Whether you’re a newbie group creator or an employee of a brand, growing an online community and maintaining a healthy level of activity is always a major challenge

In any budding community, its growth or stagnation depends on its members and their unique characteristics. This also means that your community’s growth will depend on how well you understand your members.

Here, we identify the common five types of members in your group and how you should best engage them to keep your community alive and thriving!

Early members

As the name suggests, early members are the first few hundred members or so who join your group when you first create it. These members will make or break your group, depending on how you handle the group (no pressure though).

It’s also fun since you’ll be able to remember who these early members are, given the small size of early communities.

These people will also be the ones who invite more of their friends, so be nice! They are also good barometers of change in your group as they’re most likely to be the first ones who lament that “things have changed” in the group. Hence, it is common for early members to leave eventually due to changes in the group. Be sure to listen to them.

How to engage:

Engage early and engage often. There are reasons why they decided to join and subsequently stick around your online group and you should know exactly what those reasons are. You should manage your group such that they get what they came for. For example, if you’re running a dog-lover group, no point allowing cat content to appear.

Lurkers

Lurkers are those who simply ‘hang’ around in your group. They’re primarily here to consume your content. While they do not subtract anything from the overall experience in your group, they do not add significantly as well. However, don’t underestimate their powers! These people form the bulk of your members and are the silent consumers of whatever activity present in the community.

Also Read: A guide to wading through the organic reach demise on social media

How to engage:

It depends on what you want to do with them. If you want to convert them into non-lurkers, you’ll have to talk to them to find out what motivates them. However, chances are that they take a more passive role in terms of participation, and that’s totally fine!

Supporters

Supporters will tell every single one of their friends about your group. Supporters typically love something about your group, be it the content, purpose of the group, or hell — it might be you whom they love.

How to engage:

They already love you, so the next important thing is to make sure they do not stop. Find out why they love your community so much and see if you can scale it.

Leaders

Think you’re the leader of the community? Well yes, but no. You’re the manager, who manages the members and their energy. Leaders, on the other hand, are easy to identify. They are the recognisable members in the community because they drive a lot of activity in the group. You need a few of these Leaders in your community, or you’ll be stuck with a lifeless group.

How to engage:

As mentioned, you’re a manager and manage you must. Harness the leaders’ energies! Join in whenever there is a spike in activity to ensure that the activity is relevant. Initially, you’re the leader since you’ll be driving a lot of the activity initially but when Leaders emerge, it’s time to take a step back and let them shine.

Toxic

We’ve covered the good, so now let’s talk about the bad — toxic members. There are two kinds of toxic members in your online community: the obvious and the hidden.

Traits of obvious toxic members include being excessively argumentative, not playing nice with others, mocking managers’ moves, etc. Toxicity may also occur when leaders are not well managed. In general, they bring the overall atmosphere down in the group, making it unfriendly for not just newcomers but other Supporters and Lurkers.

The more dangerous of the two is the hidden toxic members. Like a snake hidden in the grass, they strike at members of the community and out of your sight. A very common case would be sales-based people sending unsolicited messages privately to your members. When left unchecked, your members will leave the group after being harassed.

How to engage:

How do you engage hidden toxic members then? This is where you need to engage the community to speak up and report the offending member to you. It’s important to signal that you’re on the community’s side and that you would punish/remove offending members.

Also Read: Retail-targeted image recognition startup Trax close to being next Singapore unicorn

Not all hope is lost for these hidden toxic members. Is there a better way to win the hearts and minds of the community without being a pest? The right approach, which is also the hardest, would be to add value to the community by sharing your knowledge. This way, not only do you get to position yourself as a leader (and thus securing potential clients) but the community benefits from your sharing as well.

There you have it, five common types of community members in any online groups. By understanding these members’ types, hopefully you’ll have an easier time managing the community. You’ve got this!

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e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

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B2B marketing is undergoing a significant transformation

Typically, the sales team is bestowed with the responsibility to drive sales. You might be already familiar with the folks from the sales team making countless cold calls and generating leads. In most cases, B2B decisions rely heavily upon the information and intel provided by the sales representatives.

