Karan Bharadwaj, CEO of Singapore-based PLMP Blockchain and former CTO of XinFin talks about his experience at Echelon Asia 2018
Karan Bharadwaj
Get ready for a bigger, better, and bolder Echelon Asia Summit 2019! Been waiting for this? Then get your tickets here.
I’ve spoken at many blockchain and technology events, and I remember e27’s Echelon 2018 event quite fondly. I think the culture of Echelon is the biggest draw for both speakers and participants alike.
The organisers were extremely helpful and the staff assigned to me made sure I had been introduced to my co-panelists, had my paperwork for travel in order, and even made helpful suggestions about my stay in Singapore.
I had a chance to come early to the event and take a look at the other talks and panels. The diversity of the crowd was very refreshing. Echelon featured young startups and mature companies rubbing shoulders with each other, which, I feel, always leads to the emergence of interesting perspectives.
The panel I was speaking on was about the ‘limitations of blockchain technology’. I was expecting contradictory views but was surprised at our consensus on the fundamental issues with the ecosystem. I do remember having quite an intense discussion with one of my co-panellists before the the panel actually started. It reminded me of my run-ins with bitcoin maximalists!
Another unique aspect of Echelon was the format/arrangement of the venue. Because of a number of simultaneous stages I could simply walk into an area that caught my fancy. I quite literally stepped off stage and joined the crowd to listen to other speakers.
The speakers’ lounge was an excellent place to talk to entrepreneurs from all walks of life. The sheer diversity of the speakers was an enriching experience in itself. I had not planned on networking too heavily, but I incidentally made quite a few interesting connections.
I also had an interesting experience at the venue. I was sitting in the speakers’ lounge and was having a call with my business team back in India, before my panel started. We were discussing our possibilities of our token being listed. We really wanted to list the tokens on Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange Huobi.co, and had been talking to them for a while.
After my call, I picked up a conversation with the two guys sitting next to me in the speakers’ lounge and I realised halfway into the conversation that they were both wearing Huobi shirts! It turned out that I was talking to two senior executives of Huobi Southeast Asia. I told them ‘hey, we are trying to list our token on your exchange, but no luck so far’. They smiled at me and asked to email them. I did so and they followed up within an hour and got us the help we needed.
The rise of e-sports in Indonesia has provided a new opportunity for gaming companies to tap into. So what can companies do to stay on top of players’ mind?
The Indonesian gaming industry has reached a new milestone with the rise of e-sports in the recent years.
In the archipelago, e-sports industry has a history that goes back to the late 1990s. However, at the recent Kopi Chat Deep Dive Series: Gaming event at Block71 Jakarta, Eddy Lim, President of Indonesia e-Sports Association (IESPA), explains why 2002 was considered as the official founding year of the country’s e-sports industry.
“We first made a game event in 1999, but [we can say that] e-sports in Indonesia began in 2002 as that was the first time we host an international gaming event,” Lim says.
Within 17 years, the sports gained such popularity and reputation that an e-sport exhibition was held at the last Asian Games, held in Jakarta and Palembang in 2018. Even in the upcoming Southeast Asian (SEA) Games 2019 in the Philippines, e-sports will be featured as a medal games for the very first time at a competition held under the International Olympic Committee.
As the sports gain its momentum, so is the opportunity for athletes and clubs to collaborate with brands and businesses.
“‘There’s a good e-sports player here, I wonder what he drinks?’” says Haryono Kartono, COO of e-sports enabler company Mix 360, pointing out an example of partnership opportunities with brands that e-sports athletes and clubs can take.
“Back then the opportunities are limited to IT companies, but today other products, such as isotonic drinks, are beginning to open themselves up to e-sports,” he adds.
Even with all the available opportunities, gaming companies continue to face challenges in dealing with the different aspect of product marketing. From the event, e27 has compiled how two Indonesian companies –a game developer and a game publisher– deal with theirs.
Here are some of the most valuable lessons that they have learned about marketing games in the e-sports era:
According to Shieny Aprillia, CMO at Bandung-based game developer Agate, the profile of a typical Indonesian gamer can be seen through the audiences of their title E-Sports Saga: Its 5,000 players are dominated by male audience aged between 18 and 24 years old.
Her view is agreed by Kenken Rudi Salim, COO of game publisher LYTO, who sees that there are reasons why it would be rare to find an e-sports players aged beyond 30 years old.
“There’s no scientific study to support this, but the most ideal age to build a career in e-sports is up until the age of 28. This has something to do with the fingers’ reflexes,” he explains.
Apart from that, e-sports athletes that have gone beyond 30 tend to explore different aspects of their profession. For example, by expanding into content creation.
“This enables former e-sports athletes to make money for themselves. When they were still part of a team, the money that was earned has to be divided among the team members,” Salim continues.
Challenges in product development
With the rising popularity of e-sports, game developers are facing a fresh new challenge in Indonesia: Every single new title that they release has to have an e-sports angle.
“E-sports has become a part of the most successful marketing strategies to increase the games’ [sales] performance. Each developer wants to try their best to make sure that their products are being included in e-sports tournament. If there is no e-sports angle in it, then how are we going to market a title?” Salim says.
“[For games like that] the only solution is to market using advertisement,” he adds.
Another pressing challenge that developers are facing is the fact that the Indonesian game market is still dominated by foreign titles.
In dealing with this particular challenge, Agate chooses to “play it safely.”
“This means, within the next one to two years, we are not going to develop something similar to Mobile Legends, or enter the enemy’s lair in any form. We need to be able to find our own niche,” Aprillia says.
“Out of the 50 million Mobile Legends players, there is got to be something that separates one from the rest. Some of them will like robots more, et cetera. We try to find a segment that is sizeable enough to work on, and find a niche with no major player yet,” she elaborates.
As a game publisher, LYTO is taking a completely different approach. Instead of going against the current, they have to follow through with what the audiences want.
“Unless there is a certain intellectual property rights that prevent us from doing it, we will seek for something similar to what is trending,” Salim says.
Maximum returns
At last but not least, game companies in Indonesia continue to struggle with this particular challenge: How to maximise return with a limited marketing budget and average revenue per user (ARPU)?
First of all, it is important to note that ARPU in Indonesia is still relatively low with US$5-7 being the highest possible price a user is willing to pay for.
“ARPU from mid-core games tend to be bigger than those of casual games,” Aprillia comments.
