Learning more about our neighboring countries in Asia Pacific does not need to be cumbersome, tedious, or expensive

With the exception of China, if you’re a founder in Asia Pacific, you need to prepare yourself for a tough reality: At some point, you’ll have to leave the relatively safe confines of your own market and test the waters in a foreign market. Overseas expansion in the region is tough. In preparation for this task, most entrepreneurs prepare themselves and their startups financially, operationally, and strategically, but they almost always overlook one factor: culture.

We tend to underestimate just how much culture will impact our carefully thought out business and operational plans. Localization, in short, is the key to regional success. Founders who operate in Asia Pacific must be students of the world, but we most often fall short of that ideal, often maintaining a very insular view of our own culture and neglecting to explore others.

Learning more about our neighboring countries in Asia Pacific does not need to be cumbersome, tedious, or expensive. Here are a few simple ways that regional founders can gain deeper insights into the markets they may very well one day need to expand into.

Go on an immersion trip

As much as it would be great to live in other Asian countries for months at a time, for most entrepreneurs this kind of immersion is unrealistic. A much more practical way to gain first-hand knowledge of other cultures is an immersion trip. Many organizations run such trips, gathering a group of entrepreneurs and business leaders for a multi-day tour of different cities in Asia.

What’s great about these immersion trips is that everything is already planned for you. The organizer will bring you to local business events, cultural exhibits, and everything in between, in order to help you learn through osmosis as much about the local business culture as possible. All you need to bring is a gung-ho attitude and some business cards.

Host a digital nomad

There are many people in Asia, particularly technical talent like web developers, who bounce around and work different jobs as they travel the region. While many companies tend to avoid such workers as they will only be with you for a short-time, some entrepreneurs are smartly targeting these digital nomads out.

Why would you want a digital nomad on your team? Hosting someone from a completely different culture can teach you as much about their own as they do yours. Though much of this education will occur organically in the course of getting to know them, you can even formalize some of this process: You can host a brown bag session where the digital nomad shares more about where he’s from and maybe even some of the places he’s traveled. Having sessions like these will also emphasize the importance of cultural education to your entire team.

Also read: 6 lessons on collaboration from Marvel’s Stan Lee

Build a global network

A common mistake that founders make is that entrepreneurs only ask for introductions to people they want to meet when they need them. This view is a very short-sighted one, and it’ll result in you having a very insular network. Most people will be where you’re from and resemble you.

The much more prudent choice is to ask people in your network for introductions to good people to know in other countries with no specific purpose in mind. Though this advice may seem counter-intuitive, it’ll be easier to get to know them as you’re not presenting or pitching anything, and you can even find ways to give value to them first.

Go off-the-beaten path

When you’re traveling to countries in the region, you should avoid touristy places. These will give you a glossed-over view of what it’s like to live in these markets, as this destinations are usually highly polished due to all the foreign tourists. Instead seek out destinations that are off-the-beaten path — these are the kind of spots that in some cases only locals may know.

Finding destinations off-the-beaten path may give you a more realistic view of how people live in that particular country, providing you with a deeper understanding of the country when you do choose to expand there.

These tips are of course only a starting point in every entrepreneur’s journey to become more global in their perspective. What’s important is that we acknowledge we must stand in the shoes of another in order to see how we can best serve them.

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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 Ben Duchac on Unsplash

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Toppr is an after-school learning app that uses NLP to solve K12 students’ doubts instantly, whereas DataTrained offers certificate course in Data Science

Toppr closes US$35M from Eight Roads, Helion, Kaizen PE, SAIF

Toppr, an after-school learning app for K12, has raised US$35 million in Series C funding in a round led by Eight Roads Ventures, Helion Ventures, Kaizen PE and SAIF Partners.

A  Datalteria Capital and Times Group’s strategic investment arm Brand Capital also participated in the round, which brings the total investment raises by the firm to date to US$58 million.