However, times are changing.

Today, B2B vendors are bidding farewell to old-school business practices. At present, it is impossible for businesses to flourish in the absence of technology. It is something that forms the heart and soul of a contemporary business house.

The idea behind embracing newer sets of technology is quite simple. Businesses want to target consumers and vendors across geographical boundaries. It goes pretty much without saying that technological advancements make it easier for parties to interact with consumers and businesses.

Here are a few monumental changes that have taken place in the world of B2B marketing in the past five years.

Sales reps have taken a backseat

Of late, B2B buyers have realised that going personal can yield better business results. Today, companies are investing heavily in order to conduct product research and create a B2B content strategy. Also, firms prefer conducting online searches before asking the sales reps to step in.

To be honest, the number of businesses indulging in online discussions have increased by leaps and bounds. Forums such as Quora are being used extensively to get recommendations and suggestions.

Also Read: A guide to wading through the organic reach demise on social media

According to a report, around 60 per cent of the B2B buyers prefer not to get in touch with sales representatives. Well, going online and getting yourself accustomed to the various developments taking place in the B2B sphere is way easier than getting in touch with a sales rep. over a phone call.

So, it can be said that sales pitches and sales representatives have taken a backseat. Contemporary businesses rely on research validations through peer networks before asking the sales guys to take over.

The number of decision makers have increased

Recently, the Harvard Business Review reported that, on average, approximately seven people involved in making B2B purchases. The number was under six until a couple of years ago.

Content strategies are being overhauled

Moving on, it certainly would not be a hyperbole to say that the B2B content strategy has also witnessed some monumental changes. Over the last few years, video marketing seems to have taken the front seat.

Reports show that around 80 per cent of B2B buyers prefer watching a video before purchasing anything. Furthermore, the report also states that video content consumption has increased by almost 50% in the last few years.

Some food for thought

Content has to be at the heart of all of your operations. The contemporary B2B marketing strategies cannot provide you with a favourable output if the content you prepare is not in tandem with the needs and requirements of your target audience.

Content is the undisputed king

Content forms the heart and blood of contemporary B2B marketing strategies. More often than not, it is noticed that content is prepared and uploaded. After it’s uploaded, it’s read by audiences.

What happens after that? The readers find many interesting pieces of content and start reading them. Your content is eventually forgotten.

In order to ensure that the content you’ve prepared stays with your target audience, you need to practice you should try upcycling your content.

What exactly does upcycling mean?

Upcycling helps you build on the previously-published posts. For example, You can reblog a post that was shared three months ago. This way, you’ll be able to enhance the shelf life of a blog post that was written long back. The readers who have already read the post would have some sepia-tinted memories about the post.

Also Read: Malaysia Tech Week 2019 brings together the best of the country’s tech ecosystem

You can also post the same message (content) on various types and kinds of media channels in order to widen the visibility of the post. You can prepare a PowerPoint Presentation and upload it on Slideshare. The same blog post can go on Linkedin as well. You can even post the same content in the form of a video tutorial on Youtube. Add an infographic to it. This way, you’ll be able to add an element of freshness to the content that has already been used.

Conclusion

The bottom line is this — we’re living in the digital age now. Everybody is connected. You can share a post on social media and it gets viral overnight. Everything is happening in real time.

Content is the driving force behind each and every B2B marketing strategy. Keep content at the heart of everything you do and consumers will relish in an interesting story. A story they can relate to. Give them a story and they’ll be hooked.

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e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

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Ampotech’s system goes beyond dashboard reporting to detect energy waste and alerts facility managers when equipment is not operating normally

Ampotech, a Singapore-based IoT startup that develops next-generation power monitoring solutions used in commercial and industrial buildings, has raised S$1 million (US$726,000) in seed funding, led by Silicon Solution Ventures, a fund managed by startup incubator Silicon Solution Partners.

