Southeast Asia-based Blue Mobile is a vending machine platform
Along with Beijing-based Joy Capital as co-investor, Hangzhou-based Ant Financial invests in Blue Mobile, a vending machine platform based in Southeast Asia. The amount of the Series C funding round is undisclosed, as reported by KrAsia.
The company said it will use the funding to explore collaboration with Truemoney, Dana, Lazada, and Tokopedia for mobile payments usage possibilities.
Back in 2014, Blue Mobile was founded in Shenzhen and now has subsidiary companies in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
It has a flagship product called BluePay Wallet, which is a mobile payment platform that allows payment, transfer, with no transaction fee, said to be handling more than 300,000 transactions on a daily basis.
The company claims that it now runs more than 6,000 smart vending machines across Indonesia and Thailand. It plans to add 30,000 units in the coming year and partner with major e-money platforms
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Afterall, nobody wants a lousy one-star app rating right?
Between April to May 2017, our team launched the first version of Funding Societies | Modalku investors’ app on both Android and iOS. From a modest group of two developers and one freelance designer, we have expanded to a fun team of seven engineers and two designers, managing seven different applications altogether.
In this article, we wish to unveil our biggest upgrade to date — along with the challenges we encountered, our approach to solving them, and the kind of impact we strive to deliver as app developers.
We hope this will be helpful to anyone contemplating a significant refactoring phase or a major design overhaul!
Left: previous version vs right: investor app V2.
Challenge #1: tech debt
As we expanded, our investor base and their expectations and needs grew proportionally. What started as a lean mobile app soon evolved into a complex product which required quicker iterations and stronger feature updates.
However, our project architecture wasn’t ready to scale this just yet. To provide a little more candid context, our early application releases fulfilled just three conditions for production to take place:
The release wouldn’t spike our crash rates to more than or equal to 0.05 per cent.
Users would be able to invest (core functionality).
Financial data presented on the app was accurate.
While this approach was straightforward, it brought forth a greater inclination for several workarounds to be hidden under the rug, making it increasingly difficult to build new and supplementary features.
While the project had accumulated tech debt in several measures, the ones that stood out the most emerged when we were working on massive storyboards (iOS), and huge Activities and ViewControllers.
The pain-points we faced could be summarised into five points:
Difficulty in implementing unit tests.
Painfully slow load times of Interface Builders.
Conflicting constraints.
Lack of reusability leading to code redundancy and inconsistencies.
Impossible for developers to collaborate on UI development.
Our solution
Since our investor app caters to regional users, this would mean that there are vastly distinct user journeys that we have to keep in mind — the biggest consideration point being accommodating the differences in legal regulations, currencies, and languages across the three countries.
As such, we knew that moving towards custom labels, custom text-fields and table-views, and a specific number for matters was the way forward in fostering reusability.
With that, the next step for us was to review our project architecture and reconsider Model View Controller (MVC). We decided to go ahead with Model-View-View-Model (MVVM) for V2 – paving the path for lean activities/view-controllers and cleaner distinguishing of business logic based on a UI standpoint.
Below is an overview of our final architecture:
Broadly speaking, our architecture consists of four important layers:
Managers – This layer is responsible to connect with several individual components. Each component, for example, Retrofit in Android and Alamofire in Swift, is only accessible via their respective manager (which in this case will be NetworkManager).
Repositories – This is a very critical layer as it’s responsible for decoupling the business logic from the UI. Classes in this layer expose only relevant methods via interfaces in order to protect the business logic being modified by the UI layer.
View Models – Standard view models in the MVVM architecture. View Models contain all attributes that are to be displayed by the respective UI.
Views – All the XML, Storyboards, XIBs, and associated view classes to make the experience pretty belong here!
As you can probably infer from above, our revised architecture is not an overly-complicated one. We focused on keeping it simple so as to keep the development process efficient and easy to understand.
This architecture eventually alleviated all our pain points, empowered us to scale efficiently, and allow us to build more supplementary features.
Challenge #2: dated UI and UX
We believe it is imperative to keep up with the evolving needs of our users. A casual browse across different user interfaces of popular products will make it pretty apparent that the adoption of dark themes is on the rise.
The mobile and design teams identified the trend towards dark-themed applications and hugely appreciated its usability. As such, we were inspired to incorporate it into our app to enhance the experience and hopefully delight our users.
Besides ramping up on the physical appeal of our user interface, we have also introduced major changes and improvements to everything related to UI and UX.
Our solution
We can summarise two modules that went through a major overhaul below (user onboarding & portfolio management):
a. User onboarding
User onboarding on regulated finance apps can be tedious, especially when it comes with the various KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) checks, and other regulatory requirements. With such information to be accounted for, the process of even beginning to utilise the app can certainly seem daunting.
This is where we believe coming up with a considerate and well-thought user journey, and offering helpful UX-related messages, can mitigate the problem. As such, we introduced two key changes into our user onboarding process. They are namely:
1. USPs (Unique Selling Points)
Before kick-starting the onboarding journey, we present users with four key USPs of Funding Societies; in short — a ‘why choose us?’ For a relatively new financial services company like us, we believe it’s important for us to take time in establishing trust in our new investors.