“KotaKita is casual city management game that we have developed. We recently included in-app purchase and after one to two months, we checked the analytics … Even after we lower the price of in-app purchase from IDR9,000 (US$0.64) to IDR3,000 (US$0.21), people are still reluctant to pay and would rather watch ad videos instead,” she further explains.
When it comes to maximising their marketing budget, Salim has one thing to say: It will never be easy.
But from his experience, the COO learned that the “easiest, quickest” way to attract audiences is through offline events such as game competitions. The only downside to hosting such event is that companies need to invest heavily in the prizes.
Salim also stated that there is no guarantee that the more budget you spend for an event, the more successful it will become.
“We have held events at internet cafe where we managed to gather between 200 to 300 people,” he closes.
From the scarcity of furnitures, to the limited government’s support, Jeff Laflamme has seen it all and still run AngkorHub for almost six years now
Back when it was cool to be a digital nomad, Jeff Laflamme, like the rest of us, sure had been intrigued by the lifestyle that it offers. Ditching his-9 to-5 job at that time, he landed in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, when he bumped into a friend who told him about Siem Reap, south of Cambodia.
This friend introduced him to the idea of co-working space, at that time was one of the firsts in Vietnam, and Laflamme stumbled upon an AHA moment that became the preconception of AngkorHub, the first tech hub in the heart of the touristy city of Cambodia, Siem Reap.
Selling romanticised lifestyle
“It was really like the classic story of a digital nomad. I just got tired of the 9-to-5 routine,” said Laflamme.
Even so, Laflamme admitted that he realised how romanticised the nomadic lifestyle really was. “It sells the idea of working on your laptop with the beach view, remotely in an island with espresso on your table, but it was really interesting and people bought into the idea,” said Laflamme.
The reality, he added, was really trying to find a stable internet connection to be able to work for only a few hours at once. However, this seemed ideal.
So Laflamme thought to himself, why not setting up one in Siem Reap, where tourists are flocking for the beach. “At that time I was really intrigued with co-working space industry and I fell in love with Siem Reap,” he explained.
Quickly he got to work. “I start comparing the situation, numbers, and average wages in Cambodia, especially in IT sector compared to other countries,” said Laflamme.
Challenging feat
He decided that the co-working space he was going to build should be approached with social enterprise concept. “I told myself that we can reuse the same space for training businesses that come to the place. So immediately I worked on a business plan and joined force with someone,” Laflamme added.
Laflamme proceeded to meet with a local who showed him buildings, something that he recalled was like a countryside project.
“There was no stable internet connection at that time, so that was my first challenge in setting up a tech hub, aside from how limited the buildings that are decent enough and being leased to be a place for a co-working space,” said Laflamme.
In addition to that, Laflamme remembered that it was exactly on August 2013 and Siem Reap was still the second poorest province in Cambodia at that time.
He mentioned other challenges like sourcing materials like furnitures to really create a comfortable and inviting co-working space. “You can’t find anything that fits. Sourcing it from Thailand was the closest you could get to a nice interior at that time,” he added.
“I remembered visiting the capital just recently and I was shocked seeing all the infrastructure and materials like furnitures to fill up co-working space that to me doesn’t look like it is in Cambodia,” he recalled.
Next comes the administration.
“Registering business, going to Ministry of Commerce, only to find that they didn’t speak English and they don’t have forms. I remember the guy that was there brought me to another city just to do the paperwork. It was all complicated and there was zero information online,” Laflamme told e27.
After what seemed like endless hurdles, Laflamme settled in the ex-building of a bank.
The socialisation part
Laflamme might have finished all the administration and the location necessity to build the co-working space in Siem Reap, but he wasn’t really prepared for what came next.
“I thought It will be obvious that it’s a co-working place with all the tables and facilities like a power generator. I just assumed people will jump over the idea. I was wrong,” said Laflamme.
AngkorHub was set in a tourist city, with the main attraction of the place being the leisure experience it offers. So it made sense when the firsts of their customers, the people who would need the place to work are expats, more so than the locals.
“The small network that we did have and would be a customers wouldn’t be our customers within a few months because they came during their vacation,” said Laflamme.
People around Laflamme was telling him that he needed to build a community first before starting the coworking space. “I get that, but that couldn’t be the case for every co-working space, especially not in a touristy area,” he said.
Laflamme added that AngkorHub is still struggling to date to make people understand the concept, even people that are well-traveled and professionals.
Pioneering the tech industry
“We used to be the only one, and in our first months we tried to connect with similar initiatives. It took me several months to get people’s awareness, and soon enough, like two months after opening, there were some expats starting another co-working space,” he recalled.
“Now there are around six co-working spaces, and this year local group will open one that’s going to be a big one,” he added.
Laflamme mentioned that when AngkorHub was first launched, the first idea was to be a social innovation center and become an incubation hub for young talents. It was in 2013 to 2014.
“The challenge with making it an incubation center was that people barely understood what co-working was. It was simply not ready for it. We could only plant seeds and shift focus until it’s ready. That’s what we worked on,” said Laflamme.
There’s a limited startups and investors in Siem Reap for AngkorHub to become an incubation center. “To do that, we’d definitely need the guidance. I myself have been playing an advisor role for some time, providing consult for people about their startup business,” said Laflamme.
However, Laflamme prided the fact that AngkorHub is well-positioned in Google search and reviews. “But even that’s still not enough for people to com. Startups are really limited here,” said Laflamme.
As the longest running co-working hub in the city, startup events that looked for spaces in the area would reach out to them. “Mostly are event organizers from outside of the country. The local ecosystem itself didn’t really connect and reach out to organize event with us,” said Laflamme.
Co-living in Siem Reap
Now that it’s been almost 6 years into operation, the hub has been operating from its second building, abandoning the ex-bank building. It also provides a co-living option now.
“Our business model is really working based on the co-living space. It’s creating community through renting the room, aiming at digital nomad who work online and need a good connection,” explained Laflamme.
Right now, the place is divided into two big areas: one is the common area downstairs, and the other is the upstair for co-living space.
“Now we have 20 spots, all in open space with no private offices. But we’re actually working on it because there are demands for it,” said Laflamme.
Right now, the hub provides one meeting room, a small one where people get their calls done there.
The hub offers monthly membership and options of Day pass and Weekly pass for the co-working space.