Enterprise SG‘s investment arm SEEDs Capital, as well as existing investor and Indonesian telco Prasetia Dwidharma also co-invested.

With opportunities ahead in international markets such as Australia and Indonesia, Ampotech plans to use the funding to support its operations and expand its product range.

Also Read: Why you shouldn’t share your goals

Ampotech, which spun out a University of Illinois and A*STAR research centre in Singapore, specialises in the collection and analysis of electricity usage data from the built environment. Its products and software provide real-time visibility into power and energy consumption of spaces and equipment at a facility while offering a simple installation process and wireless connectivity.

The company claims its sensing hardware and cloud-based analytics platform allow its monitoring system to go beyond dashboard reporting to detect energy waste and alert facility managers when equipment is not operating normally. Its devices operate on a completely wireless architecture.

Ampotech claims its data has been used by companies in commercial real estate, retail, and oil & gas to identify energy efficiency improvements, conduct remote asset monitoring, and obtain business insight into operational and activity patterns.

“At this point, we have our core product, a number of early customers, and several significant partnerships. This funding will enable larger scale manufacturing and allow us to expand the team to support our growing sales pipeline,” said Ampotech CEO and Co-founder William Temple.

By the end of 2019, the company expects to enter another regional market. “There are a number of exciting new partnerships that will be announced over the next few months,” Temple added.

Image Credit: Unsplash

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To foster effective growth in the blockchain sector, there is a dire need for these various blockchain companies to collaborate with each other for a properly developed and organised framework

Our generation has witnessed quite a number of technological developments that have rattled industries and disrupted our everyday life in a seemingly positive manner. One of such technologies is the development of blockchain.

Since the advent of Bitcoin in 2009, the technology behind the cryptocurrency has grown in leaps and bounds. The distributed ledger tech came with its capacity to offer a decentralised framework ladened with transparency and security. Several sectors including finance and healthcare have, in one way or another, explored the many potentials blockchain has to offer.

Blockchain came around at a time when there’s a yearning for transparency in transactions and online dealings. Internet users and online transaction dealers clamour for a platform that will provide transparency in transactions carried out to enhance confidence and trust. Also, the desire for freedom from central control especially in online transactions where most power lies in the hands of central authorities has become stronger.

Blockchain technology brought along its purely decentralised framework which gives all parties equity in control of information. The level of security details involved with the technology makes it quite difficult to tamper with.

These solutions and capacities offered by blockchain is what has earned the technology a steady growth in adoption. As of 2018 over 85% of banks in Europe and North America were already exploring blockchain technology to enhance their financial systems. The financial sector has already spent over $550 million on blockchain with intention to still continue investment.

Statistics also show that there has been a steady rise in the adoption of cryptocurrency and blockchain wallets, as there are currently over 25 million blockchain wallet users globally. Countries like China and Malta rank highest in interest in blockchain on a massive scale. Major corporations like IBM and Facebook have also expressed interest in integrating blockchain technology with their operations. It is safe to say that blockchain technology is steadily in an upward movement and its only a matter of time before it becomes part of our everyday lives.

The Need for Collaboration

However, despite the increased adoption rate of blockchain, the situation could be far better if blockchain organisations adopt a symbiotic relationship or endeavour to collaborate with one another.

Several blockchain organisations have developed and are developing their own blockchains, e.g. Ethereum, Ontology, EOS and many more — with different standards and protocols. However, to foster effective growth in the blockchain sector there’s a dire need for these various blockchain companies to collaborate with each other for a properly developed and organised framework.

When these companies focus on their core competencies and work or complement each other, the rate of blockchain adoption globally will experience a major boost. For instance, in the financial sector, a recent proof of concept collaboration between IBM and CLS for LedgerConnect – a blockchain-based platform that allows service providers to build blockchain solutions for ease of access and consumption in the marketplace aims to boost the financial sector. Another example also, is the we.trade collaboration.

One way blockchain platforms can also work together is building interoperability bridges between two different protocols which allows smooth operation of digital assets and cryptocurrencies across the different platforms. Another is building better platforms for business end users to easily deploy services and not worry about the technical complexities.