2. Integrating-arrows button
With so many fields to fill in, we wanted to offer users an easier way to navigate between fields, along with a button that’s always accessible for continuing to the next step. With a traditional approach, users would be required to constantly scroll and tap.
We tried to make it more straightforward with guiding arrow buttons; all while making sure the app remains elegant.
b. Better portfolio management
1. Improving dashboards
We believe a good dashboard doesn’t only show information that users care about, but also helps them to intuitively find the data they truly need and help make these data easier to comprehend for them. While designing the dashboard, we researched in-depth to ensure that we show the right information hierarchy. We also grouped data in a more logical way.
For example, instead of showing all financial data and returns in one page, we grouped them in 2 tabs: Performance and Account. This makes our dashboard more user-friendly and helps app-users access the right information they need more effortlessly.
2. Portfolio filters
Finding specific data in a long list can be a pain in the neck. Good, functioning filter options then become the ideal solution to this problem. We designed the new portfolio filters based on our users’ job stories, and it goes something like this:
“As an investor, when it’s the [end of the month], I wish to check [all my due repayments this month] to [summarise the monthly performance]”.
By making an effort to empathize with our users and making decisions based on their point-of-view, the new filters we introduce will become more meaningful and beneficial.
In retrospect — how did it all go?
Looking back, we’re extremely grateful for having gone through this enormous refactoring phase. Having a clean code-base has significantly boosted our engineers’ excitement level in pushing forward more effective updates, improved internal NPS scores, and also increased the average number of story-points completed each sprint.
There was a direct impact on business too; our improved onboarding journey is directly attributable to a significant increase in user sign-ups and retention. If you’re considering an enormous refactoring effort while keeping the current boat afloat, we’d recommend three key principles to stick by:
Simplicity is underrated, less is really more.
Taking a step back is more often than not taking a step forward.
Always empathize with your users.
We hope that this article has brought you plenty of useful insights, and for the budding app developers and engineers alike, we wish you the very best in building something that is ever trailblazing and game-changing!
Bukalapak partners with Indonesian P2P lending platforms Amartha, Modalku, and PohonDana
Indonesian e-Commerce unicorn Bukalapak announced its partnership with three Indonesian P2P lending platforms, Amartha, Modalku, and PohonDana to launch Modal Mitra (in English capital partners), a program designed to support small businesses with capital financing solutions. Small businesses, especially kiosks owners, who have joined as Bukalapak’s partners will be given this exclusive opportunity.
“We want to give capital access to SMEs that want to improve its business with Bukalapak. With Modal Mitra, business owners can gain access to capital to buy inventories for their small kiosks to increase in quantities and varieties. We hope that this can benefit small business owners that often face challenges in capital to purchase inventories,” said Sigit Suryawan, Associate Vice President of Financing Solution Bukalapak.
To apply for Modal Mitra, Bukalapak allows partners that have been verified and actively selling on the platform to speed up the equity application. Once approved, the funding will immediately made available in Saldo Mitra, the business owners’ Bukalapak’s wallet, separated from personal balance.
The financing offered starts from IDR1 million (US$70.32) to IDR10 million (US$703.2). The business owners can choose the length of loan payment up until six months, which can be installed weekly starting from IDR90,000 (US$6.33).
Also, OSS Inversiones to buy Meituan Bike’s Mobike, Cambodian government to invest US$5M annual fund for tech startups
oBike’s new owner to acquire Mobike [Deal Street Asia]
OSS Inversiones, the investment firm that acquired oBike last year, has reportedly offered to acquire 100 per cent of the international operations of Chinese bike-sharing firm Meituan Bike (formerly known as Mobike), which are Singapore Mobike and Mobike BV, the holding company of Mobike’s international subsidiaries,
The investment firm reportedly has allied with Singapore bike-sharing startup Anywheel, which will see the latter manage the Singapore unit of Mobike while OSS will oversee international operations outside of China once an agreement is reached.
OSS reportedly submitted its offer for Mobike to Meituan-Dianping last Monday. However, both OSS and Anywheel would consider putting more weight behind the offer, as American e-scooter company Lime is also said to be interested in Mobike’s Singapore and Japan units.
Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) has recently confirmed Mobike’s application to terminate its bike-sharing licence in Singapore, which left Anywheel in charge of a sandbox licence to operate up to 1,000 bikes, joined by SG Bike and Qiqi Zhixiang.
Singaporean VC Rajah Blue Media invests in Australian Adgile Media [Deal Street Asia]
VC firm from Singapore, Rajah Blue Media Holdings, reportedly has made an investment in Adgile Media, an Australian digital marketing startup, for an undisclosed amount of Series A round.
The funding is said to be used for Adgile Media’s global expansion and distribution of its proprietary technology in Singapore, Canada, Ireland, South Africa, US, UK, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Japan. The technology is claimed to be able to deliver real-time insights on TV advertising’s effectiveness.