“20 per cent of our visitors are expats who will come living for a month or so. They are either a travelling professionals or digital nomads, who also stay in our co-living facility. We have more co-living members than the co-working members, actually,” said Laflamme.
“The plan for 2019 is to work on having a private office, and we will change the existing concept now, although I can’t get into details with the public yet,” said Laflamme.
What’s next
For AngkorHub, which Laflamme said has received an investment from an Angel VC based in Singapore, it’s still hard to keep the business afloat.
However, with the undisclosed number of investment they have received, the hub has begun their search for new location.
“This person helped us by investing in the project, enabling us to look for other locations with adjustment in concept,” said Laflamme.
For this year, since Laflamme has found that coworking space in the area is not valued properly if it’s not paired with incubation, AngkorHub will need to adjust business model.
“After all, the hub itself exists also to support the locals. The goal is to make people see Siem Reap and Cambodia past the temples, because it’s about the people,” said Laflamme.
Towards the end of the conversation, Laflamme shared his opinion on how Siem Reap has been overlooked by the government, especially in the tech sector.
“I would say Siem Reap is nowhere near ready to be the tech hub of the country. The government pays more attention to the capital, and the only time they were involved was a few years back, doing a business incubation 101 here. The government doesn’t connect with the existing players in both Phnom Penh and other provinces, and instead, they went out of their ways and created other programs and chose the same winners over and over again,” said Laflamme.
Laflamme believed that the only way Cambodia, and eventually Siem Reap, will be at par with other countries in terms of tech innovation and facility is for government and community to take it one step at a time. “Walk before we can run. The government should work their way from grassroots and collaborate with local universities. I believe doing it this way would create more lasting impact,” closed Laflamme.
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They shout from Instagram feeds, coffee mugs and status updates. Maybe you have one scribbled on a nearby sticky note. If so, no judgment.
These are powerful themes. Everyone wants to feel excited about what they’re doing and creating.
We know that hard work can deliver results. And quitting your job to chase a startup dream is a seductive idea.
Mainstream media also perpetuates the story that if you log 80 hours a week, follow your passion and “hustle hard,” you might create the next Facebook or Amazon.
It could happen. But this narrative often leads founders into business before they’re ready.
It can also create enormous pressure that derails smart, ambitious people. For every entrepreneur who’s clocking three hours of sleep each night and going prematurely grey, I’d like to offer an alternative path.
This path led me to build JotForm in one of the most competitive industries around: online forms.
Even Google Forms stepped into the ring as one of our toughest competitors.
But we maintained our leading position for 12 years and counting with 3.2 million users and 100 employees — and all without taking a single dime in outside funding.
This is not a story of overnight success or following my dreams straight to the top of TechCrunch.
I’ve built this business slowly, while maintaining my freedom and my personal life.
I believe that bootstrapping is a great approach for entrepreneurs, and I’d love to share what I’ve learned along the way.
1. Your day job doesn’t have to be a drag
I created my first software product in 1999, while I was in college studying computer science.
It was a free, open source membership program for a student website and as it became popular, people began paying me for customisations.
I still remember the thrill of getting that first check — for a whopping US$150.
It felt like a huge milestone. I soon created a paid version that started racking up downloads when it was mentioned on a SitePoint newsletter.
After graduation, I could have gone all-in and focused exclusively on my product, but I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have enough confidence.
I am a surprisingly risk-averse person. I don’t believe that every entrepreneur has to be a fearless dreamer who jumps in with both feet, consequences be damned.
So, I worked as a programmer for a New York media company — but I didn’t let a full-time job stop me from improving my product. I’d wake up at 6 am, answer customer questions, and then go to work.
It took me another five years to quit my job and start my own company — even though I already had a successful product.
Working for another organization taught me invaluable lessons about business, communication and teams.
I was also paid to immerse myself in new technologies and sharpen my programming skills.
Your day job can actually fuel your business. In addition to learning critical skills, you might even stumble upon your BIG idea — which is exactly what happened to me.
2. Look for problems, not passion
When I worked at the media company, our editors always needed custom web forms for polls, questionnaires, contests and surveys.
It was dull, tedious work — but it was part of my job. I started to think, what if I automated the process?
I imagined a simple, drag-and-drop tool that made it easy to add fields and build a form, even if people did not know HTML.
After I quit my job, I worked on this idea for six months and released the first version of JotForm in February 2006.
This brings me to a myth we need to dispel.
Many entrepreneurs think there’s a linear path to success, with three proven steps:
Ignore the haters.
Gather the courage to quit your job.
Work 80 hours a week to build your dream.
Quitting your job before you’ve clearly solved a problem will only add pressure as your cash goes down the drain.
On the flip side, starting a business with something that people actually want and need gives you a running start. You have a viable solution. You have scratched your own itch.
For example, JotForm eliminates a friction point (the need for custom web forms) that I experienced firsthand during the five years I spent at my job.
I knew people wanted this product. I was confident that if I created something great, users would happily pay for it.
Paul Graham has been writing about problem-solving for years. He says the best startup ideas have three things in common:
They’re something the founders themselves want (I wanted to automate web forms).
That they themselves can build (I had the developer skills and experience).
And that few others realise are worth doing (two competitors emerged right after my release, but the market was otherwise untapped).
It’s not easy to find yourself in that triangular sweet-spot, but always it’s worth waiting until you do.
By 2005, I realised that I was earning as much money from my side business as I did in my 9-to-5 job. It was time to make a break.
I left the company and took a hard look at my product. The membership software could keep me afloat with minimum effort. I had an infinite runway to work on something new.
So, I continued my familiar routine. I took care of customers early in the morning and late at night, and spent my days building JotForm.
3. Avoid the pressures of hyper-growth
Growing organically is so underrated.
If you start a business by “following your passion,” you have to begin scaling the business before your own savings run out. The clock is ticking — and it only gets faster as time elapses.
If you start a side project that can eventually sustain you, no one is breathing down your neck or demanding hockey stick growth charts.
Building your business with real customers (instead of giving away a big chunk of the company) is difficult, and it takes a long time. But, it is also less risky.
Customers vote for you with their hard-earned cash — and money doesn’t lie.
It’s so much easier to start when people are already clamouring to use your product or services.
With JotForm, I chose to grow organically, one step a time. I spread the word by emailing blogs and posting on technology forums.
I did not spend any money or push especially hard; I just thought people might be interested in this new way to create forms.