Also read: 10 crazy blockchain ideas for Facebook

Furthermore, when many different protocols are being concurrently developed, standardisation within the blockchain industry becomes a challenge. Industry standardisation for security is a must to prevent double spending attacks, such as the one suffered by Ethereum Classic. Thus, auditing source code becomes important and requires collaboration among developers to identify and secure blockchain solutions.

Public blockchains such as Ethereum and EOS make source codes openly available where developers worldwide can collaborate for technical review. When companies and developers help audit source codes for public blockchains, it also invariably enhances the blockchain industry as a whole.

Recently, Ultrain, a high performance public blockchain, demonstrated its willingness to work with industry peers to improve infrastructure security and promote healthy development of the industry. Their technical team recently discovered an EOS bug – an underlying implementation with a fatal security vulnerability that can cause the EOS network to be completely paralysed — and suggested solutions for the EOS team.

Ultrain is public blockchain optimised for commercial use which would help to construct a robust blockchain ecosystem that empowers a vast range of industries. The company extending a hand of collaboration to other players in the industry goes to show their acknowledgement of the importance of synergy in the blockchain industry.

In another exemplary move of collaboration by Ultrain, they recently partnered with Yoho!  The company, a leader in consumer experience, highly aware of interests of sneaker-lovers recently- to deliver a blockchain-powered sneaker authenticity solution for the state-of-the-art UFO (Unique Fashion Object) platform. Ultrain serves as the Blockchain-as-a-Service choice for the Chinese streetwear leader, Yoho!, which launched an online sneaker trading platform, UFO. The collaboration creates an avenue for the digitization of sneakers thus providing an advanced technical system for tracking product authenticity.

It is quite important to create real business partnerships and collaborations as in all the examples above. These will help enhance the blockchain industry as a whole and continue to foster growth and an increased adoption rate globally.

Blockchain technology indeed offers a lot of of capabilities and solutions. However, for a faster and effective global adoption rate, the need for collaboration among the various platforms and organisations cannot be overemphasised. There’s no telling the end possibilities achievable when players in the industry collaborate.

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Photo: Unsplash

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Myanmar-based micro-credit Daung Capital raises funding from Singaporean VC Majuven

Daung Capital, Myanmar-based micro-credit loan provider, announced that it has closed its Series A round a valuation of S$16.5 million (US$12 million).

Daung Capital managed to grab investment from Singapore-based venture capital firm Majuven. This is Majuven’s first investment into Myanmar.

According to the data shared in Daung Capital’s official statement, Myanmar’s rural nature, coupled with conservative family-owned banks, results in only 26 per cent of the population having a bank account while less than 1 per cent owning a credit card.

This lack of access to credit means that most Burmese are not able to get proper transport to reach better jobs, causing them to borrow from loan sharks at 10 per cent a day to buy food or medication just to get by.

Daung Capital believes that by providing micro-credit loans, it may bring the financially excluded access to credit. This approach, according to the company, would be the most effective way to fight income inequality in Myanmar. It also helps to create a sustainable business to help others out of poverty.

Also Read: Tech-enabled veggie hawker startup Kedai Sayur secures US$1.3M funding

Prior to this funding, Daung Capital was backed by Bod Tech Ventures, founded by Burmese entrepreneur Mike Than Tun Win.

“We will seek to find further partnerships to expand our footprint, extend our line of loan products with a strong emphasis on a double bottom line and disrupt the pain points of traditional lending through our technological capabilities,” the company stated.
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The true value of Artificial Intelligence based technologies are quite often understated and also overstating the same is at most times — difficult

Getting our hands in-deep with how AI is actually bringing changes in Medical Coding Automation, it is required the proper understanding of what the basics of what Medical Billing and Coding actually are.

Medical Billing, in the United States, is used primarily for reimbursement purposes since the codes allow for efficient and accurate billing. We all know what an insurance claim is, ad Medical Billing is the process of submission and follow up on these insurance claims by insurance companies for the services provided by the healthcare provider.

