While the quality of startups and entrepreneurs have been increasing over the years, there are still many common mistakes and areas that entrepreneurs should take note of when pitching to angels

At AngelCentral, our Partners, who have all been active angel investors for many years, meet close to 500 startups annually. As such, they have met a diverse group of founders with extremely different backgrounds and personalities, and been pitched a wide range of business ideas and opportunities. While we believe that the quality of startups and entrepreneurs have been increasing over the years, there are still many common mistakes and areas that entrepreneurs should take note of when pitching to angels. Here are some important things we believe that founders should understand before approaching an angel investor:

You are the most important part of the pitch

During the many investor meetings I have sat in, many founders like to go straight into pitching their business. Yes, while many founders get it right by sharing important areas of focus such as their product, market opportunity, traction and the like, they usually skim or worse yet, miss out on the most important thing that many angels focus on: the founders themselves.

When evaluating an investment opportunity, most angels like to make sure they are extremely confident that the founder(s) is the right person to make the idea work. Of course, many founders will share about their past study and work experiences, skillsets and abilities, projects they have worked on, etc. However, it is also useful for investors to know the entrepreneurs’ vision not only for the business, but as an individual. This includes sharing about their values, mission, and goals in life.

A couple of months back, I joined an office visit meant for angels who have already committed to investing in the startup. During the Q&A session, an angel asked the founder her reasons for doing the startup in the first place. The founder spent about 10 minutes giving a spirited sharing about how succeeding in the startup would help to achieve her goals, dreams, and her mission in life. Everyone present could sense the passion and excitement from the founder when doing so, and not only did it solidify many of the angels’ commitments, a couple of investors even decided to increase their investment sums after hearing that sharing.

Also read: The angel investor’s cheat sheet to successful portfolio building

This is not to say that you need to share every personal detail of your life, but a crucial part of any pitch towards investors. is you should always give reasons for angels to invest in you as a person, and not just the business.

Investor rejection is going to happen; Make full use of it

No matter how much research you have done for your financials, preparations you have made for the most effective deck, and number of rehearsals to perfect your pitch, there will always be investors who reject you. This is completely normal. There could be a thousand reasons why an investor says no, and not one of them could have been within your control. It could be that your business does not fit into their investment thesis, they have already invested in a similar business, or they have maxed out their portfolio allocation for the year. Of course, it might be because they do not believe in your idea or business.

Don’t be disheartened. It is normal. Some of the biggest names in the US’ startup world such as Mark Cuban, Chris Sacca, and Bill Gurley, missed out investing in companies such as Uber, Airbnb, and Google. Yet, they are still considered as some of the most successful investors of all time! If even the most renowned investors can miss out on such opportunities, it means that being rejected by any angel would mean that your idea is bound to fail.

Thus, instead of taking it personally or feeling down that your investment pitch was rejected, you can make full use of it by asking for three simple things. Firstly, you can ask why they rejected you in the first place. Some founders, having been rejected by potential investors, decide not to communicate with them anymore. Instead, you could use it as a huge learning opportunity by finding out why your pitch was rejected in the first place. This can help you improve and increase your chances of getting an investment in future pitches.

Secondly, ask whether you can periodically provide updates to the investor about your startup. While investors do not invest in you in this round, they could always do so in subsequent rounds. Also, by providing periodic updates, investors will constantly be kept aware of your progress.

Lastly, ask for potential referrals. Even if one investor decides not to invest in you, it does not mean that he/she believes you might be right for someone else instead. It is usually ok to ask if the investor can make a warm introduction to another potential investor who could have a greater level of interest in your startup instead.

Also read: 6 bad angel investor practices that will sabotage a startup’s success

Focus on securing a (reputable) lead investor

From my experience, most angels in the region generally prefer to invest only after the startup already has a VC or super angel leading the round already. This could be due to the variety of reasons, perhaps that angels here are more risk adverse, or trusting that the lead investor would have made an extensive amount of due diligence and evaluation and thus trusting his/her judgment, etc. Either way, if you have secured a reputable VC or super angel to lead the round, it usually becomes easier to secure the commitments from other investors.

Do note that the key word here is reputable. You would generally want a lead investor that has a good reputation among the ecosystem. He/she must have had some experience in investing in or leading previous deals, be known for being both founder and investor friendly, whether that involves being responsive, helpful, participating actively, or issuing fair terms for both parties.

By securing a good lead, fellow angels will actually be a lot more confident in investing in your startup and it is likely you will gain a lot more interest than before, as it signals credibility that a reputable investor would want to lead your fundraising round. It will help you to secure investment commitments from fellow investors a lot easier.

A great product does not mean it is a good investment opportunity

When speaking founders, one thing I found is that many startups tend to focus on how great their product is, or the number of partnerships or customers the businesses have secured as a proof of its validation. While all these info is great, it does not necessarily translate to a good investment opportunity. This is because other areas such as, the projected financials (incl. sales) of the business, along with the target valuation of the company at that fundraising round, are usually important factors for angels to consider when deciding to invest or not. There are many times where the startup’s solution is solid and there is actual validation from the market,  that angels still decide to pass on the opportunity because the valuation just does not make sense from their POV.

Thus, it is important for angels to highlight the company’s projected financials for the next 3-10 years, and how it will bring about a positive ROI for the angels. Yes, while it is true that many angels do not just do it for the money, it is important to show that you as a founder, have thought of a clear path on how your angels can profit in the long run by investing in you as well.

Conclusion

Through this piece, I hope that founders will have a better idea of some things they need to look out for when fundraising, and help create a better experience not only for themselves, but for investors as well.

As part of what we do in AngelCentral is to create a smooth fundraising process for startups when pitching to angels, do check us out if you are a founder looking to fundraise, or an individual who wants to find out more how to become an effective and competent angel investor.

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Photo by Eugenia Vysochyna on Unsplash

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Artists should be able to create their work in an environment where their originality and creativity is not just appreciated, but given the compensation it deserves so we can shift the artist paradigm once and for all

Nanu Berks has lived a life that can almost be defined as cinematic. Born in San Juan, a small town North of Argentina, Nanu grew up in an environment filled with community, culture, and simplicity. It was through her humble surroundings that she learned to appreciate true abundance; the kind that goes beyond material gain. Her mother also played a major role in developing her outlook on life.