By the end of my first year, about 15,000 people had signed up to use the product.
4. Focus on the only metric that matters
Bootstrappers like me believe that entrepreneurs should have one goal: making their businesses work.
In other words, you need to earn more money than you spend; being profitable.
Media outlets often celebrate companies that raise millions of dollars and have huge vanity metrics, like user acquisitions. There’s a myth that you can worry about being profitable later.
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson explain this beautifully in their now-iconic book, Rework.
The Basecamp founders target startups in general, but I think bootstrapped startups are the exception to the fairytale where “the laws of business physics don’t apply.”
Clearly, there are exceptions. Capital-intensive startups, such as building an online marketplace or opening a physical restaurant or retail store could require funding.
Business is never one-size-fits-all.
My advice? Ignore the unicorns and glittery startup tales and do it your own way. Make sure you’re profitable from the start — even if those profits are modest at the beginning.
Work steadily and don’t worry about “following your dream” until you have a solid foundation.
In order to stay profitable, I made two key decisions in the first year of my company:
I moved back to my native Turkey. I knew I wanted to grow the company and hire employees, but the United States were too expensive.
I hired my first employee. It felt like a huge leap, but I had enough money set aside to pay a full-time salary for a year.
We released the paid version of JotForm in April 2007. We only received three Premium upgrades on our first day, but it was still incredibly exciting.
Word continued to spread, and by the end of 2007, we had 50,000 users and 500 paid subscribers.
If I had been tracking sheer vanity metrics, I might have felt pretty smug about what we had achieved. But, I was focused on profits.
I knew we had a long way to go. We needed to add more paid users and steadily grow the subscription base — and that’s exactly what we have done for the last 10 years.
5. You don’t have to give away a big chunk of your company
Investors often look for businesses run by co-founders with complementary skills: perhaps one is a marketing genius and the other has profound technical experience.
That is why most business advisors tell people to pair up in order to get funding.
Co-founders can be great, but many entrepreneurs waste their time searching for a perfect match, just because investors often favour these teams.
This mentality can lead to ill-fated partnerships, ugly splits down the road, and lost revenues — instead of better products.
I almost had a co-founder in JotForm.
A friend and I talked seriously about it, but the partnership didn’t work out in the end. It’s fine. There are no hard feelings, and I’ve been happy to build the company on my own terms.
By earning more than we spend, I can hire incredibly smart people to help me, without giving away half of the business. A great way to work.
6. Bootstrapping can minimise distractions
I think about JotForm all the time. It’s not that I’m obsessed (well, maybe a little), but I love the product as much as the business itself.
We make sure our employees are happy and the company runs smoothly, but the product is always at the core. It has to be something that our customers use and love.
That means I’m focused on the product, not building decks for the next Board of Directors meeting. We answer to the needs of our users, not the demands of investors or shareholders.
Here is another point that people rarely discuss: investors want to back founders with killer resumes.
I did not graduate from Harvard or MIT nor did I have two successful prior exits, or a fancy membership with Google.
My company did not start because of my connections.
Even if I had wanted to get VC money, I doubt it would have happened.
My idea probably did not look big enough on paper. There’s also the simple fact that I had no idea how to raise capital.
I would have spent at least six months learning how to find and pitch investors. Instead, I used that time to refine the product and spread the word.
The bottomline? Follow your passion — once you’re profitable
Starting a business is not easy. No matter how excited you feel, there are tough days and difficult decisions ahead.
But, difficult should never mean impossible. Tough is not terrible.
There is no honour in killing yourself for a dream.
Starting small, building slowly and growing organically can prevent both small meltdowns and a total crash-and-burn nosedive.
Working for yourself can free you from other people’s expectations. That is why the “rise-and-grind-for-your-passion” messages are so powerful.
Entrepreneurship can be a siren’s call with the twin rewards of freedom and control. If you’re pulled to build a business, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
So, why shackle yourself to people who just want to see profits? Why take third-party money or take a massive risk before you’re ready?
Hold onto your freedom and keep your expectations in check. Strive relentlessly for improvement.
You have the power to go further than you ever imagined — on your own terms.
Both companies are education tech startups based in Singapore
XSEED, a Singapore-based edtech company, has reportedly acquired Report Bee, a cloud-based software solution for school management. The amount of acquisition is undisclosed.
Founded in 2010 by Ananthraman Mani, Bala Ganesh S., and Anjan T., Report Bee is a cloud-based software solution that allows schools to assess, report, and analyse the performance of individual students, classes, and teachers.
With the acquisition, the founders will join XSEED.
The acquisition will include the integration of Report Bee’s assessment platform and suite of products. XSEED intends to use Report Bee’s already established system to make real time assessments, provide personalised student feedback, and analyse data to diagnose teaching gaps.
Report Bee claimed that its platform has been used by close to 1,000 schools. Previously, it secured investment from India Education Innovation Fund which is wholly backed by Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.
Headquartered in Singapore with development centers in Delhi and Bangalore, XSEED said that it has reached one million children in eight countries.
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Ascendas Reit will handle the development of the building that’s set to be done in 2020
Grab announces that it will begin the building of its new Singapore’s headquarters, managed by Ascendas Reit. The deal was signed by both Grab and Ascendas Funds Management (S) Limited, the Manager of Ascendas Real Estate Investment Trust (Ascendas Reit).
The building process will spend S$181.2 million (US$135 million), and it’s said to be done by fourth quarter of 2020. The building will be located within the one-north business park, and it will house all of Grab’s employees based in Singapore and its R&D centre.
“We are delighted to announce this partnership with Grab. The long lease commitment of 11 years by Grab will provide Ascendas Reit with a stable income stream. This development takes our business and science park investments to S$3.8 billion (US$2.8 billion) and accounts for 34 per cent of our total portfolio value of S$11.3 billion (US$8.4 billion),” said William Tay, Chief Executive Office and Executive Director of Ascendas Funds Management (S) Limited.
The design of the building will provide Grab’s employees with a green and sustainable workplace environment such as recycled building materials and energy efficient low emissive glass façade to reduce solar heat gain. It will have greenery on the ground and mid-level sky terraces integrated with communal spaces and public pedestrian to promote social interactions and exchange of ideas.
In support of Singapore’s car-lite vision and to reduce carbon footprint, the headquarter will facilitate bicycle parking, lockers, and shower facilities.