The company is using the fresh funding to fuel its adaptive platform.

Toppr caters to the individual learning styles of candidates and provides a wide K12 syllabus coverage with 1.5 million course combinations. It currently has over six million students on its platform and helps them prepare for various school, board, and competitive exams. It uses Natural Language Processing to solve student doubts instantly. It also uses Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Big Data to study student behaviour and create adaptive learning paths with infinite combinations. This ensures that every student has a personalised learning experience.

Toppr has a community of over 29,000 educators from across the country.

DataTrained raises US$1.7M to grow pan-India

Bangalore-based edtech startup DataTrained has raised INR12 crore (US$1.7 million) from a pool of three high net-worth individuals — Ashish Nadiadwala, Rupesh Sinha, and Mithlesh Thakur — in return for a stake of 20 per cent.

The company has earlier raised US$570,000 in 2016 from a New York-based Indian industrialist.

The company will use the fresh funding  for expanding to new geographies, strengthening its product and technology team. It is also looking to invest in a classroom-based Data Science PG course in the next year start in Noida.

Founded by Jatin Juneja in 2012, DataTrained Analytics Academy offers 50 courses conducted by 60 highly rated faculty members. DataTrained under offers 11 months certificate course in Data Science with an assurance of 100 per cent placement. The startup has tied up with more than 300 companies as hiring partners.

 

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Also, A JV partnership to result in Thailand’s first data centre, and India’s ride-hailing service Ola to invest in scooter sharing startup Vogo

Indonesian culinary supplier marketplace Stoqo raises Series A round from Monk’s Hill Partners and Accel Partners India [Deal Street Asia]

Stoqo, an Indonesia-based culinary supplier marketplace aimed at small restaurants and hotel owners reportedly just closed a Series A round co-led by Monk’s Hill Partners and Accel Partners India.

Deal Street Asia was the first to share the news upon the story shared by two people familiar with the investment.

Stoqo was founded by Aswin Andrison and Angky William just a shy one year ago under PT Stoqo Teknologi Indonesia. According to Andrison, Stoqo focuses on Business-to-Business (B2B) culinary supplier and seeks to become a pioneer in this sector.

“We gave an easy access to buyers, especially those in culinary business, in getting the basic, daily needs like rice, eggs, oil, flour, vegetable, fresh meat, and other produces. Stoqo aims to fulfill this need to be more accessible and efficient in the best price,” said Andrison in a statement shared by SWA.

Also Read: Indian edtech startups Toppr, DataTrained raise funding

Right now, Stoqo has more than 2,000 produces available on its platform and has gained over 5,000 downloads from Google Playstore. Next, Stoqo is looking to expand to other cities in Indonesia.

Singapore’s STT GDC partners with TICON to bring Thailand’s first data centre to the country [Press Release]

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC), Singapore-based data centre service provider announced that they are now in the final step of completing the joint venture partnership with TICON, the smart industrial platform provider in Thailand. The joint venture will allow their first data centre to be built on a 75,000 square metre (15-rai) site in Ramkhamhaeng district, situated in central Bangkok, that would be finished by 2020.

This first data centre is in line with the Thailand 4.0 initiative that seeks to develop the digital economy in the country, as well as the Thai government’s National Digital Economy Masterplan, in which the digital economy is expected to see robust growth and contribute up to 25% of Thailand’s GDP by 2027.

“We believe in the market potential of expanding our focus into developing Thailand’s digital economy and transforming urban living with Smart Cities. Developing digital infrastructure in the form of state-of-the-art data centres is one of the key investment areas we are embarking on in this new economy. This partnership will allow us to best serve the digital growth plans of our customers,” said Panote Sirivadhanabhakdi, Chairman of the Executive Committee of TICON Industrial Connection Pcl. (TICON),

Furthermore, TICON’s representative added that they are confident that the data centres’ operation will match the global standards in key markets such as Singapore, China, India and the UK, as well as maximising the local expertise of TICON in understanding the needs of the Thai market and navigating its regulatory environment.