The Medical Coding future consists of software solutions that are able to take advantage of Artificial Intelligence, these AI powered Medical Billing Software Solutions would emerge as a new chapter for healthcare innovations. For example, AI can automate a web-based system that’s used to analyse a physician’s documentation for the treatment and recognise the relevant medical codes from its pre-defined medical coding list. The benefits of medical coding using AI is that it can automate the detection of predefined medical billings codes used by insurance companies.

The use of AI for Medical Billing Solutions, in context to Medical Coding Solutions is on similar lines. Just like software for medical coding, there are medical billing software helping the medical biller translate medical codes and turn them into a financial report all while making sure the amount of errors is minimised as much as possible.

Medical billing or coding didn’t really require automation until recent times due to the drastic increase in the growth and complexity of modern technologies, if you compare Medical Billing in 2018 and medical billing in 2019, you would notice a difference in the types of softwares used then and now.

Also Read: LINE, iPrice Group join forces to launch LINE SHOPPING in Indonesia

The medical billing projects taken up by Medical Billing companies in 2019 leans more towards the use of Computer-Assisted Coding to identify and extract data from documents and apply the appropriate codes.

The two most important job titles here are the Medical Coder and the Medical Biller. Medical coding, if we talk about it at a very basic level – is something that a coder takes, a written piece if you may, and translates it as accurately as possible into a coded format such as numeric or alphanumeric code. The piece that’s taken for translation can be something such as a prescription for medication or a doctor’s diagnosis or something else medical related. A code for each and every event is created, these events can be of injuries, diagnosis or medical procedures.

On the other hand, a medical biller more so acts as a middleman between patients, healthcare providers, and the insurance companies. Their job is on similar lines in context to the Medical Coder. The Medical Biller translates the codes given by the Medical Coder into a financial report, they make sure that the Healthcare Provider has been reimbursed appropriately for the services they’ve provided.

The above image demonstrates the creation and usage of AI in the form of softwares and NLP (Natural Language Processing), here, used in the process to generate a medical report. This is one of the solutions for medical billing known as Healthcare Billing Software Solutions. The complete process of medical billing is known better as ‘Healthcare Revenue Cycle’.

There were various challenges faced while building a medical billing system. The challenges found out to be the most problematic are:

• Complex procedures for integration

• Huge requirement of workforce

• Unprecedented workload

• Rectification of systems

• Implications of high cost

• Inaccurate billing due to inaccurate coding

Also Read: Tech-enabled veggie hawker startup Kedai Sayur secures US$1.3M funding

The proposed solutions for a medical billing system through the integration of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence can be stated as:

• Creating a customised billing module

• An advanced reporting system

• Billing CRM management system

• A payment processing system

• A system to review claims
• An automated system for clinical documentation

AI-powered healthcare revenue cycle is, overall, a future of all medical billing as it moves towards the digitalised practice. The automation and efficiency it offers are a winning combination that many more healttech providers should be able to access.

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Also Kedia Sayur, Vntrip and Duang Captial raise money

ByteDance has eyes for a mobile phone — [Financial Times]

ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is said to working towards building its own smartphone, according to the Financial Times.

The phones will be pre-loaded with ByteDance properties, which also includes Toutiao.

ByteDance has one major attribute working for it — a large user base outside of China — and one factor working against it — a long history of software/consumer companies trying and failing to launch a mobile phone. Google has been relatively successful with its phone, but Amazon, Facebook and even ESPN all attempted, and failed, to tie a phone to their core product.

Currently ByteDance is valued at US$75 billion.

Kedai Sayur raises money to help connect farmers and vegetable consumers — [e27]

Indonesia-based ​Kedai Sayur, a startup that empowers vegetable hawkers utilising technology, announced that it has secured US$1.3 million seed funding led by East Ventures.

Kedai Sayur said that the investment will be used to accelerate its mission, which is to onboard more vegetable hawkers as their partner.