“The increased capacity of our headquarters will enable us to create and hire for a thousand more exciting roles globally over the next 12 months,” said Ong Chin Yin, Head of People, Grab.
Don’t expect managers to teach themselves, and make sure to hold them to high (and strict) standards
This article was originally published at matteosutto.comon January 27
I joined iPrice in the summer of 2016. At the time,it was a very promising regional affiliate player with an encouraging initial traction and around 1 million monthly users.
I left at the end of last year, after a terrific journey which saw us becoming the leading meta-search e-commerce aggregator in Southeast Asia. We grew our userbase to over 15 million monthly users, closed tworounds of funding from some of the best VCs in the region and grew our headcount to more than 150 employees from all around the world (>30 nationalities).
During those three years, as part of iPrice Leadership team, I spent the majority of my time finding ways to maximise managerial leverage and increase our organisational output. Above all, we created and maintained highly productive teams as our organisation faced rapid growth.
In other words, I was learning and practicing the art and science of effective management.
Reflecting on my experience, I’ve decided to write down the most important management lessons I have learned during my journey. The hope is to provide some valuable insights to managers and leadership teams in other scaling organisations, especially in the region.
I’ve split the learnings in five different sections: Hiring, Promoting, Communication, Relationships and Performance Management.
Hiring
Front-load your People Investment
Laszlo Bock, (former) VP of People Operations at Google
“At Google, we front-load our people investment. This means the majority of our time and money spent on people is invested in attracting, assessing, and cultivating new hires. We spend more than twice as much on recruiting, as a percentage of our people budget, as an average company. If we are better able to select up front, that means we have less work to do with them once they are hired”
It all starts with hiring.
The moment you fully realise this fact, consider making a few fundamental adjustments to internal hiring practices.
First, hire more slowly. Never, ever, compromise quality over speed. Even when it seems like it is taking too much time, and especially if you are hiring managers (more on that below). The cumulative amount of time you will spend fixing your bad hiring decisions will almost always be of an order of magnitude higher than your initial time investment.
Second, invest enough time in writing a truly articulated and inspiring job description(JD). Assuming the company branding is not on the same level of Google or Go-Jek, it is important to put in the work to differentiate the company from the competition and inspire top applicants.
The best candidates always pay attention to a well written job description.
Most of the best candidates I have interviewed referred to the job description as one of the major factors that convinced them to apply. Despite this empirical evidence, few companies get it right.
Third, add written screening questions to each of your openings. This is important for three main reasons:
It is the fastest way to screen out candidates and therefore minimise time spent interviewing.
Again and again, I found the quality of the answers to be among the most correlated factors in determining whether the candidate is truly a top talent.
It motivates the best candidates to apply (self-selecting them). Instead of becoming a burden in preventing the busiest and most talented candidates to invest time in the application process, it reinforces their interest in the company.
Beyond the above tips, at iPrice we started to gradually implement some of the hiring and interviewing process used internally by Google, resulting in a substantial improvement in the quality of our hiring.
Two books have been particularly valuable in giving us an inside look of some of the most valuable Google hiring practices:
From structuring a collegial interview process, to building candidates ‘packet’ or making internal hiring calibration, there are plenty of actionable practices that can be adopted into an organisation.
Hiring Managers
When hiring managers, your focus should be in assessing their ability to manage people. Simple in theory, hard to execute in practice.
Assessing how smart a future manager is or her strategical savviness is relatively easier. Assessing her ability to truly manage people effectively is way trickier.
Especially with senior managers, past performance is typically the best indicator of future performance. Therefore, how to assess ‘past performance’ when it comes to managing people?
The biggest and most recurrent mistake when hiring managers is to confuse the quantity of people managed in the past vs. the quality/effectiveness in managing them. That is, assuming that since the person managed lots of people in the past, she must know how to manage them effectively.
Therefore, don’t rely too much on questions such as “How many people did you manage in the past?”
Below, some of questions that I found to be much more effective to ask when assessing new managers:
“Tell me an example of person you are particularly proud of having hired and coached during your career? What make you so proud about it?”
“What are you doing today as a manager that you weren’t doing 5 years ago?”
“How do you structure your 1:1s? Which topics do you cover, with which frequency, etc”
“Have you ever promoted someone in your team from individual contributor to manager? If so, which reading material did you recommend her?
“If you had to spend only 1h per week with your newly promoted manager, what would you spend your time teaching her?”
“When managing a new team, what are the first things you do in your first 30 days?”
I also recommend you to ask your candidates to share with you one or more examples of performance evaluations they did in the past for their direct reports.
Regardless of how poorly structured the performance evaluation process was in their previous companies, when a manager truly cares about her people (which is among the most important pre-requisite for being a good manager), you can see it from how she has written her performance evaluation in the past.
Promoting
The speed at which fast growing startups typically require their junior staff to take on managerial roles can often create big organisational frictions, increasing employees churn and ultimately slowing down the growth of the company. Think of it as ‘organisational debt’ (not unlike technical debt).
When it comes to promotions, there are typically three types of bad promotions to avoid:
Promoting individual contributors (ICs) who don’t have any desire in managing other people
Promoting ICs who think they can manage people, but in reality don’t want to put in the effort to become good at management
Promoting ICs who want to manage people and are willing to put the efforts to learn, but are left alone in figuring it out by themselves
The first case of bad promotion is the easiest one to avoid. With transparent and frequent conversations, it should be obvious whether managing people is something a person wants.
The second case of bad promotion is trickier. Many ICs can be seduced by the prospect of managing other people as the only (or fastest) way to progress in their careers. To reduce such instances, establish company wide and separate career tracks for both ICs and Managers.
See below an example of dual career track we implemented at iPrice:
iPrice’s Managers and ICs career progression
Besides this, to further reduce the risk of promoting ICs to a managerial position they are not ready for, try the following:
Have them manage one or more interns
Have them onboard and train new team members
Expect to be surprised by how much useful information comes from just observing the potential manager perform the two above activities.
The third case of bad promotion can be avoided only if Senior Managers are willing to put the time and effort to provide the necessary guidance and training to their first time managers.
As the former CEO of Intel Andy Grove writes in his (highly recommended) Management bible:
“Training is the manager’s job. Training is the highest leverage activity a manager can do to increase the output of an organization.”
– Andrew S. Grove
Don’t expect first time managers to learn all by themselves. It won’t happen (fast enough).