Overcoming obstacles and challenges were a theme in her life from an early age, moulding her early childhood and growing up during the economic downturn that took place in Argentina from 2002 to 2008. Banks closed down, citizens lost their savings, and many of them lost their jobs as well, including Nanu’s mother. Unable to support themselves, the family moved in with Nanu’s grandmother, living in the garage of the house with a mini heater and very few of their belongings.

Finding Roots of Her Own

Frustrated by the failed financial and governmental systems of the times, Nanu turned to venting her feelings through spray-painting walls and banks. “Once we turned 12 or 13, we joined ‘cacerolazos’ – revolts on the street, hitting pots and pans while advocating for justice.” She and her peers chose to use graffiti culture as their medium to express their activism. It was from this point that the “art fire” in her was lit and would continue to burn. Soon after her art discovery, Nanu’s mom and brother relocated to the US; but by then she had lost interest in “the system”. She gradually transitioned to backpacking full time, finding herself traveling through the Americas, the Middle East, and Europe.

“I saw a lot of beautiful people in broken places, and many beautiful places with helpless people,” she explains. “I would live on the beaches of Peru for months at a time in a tent, painting murals in exchange of food, and then teach yoga at a mansion the next week. During this time of my life i was very fortunate to have connected with a few teachers who really cared about me and saw a light of creativity in me.”

Her Journey into Tech

After gaining acceptance to university, a professor who really believed in her future allowed Nanu to travel and backpack while gaining credits for university remotely. Nanu had the opportunity to live a nomadic lifestyle while graduating with a BA in Communication as well. Her focus was mainly on social design for global impact. After a decade of backpacking, trading art, and conducting healing art classes, Nanu decided to become a freelance Tech writer.

Her interest in tech was minimal, when she first started out, but as she delved more into the topic, namely planet positive as well as transcendental tech, and realized the importance tech could play in shaping a better world, her perception changed.

“Tech is a 3D print of our consciousness,” Nanu says. “Like everything else, what we do with the tools we pull from the collective ether is steered by out ethos and our core values. People often blame tech for going too big too fast, but this is a fundamental human problem in how we see value.  Redefining value through art and through transcendental tech art is why I believe these two worlds [tech and consciousness] need to continue intersecting, to balance each other out.”

Also read: Fintech and blockchain pitches can be so ugly, but here’s some communication advice for fundraising startups to get the point across

Behind Her Art

“At first it was mostly symbology, as a dyslexic person,” Nanu explains. “I assumed I was unintelligent. I used to have a lot of trouble with numbers growing up, however as soon as I was educated on what dyslexia is, and how to read and do math with this different type of brain, I became obsessed with letters and numbers as a means of symbology expression.”

Essentially, art is how memories are stored and how people design who they become. Without the symbols, the slogans, the music,  and even the tech, there would be no culture. Culture is the creative expression of thought and product, it is the soul of all movements, and this is why it is crucial to give attention and resources to the artistic renderings of our evolution. This is the message Nanu carries within her when she expresses herself through all of her art.

“I aim to help redefine value, from how we see our natural resources, to human interaction, community and labor.”

Transitioning to Blockchain

It was also with this mindset that Nanu ended up adopting blockchain. Nanu first heard about Bitcoin in 2012 but did not pursue her research further into the topic until she found herself in the tech world. It was during her work with Samsung Bixby AI team that she came back to find blockchain technology, with her interest particularly piquing in Satoshi Nakomoto’s philosophy.

“I realized that nomadic principles are very similar to Satoshi’s original dream, decentralization of power, opportunities, and resources, tokenization as a trade economy, merging with elements of a gift economy, and what “democracy” should actually look like.”

After being on and off and around the blockchain space, Nanu made a decision to jump into the industry at the Miami Bitcoin Conference in 2017. But she has been an advocate for decentralization since her protest days of her younger years, avidly against the idea of central governance and authority. Not only did Nanu transition to the blockchain space, she found a way to merge her passion for the industry with her first love – art.

Merging Art and Blockchain

“I tend to embed positive messages of compassion and love into made up language equations, they usually contain a lot of blockchain symbology as well,” says Nanu.

After gathering significant experience from advising companies on art and integrating blockchain, as well as engaging other communities on the importance of the convergence of these two worlds, Nanu, herself, has registered her art on the blockchain. Mainly through the Blockchain Art Collective, a project that utilizes NFC chips, equipped with unique hashtags for “proof of originality”, Nanu has successfully managed to tokenized her work.

Also read: Why your company needs an Artist-in-Residence

Tokenization is the process of converting a “real-life” asset into a token that can be moved, recorded, or stored on a blockchain. Simply put, tokenization converts the value stored in an object – e.g. a painting, luxury product, or a carbon credit – into a token, a form of digital currency.

Nanu is also an advocate for transparency; making use of Paybook Glass, a financial transparency platform, to view for the rebuilding of trust and transparency in various communities. In this way, she believes, tech can give power back to the people.

Technology like this also plays an important role where charitable efforts are concerned.

“I donate a lot of art to non-profit,” Nanu explains. “But, often, we don’t know where the funds end up. With [financial transparency technology] you can see where and how these funds are being spent. Systems like these are very important in the redefinition of value; we need to have secure systems in place that hold us accountable for the values we say we advocate for.”

Another major factor that has helped Nanu advance in her endeavors is the fact that she has both a business and creative mind. This, however, has not stopped her from experiencing a series of challenges in creating her form of original art, and converging it with tech. One of the biggest struggles she has faced in the last few years, and continues to overcome, is getting the mainstream community to find original art just as, if not more, valuable than generic art.

“While art has always been admired and valued highly since the beginning of time,” Nanu explains. “Allocating equal resources to art careers has not been a priority; even today we see middle schools cutting out art classes from their programs.”

But she refuses to be deterred by these challenges, choosing instead to raise awareness on the importance of original art, and why artists should be significantly compensated for the work they create. She has also channeled her efforts into breaking the glass ceiling for other artists to gain their deserved benefits from the work they are creating – both on and off of the blockchain.

Nanu believes that blockchain can solve the counterfeit problem many artists experience on a regular basis. Through tokenization, and storing artwork data to the blockchain, artists and art buyers will be able to keep track of all original works, preventing fraudulent parties from attaining them.