Myanmar’s largest private bank KBZ Bank works with treasury management solution Finastra to eliminate manual operation [Press Release]

Kanbawza (KBZ) Bank, Myanmar’s largest privately owned bank has selected treasury management solution Finastra to automate the tedious operational work by enabling straight-through-processing (STP) using the company’s product called Fusion.

By moving away from manual treasury processing operation, the bank believes that it will result in a faster, more efficient services that can help the bank grow both transaction volumes and revenue and reduce operational risk. The bank also seeks to scale more effectively without sacrificing current levels of manpower across all its treasury business operations.

“Market dynamics are changing rapidly due to increased modernization and digitalization within Myanmar’s banking sector. Finastra’s capability is helping us to overcome high operational overheads associated with manual processes, reduce time-to-market for new products and bring our operations and systems in line with the standards of sophisticated developed markets both regionally and globally,” said Win Lwin, Managing Director of KBZ Bank.

Fusion Treasury by Finastra is a single, integrated, front-to-back solution, built to cover all aspects of a bank’s operations in treasury, capital markets, derivatives, and risk and compliance. The solution enables financial institutions to integrate and automate systems and streamline treasury operations.

Prior to this partnership, Finastra has supported other financial institutions in Myanmar like Yoma Bank, AYA Bank and First Private Bank.

Microsoft’s Azure manages to cover almost all Southeast Asia regions with its cloud capability [SG Channel Asia]

Microsoft Azure Availability Zones are now generally available across Southeast Asia, as the tech giant’s cloud system arm continues to expand cloud capabilities regionally.

The Azure Availability Zones are designed to be a solution for mission-critical applications.

“As a high-availability offering that protects your applications and data from data centre failures, Availability Zones are unique physical locations within an Azure region with each one of them made up of one or more data centres equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking. To ensure resiliency, there is a minimum of three separate zones in all enabled regions,” explained Patrik Bihammar, cloud and enterprise lead at Microsoft Singapore.

Furthermore, with the introduction of Availability Zones, the vendor can now offer a service-level agreement (SLA) of 99.99 per cent for uptime of virtual machines. The company believes that it will build upon their extensive cloud portfolio to enable customers to design resilient applications for comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategy.

Through the addition of these regional zones, customers will now be able to synchronously replicate applications and data using Availability Zones within an Azure region for high-availability within Singapore, and asynchronously replicate across Azure regions for geographic disaster recovery protection.

India’s ride-hailing service Ola seeks to invest US$100 million in Indian scooter sharing startup Vogo [Channel News Asia]

Indian ride-hailing service Ola is reportedly to invest US$100 million in Vogo, a domestic scooter sharing startup. When the investment comes through, the two-wheelers fleet will be added to Ola app to broaden the range of vehicles it offers.

Vogo provides services in the southern Indian cities of Bengaluru and Hyderabad. The company will use the money to expand its fleet by 100,000 scooters.

Also Read: (Exclusive) Thai fintech startup Masii.com acquires events ticketing platform One Place

Meanwhile, Ola’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Bhavish Aggarwal said, “Our investment in Vogo will help build a smart multi-modal network for first-last mile connectivity in the country.”

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Image Credit: STT GDC

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Not only will this bring more comfort and convenience into modern life, but it will bring new ways of being energy efficient and lower the costs of the city

We’re used to weird and wonderful things coming out of science and technology at breakneck speeds. But never before has technology been so advanced, and this time the future promises an almost movie-like reality. The focus of this article is one of these promises, the smart city.

The idea of a completely connected city has been born from the recent technological phenomenon known as the internet-of-things. Simply put, this is the process of endowing inanimate objects with sensors and connecting them via the internet, allowing them to gather, analyse and send data automatically. This has already begun to enter the home life with smart houses that can perform various tasks for you, such as running a bath to be ready when you get in from work.