Kedai Sayur translates to “Vegetable Kiosk” in Indonesian and just established in late 2018, founded by former Deputy Director for Business Process and IT of Triputra Group, Adrian Hernanto, along with Ahmad Supriyadi and Rizki Novian.

It aims to provide vegetable hawkers the quality and price of fresh commodities for their selling products such as vegetables, fruit, meat, and fish, that are the daily main staples of Indonesian households.

Duang Capital raises Series A with valuation at US$12 million — [e27]

Daung Capital, Myanmar-based micro-credit loan provider, announced that it has closed its Series A round a valuation of S$16.5 million (US$12 million).

Daung Capital managed to grab investment from Singapore-based venture capital firm Majuven. This is Majuven’s first investment into Myanmar.

According to the data shared in Daung Capital’s official statement, Myanmar’s rural nature, coupled with conservative family-owned banks, results in only 26 per cent of the population having a bank account while less than 1 per cent owning a credit card.

Jubilee Capital Management injects funds into Vntrip — [DealStreetAsia]

China and Singapore VC firm Jubilee Capital has invested an undisclosed amount in VnTrip as part of the startup’s ongoing Series C round, according to DealStreetAsia.

Vntrip is an online travel startup and plays in an established sector in Southeast Asia. But, Vietnam’s online travel industry is further behind its regional neighbors.

The company is hoping to close the round in 2019.

LINE and iPrice Group launch shopping platform based in Indonesia — [e27]

LINE messaging platform today announced a partnership with iPrice Group to launch LINE SHOPPING, an online shopping experience launched for its users in Indonesia.

The feature enables users to find deals on electronics, fashion as well as health and beauty products on the LINE SHOPPING tab in the platform.

iPrice Group will be working closely with LINE to provide updates and content for the feature.

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Photo by Filip Mishevski on Unsplash

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Brazn offers facilities solution Buildos, smart retail solution Retailr, and agriculture solution Agrios

Brazn, a Singapore-headquartered IoT startup with offices and businesses in Thailand and Malaysia, announced today it has inked an agreement with B2B investment firm Tin Men Capital to raise US$3.65 million over two seed rounds.

Tin Men is Brazn’s first and only venture investor.

The funding will primarily be used to scale its secure facilities solution Buildos and smart retail solution Retailr. A portion of the money will go into launching its agriculture solution Agrios.

Brazn was started in July 2016 by Adrian Lee (CEO), Ong Su Hui and Ariff Razak. The firm has developed an open platform, called IOT Operating System, which is able to ingest various data protocols sent from any sensor device, digest and process these real-time data into actionable alerts and visualisations, and be integrated with existing business systems like POS and ERP.

In other words, Brazn solves the problem of integration fragmentation from sensors to third-party platforms aggregating solutions into one data bus and exchanging data from the home domain, to the city domain, to the agricultural domain and car domain.

Also Read: Hard for VCs to influence the success of B2C startups beyond capital, advice: Murli Ravi of Tin Men Capital

Brazn CEO Lee said: “The retail IoT space is filled with either point solutions that work in isolation, or large implementations that are not practical in today’s fast-moving world that needs on-demand SaaS solutions. Brazn brings deep domain knowledge, Big Data and business visualisations in one platform, that holistically addresses the real-world operational needs of retailers of every size.”

“Similarly, in the facilities space, we are not just another security platform provider or a video management provider. What we focus on is a layer of data intelligence that will change the game in terms of how facilities and properties are being managed that affects not only security but also energy savings, customer convenience and full automation,” he added.

Based in Singapore, Tin Men invests in industrial technologies and automation opportunities that are coming to the fore in Southeast Asia spanning segments such as smart cities, security, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation & supply chain, retail enablement, travel & tourism, and enterprise productivity.

 

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TaniGroup is the company behind agritech e-commerce platform TaniHub and P2P lending platform TaniFund

Indonesian agritech startup TaniGroup, which operates agriculture products e-commerce platform TaniHun and peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform TaniFund, today announced a US$10 million Series A funding round led by Openspace Ventures.