“I dream of a world where every mural has a QR code we can donate to,” Nanu mentions. “Imagine a world where an artist paints a beautiful mural in a community and goes home to open his crypto wallet and finds compensation from random people who stopped by their work.”

Her hope for the future is that artists will be able to create their work in an environment where their originality and creativity is not just appreciated, but given the compensation it deserves so we can shift the artist paradigm once and for all.

These days Nanu travels, creating immersive art installations and partnering with brands who want to expand their message to a larger audience. She also teaches creative workshops with teams and at events, to help them gain productivity by tapping into their sense of flow.

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The Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) of the Philippines said that there’s been a violation

Following its region-wide expansion, Indonesia’s ride-hailing unicorn Go-Jek is reportedly forced to pause its expansion plans to Philippines, as reported by Rappler yesterday. In the Resolution No. 096 dated December 20, 2018, the country’s Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) denied Go-Jek’s entry due to a violation by the company’s local subsidiary, Velox Technology Philippines.

As a transport network company (TNC), the local subsidiary is said to violate the foreign ownership rule in public utility. This resulted in the rejection of the company’s application to start operations in the Philippines.

Also Read: Online investment startup Ajaib secures US$2.1M from SoftBank

“This committee resolves to deny applicant Velox Technology Philippines Inc’s petition for accreditation as a transport network company due to its failure to file a verified application as prescribed in the item (II) first paragraph of Memorandum Circular No. 2015-015-A dated 23 October 2017 and for being a foreign-owned corporation in violation of Section 11 Article XII of the 1987 Philippine Constitution,” the dispositive portion of the resolution said.

Under the Constitution, franchise for public utility should be granted to Filipinos who own at least 60 per cent of its capital, while Velox is 99.99 per cent owned by its parent company, Singaporean Velox South-East Asia Holdings.

LTFRB’s pre-accreditation committee chairman Samuel Jardin confirmed to Rappler that Velox’s application was denied, signed by himself and panel members Carl Marbella, Nida Quibio, and Joel Bolano.

However, Jardin said that Velox can still appeal the decision.

“We continue to engage positively with the LTFRB and other government agencies, as we seek to provide a much needed transport solution for the people of the Philippines,” Go-Jek told Rappler.

Also Read: TenX Co-Founder and President Julian Hosp has left the company

Right now, Grab is still dominating the market for ride-hailing services in the Philippines.

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Commercial rentals and leases are stuck in the age of dinosaurs while disruption is happening in other industries

Commercial rentals and leases are stuck in the age of dinosaurs while disruption is happening in other industries.

Physical paper copies of rental lease agreements are still signed and kept by property owners and their tenants, while manual spreadsheets are used to monitor leasing agreements and transactions.

These traditional ways of transacting are paved with challenges for landlords. Fortunately for commercial property market, blockchain technology, used primarily in transacting cryptocurrencies can be employed as digital smart contracts — revolutionising the way landlords and tenants transact.

1. Painful Documentation Processes

Traditional commercial real estate leasing processes involve a lot of documentation. Between you and the lessor, there are lawyers, guarantors, agents, financial institutions and more needed to verify and safeguard each transaction.

The moment you engage your agent with the interest in leasing a property, your paper trail starts. Then it goes through various parties, with back and forth amendments, additions, and cleaned up versions with every new iteration of the contract.

With digital contracts, these processes and paper trails are greatly reduced.

Signature collection can be performed almost instantaneously online. Once the primary stakeholder and verified and signed off, the counter signatures can be notified and collected right way.

2. Need for Internal Checks

The manual process of leasing transactions opens up opportunities for fraud; the more parties involved, the higher the chances. Internal and external audits, tiered approvals, and corporate governance procedures are needed to minimise mischief and instil trust. Such processes lead to bureaucratic bloat and inefficiencies.

Using artificial intelligence, discrepancies can be quickly spotted for immediate ratification by the involved parties.

3. Privacy and Security Risks

Using excel spreadsheets to record data makes it vulnerable to data hacks by external parties. The Singhealth database breach last year is a prime example of how manual processes offers little to no security. With Blockchain’s cryptographic security system that requires the use of a public and private key, your data is secure and immutable.

Also read: 4 good reasons why commercial real estate should use blockchain

4. Inefficient Manual Tracking

Current real estate leasing, tracking and booking systems are often recorded manually on excel spreadsheets. This is both time-consuming and tedious when records need to be traced and verified. This also places unnecessary administrative

burdens on the personnel responsible for keying in entries to the excel sheet, and creates hours of non-productive work.

While applying blockchain, commercial real estate companies can now eliminate painful documentation processes as contracts will now be transacted online with a monitoring systems of each stakeholder’s actions. Privacy and security risk will be significantly reduced due to characteristics of Blockchain.

5. Environment and Space Unfriendly

The large amount of paperwork that follows a leasing transaction is not very green – many trees would have to be sacrificed. With that much paperwork, it also means there’s a need for substantial storage space to house all these documents. This results in a waste of space that could be used for commercially profitable activities.

Needless to say, if these transactions are done online tons of paper can be saved. While storage space can therefore be repurposed for commercial use.

6. High Intermediary Costs

Leasing a commercial space the traditional way doesn’t just involve the lessee and lessor. There could be many parties involved, like lawyers, guarantors, financial institutions, courier companies and more. Collectively, such third party and intermediary fees could swell the actual business cost for both landlord and tenant.

As platforms that utilise blockchain technology to create smart contracts typically acts like an agent. High administrative fees and commissions will be eliminated, saving real estate companies unnecessary expenses which can better their bottomline.

Also read: Why proptech and real estate tech will be important in Asia

7. Lengthy Approval Processes

The time between the start of a leasing transaction until its completion could be lengthy. With multiple intermediaries to deal with, plus the time needed for contracts to be seen and approved up and down the corporate hierarchy of each organisation, it may take 2 to 3 weeks for a contract to be approved and endorsed.

This excludes the transportation time involved in delivering the physical copies of the contract back and forth between different parties.

By transacting online, all these inefficiencies will magically disappear. It’s as simple as sign, verify, confirm. It’s akin to performing a web check-in online before you

travel. It enhances the experience between the landlord and tenant by reducing the need for unnecessary waiting time.