“Adgile’s technology has managed to produce robust, granular quality of their data, strong analytics suite, and real-time functionality of the technology,” said Rajah Blue Media principal Mark Radford.
Cambodian government to create US$5M-worth of annual fund for tech startup [Khmer Times]
To support country’s blossoming digital economy, Prime Minister Hun Sen said that the government of Cambodia plans to create a US$5-million annual fund to strengthen the tech startup scene, as reported by Khmer Times.
The fund was announced during the opening of the 2019 Cambodia Outlook Conference, held at Phnom Penh’s Great Duke Hotel with focus on digital transformation to achieve Industry 4.0.
“An entrepreneurship fund will be established with US$5 million dollars a year to support startups in terms of financing, technical expertise, marketing, production, and training,” the prime minister said, highlighting the country’s dramatic economic transformation from an agriculture-based economy to manufacturing and services-reliant.
Supreme National Economic Council (SNEC) is to establish a working group that will focus on three areas: Building infrastructure and developing e-payment systems and the logistics network; developing the digital ecosystem; and promoting the digitalisation of the government while strengthening entrepreneurship, improving digital literacy, and developing open data.
Aun Pornmoniroth, the Minister of Economy and Finance, said it will take the country at least 10 years to complete the transition into a full-fledged digital economy. “Cambodia may need to spend the next five years building the pillars of a digital economy, and will probably spend another five to ten years growing that digital economy and aiming for a technology-driven market,” he said.
“Our vision is to create a robust digital environment that allows both small and large firms in the country to connect to global value chains,” he added.
e-Commerce solution Shopmatic merges with retail management solutions Octopus, eyeing APAC region [Press Release]
Singapore-based e-commerce solution aimed to help small business and individual entrepreneurs Shopmatic, announced its merger with Octopus, a fellow Singaporean company providing retail management solutions focussing on omni-channel sales and customer engagement.
With this partnership, both companies will focus on bridging the existing gap in retail businesses that hinders them to go online as well as have strong offline touch points. This collaboration will also see both firms expand into newer markets and leverage on each other’s geographical presence.
“Our merger with Octopus will enhance the offline-online synergy. Their strength and experience in Point of Sales (POS) suite of solutions will be of immense value to merchants across the Asia Pacific region. We see great synergies in the two companies and will be one of the few entities to offer a comprehensive omnichannel offering for SMEs & aspiring entrepreneurs,” said Anurag Avula, Co-Founder & CEO, Shopmatic.
The combined entity will see online businesses enhancing their e-commerce technology with Shopmatic’s solutions while tapping into the physical retail opportunity with Octopus’ POS solution. Offline businesses can also power their stores with Octopus’ suite of retail management solutions and at the same time have Shopmatic’s support to navigate the burgeoning world of online commerce.
The combined entity is said to acquire 500,000 customers, generate more than U$1.5 billion in GMV and achieve US$7.4 billion in revenue in 2019.
Student housing startup Stanza Living secures US$4.4M funding from Alteria Capital [Press Release]
India’s student housing operator Stanza Living announced that it has raised INR 30 crores (US$4.4 million) fresh venture debt from Alteria Capital, bringing a total funding of INR 115 crores (USD16.7 million) over the last 15 months. Earlier, the company raised funding from investors like Sequoia Capital, Matrix, and Accel Partners.
“The student housing segment in India is largely unorganized, suffering from several infrastructure and service quality gaps. We offer a student living experience that mirrors international standards,” said Anindya Dutta, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Stanza Living.
Dutta said that the funding will be used to unlock an inventory of one lakh beds by 2021 and bring Stanza Living brand experience to students across India. The company will also be working on developing financing and funding structures relevant to the business.
Stanza Living offers a new-student living models encompassing a service-led housing solution, proprietary community-building personal and professional development programmes and a high-quality ecosystem catering to diverse student requirements. The company said it has scaled the business by unlocking an inventory of 15,000 beds across Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Indore, Vadodra, and Dehradun in 2019.
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Just 1 per cent blockchain adoption is expected. What about the other 99 per cent?
Bitcoin’s 2017 bull run from US$900 to US$20,000 (at its peak) has caught the world’s attention, bringing the once obscure distributed ledger technology mainstream.
Many industry newcomers have the misconception that blockchain is a newly emerged technology. However, the fact is that cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology have been around since a decade ago, back when Satoshi Nakamoto first published the Bitcoin Whitepaper in 2008 and mined the genesis block of bitcoin a year later.
The hype and attention buoyed by the parabolic price action have also attracted more players to enter the industry.
Just three years ago, the total number of ICOs stood at 29, with total funds raised totalling US$90 million. In comparison, the total number of ICOs in 2018 stood at 1,257 and total funds raised US$7,852 million — which translates to a whopping 4,234 per cent and 8,624 per cent growth respectively!
Despite being around for so long, and having garnered positive news and directions, blockchain technology remains far from practical adoption.
A 2018 survey by Gartner has indicated that blockchain adoption rates are still low — one per cent today and only eight per cent expected by surveyed CIOs in the short term.