Moving into the city will be a huge step forward for mankind. Not only will this bring more comfort and convenience into modern life, but it will bring new ways of being energy efficient and lower the costs of the city. To give you an idea as to the aesthetic and technological possibilities, this article will focus on three features of the future city: electricity, street lights, skyscrapers and automation.

Efficient use of resources

One of the benefits of smart initiatives is an improvement in efficiency. This could be in the form of logistics, workflows, and utilisation of resources. For instance, in New York City, which is considered to be a leader in smart city initiatives, IoT and blockchain startup MXC has partnered with mapping Citiesense to deploy smart sensors and collect data about walking routes, sewage flows, car usage, and other common activities across the city’s five boroughs. MXC is a blockchain startup that deploys smart sensors and LPWAN gateways across dense geographies to aid in data collection, analytics, and interpretation. With data on a large scale from different sources, cities can improve how resources are allocated and consumed.

Streetlights

Already, there are many areas where councils and authorities have opted to switch off or dim certain street lights between the hours of midnight and early morning, saving huge amounts of energy that would be otherwise wasted. Although there were concerns that this darkness might result in higher traffic accidents and crime, research has shown that this is not the case. The future city offers the best of both worlds. The streetlights of tomorrow will have sensors that can detect movement and will light up as and when they’re needed, saving massive amounts of energy and money.

Also read: Taipei is using a blockchain alternative to transform into a smart city

Buildings and Skyscrapers

The costs of running a huge skyscraper filled with businesses can be very daunting. If you consider the amount of electricity needed to keep the building working through the day — and even night — and then the fact that more and more people are migrating to urban areas, into high-rise accommodations, there needs to be some solution as to how we can keep these buildings powered for as little cost as possible. The utopian notion, and one that is key in the smart city index, is energy self-sufficiency. Skyscrapers of the future might very well have the answer. Windows have been developed that double as solar panels, for instance. These windows will cover the facades of these future buildings, meaning that they will be able to essentially power themselves without the need to deploy separate photovoltaic devices.

Automation

This relates more to transport than automation within the home or workplace, even though automation is set to take over up to 40% of jobs as we know them. Specifically, this involves the use of drones for deliveries and self-driving cars for taxis. In the not too distant future there could be a second lane of traffic overhead containing drones delivering goods, plus self-piloting helicopter taxis, similar to the ones being introduced in Dubai. Given that drones can work constantly if properly maintained, this will cut delivery times and costs as drivers would not be needed. Likewise, Singapore is currently utilising IoT and sensors to reduce road congestion, as well as other data-centric means of improving city services.

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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 Puk Patrick on Unsplash

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Chinese internet giant ByteDance has filed a series of trademarks hinting at a foray into the fintech sector

The article ByteDance registers fintech trademarks was written by Jill Shen for TechNode.

Chinese internet giant ByteDance has filed a series of trademarks hinting at a foray into the fintech sector.

The most valuable startup in the world, which runs content aggregator Jinri Toutiao and short video platform Douyin (known as TikTok internationally), filed for three trademarks on December 6. News of the filing was only picked up by media this week.

Included is BytePay (our translation, 字节付), classified as relating to insurance and other financial products.

The company also applied for the trademarks of two loan products, namely Qingli Installment and Wuxian Installment, falling into the same trademark category as BytePay.

The company declined to comment when contacted by TechNode.

Also Read: Today’s top tech news, Nov 30: ICONLOOP joins govt blockchain initiative, ByteDance fined for illegal medical ads

Speculation around ByteDance’s entry into the financial services market has circulated since 2017 when the company was reportedly applying for relevant licenses. ByteDance denied the claims.

In July, Jinri Toutiao launched a fintech product named Safe Lending. Up to 20,000 users were permitted to borrow up to RMB200,000 (around US$30,000) per person per day. The company claimed the Bank of Nanjing was one of its loan partners.