8. Costly to Manage Short-term Leases

The trend of tenants committing only to short-term leases makes the lease management process tedious and laborious. Manual records will need to be frequently documented, plus the need for intermediary fees to be incurred regardless of the size of the rental contract.

Smart digital contracts platforms are agnostic to the size of your leasing contract. The cost and time required to transact are the same for 1 month leases, as well as 10 year leases. It spells convenience without imposing heavy intermediary fees.

9. Tedious Tenant Due Diligence

Evaluating potential tenants and lessees is a painful necessity. Failure to ascertain their credit-worthiness may lead to potential risks such as tenant defaulting on payments or having tenants with poor track records on board.

Also read: (Infographic) 16 industries that blockchain is disrupting

10. Inefficient Tenant Search Costs

Finally, the marketing of available commercial spaces is archaic, cumbersome and expensive. Property owners have to list their spaces across multiple online and offline media, incurring marketing and advertising expenses.

It’s surprising that it has taken so long for the industry to take on a digital approach for their commercial property leasing. Like airlines, commercial property should take a direct booking or enquiry approach due to the sheer fact of perceived cost savings to be enjoyed when you transact directly with the landlord. There aren’t many plug and play solutions out there to help landlords easily market their spaces and there should be more, lots more.

Charting the Way Forward

Thanks to the advent of the blockchain, smart contracts, and cryptocurrency tokens, commercial property owners and managers can now forge a fresh way forward.

Offering greater security, almost real-time approvals, trust-less verification, and frictionless transactions, blockchain based systems can transform how commercial leasing takes place.

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Also, Equinix to build US$85M worth of data center in Singapore, Privé Technologies buys digital engagement startup Hive Up

Coinhako to offer 100 fiat-crypto pairings [Press Release]

Coinhako, Southeast Asia-based blockchain platform, announces that it now offers trade option pairings for 25 cryptocurrencies and 4 Asian fiat currencies for Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. This puts the total number of cryptocurrency and fiat currency trade pairings at 100 on the platform.

Although speedy, the limitation in direct cryptocurrency purchases with fiat currencies makes it debilitating and not to mention complex. To access certain cryptocurrencies, users must make multiple transactions – ranging from FX exchanges, crypto-to-crypto exchanges, and moving tokens across different platforms – and these practices sure incur a variety of fees.

Also Read: Online investment startup Ajaib secures US$2.1M from SoftBank

The mission of Coinhako is to help to accelerate crypto access in the region. Besides Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) exchange services, Coinhako users can now gain access to Bitcoin Cash(BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP), Omisego (OMG), Zilliqa (ZIL), the 0x project (ZRX), Kyber Network (KNC), Status (SNT), Golem (GNT), Basic Attention Token (BAT), QuarkChain (QKC), Waltonchain (WTC), District0x (DNT), Pundi X (NPXS), DigixDAO (DGD), Mithril (MITH), Loom Network (LOOM), Storm (STORM), Binance Coin (BNB), SONM (SNM), Gifto (GTO), Civic (CV), True USD (TUSD).

Coinhako has also added wallet support for Stablecoins such as Paxcoin(PAX), USD Coin (USDC) and Dai Stablecoin (DAI). Coinhako has shared that it will add on new cryptocurrency and fiat pairs through the year focusing mainly on emerging markets.

SoftBank Group Corp. will no longer take a controlling stake in real estate company WeWork Cos. [Bloomberg]

After investing more than US$8 billion in WeWork, SoftBank now has come to a decision that it will no longer go through its initial plan of taking a controlling position. Had it come through, the Japan company would spend another US$16 billion just to buy a big chunk of the company, as shared by an anonymous source.

The cold feet is likely due to recent declines in tech stocks — particularly SoftBank’s shares, which are down about 20 percent in the last month.

On its own WeWork’s 7.875 percent bonds dropped 3 cents on the dollar to 86 cents on Monday afternoon in New York, which made it the lowest price since the debt was issued last April. The bonds are due in 2025.

Originally the SoftBank Vision Fund, in part backed by the Saudi Arabian government, had discussed buying the controlling stake in WeWork. Now, SoftBank the company is planning to make a minority investment directly.

Both SoftBank and WeWork declined to comment on the issue.

Equinix put in US$85M for the fourth data center in Singapore [Press Release]

The interconnection and data center company Equinix, Inc. announced yesterday that it plans to start the construction of its fourth International Business Exchange (IBX®) data center in Singapore, called SG4.

The new facility is said to provide interconnection and premium data center services to help businesses with their IT transformation and cloud adoption initiatives, while also supporting the digital infrastructure of Singapore. The investment made onto the seven-story data center is worth US$85 million, scheduled to open in Q4 2019.

Located at the eastern part of the country, SG4 will provide approximately 4,220 square meters of colocation space, offering an initial capacity of 1,400 cabinets. The facility is planned to accommodate more than 4,000 cabinets at full build out, with a total colocation space of approximately 12,280 square meters, all using 100% clean and renewable energy.

SG4 will also provide software-defined interconnection through the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric) to more than 1,300 businesses. Names that already on the list to use the facility are some of the largest cloud service providers (CSP) like Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, and Tencent Cloud.

Fintech Privé Technologies buys digital engagement startup Hive Up [Press Release]

A global fintech solution Privé announced that it has bought out Hive Up, a financial-literacy content startup from Singapore.

“Privé will be able to help us accelerate our mission of bring wealth management to the masses. Our team is excited to join forces with Privé,” said Qiuyan Tian, the CEO and co-founder of Hive Up.

“ Hive Up’s expertise in the mass affluent and wealth management segments contributes to Prive’s mission to bring wealth management to all,” said Charles Wong, CEO and co-founder of Privé Technologies about the acquisition.

Hive Up focuses on highlighting financial concepts and engaging the everyday person via mediums such as articles, infographics, workshops, and webinars, all the way to curriculums and institutional trainings. For enterprise businesses, the company builds management platforms and client-facing applications for financial advisors.

Malaysia’s RHL Ventures invests in SaaS platform HealthMetrics [Press Release]

Malaysia-based investment firm RHL Ventures has made an undisclosed amount of investment into healthcare SaaS platform HealthMetrics. The investment is a follow-on, and RHL Ventures has participated in the seed round before.