Meanwhile, user adoption of decentralised applications (dApps) on Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, remains surprisingly low. Daily users of all dApps averaged less than 10,000.
Yet, Ethereum has a multi-billion dollar market valuation at US$14 billion, highlighting that the prices of these cryptocurrencies are mostly driven by speculation and not use.
So what exactly is holding blockchain technology back from mainstream adoption? We explore a few possible factors in this article.
Scalability of technology
Current technology limitations — such as scalability — remain a significant issue facing blockchain technology.
The scalability trilemma as termed by Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin states that blockchain systems can only effectively possess two out of three components — either decentralisation, scalability or security hence trade-offs are almost inevitable.
CryptoKitties, a ERC20 dApp enabling players to buy and breed digital kittens on the Ethereum network is a prime example highlighting current technical limitations of blockchain technology. This single dApp alone has resulted in the congestion of the entire ethereum network, highlighting the difficulties in scalability with decentralisation.
In December 2017, unprocessed ethereum transactions were reported to rise up six-folds resulting in Cryptokitties having to increase their “birthing” (transaction) fees to minimise network congestion.
It is promising to note that improvements to current technological limitations are actively being explored, such as the recent Ethereum Constantinople hard fork and new structures like the Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) aiming to solve current limitations with blockchain technology.
Expectations outpacing usefulness
The state of ICOs draws parallel to the infamous Fyre Festival saga, with charismatic millennial founders over-promising and under-delivering by “selling a dream”.
The “80 per cent marketing, 20 per cent product” framework seems to ring true for many projects, with a recent E&Y report showing that only 29 per cent of 2017 ICOs have delivered a product.
Hence, it is important for investors and the public to do their own due diligence while assessing any opportunities. Reverse ICOs, ICOs founded by already established businesses with a proven team, communities and use cases may just prove to be an effective filter.
Lack of trust in a trustless system
Public sentiment and perception of the industry have been low, especially with the current bear market and bad actors in the industry.
It is no wonder that there is currently a lack of trust in the system, with regulatory and security issues being frequent occurrences.
Misconceptions fuelled by lack of education
Understandably, it has been tough for investors and the public to really get to know what cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are all about, with the technical jargons and the ever-evolving landscape.
This has led to common misconceptions such as:
1. Bitcoin = cryptocurrencies = blockchain technology
Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are not interchangeable terms. Bitcoin is a form of cryptocurrency, while cryptocurrencies are forms of digital assets as mediums of exchange.
Blockchain technology is a form of distributed ledger, a technology underlying cryptocurrencies enabling peer-to-peer transactions.
2. Blockchain technology is only for cryptocurrencies and payment
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies may go like peanut butter and jelly. However, it is not the only use case for blockchain, a distributed ledger technology that spans across multiple industries and used cases.
3. Price volatility and bear market reflect the current state of technological progress
Blockchain technology, as the underlying distributed ledger technology, should not be conflated with the incentive layer of public blockchains, namely cryptocurrencies. As Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak shared in a CoinTelegraph interview, people should focus on Bitcoin value creation rather than being preoccupied with price.
No moonbois or lambos but the future remains bright
Despite such factors, holding the adoption of blockchain technology back, we still believe in the vast potential of blockchain technology, with its ability to impact and improve different industries.
According to a recent report from US-based market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), global blockchain spending will account for almost US$2.9 billion in 2019, which is an 88.7 per cent increase from 2018.
With such positive projected growth and the involvement of big corporates and institutions — such as NYSE which recently launched digital assets platform Bakkt and corporates such as IBM’s well-known active involvement in blockchain technology — there’s still long-term growth and opportunities for the industry.
In order for the industry to mature and grow, we believe that education is key.
Investors, projects, users and the wider communities should look past the hype and instead learn more about the true state and merits of blockchain technology and explore how it could be used to solve problems or enhance existing solutions in different industries.
In time and with solid development, trust will slowly be built up.
Disclaimer: Nothing written, posted or said by representatives of ArcadierX, its community managers, or community members should be interpreted as, taken as, or constitutes investment advice. All written comments are opinions of individuals and any investment is a risk that individuals take themselves.
ArcadierX is a leading marketplace builder Arcadier’s blockchain initiative to onboard users with a blockchain enhanced platform. For more insights and developments about blockchain and eCommerce, check us out on medium.
How can we expedite the rate of blockchain tech adoption? Continue the discussion with us on Telegram.
The opportunities for tech startups to deliver digital financial services are said to multiply
Fintech companies that combine innovative financial service business models with digital technologies are emerging in Southeast Asia in waves.
Fintech is revolutionising Asian banking by modernising cumbersome service channels, creating new ways to borrow money, and bringing in once-excluded customers.
According to the McKinsey Global Institute, the region has around 266 million people, with limited access to basic financial services such as bank accounts, loans, credit cards and insurance. There over 30 million SMEs underserved by the financial system, facing a collective credit shortfall of around US$175 billion.
It is safe to say that the potential market for Fintech in the region is significant.