I found a few areas to be the ones where guidance is most needed:
How to hire – Don’t expect someone who has never drafted a job description nor interviewed someone to know how to do it. Review their job descriptions, share with them examples of questions to ask during the interview, sit with them during the initial calls to provide them feedback and teach them what great answers look like.
How to run effective one-on-ones – Which topics to discuss, which inputs to expect from their direct reports, with which frequency, etc.
How to write and deliver a performance evaluation – Review every single written performance evaluation until they get to the expected level of depth and quality. Run the first performance evaluation together with them, to provide feedback on their delivery
How to handle performance management – This is probably the hardest one for any first time manager. Michael Brown, former UBER APAC Head, puts it best in a First Round Review article:
“I’ve learned that young managers tend to move too slowly to address underperformers on their teams. They hope something will change, and they want to avoid uncomfortable conversations — so they let low performance fester. More senior or experienced managers must recognize when this is happening and give their younger or less seasoned colleagues the push they need to proactively deal with these situation”
Last and probably most importantly, its important to also be a great manager. By being a great manager, any person on the team, once in a managerial position, will start to naturally imitate the behaviours and practices.
This is why management (both good and bad) is so contagious and can create so much leverage within an organisation.
Communication
Structure One-on-ones
Establish a company wide cadence for each of your managers’ one-on-ones and make them stick to it. Weekly is the most popular frequency and what we were doing at iPrice.
Once a manager starts having multiple people reporting to them, ask each of team members to set up the agenda of the discussion. Ideally, it will stick to a consistent format. Even better, ask them to send the topics of discussion ahead of the face-to-face meeting.
This will not only allow managers to make the most of their limited time, but will also allow them to focus on what matters the most to the team, thus empowering them.
Provide impromptu guidance
Don’t wait to schedule ad-hoc meetings to provide feedback to the team. Do it after each meeting with internal or external stakeholders (or after each email sent, if necessary).
Don’t wait for weekly or monthly alignments to share feedback. It will be much less effective.
Even worst, don’t wait for any quarterly/bi-annual/annual formal performance review to dump all of the feedback at the same time. Performance reviews should never come as a surprise to the recipient.
Praise Publicly, Criticise Privately
Public praise gives more weight to your appreciation, thus incentivising the person to do more of the same. It also provides an opportunity to reiterate the company values to the team(s) and to the entire company.
When it comes to criticism, any public display of it will most often have negative consequences. It makes it much harder for the receiver to accept it, due to the triggering of her/his natural defensive reaction. If it is necessary to criticise over email, just reply to the individual removing any other people in the email thread.
Care Personally
Try to build strong personal relationships with the individuals that make up the team. Without a connection, managers will face an uphill battle in their role.
The best way to build personal relationships is by showing genuinely care for people. There is no way around it and it is impossible to fake. It is essentially to genuinely and personally care for their personal and professional development.
By building such layer of personal care, bosses will be able to challenge the team directly without deteriorating the relationship. On the opposite, challenging them directly shows that their growth is important to the manager.
Kim Scott, visualises it best in her Radical Candor diagram (another highly recommended management book)
Build a safe pasture
In order to get the most out of the team, it is crucial to create an environment where people feel psychologically safe and secure under the leadership team. More specifically:
Make it clear that they won’t be punished if they make a mistake
Try to always be the first one to let them know the bad news, so they don’t get distracted by rumours
Defend them from outside criticisms. Always take the blame while always give the credits to the team
Being able create such an environment can lead to unconditional loyalty from the team.
This will probably sound controversial, given the widespread belief that good management is mainly about ‘getting out of people’s way’ and ‘letting them do their job’. I found this to be an easy excuse typically used by lazy and/or bad managers.
To the opposite, a good manager is someone that will keep on challenging the team directly.
Micromanage each of the team members until they consistently perform at the high standards expected from them. Then, gradually let it go.
In practice, this means investing energy and time into things which often might seem trivial from the outside: correcting the emails they send or the terminology they use in their verbal communication. I found both activities to have extremely high ROI and leverage in the long-term.
At the end, it boils down to establishing a culture of high standards from the get go. Borrowing a favourite quote on the topic:
“A culture of high standards is protective of all the “invisible” but crucial work that goes on in every company. I’m talking about the work that no one sees. The work that gets done when no one is watching. In a high standards culture, doing that work well is its own reward – it’s part of what it means to be a professional”
– Jeff Bezos
Being a Public Figure
As a manager, especially if in a senior/leadership position and especially if working in a multi-cultural environment, actions outside the office (hours) matters.
The higher the seniority, the more people will start looking view the person as role-model; and not only inside the office.
It is just something that needs to be accepted.
Performance Management
It’s not what you Preach, but what you Tolerate – Jocko Willink
Especially in Asia / SEA, I found the bar for complacency and conflict-avoidance very high when dealing with performance management.
When having to make tough calls, a few principles can help address such situations with enough proactivity so to avoid creeping under performance.
First and foremost, a low performer is always, in 100 per cent of the cases, affecting the rest of the team and their morale. As a manager, when the under performance of an individual becomes noticeable, the rest of the team is already well aware of it (in well functioning and performing teams). Addressing underperfomers is a matter of respect to the other people on the team that are doing a great job.
Second, reject the claim that “someone is better than nobody”. Poor performers typically create more extra work for everyone else on the team (and their manager).
Third, it is possible to let someone go and still leave on good terms. Demonstrate to the person that it is not personal and that the judgment is only about their work. Reach out some weeks after they have started a new job to check how they are doing. More likely than not, they will express happiness about being in a new environment.
How a manager handles the people that they let go will have a big impact on how the team perceives both the leader and the company. Don’t underestimate it.
Managers’ Performance
When it comes to the performance of managers, leadership needs to be much more strict. Bad bosses have huge negative consequences for the team and for the entire company. Always think about the damages a bad manager can have on the career of an individual.
How to evaluate the performance of a Manager?
First, start looking at a team as the by-product of the Manager. Jocko Willink, in Extreme Ownership, summarises it best : “There are no bad teams, only bad leaders”. It is a major red flag if the manager doesn’t fully own the performance of the team.
Second, leaders will encounter cases where the team is performing well from an overall output perspective, but the Manager is not performing up to expectation. The single most effective way to discover such cases is by starting regular, and recurrent, skip-level meetings with tbe team members. Establish it as a normal practice from the get go. This way it prevents the Manager from feeling threatened.