HealthMetrics Co-Founder, Alvin Yuan, said that the investment will enable them to build an extensive network of healthcare suppliers not only Kuala Lumpur, but also in Penang, Johor and Malacca.

Also Read: Go-Jek is forced to pause expansion to the Philippines

Employees’ medical benefits has been an overlooked segment which has resulted in companies overpaying on employee insurance premiums and in employees underutilising their benefits due to the lack of transparency, inconvenience, and overcomplexity involved in the management part.

The platform supports human resource (HR) administrative tasks related to employee well-being by integrating its solution to a company’s existing HR management system. Employees, on the other hand, can use HealthMetrics’ mobile app to check their medical benefits balance and enjoy cashless visits to the clinics.
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Image Credit: HealthMetrics

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Angel-funded on-demand laundry startup Mama Wosh is already gaining good traction in Kuala Lumpur

Just a few weeks after Anh Tu Sam’s birth to a Vietnamese mother and a Chinese-descent father in the city of Hanoi, his country plunged into a massive political unrest, forcing them to flee Vietnam. After several months of a perilous journey on a country boat, with a temporary stop in Hong Kong, Anh Tu Sam and his family ended up in the German city of Dortmund in 1980.

“We first arrived in a refugee camp near Dortmund,” Sam recounts the treacherous journey to e27. “Since then, we moved around many times and lived in places like Hamburg, Cologne, Bonn and Frankfurt. The first few months were hard, as I could not pick even a single word of the German language. This made my kindergarten tough. However, after several months of perseverance, I assimilated into the local culture and lifestyle.

“From then on, I enjoyed each and every moment of my life spent there. However, I always felt something amiss in my life. I realised that it was the yearning to return to my roots, meaning to go back to Asia. That’s what brought me back. I feel that it is my destiny to be here,” he shares.

Meeting future co-founder

While pursuing a Graduate course in Business Computing at a university in the European country, Sam met Holm Schimanski. Although they came from different backgrounds, they both shared some common characteristics and became thick friends. After graduation, Sam worked for a leading strategy consulting company and opened several F&B franchise stores, before eventually founding a VC-funded language startup. Schimanski, on the other hand, worked as an IT consultant for over a decade, dealing with large customers and implementing CRM and SAP software.

“It was 2015 and the O2O category was slowly taking off across the world, thanks to the success of companies like Uber and Grab,” Sam, now 39, shares. “We decided to try our luck on O2O. We sat together and brainstormed ideas around this. I was still itching to go back to Asia. Fortunately, Schimanski (now 38) was also okay with my idea as he, like me, always loved the Southeast Asian lifestyle.”

Also Read: eziPOD’s smart laundry locker doubles as your courier delivery point and personal storage

However, with the kind of economic growth rates in Asia, it was a no-brainer to set up a business in this part of the world, Sam thought to himself. “We conducted an in-depth research of all major ASEAN markets, such as Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. After looking into GDP levels, disposable incomes, infrastructure, language barriers, market size etc., Malaysia seemed like the perfect starting point.

And the duo set foot in Malaysia, with an on-demand laundry startup.

Launched in Selangor in 2015, Mama Wosh is a laundry subscription service app. As customer, you can choose your time and location, and Mama Wosh’s “laundry angels” will come and pick the laundry. You will get back your clothes folded or ironed within a specified timeframe.

“Most people are frustrated with laundry and dry cleaning in general,” according to Sam. “Consumers spend 12-15 hours on laundry every month. Most laundromats and dry cleaners have limited business hours only. Bad cleaning, damaged and lost items are the most frequent complaints. Transparency in pricing is another problem. We are here to address these pressing issues.”

The Malaysian on-demand laundry segment is still in the nascent stages, despite the fact that there are already a handful of companies attacking different sections of the society. “We have seen a lot of laundry startups in Malaysia. Most came, stayed for a few months or a year, and then went offline again. Probably because they have underestimated the operational complexity of this business model,” Sam notes.

Most laundry businesses in the country are just mom-and-pop shops that have spent some money on a website and started to deliver to their existing customer base. Sam feels that these businesses know literally nothing about tech, online or digital. “We have also noticed that Asians in general are embracing mobile technologies much more than Germans. Back in our home country, we would have to deal a lot with legal and privacy issues such as the GDPR compliance. Here in Malaysia, the government is very eager in becoming a prospering digital economy. And we love it.”

Then there are coin laundromats which, in his view, are great for low income households, but for majority of the population, sitting around and waiting for an hour or more just to do your laundry seems like a very inconvenient waste of time.

The existence of the number of players such as eziPOD, Fresh Press, Mr. White Dry and Mobile Laundry, however, doesn’t really bother Sam and team. “We are looking at competition from two different angles. One the one hand, like Peter Thiel or the book ​Blue Ocean Strategy​ says,  you don’t want to have competition; ideally you are the only dominant player and run a monopoly. At the same time, competition can be a good thing as it fuels innovation, which in turn will benefit the end customer. In the end, we said to ourselves: several players in the market are a good indicator that there’s some demand. Let’s bring on the challenge and crush the competition, which we eventually did,” he shares.

Indeed, everything in Malaysia is still in its infancy, Sam reveals. Search Engine Optimisation, affiliate marketing, digital analytics, email marketing, frontend/backend engineering– it’s tough to find talent with decent experience in those domains. “But we’re quite happy about it. What this means is that the situation gives us some advantage and a headstart over our competitors,” Sam smiles.

The revenue stream

In order to earn revenues, Mama Wosh banks on three services — ​laundry wash,​ ​dry cleaning​ and ​curtains​. With  its ​curtain PLUS service, the startup sends a team of people to do the heavy lifting for the customer. This means, these people remove, wash and re-install the curtains for the customer.

For the other two services, the startup enables customers to choose between ​regular turnaround time​ or ​next-day express turnaround​ at double the normal rates. In the beginning, Mama Wosh banked on a ‘pay-per-use’ model; if a customer had three loads of laundry in a month, he/she would make three bookings, get three deliveries and pay three bills.

“But, always having the customer and his problems in mind, we thought ‘how we can make their lives easier?’ That’s when we came up with the ‘L​aundry-​as​ -​a​-​S​ervice’ concept. It’s a subscription model where you pay a monthly flat fee and are entitled to have one laundry pickup every week. We would pick up the bag, and whatever you can fit into this bag gets washed, dried and folded,” he explains.

