital innovation and product launches in Singapore.

As part of the collaboration, Income will utilise ZhongAn’s deep technological know-how, experience, and knowledge to deliver a pipeline of digital insurance products tailored for modern lifestyle needs with its ecosystem partners. ZhongAn’s key technology asset “Digital Insurance Core System” will be the main tool to support Income in improving agility and cost-efficiency to introduce more personalised products to customers.

In return, Income’s position in Singapore will give ZhongAn an edge to do a test and eventually scale digitally to expedite the digitalisation of insurance industry both in the country and regionally.

The collaboration with ZATech is part of Income’s digital transformation strategy to drive greater innovation and speed to market. The DTO was set up in 2016 to hot-house digitalisation and innovation at Income.

“ZhongAn’s tech capability enhances Income’s agility when developing insurance offerings to meet customers’ changing needs. We can now test-bed digital innovation via ZhongAn’s technology platform without causing potential operational burden to the business and this allows us to pivot away from products that get less traction with customers and scale those that resonate better with speed,” said Peter Tay, Income’s Chief Operating Officer.

Also Read: PSA unboXed partners with Israeli startup theDOCK to support maritime logistics tech

Tay added that the partnership is expected to enable Income reaching a segment of customers, who are typically less receptive to traditional insurance offerings and distribution channels.

The strategic partnership itself will start off by introducing a lifestyle insurance product tailored to the tourism sector in Singapore by the second quarter of 2019. The product aims to protect both residents and tourists in Singapore against contingent events when they visit specific tourist attractions.

The new product will leverage ZhongAn’s cloud-based insurtech solution, which will enable Income to process millions of insurance policies every day and create new, efficient, and cost-saving offerings.
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The two authors, Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna, have infused The Age of Cryptocurrency with a sense of cautious optimism

They say the best journalists are cautious optimists. Idealists find themselves either unable to see the faults, or they get taken for a ride by their subjects. Cynics, they say, miss stories by being too jaded to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of mankind.

Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna, the authors of The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money are Challenging the Global Economic Order, fall into the camp of cautious optimists.

The book is an exercise in journalism, it is written by two reporters who are clearly on the blockchain wagon but who are not certain the revolution is a foregone conclusion.

This attitude makes The Age of Cryptocurrency a fantastic read for anyone remotely interested in the development of blockchain. It mostly conquers the history and political context of Bitcoin but also slowly brings the reader along to a foundational understanding of the underlying technology.

For experts, the book is probably ‘below their level’, but it contains so many nuggets that even blockchain startup Founders might find some useful nuggets of history and cultural context.

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What makes The Age of Cryptocurrency a useful book is in large part the result of its release date. Published in 2014, the book hit the shelves after Bitcoin had achieved a certain degree of momentum, but before it exploded into the mainstream in 2017.

The result is the book connects to the original, slightly underground, libertarian-leaning culture that has largely been pushed to the sidelines after cryptocurrencies exploded in the last year.

For the reader, this means they get an advantage of rising above the current media churn, helping them understand the origins of blockchain, and thus see where the road of cryptocurrencies is likely to lead.

One key feature of the book is it is focussed almost entirely on Bitcoin. It touches on other coins like Ripple and Ethereum, but in 2014 these technologies were nascent, so the authors were not entirely sure about the long-term potential of the alt-coins.

For example, when Casey and Vigna analyse the intellectual merits of a centralised vs. a decentralised platform, they briefly discuss the merits of Ripple, but then they quickly move on; and even then, the comparison is made through the lens of Bitcoin.

The Age of Cryptocurrency often spells out cultural, macro-economic and technological hurdles to the ‘great bitcoin financial proliferation’. Then, when they explain why the hurdles are not impenetrable walls, it lands effectively.

Casey and Vigna see the most potential for Bitcoin as an avenue to help the global poor. It is an argument that has been hashed out in many outlets, but they lay out the argument as to why Bitcoin makes it an enticing option for people trying to help the unbanked gain access to the financial system.

Other benefits of Bitcoin include the trillions of dollars it could save within our financial system; which Casey and Vigna brilliantly outline by explaining exactly what happens behind the scenes when somebody buys their morning coffee with a credit card.

Most importantly, the writer’s are clearly believers in the Bitcoin community. For example, one of Bitcoin’s potential pitfalls is the core ideology that decentralisation is better. Yes, it is what the coin is built upon, but there is nothing to suggest it’s actually a correct ethos.

There are a lot of benefits of a centralised financial system — highlighted by the fact that when shit really hits the fan, Bitcoin doesn’t have a regulatory body, and thus no big boss to fix the problem. One of the largest bugs to ever be discovered by the Bitcoin community was essentially fixed by four dudes — two of whom had to do it part-time because they had day jobs.

And yet, because Casey and Vigna believe in the community, they explain why having 10,000 coders constantly tinkering with the product is a far more important trait, and that Bitcoin will have to live with some scary pitfalls but it is better to  to maintain its army of experts.

As written in the book: Yes, Bitcoin has its problems, but it also has 10,000 of the best coders in the world working hard to fix the issues. That is why people should believe.

The issue without a real solution

Towards the end of the book, Casey and Vigna bring up a problem that does not seem have a solution: massive disruption to the labour force. Yes, this has always been the push-pull of technology; carriage operators were pushed out by the automobile, chimney sweeps lost their jobs to centralised heating, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

However, if Bitcoin truly takes off the way its evangelists hope, this isn’t a discussion about robots taking jobs, it is complete reconstruction of money.

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The current financial system was largely the invented during the renaissance, and hasn’t changed that much at its foundation. While crypto fans point out very real problems with the system, it’s impossible to argue that it has not been a net-positive for humanity.

If do switch to a decentralised financial system, Bitcoin will be upending 600 years of cultural norms, system evolution and technological development. This level of disruption would be tremendous, and could possible be reminiscent of, well, the Renaissance.

This is not to say any of this is bad, but more to recognise exactly what is being proposed.

So again we run into another example as to why this book is valuable; it presents a huge problem, but does so in a way that does not try to hammer in the last nail of the crypto-coffin.

One final takeaway in one sentence

The greatest potential for cryptocurrencies — at least in the next decade — is not in mass adoption by civilians, but rather as a facilitator for B2B transactions.

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Copyright: yourg / 123RF Stock Photo

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