The product became the subject of investigations by the media in September. ByteDance later shuttered the online money lending service, while thousands of Chinese P2P lending companies shut down in the second half of the year.

Thanks to the success of its short video and content aggregation platforms, Bytedance has become one of the fastest growing startups in China. The company’s valuation skyrocketed to US$75 billion following a round of financing earlier this year.

ByteDance has sought to raise an additional US$1.45 billion for its first venture fund. The company reportedly plans to invest in AI and media content.

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The article ByteDance registers fintech trademarks first appeared on TechNode.

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500 Startups Vietnam shares its plan to bring 500 Startups’ Silicon Valley accelerator curriculum to the country

Updates: The editorial team has corrected some errors on the previous version of this article. We apologise for the inconvenience.

500 Startups has announced the launch of its accelerator programme in Vietnam for 2019 called The Saola Accelerator, brought to the country in partnership with Korean multimedia retailer GS Shop.

This announcement was made just one month after the accelerator had the oversubscribed final close of its fund.

The Saola Accelerator is named after rare species of Vietnamese deer, commonly known as the “Asian unicorn”.

It seeks to support three batches of Vietnam-connected startups with every single startup in the batches to receive US$100,000 investment and a Silicon Valley accelerator curriculum.

Also Read: MealPal is great, but it uses A LOT of plastic

Each participating company will also receive access to more than US$500,000 worth of free perks and discounts from twenty 500 Startups partners including Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft.

In addition to capital, the Saola Accelerator will offer enhanced programming including 500’s signature Growth Hell Week plus hands-on support for growth.

The programme will conclude with a Demo Day, where the companies will share about their products and progress to an invite-only audience of regional venture investors.

“We’ve learned a lot from working with 1,000 companies in more than 40 growth programme batches around the world. We’re excited to bring that experience to Vietnam,” said Marvin Liao, Partner at 500 Startups and head of its flagship accelerator programme in San Francisco.

There are three criteria to enter the accelerator:

• Tech or tech-enabled
• Vietnam-connected: serving the Vietnam market, having a Vietnamese co-founder, and/or having a meaningful portion of the team in Vietnam
• Have meaningful traction

The registration opens now and interested startups can apply to the programme here.

The Early Bird application deadline is January 2, 2019, and regular deadline is January 20, 2019.

Also Read: (Exclusive) Thai fintech startup Masii.com acquires events ticketing platform One Place

“Our programme is aimed at companies ready to break out and become Asian unicorns – saolas,” closed Eddie Thai, a lead partner of 500 Startups Vietnam.
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Image Credit: 500 Startups

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Good Foodie Media produces food-, event- and travel-related content in the form of daily food review videos, listicles, event postings, and food deals compilations

Penang-based Good Foodie Media — the startup behind the online food channels Penang Foodie and KL Foodie — has secured RM220,000 (US$53,000) from the city-based i4 SeedFund and several angel investors.

The company plans to use the funds to expand to Singapore, Bangkok and Johor in 2019. A part of the money will also go into strengthening its market presence and its digital content (video and article).

Founded in 2018, Good Foodie Media produces food-, event- and travel-related content in the form of daily food review videos, listicles, event postings, and food deals compilations. Good Foodie Media currently has presence in Penang and Kuala Lumpur.

Also Read: (Exclusive) Thai fintech startup Masii.com acquires events ticketing platform One Place

The company claims it has over one million followers across multiple social media platforms. Its content reached 32 million and generated over 16 million video views in November.

Since its debut in early this month, its channel Singapore Foodie’s viewership has grown to reach three million, and has over one million video views.

The one-year-old startup is profitable from day one. The entity makes money via video advertising, advertorial, branded content and agency work.

 

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Make it easy for them to want to share

Question: What’s the best way to secure ambassadors to promote my brand?