Also Read: How the son of a humble watch repairer became the owner of a multi-million dollar realty tech startup

Still in beta test mode, Mama Wosh is going to publicly launch the service soon.

In Sam’s opinion, the Malaysian market is not the biggest, and the company plans to expand to another country within the next 12 to 18 months. Whether it’s going to be Singapore or Thailand remains to be seen, he said. “There is no rush — in Malaysia alone, there’s enough business to make millions of dollars per month.”

A massive market

As per the company’s estimates, the laundry market in Southeast Asia is growing at a CAGR of 37 per cent and is estimated to reach US$1 billion in annual sales in 10 years from now. The market share of traditional players will steadily decline but offline retail will never go away. “Luckily, we have figured out how to fill out those gaps and have a strong physical offline presence.”

Looking into the future, Sam wants to shape an entirely new O2O category at a massive scale. He says popular apps like Grab and Go-jek started with ​transportation,​ then later ventured into other verticals, such as ​food,​ ​payments,​ ​parcels​.

“One day, they will have to deal with the laundry vertical. Given the massive market size, they cannot simply ignore laundry and sit on their ​transportation​ or ​food delivery​ cash cows forever,” he feels.

In the first two years of launching the company, Sam and Schimanski were doing freelance consulting jobs to bootstrap and finance Mama Wosh. “Last year a fantastic business angel joined our company and invested a small amount. Now that we have seen great traction over the past 12 months, we committed ourselves to work full time on Mama Wosh, and make this really big. We want to take our startup to the next level and hence looking for a seed round of US$350,000,” he concludes.

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The startup frenzy is real; Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad are all upwardly mobile cities with young graduates eager to grow and learn

Over the last few months, I have been able to spend a significant amount of time in Pakistan — accounting for the largest continuous period I’ve spent in the country in the past 15 years. I took the opportunity to learn more about the emerging startup ecosystem here, and wanted to jot down my thoughts on what I’ve learnt after speaking to dozens of founders, operators and investors over the last 4 months.

Firstly, I’m very encouraged by the excitement around technology companies in Pakistan and none of what follows should take away from that. It’s not uncommon now to sit next to a passionate group of founders discussing the problems of the day at a coffee shop in Karachi or Lahore. Startup focused events seem to be popping up everywhere, too. I was at 021Disrupt in November and found it to be well attended, with thoughtful speakers and engaged participants. Even the government is getting behind the idea, although much of that is still to materialize (I wouldn’t hold my breath).

It’s important to state that my thoughts are naturally biased because of my experiences founding or operating early stage companies in Toronto and Singapore during periods when the ecosystem was on a rapid upswing. Each country was unique and had its own localized challenges, but there are still patterns that emerged which I feel Pakistan can learn from.

VC activity in Pakistan: Not on the map

When you talk about venture capital activity, Pakistan is simply not on the map.

According to the 2017 KPMG Global Analysis of Venture Funding Report, approximately US$155 billion was invested by venture capital firms across the world. These funds involved deals across all stages of the funding lifecycle including seed, series A, and onwards. Of this, Pakistan’s share was a measly $23.1 million in the same period.

Yet, there’s been a surge in VC activity in Pakistan lately, so this year’s numbers are likely far higher than last years. Sarmayacar officially announced the close of its $30 million fund dedicated to Pakistan. I2i ventures is also in the throes of closing a $15 million early stage fund of its own. Furthermore, regional funds are starting to take notice and directly investing in local companies. But I feel this is still a drop in the ocean for Pakistan, a country of over 200 million people and 60 million 3G/4G connections. After all, Pakistan seems responsible for a large part of the Middle Eastern companies’ healthy valuation. Pakistan has, in fact, grown so rapidly that it’s a priority market for Uber now with over 30,000 drivers plying its roads. “The country has surpassed all expectations and goals,” said Anthony Le Roux, Uber regional manager for Middle East and North Africa while talking to the Express Tribune.

Some naysayers may postulate that a lack of exits in Pakistan has been a key deterrent to the emergence of private venture funding. But the fact is that foreign companies that have been willing to take risks and wade out into the unknown are emerging victorious. The example of German incubator Rocket Internet is pivotal here. It first started up in late 2012 when ecommerce in the country was virtually non-existent and mobile consumers  had to contend with 2G speeds. Daraz, its flagship venture, enjoyed the bulk of funding but its other ventures such as Foodpanda, Lamudi, Carmudi, Easytaxi, and Kaymu were also similarly encouraged to grow. Some failed but some didn’t as is standard with venture-backed companies across the world.

Also read: Why is Pakistan not producing Unicorns like other Asian countries?

Daraz was recently acquired by Alibaba in a $200 million deal, which is a 10x return on investment for Rocket from what I understand. The exits will come once investors start deploying capital early, just like they’re supposed to. A similar refrain was very common in Singapore circa 2009, but no one talks about the lack of exits less than a decade later. This is within range of expected VC shareholding period before exit, so an argument that it may be too early doesn’t pass the sniff test entirely.

At the same time, startups in Pakistan need to also watch out for whom they let in on their cap tables. I’ve met a few companies that we’re offered – and in some cases accepted – term sheets asking for 50%+ in equity for a few thousand dollars. Vulture capital is alive and well here and such terms are regressive and surely going to be responsible for more than a few promising starts being wasted.

But despite these funding gaps and in spite of what local founders will often tell you,  I don’t believe that capital funding is the only – or even the biggest – challenge that needs addressing before the startup ecosystem really comes into its own here.

What else is missing besides Capital?

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A common problem whether you’re building your company in San Francisco, Shanghai or Karachi is finding, hiring and retaining really great people who want to work on your dream. The smartest Pakistanis graduating from the best local colleges don’t want to work at early stage startup companies. This can change, especially since larger companies are notorious for their terrible culture. From my experience hiring local talent for back offices, I’ve come to realize that Pakistani employees value job security and stability over most other perks that can be offered.