Intudo Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures, and The DFS Lab, a fintech accelerator funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, also participated in the funding round.

The funding round is one of the biggest ever raised by an agritech startup in Indonesia, particularly at Series A stage.

Earlier today, Kedai Sayur announced a US$1.3 million seed funding round by East Ventures.

TaniGroup plans to use the new funding to support its nation-wide expansion and product development.

Also Read: How TaniGroup faces challenges, opportunities in Indonesian agritech industry

“In the near future, we want to invite other agriculture startups to collaborate because Indonesia’s agriculture space is still large and very traditional. There are big problems to address, a lot of farmers still in need of help, and the chance to build a stronger supply chain to deliver great produce to Indonesians at best cost,” said TaniGroup CEO and Co-Founder Ivan Arie Sustiawan in a press statement.

Established in 2016, TaniHub aims to cut the need for a middleman by helping farmers sell fresh produces directly to businesses such as restaurants through their online platform. In addition to the B2B line of their business, it also embraces the B2C segment by launching a mobile e-commerce app.

TaniHub claimed to have connected farmers with more than 400 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as over 10,000 individual customers. It has partnered with more than 25,000 local farmers across Indonesia and operates five regional offices and distribution hubs in Jakarta, Bogor (West Java), Bandung (West Java), Yogyakarta, and Surabaya (East Java).

As for TaniFund, it provides lending for cultivation projects by farmers who may otherwise lack access to formal financial institutions. By linking with TaniHub, more clarity is provided to both borrower and lender on credit standing and terms.

TaniFund is registered with the Financial Services Authority (OJK) and a member of Indonesian Fintech Lenders Association (AFPI).

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Image Credit: TaniGroup

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Once implemented, it will enable businesses, retail shops, consumers, tourists and visitors to interact with each other in a smarter and more effective manner

About five years ago, Eddie Lee, a tech entrepreneur, and his real estate developer-friend Jeremiah Lee, together with other co-founders, launched a crowdlending platform, called SeedIn in Cambodia, Singapore, Taiwan and the Philippines. However, the duo — both huge fans of blockchain — was more interested in exploring the opportunities for this new-age tech. And as their real estate portfolio increased, the pair started asking themselves how to leverage blockchain to better manage and bring more efficiency for their tenants and visitors.

They pondered over this question for some time and finally landed in an idea — smart city.

“We were intrigued by the idea of a smart building, and on a bigger scale, a smart city, which then gave us the inspiration to start Limestone Network,” Eddie tells e27.

Limestone Network, an initiative of Global Tech Exchange, aims to build a smart city ecosystem for real estate developments and infrastructure across Southeast Asia. This, the co-founders hope, can be accomplished through the digitalisation of the city via the development of a blockchain infrastructure.

“Our team envisioned Limestone Network to be the final solution that resolves existing challenges faced by governments, real estate developers and estate management service providers. When Limestone Network is implemented into a real estate project or existing infrastructure, it will allow the facilities management to be taken to a simpler yet more secured level. Businesses, retail shops, building facilities, consumers, tourists and the daily visitors would be able to interact with each other in a smarter and more effective manner to provide a meaningful smart city experience,” adds Eddie.

The beginning

When Eddie and Jeremiah started thinking about building a smart city, the first questions that came into their mind were ‘who are they serving in the city’ and ‘what are the different ways to make it more efficient and increase the productivity for the residents’.

Also Read: How Singapore and Hong Kong provide models for Smart City development

“We believe that in order to build a smart and efficient city, the city and its requirements need to be understood first. It starts by having a digital ecosystem that allows real time analysis of living and moving data. The end result is a greener city through optimal energy production, enhanced security via distributed ledger technology and an urban civilisation that provides efficiency yet with simplicity,” he says.

According to Eddie, this can be achieved by integrating blockchain technology into the physical real estate assets, thus forming a digital network that connects urban cities into the daily lives of the residents that exchange information seamlessly in the background to bring convenience, efficiency and enhance security to their day to day business and life.