Make it easy

“The easier something is to do, the more likely people will do it. So make sure they have all the tools, knowledge and information they need at their disposal: samples, literature, swag, the right answers to common questions, a support system in place, etcetera. If they’re confident that you’ve prepared them well and are standing at the ready behind them, they’ll be far more willing to go forward for you.”

– Nicolas Gremion (@FreeEBooksNet), Free-eBooks.net

Be authentic and offer incentives

“When we open a new store, we first read local magazines and search on social media to find the key influencers who are out and about and attending events on a weekly basis. We reach out to this influencer list and offer a complimentary product to see if they like the brand. We then provide them company credit for referrals, which can be significant given the number of people they’re meeting.”

– Fan Bi (@blanklabel), Menswear Reviewed

Create a programme and promote it

“Publicise an ambassador programme that actively seeks out these influencers who are more than happy to represent your product and service if they like it. The programme should include messaging and a targeting plan to seek out these ambassadors. Having a programme with consistent communication and buy-in for the potential ambassadors can help secure them.”

– Cynthia Johnson (@cynthialive), Bell + Ivy

Target your most dedicated customers

“As a company who reaches moms and moms-to-be, almost everything we do is word-of-mouth based. The best place to start is with your most dedicated customers. You would be surprised how many people will want to help spread the word. Often they will do it for trade, as they just want to be a part of a brand they love.”

– Lindsay Pinchuk (@lindsaypinchuk), Bump Club and Beyond

Gather, nurture, and ask

“For our members, we’ve worked hard to create a lively and engaged Facebook group. We are in there every day answering questions, having conversations and celebrating our members. On the sixth week of membership, they receive a survey. Whenever we see a super fan come through, we reach out to do a member feature and ask if that person will help to be an ambassador of our group. This works well.”

– Kim Walsh-Phillips (@KWalshPhillips), Elite Digital Group

Also Read: 6 tips to turn your customers into ambassadors

Call on strong network ties

“The best ambassadors are people with whom you’ve cultivated a solid relationship over the long term. You talk regularly, you’ve helped them out, and they’ve helped you out. Therefore, it’s not strange or irritating when you approach them with an ask to publicly promote your brand. I personally bristle when I get a request out of the blue, even if I happen to like the person or product.”

– Alexandra Levit (@alevit), PeopleResults

Only engage people with passion

“The best ambassadors are those who don’t need convincing or compensation. If you have a great product or service, there are undoubtedly influencers out there who either already love using it or would love using it. Develop a list of target influencers you think make sense, reach out to gauge their passion and excitement about your offering, and when you smell the organic mutual love, you’re in.”

– Andrew Antonio, World View

Show them that you care

“Build a relationship with them and ask for their opinion. It may sound simplistic, but when you show that you care about them, they will also reciprocate. If they sense that you’re just trying to get them on your side so you can get more exposure for your brand, odds are they will only do the minimum required. Create a brand they’ll want to promote.”

– Ismael Wrixen (@iwrixen), FE International

Build a microbrand first

“Brand ambassadors are force multipliers. But they need something to work with. Start building your product and community before recruiting ambassadors. Focus heavily on design. Ambassadors love working with brands that get great feedback from their fans. Show them that a few people already love your service, and they’ll follow your lead in promoting your company.”

– Neil Thanedar (@neilthanedar), LabDoor

Give first, ask second

“There’s a simple rule in the game of life: ‘Give and you shall receive.’ So before approaching ambassadors, how can you help them? Can you provide a dedicated training to help them grow their business or a personal phone call to help them with their marketing? Give first and ask them to help later.”

– Chris Bission (@chrisbisson), Salesmsg

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The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organisation comprising the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship programme that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

Image Credit: Drew Farwell on Unsplash

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Citramas’ Nongsa Digital Park in Batam houses Indonesian leaders in a bid to strengthen Indonesia’s startup ecosystem through the e27 Academy

The line that delineates digital economy and traditional economy is becoming increasingly blurred as businesses are finding ways to integrate the former with the latter. In a time where business practices are shifting to digital frameworks, it is worth investigating how different economies are dealing with this shift.