Large families, low wages, culture and few breadwinners make for an environment that compels well-educated folks to not take risks. I have been successful in hiring here when focusing on finding the few who are willing to take risks. I don’t see a concerted effort by founders here to identify, hire and reward those folks, even though almost every founder I spoke to agrees that talent is a huge issue for them. There is some good news on the horizon: as larger technology companies (Careem, Daraz, etc.) get built in Pakistan – not to mention large offices for Silicon Valley companies with Pakistani founders such as Keep Truckin’, Elastica and Affiniti – the “Paypal Mafia” effect should kick in and supply experienced leadership talent (and future founders) for the next generation of startups.

Employee shareholding is usually not offered, and startups tend to try to hire just like large corporates do, through LinkedIn, job posts, and their own network. This is not an optimal strategy when trying to identify a small subset of pirates who are willing to buck the trend and do something exciting with their careers. In fact, if I was a talented twenty-something curious about startups but not ready to take the plunge, I wouldn’t even know where to start looking short of landing up at a paid, expensive event. There are no community outreach efforts such as job fairs, open houses and other active ways to investigate what startup careers could look like. This seems like an easy win to me.

Also read: Insurtech has a growing role in Pakistan, and it can change lives through better financial smarts

Furthermore, Pakistani society tends to be very cliquey, and people move in their own (perceived) socio-economic stratas. Sadly, this means founders don’t coalesce together often in social settings, and aren’t able to trade notes or collaborate on solving some of the common problems they face. It seems as if startup folks here view the market as a zero-sum game; as if there simply isn’t enough room for everyone to succeed. I hosted a mixer for local founders and operators and was surprised how they tended to stick to their own socio-economic strata even when in the same room as others who have the exact same problems as them. This knowledge sharing is vital when operating in an emerging ecosystem — serendipity and a strong network help you short-circuit problems when you don’t have the funding to afford too many mistakes.

Next, I believe there isn’t enough focus given to mentorship. Or more accurately, a lot of the mentorship being offered is of dubious value. This is a sad result of a lack of experienced founders and seasoned operators in Pakistan. This is partially because the industry is young, but also because unlike India and China, there is no large stream of overseas Pakistanis looking to come home from Silicon Valley to start their next companies. Equally worryingly, there is no shortage of tech incubators in Pakistan touting expertise but other than fancy photo-ops and terrible term sheets — what are these funded entities actually doing? I hope first time founders realize that just because an individual is being touted as an expert does not make them one. I’ve seen these “mentors” try to upsell startups on paid consulting services, such as engineering support. Do your research and critical thinking before getting in bed with such actors.

Lastly, because of the acute lack of talent and capital, as well as these other systematic problems I’ve tried to outline here, I believe founders are stretched so thin and are so operational in their companies they have a hard time conceptualizing the larger vision. I’ve only met a handful of startups that are even thinking about how their ideas would fare beyond Pakistan’s borders. Even hyperlocal ones have a tendency to simply copy what’s working in other countries and apply it to a Pakistan context, with little thought given to localization. I know it’s tough to zoom out and think big when you need to do nearly everything yourself, but this stuff was never meant to be easy. Thinking through where things are going and being able to articulate your vision passionately and defend it logically is key to fundraising, recruiting and a lot of the other problems outlined here.

I don’t see this as an optional luxury. Here’s why: Unlike other large countries, the Pakistani startup scene is maturing at a time when neighboring China is starting to flex its technological muscle globally. Companies here will have to actively compete with well funded ones from China – not to mention Silicon Valley and elsewhere — looking at international markets to compensate for slowing domestic growth. This inevitable global competition is a self-inflicted wound and I wonder how many great Pakistani startups were lost because Pakistan arrived shockingly late to the 3G/LTE party in 2014.

Also read: Bottom of the Pyramid sector in Pakistan can open new opportunities through increased mobile engagement

To be clear, I’m pretty bullish on Pakistan’s prospects. The startup frenzy is real. Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad are all upwardly mobile cities with young graduates eager to grow and learn. Our grandparents know about Uber, Careem, and Daraz and acutely aware of the power of the internet. It sure will be very exciting to see how this plays out over the next few years.

On a personal note, I’m interested in helping Pakistani companies grow and scale. If you’ve got an idea you’re contemplating, are already a startup founder in the thick of things, or just have an opinion you’d like to share, find me on Twitter (DMs open) or find me on LinkedIn. And if you’re an investor looking at Pakistan seriously, I’m happy to connect you with some great companies here.

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

Photo by Aa Dil on Unsplash

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Carput does on on-the-spot repairs such as car battery change, jumpstarts, spare tyre change, and emergency petrol delivery

Upon returning to his home country after higher studies in Australia, Eugene Tan decided to get around Kuala Lumpur using his mother’s old car. Unfortunately, the car played spoilsport and the engine failed to turn over, owing to a faulty battery.

“Getting the car battery replaced seemed to be a daunting task; there was no transparency in the industry,” he revealed to e27. “After waiting for more than two hours, a mechanic came in and did the needful, but he overcharged me for the labour. I thought we could do better and that Malaysia needed a culture of transparency and reliability.”

This was the turning point for Tan to start a company, which would provide on-demand roadside assistance in his country. “And thus Carput was born.”

Launched in 2016, Carput can come in handy during sticky car situations in Malaysia. “We realise that the automotive assist industry is massive, and that the use of mobile tools is non-existent, especially in a market where the primary mode of transportation is a personal car and where mobile penetration is at an all-time high. That’s why we designed Carput,” he said.

Also Read: No time to have your car serviced? MisterTyre comes to your aid at the tap of a button

According to Tan, Carput is a must-have mobile app for every car driver as it specialises in getting car drivers back on the road as soon as possible. “We focus on on-the-spot repairs such as car battery change, jumpstarts, spare tyre change, emergency petrol delivery, and if the car can’t be repaired on site, we are able to tow your car back to your preferred workshop.”

Carput was was co-founded by Tan (CEO) with his school mate Mark Chew Yihaur (COO). After their secondary education, they met again while pursuing higher studies in Australia. Post graduation, Tan worked as a Tax Accountant, and Yihaur as an Acoustic Engineer in Melbourne.

They met again in Kuala Lumpur in 2013, and decided to start something themselves, which led to the founding of Carput.

“Requesting a car breakdown services is easy, as it should be, during a stressful situation. That’s why we invested into developing an easy-to-use mobile app;  to be more efficient and quicker,” he explained. “We envisage a future where automotive assist will finally be quick, reliable and transparent. Carput is an extension of an already growing business, The Battery Shop, and we are determined to expand our presence in this limitless marketplace.”