At Cento Ventures, a Southeast Asia-focused venture capital firm, we focus on the financial technology industry from a broad perspective that includes both companies that are providers and enablers of modern financial services.
When we look for Fintech investment opportunities, our main criterion is the use of technology to enable or to improve a financial event in some way. For example, a software platform that is widely adopted by retailers might create an opportunity for lending to those retailers or for insurance of the goods being traded – perhaps not ‘Fintech’ in the narrow sense but most certainly an enabler of it.
Fintech in Southeast Asia
In recent years there has been a global trend towards the convergence of finance and IT in the form of Fintech, leading to the emergence of various new digital financial services.
In Southeast Asia, the economy is still in the early stages of digitalization. The total economy of the region is estimated at US$2,900 billion, out of which, only US$50 billion (1.7 per cent) is digital. This suggests that there is a significant opportunity for the growth of digital financial services as the digitization of the wider economy progresses.
Approximately 1,000 companies have been built in the last few years that use technology to tackle some of the challenges in the financial services sector across Southeast Asia. As of now, Singapore remains Southeast Asia’s Fintech hotspot with over 490 fintech companies.
However, other markets are also generating interesting startups at a great pace. Today, Indonesia has around 262 fintech companies and is a booming market for digital payments, lending, and increasingly insurance.
Waves of development
The first wave of Fintech to be developed was focused on payments. 2C2P, Asiapay, iPay88 and Codapay are some examples of payment companies built in Southeast Asia. Many of these serve new online merchants, helping them to process payments from consumers.
Alongside this, we saw the creation of many e-Wallets that help consumers to store value and make purchases digitally.
Next came a wave of startups that made it easier to borrow money. The region has seen many online lenders, for example, Modalku and Funding Societies to name a few. These companies seek to help people and businesses borrow money more flexibly and efficiently than from traditional lenders and use technology and data to assess credit-worthiness in new ways.
Another wave of fintech innovation that is getting going and which has considerable potential is insurance. Both online insurance distribution platforms like Indonesia’s Cekpremi, and Malaysia’s Jirnexu, and direct insurers such as Thailand’s Sunday Insurance are growing fast.
We believe that future waves of fintech innovation will not be only about creating additional consumer-facing products but will also address B2B opportunities in areas such as security and data analytics.
One factor to note is the importance of regulation in the financial services sector. Central banks and regulators around the region have established ‘sandboxes’ designed to allow fintech players to test their services under relaxed regulations. These serve to encourage innovation in a controlled manner.
At the same time, digital financial services remains a highly scrutinised sector. For example, in late 2018 Indonesia’s OJK blocked websites and sent warnings to many of the peer-to-peer (P2P) lenders operating in the country in response to complaints about lending practices.
Digital platforms as opportunities for fintech
We believe that there is an opportunity for new digital platforms to play an important role in developing and distributing digital financial services that are tailored to the needs of their users.
Digital platforms enable connectivity, create new ways for people to exchange value, provide enhanced user experiences, facilitate trust between participants and help in data collection. This can lead to opportunities for fintech in areas like travel, logistics, healthcare, and retail to name a few.
Some digital platforms in Southeast Asia, such as Grab and Go-jek are already offering related financial services that include payments, loans and insurance, both directly and in partnership with others.
The region is producing other large digital platforms across a number of different sectors, that have, or are building, financial services components to their business models. For example, Carro and Carsome in the automotive sector, PropertyGuru and 99.co in real estate, and Bukalapak and Tokopedia in retail.
Future opportunities for Fintech can be seen in digital platforms that serve various industry sectors which have not yet been materially disrupted by the internet. For instance, if shipping transactions are done on an online platform, then the platform is in a strong position to offer value-added services such as shipping insurance.
Likewise, if students are using a portal to apply for universities, they are likely to require associated services such as financing of school fees. Technology can be used to make these financial services more easily available and, quite often, more cheaply.
Fintech is not only about banks and insurers — many online transactions can have a financial dimension to them. As more and more sectors of Southeast Asia’s economy are transformed by the internet, the opportunities for tech startups to deliver the enabling digital financial services will multiply.
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Oxfordcaps works directly with universities and colleges as well to build a tailored experience for the student community, both via on-campus and off-campus housing
The Oxfordcaps team
Oxfordcaps, a branded and tech-enabled student housing startup with operations in India and Singapore, has raised S$11 million (US$8.15 million) in Series A funding led by Times Internet, a digital unit of India’s leading media company, The Times of India Group.
The new capital will be used for fuelling its growth with expansion into 10-plus cities in India and standardisation of its student housing product. Oxfordcaps aims to grow its operations across education hubs in India, including Delhi, Noida, Greater Noida, Dehradun, Indore, Jaipur, Pune, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad.
Founded by INSEAD graduate Annu Talreja (CEO) and IIM-Calcutta alum Priyanka Gera (COO), Oxfordcaps provides a technology-driven living experience to Gen Z students in India and Singapore.