Third, there is typically a strong correlation between how well the performance reviews of a Manager are written and the performance of the Manager himself. Take a look at them as an additional performance proxy.
Finally, run team happiness surveys across the company.
How to proactively perform self-criticism as a Manager?
The survey mentioned above is typically a good tool. Another very insightful exercise we implemented at iPrice were quarterly bottom up reviews from the direct reports. Some example of questions we have been using:
Value Creator – Her/his involvement in my activities maximize the impact of my work
Availability – I get the right amount of support I need from her/him
Communication – Communicate to me tasks clearly and concisely in verbal and written communications
Problem Resolution – Able to quickly resolves issues/problems that I bring to him or questions/doubts I have
Personal Growth – Allows me, by direct coaching or indirectly to keep learning at the speed I want (new or existing skills)
Career Growth – Able to provide me with a clear career trajectory
Bringing it all together
Effective Management is among the most scalable and defensible assets a leadership team can build to increase the output of their organisation and support its growth.
As an individual, if there is motivation to become a better manager, start training. Anyone can achieve greatness and improve their own and the group’s performance and productivity, regardless of what is happening in the rest of the company.
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Thanks for reading! For any questions or thoughts, you can comment below or you can find me on Twitter .
Southeast Asia’s internet economy is still growing resolutely
One month in, the year kicked off with a flurry of activity and a particularly busy few weeks for the Vietnamese startup ecosystem.
This January, we saw 1,438 Southeast Asia startups created/updated on the e27 media platform. Of which, 41 startups raised/recorded more than US$1.58 billion across 19 industry verticals.
Since its emergence in 2016, Fintech still remains a strong theme in this region, amassing 10 deals totalling US$345.6 million in January. This number was twice as much as the runner-up (e-commerce). [Chart below]
Speaking of e-commerce, it is always important to remember that the sector is still king in Southeast Asia and growth does not seem to be slowing down. e27 recorded five deals valued at around US$57.5 million in January.
Healthtech scored rounded out the top-3 with three deals.
While most of the startup fundraising activity still revolves around the Seed and Series A stage, we are starting to see different large companies raise financing at such a rate that the alphabet-soup naming mechanisms become pointless. [Chart Below]
The biggest contributor to January’s deals was Go-Jek, confirming an initial US$920 million close for their Series F raised from Google, Tencent and JD.com.
On the other hand, KinerjaPay and Grab each secured US$200 million in a post-IPO equity round and a corporate round respectively.
A breakdown by country
Indonesia and Vietnam followed closely with 11 and nine deals respectively, while Vietnam and Malaysia and the Philippines scored an 8 collectively. On deal flow/fundraising activity, Singapore led the way with 14 deals recorded. [Chart Below]
e27 did not manage to capture any deals from the rest of Southeast Asia.
In terms of deal size/total amount raised, Indonesia amassed a total of US$1.21 billion, which is a staggering 77 per cent of the total amount captured for entire Southeast Asia this month.
Singapore and Vietnam each totalled US$253.86 million and US$113.5 million respectively. These figures did not include the 15/41 deals which remained undisclosed.
Jan 2019 a stellar month for Vietnam
And all this does not take into account the undisclosed seed round raised by TheBank.vn as well as the Series C round raised by Tima. If we revisit the same table after removing the outliers (read: unicorns), January 2019 was a stellar month for Vietnam, ranking third in deal flow/fundraising activity and second in deal size/total amount raised. [Chart Below]
This sentiment is also echoed by the e27 community, who recently voted MoMo as the January’s best startup. The company won because it managed to raise a Series C funding round Southeast Asian startup that reaches a significant milestone in that month.
Do you believe in superstition?
While Southeast Asia is known for its US$200-billion-worth digital opportunity, it is also a region with 11 countries and 660 million people representing a diversity of cultures.
Each culture has its own superstitions, which might affect the way founders choose to announce their fundraising milestone.
For those who subscribe to a notion of (in)auspicious hours or (un)lucky days, here’s an interesting stat for you.
Last month, fundraising announcements on e27 happened mostly on Mondays, with Tuesdays being the least popular. e27 refrains from publishing any fundraising news over the weekends as it will not do justice to the celebratory two-day-occasion when everyone is away from their laptop and industry news grind. [Chart below]
Whether the strategy is riding the popularity wave or emerging brazenly on a quiet and slow news day, it is also kind of fun to zoom out to determine the time of the month that is best for an announcement.
Announcements generally peak in the first week, whereas during the 2nd and 4th weeks, announcements tend to die down [Chart Below].
With this in mind, you can better plan your communication strategy; which date/weeks to submit your press releases to writers@e27.co.
A disclaimer, and an open invitation for community & collaboration
Is this report accurate?
Definitely not a hundred per cent.
e27 data is heavily reliant on inbound participation and we are well aware that there are startups and stakeholders that have no engagement with our platform at all.
Nevertheless, we are excited by its vast potential and the endless possibilities.
This publication is not a one-off, but a follow-up from the launch of e27’s Southeast Asia Startup Ecosystem Report 2018, as a continuous effort to improve visibility and transparency in Southeast Asia’s tech startup ecosystem.
To make sense of Southeast Asia’s growth and complexity, this project also presents an opportunity for us to develop a stronger sense of community.
This is an open invitation for the #e27community to continue engaging our platform proactively, as we continue serving our mission — to empower entrepreneurs to build and grow their business.
We are also in conversation with active stakeholders and various governments for collaboration and partnerships so that subsequent publications will be more valuable and impactful for the region’s tech startup ecosystem.
Southeast Asia is a region that has both the richest, and poorest, people in the world, Insurance offerings rarely are tailored to the specific person
This article was written by Keith Lim, the CEO of Hearti. If you would like to contribute, click here.
Scoot has not had the best of times in recent months. Lengthy consecutive flight delays in November and December have not only earned the airline the ire of thousands of passengers and their families but has also cast an uncomfortable spotlight on passenger rights when it comes to air travel; specifically, their rights to recompense and restitution.
The problem with compensatory models is that inconvenience is difficult to measure, and agreements on how much a passenger’s time is worth not only varies from carrier to carrier and person to person, but is also at best arbitrary, and at its worst, a downright insult to those affected.