He observes that the automotive services industry in Malaysia is huge and has one of the highest car ownership rates in the world. However, things in this industry are still mainly done the traditional brick-and-mortar way. “Our goal is to shake up the industry by introducing technology, starting from automotive roadside assistance and then towards the many other services relating to owning a car.”

In the initial phase of building the company, Tan and team faced some big challenges, finding an appropriate business model being the biggest. “In those days, we had to meddle with different business models to ensure sustainability. The entirety of the business model was a challenge — how to market at scale, how to fulfil 100 per cent of demand efficiently, what are our financing options? For the most part, we relied on testing, failing and learning from our mistakes to be where we are today,” Tan shared.

The current challenges are manifold and are of a different kind. “In roadside assistance we are always trying to be quicker. In 2019, we are challenging ourselves to try and get our average response time to below 30 minutes. This might be far-fetched in a place like Kuala Lumpur, but we have leveraged on technology to get our response time down from 66 minutes to 42 minutes in the past two years. Thirty minutes is in sight now, and it will definitely be a challenge to achieve it,” he went on.

Indeed, Carput is not the only company providing roadside assistance in Malaysia. MisterTyre is another company (which we featured last year) that allows customers to buy tyres, battery and engine oil, and to schedule a fitting/service at any suitable location of choice, at the click of a button. According to its Czech Founder Dennis Melka, MisterTyre seeks to transform automotive aftermarket services in ASEAN through low prices and doorstep delivery of services.

Carput’s Tan, however, sees competition from a different perspective. “Competitors are always seen in bad light, but we embrace them. In fact, we have made partnerships with several automotive startups, including MisterTyre. We truly believe that the way to drive the automotive technology industry forward is to work together. We all have the same goal — digitisation to recreate an industry to be safer, quicker and more efficient for both service providers and customers. This will never happen if we are always locking horns with each other.”

Like MisterTyre, Carput also earns revenue through the products and services it provides. “We employ our own mechanics to execute these services while also partnering with other forward-looking workshops and tow truck providers. Having a balance of both internal and external service providers gives us more coverage and speed to scale,” he reveals.

When asked, Tan refused to disclose the traction, but he reveals Carput gets hundreds of calls per day.

Carput raised its initial capital from a friends and family round. “We do have plans to raise funding in the future, but upon reaching certain milestones,” Tan noted.

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Melisa Irene joined the company in 2015and was previously promoted to Principal. 

Focussing mostly on early stage startups based in Southeast Asia and Japan, East Ventures has made quite a number of investments, especially in Indonesia. The natural move for the company is to establish new Partner, for the first time, this person will be a female, Melisa Irene.

Irene, from Indonesia, is said to have joined the company in 2015 and her first role in the firm was an Associate. East Ventures shared that Irene has successfully closed multiple deals for the company.

Within three years time, Irene was made the firm’s Principal before finally promoted as the first female Partner.

Also Read: 200M people and zero Unicorns? Here’s to building the next great startup in Pakistan

Irene herself shared an unlikely ascendency to the role of Partner: East Ventures was her first full-time job.

“I joined VC because I always wanted to witness and take part in Indonesia’s digital transformation era. With EV, every day is a new learning ground as we always bet on young and mostly ‘first time’ founders to build Indonesia’s tech ecosystem,” said Irene.

“I look forward to supporting our team to execute on EV’s mission in advancing Indonesia’s digital ecosystem. I am hopeful that this could be a benchmark that meritocracy is the ultimate parameter- not gender,” she added.

Willson Cuaca, the Managing Partner of East Ventures said, ”Irene joined EV right after school without investment experience nor digital industry knowledge. Over years, she developed personal traits that applicable thought out every VC tasks given to her and she aligned with our firm core values; integrity, empathy, and velocity. We welcome Melisa Irene as our youngest partner (probably youngest in the region) and looking forward to her impact in our ecosystems.”

Also Read: Indonesia’s P2P lending platform KoinWorks secures Series A funding from Quona Capital

Melisa Irene graduated from Binus International University in 2015 with a Bachelor of Accounting degree and was a multiple national-level debate championship winner.

She is proof that you can start with no experience in the industry and make it to the top.
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Image Credit: East Ventures

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PT Investa Wahana Development or Wahana Group from Indonesia reportedly has committed US$200 million in the digital payment and e-commerce platform

Indonesia-based digital payment and e-commerce platform KinerjaPay announces a signed agreement between the company and PT. Investa Wahana Group, with the latter committed to investing US$200 million.

The breakdown of the fund would be a subscription for US$100 million in shares of the Company’s Series F and an addition $100 million in shares of the Company’s Series G Convertible Preferred Stock.

Also Read: Southeast Asia-based early stage venture fund East Ventures appoints its first female partner

KinerjaPay shared its plan to fund the company’s peer-to-peer lending operations, potential acquisitions, and strategic investments in Indonesia as part of their expansion plan for 2019. The fund will further be used to allocate a certain portion of the subscription proceeds to repurchase KinerjaPay’s stock in the open market, subject to the rules and regulations of the SEC.

“This investment commitment should transform the company into a significant market presence in our e-commerce and peer-to-peer lending operations, principally in Indonesia,” said Chairman and CEO of KinerjaPay, Edwin Witarsa Ng.

For 2019, the company that also trades in United States will expand into prepaid mobile business, P2P lending, mobile payment solutions, online gaming, and e-commerce services initially in Indonesia’s growing economy and expanding in Southeast Asia. The company also intends to make investments in certain related industries in other foreign countries.

The Series F Preferred Stock of KinerjaPay bears a dividend of 6% per annum, is convertible into shares of the Company’s Common Stock at an average of $1.80 per share.

Also Read: Indonesia’s online media company IDN Media secures Series C funding round from EV Growth

The Series G Preferred Stock also pays a dividend of 6% per annum and further provides for the Company’s right to force the conversion at $1.80 per share, provided that the KinerjaPay shares are trading at $3.50 per share or higher for a period of 20 days commencing six months after the date of issuance of the Series G Preferred Stock.

The signed agreement is expected to close within the next ten days.
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Photo by lucas Favre on Unsplash

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