The company operates via three sub-brands and caters to students across price segments, including Oxfordcaps Premium Residences, Oxfordcaps Student Residences, and Oxfordcaps Dorms for the budget segment. It offers fully-fitted out and custom designed residences with full- stack service model, including wifi, laundry, nutritious meals, professional housekeeping and an array of events and activities focused on career development and lifestyle for students.
With Gen Z’ers at the core of its business, it is also investing heavily on technology, particularly focusing on IoT and Deep Learning architectures, to provide a customised and engaging living experience for students.
The startup works directly with universities and colleges as well to build a tailored experience for the student community, both via on-campus and off-campus housing.
The founders claim the firm has clocked a 30x growth in less than 10 months since its launch in India, and has expanded from 200 beds to acquisition of over 6,000 beds.
Vani Kola, Managing Director at Kalaari Capital, said: “More than 10.4 million students across India migrate to cities every year to pursue their academic dreams. However, student housing today suffers from a high level of fragmentation, lack of quality solutions, price transparency, reliability and complete lack of tech enablement of processes. OxfordCaps is addressing this gap.”
“An avalanche of institutional capital is pouring into the fast growing student accommodation sector. We are confidently doubling-down on our initial investment in OxfordCaps to further propel their mission of providing an unparalleled student housing experience,” said Vishal Harnal, General Partner at 500 Startups.
In 2017, Oxfordcaps received seed funding from 500 Startups, ReadyVentures and a group of undisclosed angel investors. In the same year, Your-Space.in, another student housing startup from India, secured US$500,000 in angel funding from a group of unnamed High Net-worth Individuals.
Placio, yet another startup operating in this vertical, announced a US$2 million in pre-Series A round from Singapore-based private equity fund Prestellar Ventures in 2018.
Starting with Indonesia, the integration will see public transportation options available on the app with Trip Planner feature
Grab announced today that it officially operates mass market transportation services with public transit integration onto its app in Southeast Asia, starting with Jabodetabek area in Indonesia since three weeks ago. Grab offers first-mile-last-mile trips through a new Trip Planner (“Rute” in Indonesian) feature.
Grab also connects GrabBike and GrabCar to its first-mile-last-mile trips to and from public transit stations or bus stops in order to complement the public transportation options.
The Trip Planner feature will continue rolling out in other Southeast Asian cities in the coming weeks, along with its bus travel marketplace.
Leveraging its partnership with cities, public transit agencies and private companies, the new public transit and bus offerings cater to mass market consumers and provide access to transportation services that are affordable enough for everyday use. The two new features will offer mass transit options that are up to 70 per cent cheaper than private-hire car-hailing services.
“Today, in Jakarta for example, more than 70 per cent of daily trips are taken on motorcycles and private cars rather than public transportation when commuting to and from city centres. These trends underpin the massive congestion problems plaguing the city. Our long term vision is to make people ’s everyday commute so reliable and seamless that they eventually choose to leave their vehicles at home. Mass transit – via buses, shuttles or high-quality public transport – is the only way to achieve this without adding cars to the roads,” said Ngiam Xinwei, Head of Marketplace and Shared Mobility of Grab.
Trip Planner feature enables users to plan their journey with accurate public transportation information and end-to-end directions within the Grab app. Grab also seized the new MRT Jakarta launch momentum to introduce this feature and collaborated with MRT Jakarta to integrate its public transit information into the Grab app.
Grab said it will also provide shelters for pick-ups and drop-offs near the stations to better serve users’ first-mile-last-mile needs and ensure the safety of driver-partners and passengers.
“Through the integration of real-time transit schedules on the Grab platform, we believe that we can increase our ridership by tapping into the wide user base of Grab. More people will have better visibility, predictability, and reliability of when the next train will arrive and plan in advance,” said William Sabandar, President Director, MRT Jakarta.
Besides the new MRT lines, the Grab app will also display live public transit schedules from commuter rail, Airport Rail Link, Transjakarta public bus services, as well as more than 50 fixed schedules of public buses across Jabodetabek.
Simply by entering a current location and destination via Trip Planner, commuters are able to view available public transit routes nearby that will get them to their destination, along with real-time departure and arrival times for some of the public transport services. They will also receive walking directions or recommendations of first-mile-last-mile transportation options such as GrabBike or GrabCar to and from public transit that they can book right away.
Furthermore, not only public transit partners will get increased ridership, access to Grab’s network of ride-sharing services, and journey planning, they will also get to understand how commuters use public transportation services in-app and identify any gaps in existing public services that need to be plugged to improve accessibility for all.
As for “Bus” feature, Grab will pilot the marketplace over the next few months across key Southeast Asian cities. Grab will allow users to pre-book a seat at a price point lower than ride-hailing services, on a route provided by Grab’s bus partners, eliminating queuing and bridge the transit gap for people living in underserved areas where getting to and from city centres remains a hassle.
Bus operators will be able to efficiently manage and operate their bus fleet by getting full visibility of user demand information in advance. They can better allocate their available supply, and unlock new opportunities to serve unmet transportation demand.