Take for example, the 29-hour delay to flight TR869 on November 26. Based on the airline’s Guest Promise, all passengers were given accommodation and meals, but is it arguable that a person who had to take two extra days of leave as a result should be entitled to the same as a student travelling on vacation? From the airline’s perspective all is fair, but to those actually in the situation, the inequity is obvious.
This is where micro-insurance comes in.
The very principle of a consumer determining their own value of objects, time, and opportunity and apportioning monetary premiums accordingly is rooted in the fundamentals of financial inclusion. The reason why microinsurance has enjoyed a rapid surge across Southeast Asia in the last decade is precisely because traditional bundled insurance policies are also inherently unfair.
In the earlier example, the working adult would have logically purchased a travel policy, say AIG’s Travel Guard Classic plan for instance, and would have been entitled to claim up to US$1000 for flight delays.
However, at a premium of US$500 per annum, such an option is usually out of reach for the student on the same flight, and these passengers end up not simply not purchasing, which serves them well until the precise moment peril strikes.
This situation is a reflection of the 80 per cent under-represented by insurance policies – who will inevitably find themselves the most caught off-guard when a crisis hits.
Micro-insurance sits in between the domains of insurance and financial inclusion. While it is a relatively young sector, micro-insurance has experienced exponential growth due to the proliferation of technologies and an equally young customer base that makes this possible.
This growth is driven by the twin forces of geography and demographics. As an emerging market, most of Southeast Asia has come to quickly embrace technology, and its largely cash-driven economy now eschews traditional finance in favour of mobile payments and the like.
The population of Southeast Asia continues to grow, and as a result it is now one of the largest markets for insurance products due to sheer population size and to some extent, its advanced insurance regulations.
In a landscape study, over 500 insurance products were identified across the markets, with life insurance being the most ubiquitous at 48.5 per cent.
Yet while the number of people covered by micro-insurance policies is substantially higher in Southeast Asia, the total percentage of its population covered (18.1 per cent) is still smaller than the equivalents in Europe and the Americas, again owing to population density.
Hence, more needs to be done to increase representation. Additionally, Southeast Asia alone houses some of the world’s richest, and a lot of the world’s poorest – catering to both is a challenge for traditional finance and insurance models, which is why companies just simply exclude the latter, most of whom have no access to banking and financial services with which to service their insurance premiums anyway.
With mobile payments and other alternative finance methods gaining prominence and popularity, traditional insurance companies have themselves adapted their policies and updated their platforms.
While ten to twenty years ago it was common to see insurance salespersons approaching prospective clients in a mall and talking them through lengthy policies and contracts, most insurance products these days are sold online, through a website or even a mobile application.
Far from being a step backwards, it is actually a clear sign of a progressive march, even sprint, towards financial inclusion. As in the airline example, customers determine the value of their time, luggage, and various other components and purchase coverage for the specific items they want.
On a basic level, customers have much more choice as opposed to the old dichotomy of having insurance versus having no insurance.
In addition to being able to say, “I will only want to claim the basic minimum of daily compensation for flight delays, but I don’t want to pay extra for baggage coverage because I don’t have checked-in luggage”, customers are also able to do that on their mobile devices right before arriving at the airport. It is not only convenient, they also avoid paying a day’s more for premiums when it is not necessary to.
Since micro-insurance protects against “specific perils”, we see how it is fundamentally a key step towards financial inclusion across Southeast Asian markets.
Travel is one matter – statistically apart from life insurance, the top microinsurance policies in force are those for health (18.4 per cent), accident (21 per cent), property (1.5 per cent), and agriculture (14.9 per cent).
Evidently, there is not just a demand in specific sectors but also much room to grow still.
The last week of January saw many great moves from some of the biggest tech startups in Indonesia, including Grab, Traveloka, and Telkomsel’s Tcash
Bukalapak launches R&D centre, bike-sharing service in Bandung – Press Release
On February 1, Indonesian e-commerce startup Bukalapak with Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) officially launched the Bukalapak-ITB Artificial Intelligence & Cloud Computing Innovation Center, a research laboratory for Indonesian students, lecturers, and researchers to focus on AI and cloud computing projects.
The R&D centre will be located at ITB campus in Bandung, West Java.
Students who have worked on projects at the R&D centre will have the opportunity to work in Bukalapak following graduation.
“Our greatest challenge at the moment is finding tech talents in the AI sector that is able to contribute for Indonesia. Bukalapak is working together with ITB in building the first AI research laboratory in Indonesia to help empower local talents in building their capacity,” Bukalapak Founder and CEO Achmad Zaky said in a press statement.
In addition to launching the R&D centre, the company also introduced its dockless bike-sharing service BukaBike. Operating since January 7 at ITB campus, the BukaBike service provides 25 bicycles that are available for students and lecturers for free.
To use the bike-sharing service, users only have to download and use the Bukalapak mobile app.
Grab appoints Neneng Goenadi as Managing Director – DailySocial
Also on February 1, Grab Indonesia named Neneng Goenadi as its new Managing Director.
She will replace Ridzki Kramadibrata who is now holding the position of President of Grab Indonesia.
As Managing Director, Goenadi will be in charge of improving and developing corporate services, particularly in the transportation sector.
Meanwhile, as President, Kramadibrata will focus on bridging the relationship between the company and the government, as well as arranging security and social impact strategy.
Prior to her appointment, Goenadi was the Country Managing Director of Accenture Indonesia.
Telkomsel’s e-wallet app Tcash is set to rebrand to LinkAja starting on February 21.
LinkAja is a state-owned fintech company that is the result of a joint venture between telco operator Telkom, oil and gas company Pertamina, as well as four major banks Bank Mandiri, BRI, BNI, dan BTN.
The joint venture was set up as part of an effort to compete in Indonesia’s increasingly competitive cashless payment sector. It has also been rumoured to work with WeChat Pay and Alipay, and will be led by Tcash CEO Danu Wicaksana.
Tcash users will be automatically converted into LinkAja users starting on February 21.
Traveloka opens R&D centre in Bangalore – DailySocial
Indonesian traveltech giant Traveloka opened its new R&D centre in Bangalore, India, on January 28.
The R&D centre will be the company’s second one after the one it operates in Singapore, marking its first expansion outside of Southeast Asia.
Prior to this, outside of Indonesia, Traveloka already has presence in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
During the launch event, Traveloka Bangalore VP Engineering Prashant Verma stated that in the new centre, the team will work to prepare platforms and products which capable to provide experience and engagement for Traveloka users.