The process

Residents who work or reside in the city are required to register themselves with the Limestone mobile app (this is called digital passport). Limestone will first verify the residents’ identity and scan them against global databases before mapping them onto the blockchain network.

With a better understanding of the people living and working in the smart city, Limestone can then unlock one of the key features — digital payments — by working with the payment providers to allow residents to pay for any purchases digitally. Limestone has developed a digital wallet to hold multiple currencies of the solution providers within the cities. It will automatically be available to residents, who have registered themselves over the digital passport.

With the identity and payment data set up, this will form the basic digital infrastructure of the smart city. The smart city will be designed such that the residents own their own data and are empowered to share their information for convenience or to be incentivised by the providers whom Limestone is partnering with for the smart city.

“We will invite third-party developers and service providers to develop our blockchain applications on the Limestone architecture to create a three-dimensional ecosystem to transfer content and knowledge through an open application programming interface (API). The open API is set up to work with partners like the micro-finance institutions, banks and telcos to allow residents to gain access to financial services. There will be added convenience with data portability as they open a new account with the telcos bypassing the submitting of the same set of information that they already have and verified in our network,” explains Eddie, who started his first technology solutions company in 1998 before selling it in 2014 to focus on fintech.

Current project

With the UX of the product ready, Limestone has already moved on to the API integration of the AML/KYC process for the on-boarding of the smart city’s residents. The company has also selected its blockchain protocol and has begun the implementation simultaneously. The minimal viable product (MVP) rollout is expected in Q3 of 2019.

“As for the construction development of the smart city, we have completed the substructure (an underlying or supporting structure) and the work has begun on the superstructure (the part of a building above its foundations). It is targeted for completion in Q4 2021,” he says.

As per the current plan, Limestone Network will first be deployed in a city centre in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh with up to 10,000 business tenants and 190,000 daily population, spanning across 20 hectares of work spaces, encompassing shopping malls, schools, retail outlets and housing the largest exhibition hall for business. Apart from Phnom Penh, the company looks forward to working with other cities within Cambodia and across the ASEAN region.

But do you think the adoption of blockchain itself is sufficient to solve the perennial problems faced by cities? Don’t you think a drastic infrastructural change is the only way forward to achieve this?

“Both the hardware infrastructure and software layer are important to form an efficient smart city,” he shares. “If a drastic infrastructural change is needed to solve the perennial problems faced by cities, we will actually need to design and construct a city from scratch, without taking into consideration that there will already be old legacy roads, buildings and systemic designs in place.”

Eddie believes that like any new technology, blockchain is also going through its share of controversies and challenging period before mass adoption. “Blockchain holds a great promise and we have also witnessed a few central banks implemented and currently testing them within a controlled environment as early as 2016. This shows that mainstream society is gradually opening up to the benefits of blockchain, and we are confident that we will be able to get over the proverbial hump in pushing for mainstream adoption of the technology.”

Eddie says he has noticed a good bit of interest in corporates wanting to develop the system on blockchain for the supply chain industry as it provides the single source of truth and data immutability.

Also Read: What’s in store for blockchain and cryptocurrency?

“In my observation, I feel that the governments and MNCs are taking the lead in rolling out initiatives backed by blockchain technology, and with adequate education, the SMEs will follow suit. Personally, it is also important for us to develop a good solution through good design thinking for the consumers. It should blend into their everyday lives without disrupting their daily activities. Blockchain or not, it should just be a backend process that works,” he shares.

In March this year, Limestone Network became one of the 10 startups selected for Tribe Accelerator‘s blockchain programme. Eddie believes that Tribe Accelerator has an excellent global ecosystem.

“We have learnt a lot from the partners they brought into the ecosystem. For example, we are regular participants in a curated series of masterclasses, where we are engaged on topics ranging from the legal system, to blockchain design, unique and interesting use cases and exposure to industry grade tools that we could consider using,” Eddie concludes.

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Image Credit: Limestone Network.

 

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