“Ultimately, the mass mobility ecosystem we want to build is one that allows anyone to plan their trip end-to-end, book, buy electronic tickets, and pay for their entire journey across all modes of transportation, public or private, through one integrated payment system, while reaping the benefits of GrabRewards loyalty programme simply by going about their daily commute,” Ngiam added.
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We’re more connected than ever, but also as disconnected
Recently, a prolific developer by the name of _unwriter released the world’s first native Bitcoin web browser, Bottle. It provides a hint of what’s to come if we choose to rethink how we build applications on a new type of data plumbing system.
On the landing page, _unwriter responds to the question “Why a standalone browser instead of building as an extension for existing browsers, or waiting for mainstream browser support?” with the below statement:
“Many things we take for granted in the old “web browsing” experience — including the security model — no longer apply in the new world of Bitcoin. The thing is, Bitcoin is NOT “the next web”. In many ways, it’s completely opposite of what the WWW is, which is why Bitcoin is so powerful.
That’s why it’s more beneficial to start from scratch instead of forking an existing full-fledged browser built for the existing WWW, with many legacy features that can constrain future directions. We can create a new user interaction model optimised for the new Bitcoin world order.”
Bitcoin
What’s occurring right now in the BSV (Bitcoin SV) ecosystem is a flurry of developments that require a different type of thinking.
You can’t solve problems using the same thinking that caused them.
This is what made Bitcoin so “revolutionary” back in the day, because it got people thinking differently about the world.
Unfortunately, if you’ve been paying close attention to what’s happened over the last decade, the Bitcoin most people know (BTC) has been subverted (via the promise of Lightning Network as a scaling solution) to something that is no different to what we already have. In my opinion, this has been Bitcoin’s biggest setback.
Fortunately, Bitcoin had a way of preserving itself through what was known as forks. As a result, two key hard forks took place over the last couple years, which resulted in Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin SV (BSV).
Whenever an attempt to alter the Bitcoin protocol as of v0.1 occurs, that new chain is considered the fork (regardless of the ticker, e.g. BTC/BCH/BSV). This is why there’s been so much contention around “who is the true Bitcoin?”
Like nature, or reality itself, it is neither perfect (Regular, High L, High C) nor completely random (Low L, Low C). If looked at through the lens of a security expert, it is not completely secure — but secure enough with the economic incentives used to combat some of the potential attack vectors.
Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. are also based around this concept of SWNs.
Another way of understanding SWNs is through the concept of 6 Degrees of Separation. You may be familiar with the term from the 1993 movie of the same name, or even witnessed it unknowingly when looking at first, second, or third degree contacts on LinkedIn.
Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are at most six social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.
It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929 and popularised in an eponymous 1990 play written by John Guare. It is sometimes generalised as the average social distance since it seems logarithmic in comparison to the size of the population.
As mentioned, LinkedIn will show you up to third-degree connections. I have rarely (if ever) met anyone outside of first or second-degree connections. And, since the maximum is six, LinkedIn shows just how small our world feels, and this is important if you want to understand why companies like Facebook are now shifting their mission statement towards more meaningful connections over sheer numbers.
Sense of community
According to the American Psychology Association, a “sense of community” is the feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that their needs will be met through their commitment to be together.
This sense of community is an important factor in determining trust levels within a group. The higher the trust, the higher the sense of connectedness and camaraderie.
However, it is important to note that connectedness does not mean connection.
Back to talking about Facebook, after it shifted their mission statement, organic business page visibility was greatly reduced (unless paid via ads) and the algorithm was shifted to display actual friends and family posts and increase focus on smaller, tighter-knit Facebook Groups.
In the beginning stages of the social network era, we saw an explosion of open platforms. Now, we’re starting to see a contraction whereby individuals are preferring smaller messenger groups and/or more intimate viewing experiences (e.g. Snapchat/Instagram Stories).
“It is not open platforms people seek but rather closed personal groups and communication with people in a way that allows them to build trust over time. People need to be able to decide what they will consider public, private, or even somewhere in between. Importantly, such a system would include a means to attribute information to a source and stop the widespread misinformation campaigns that have been occurring.”
If you’ve lived long enough in this world, you will know that over time it’s far better to have a small, close group of friends than it is to have many acquaintances that you have no real deep relationships with.
Communities, or that “sense of community”, comes from high trust, strong bonds, and deep relationships with fewer people.
Why? Because it’s harder to go deep with more people — there just isn’t enough of you, or your time, to create authentic relationships both ways through volume. But, you can leverage the “small world effect” to achieve that sense of community.
Drake sums up this dilemma well in his song Fear:
“Yeah, and plus things are just surreal at home
People think I’ve changed just cause my appeal has grown
And now security follow me everywhere,
So I’m never actually am alone, I just always feel alone”
More connected than ever, but also disconnected. The same applies to the world of Bitcoin.
The network stays decentralised enough through a minimum number of “hops” (or degrees of separation) between nodes. This makes it so that not every single individual in the world needs to be a “node” (a computer or CPU used to check, validate or mine Bitcoin). Only a few need to be, so that the rest of the network can feel free to transact safely.
Because, at the end of the day, despite how rational we think we are, the majority of humans are driven by emotions.
Tying it all together
So what does this all mean for the future of social media?
If we think of Bitcoin, not just as cash or a “store of value, but a system, we can start to rethink many of the applications we currently have in the world with new eyes.
Example #1: social media
We are seeing an increase in the abuse of automation in the form of bots, anonymous trolls, and cyber-bullying.
Imagine a world where you may need to pay (in the form of micro-transactions) in order to comment, post, or reply. Mind you, this is already taking place on various sites such as Yours.org and Steem.it.
If someone really wanted to post negative things, en masse, it may cost them an arm and a leg to do so. Now, some will, of course, be willing to pay this, but then what?
Well, if data/transactions are being sent via Bitcoin (as the underlying plumbing system), all things get traced back to its source. It makes it very easy to track down if absolutely needed.
This starts to shift people towards more honest behaviour, as it brings in accountability.
Example #2: identity
With personal keys, Bitcoin removes the need for things like usernames, passwords, 2FA, etc.
You hold your keys. Other providers then need to request access to your data from which you could potentially be paid for directly, and in real-time, versus how it’s currently set up, whereby you give your data over freely and then lose out on any money made by third-parties selling your data.
Whenever something like an image, video, audio file, etc. gets copied, the piece of data’s original source (currently contained via OP_RETURN within a Bitcoin transaction) can be traced back and attributed correctly to the source owner and their original transaction ID.
It is immutable.
How to read a Bitcoin transaction on the public ledger, courtesy of Blockchair
Another useful example may come in the form of global, federated search. A fellow community management expert, Rachel Happe, shares:
“With Bitcoin underpinning everything, this becomes a reality, as all data becomes traceable/interlinked, while privacy still remains intact and secure (just not anonymous). We cry out for federated search, but also seek privacy. Bitcoin (as a system) is that near-perfect middle ground.”
Now, we haven’t even covered how communities have formed around Bitcoin (as an idea) itself, but if we wish to truly innovate, we must discard all that we think we know.
We must start from scratch, but with lessons learned from the past. Is Bitcoin (as a system) still worth keeping an eye on, in terms of reshaping our global financial/social infrastructure?
There’s no denying that IoT is ushering in a safer future for everyone
The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) is known for changing the way we conduct businesses with one another, but little attention is being paid to the abundance of ways it is revolutionizing modern safety and public health.
As we become ever more interconnected, our ability to predict public health crises and avoid common fatalities is becoming better and better.
Here’s how the IoT can increase safety, and how some companies and government officials are already working hand in hand to harness the power of technology in the pursuit of saving lives.
Our roads are becoming safer
First and foremost, the IoT promises to reinvent modern roadways and make cars much safer.
Most people think about autonomous cars when they consider the future of transportation, and it’s indeed true that self-driving vehicles will be a major part of tomorrow’s cities.
What few people realise is the way autonomous vehicles interact with their local environments to mitigate traffic fatalities and save countless pedestrian lives.
Given that the pedestrian fatality rate is increasing alarmingly in many regions, the need for interconnected vehicles that communicate in order to avoid collisions is more important than ever.
In the future, your distracting smartphone may communicate with the car or truck barreling down a sensory-laden road towards you, and divert the vehicle just in time to avoid a deadly collision.
The interconnected cities of the future are often imagined as surveillance nightmares, but although it’s true that privacy concerns will be around for years to come, one positive consequence is avoiding car accidents by a longshot.
The IoT is also reshaping city experiences as a whole, making things more pleasant for pedestrians and everyday citizens trying to go about their business.
Modern city planning is finding itself supercharged thanks to the introduction of intelligent planning software. For instance, reshaping our public work and enabling us to free up congested areas that have long suffered from traffic.
More efficient public transit schemes are in the work, and data analysis will also be conducted on the local climate to determine which areas of the city have more breathable air and fresher water.
The creation of a “smart environment” that can detect pollution at the speed of light is one of the most impressive ways that the IoT has done. This has increased the safety and longevity of the planet amidst climate change.
However, this is only the start and the true capabilities of the IoT are only just being discovered.
AI assistants are becoming home guards
The IoT is most notably taking shape in the living rooms across America, where smart AI assistants like Amazon’s Alexa have nestled into the role of household objects.
The rise of Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa isn’t just good from a commercial standpoint, these devices can do so much more than help you order milk or play your favourite tunes.
In the future, AI assistants will be used as home security devices, alerting authorities whenever something goes wrong and enabling you to harness the power of data to make your home an ‘impenetrable fortress’.
Security companies have already moved heaven and earth to announce huge partnerships with Google and other home assistant manufacturers in an effort to make people feel safer than ever.
Home assistants becoming the future of home security is just another way the IoT is going to increase safety enjoyed in the 21st century.
Make no mistake, the IoT is upending every aspect of our lives from business to security to who knows what.
While some might continue to doubt the interconnectedness movement, the growth of sensory technology in our everyday lives is clearly a positive development that should be welcomed from the viewpoint of public health.
Source: 