In Southeast Asia, efforts to support digital economy has been cropping up across multiple facets. Some countries are largely supported by state-sponsored initiatives; others rely on the support of more established enterprises.

In some instances, the best support comes from the tech startup community itself, gathering experts and insiders to connect and trade insights on how to manage different business models. More importantly, such initiatives help educate emerging startups on how to improve products under their businesses.

This is the main thrust of e27 Academy: building the right foundation through content, community, and coaching.

e27 Academy is a three-day learning programme that is designed to help aspiring and early-stage startup founders build their companies and navigate the ecosystem. The e27 Academy happened in the Indonesian island of Batam, home to Nongsa Digital Park, on November 28-30, 2018.

Also read: e27 Academy is your Founder’s Retreat with hundreds of other Founders

It was participated by startup founders across Southeast Asia, with trainers and experts representing some of the most sought after startups today.

Nestled among lush foliage, the Nongsa Digital Park—considered to be the “digital bridge” between Singapore and Indonesia—is in support of Indonesia’s plan to build 1,000 new digital startups amounting to a total of 10 billion USD by 2020. It also seeks to support Singapore’s expansion of its infocomm and technology sector.

Situated in Batam, merely a short ferry ride from Singapore, NDP positions itself in Southeast Asia’s largest economy (Indonesia) while maintaining close access to Singaporean and Malaysian economies.

Leveraging experience at the core of every new business

An institution that has shown its immense support for e27 Academy is Citramas Group, a diversified group of businesses that was founded in 1980.

Industries under Citramas group’s umbrella of businesses include: oilfield equipment manufacturing, shipping and logistics, drilling services’ infrastructure development comprising port and ferry terminals, hotels, and an animation and film production company as well as other interests in the hospitality and leisure industry.

The diversity of industries they work in puts Citramas in the best position to help emerging startups get a sense of how to build their businesses and improve their products, since many young startups do not have the same grasp and experience yet.

The Nongsa Digital Park is a subsidiary of Citramas, making it the perfect platform to house initiatives like e27 Academy, along with media and creative services company, Infinite Studios, that mooted the idea of the park.

Also read: Slew of Indonesian MOUs aim to support Batam island tech scene

Collectively, Citramas, NDP, and Infinite Studios were the three core signatories of the 13 MOUs (memorandum of understanding) that is pushing for growth in the western Indonesian startup ecosystem, putting the island of Batam at its heart.

This series of MOUs cover a range of verticals: industrial curriculum, funding for digital workforce training through LPK, exploratory work on opportunities related to vocational trainings, areas such as creative arts and digital skills, job opportunities for Indonesian talent, creating collaborative and innovative spaces to share scientific and academic knowledge, hackathon programs, seminars, workshops, and vocational trainings and conferences among many others.

The agreements made through the thirteen MOUs were signed during the e27 Academy.

Leaders to further their resolve to strengthen Western Indonesia’s startup ecosystem

In an effort to strengthen Indonesia’s startup ecosystem, Indonesian leaders also took part in e27 Academy. Infinite Studios, one of the core signatories of the series of MOUs, was part of the event through Director & Member of the Board, Marco Bardelli.

Indonesian creative economy agency, BEKRAF, was also present. BEKRAF is a new non-ministral institution formed by Indonesian president, Joko Widodo in an attempt to bolster and embolden the creative sector of the Indonesian economy.

Ilham Habibie, Implementation team Chair of Wantiknas, also took part in the e27 Academy. Wantiknas or The National Information and Communication Technology Council is a multi-stakeholder institution in the field of ICT, formed and chaired by the President of the Republic of Indonesia.

Its vision is to speed up the utilisation and growth of ICT in Indonesia efficiently and effectively by formulating ICT policies nationally.

Another important personality present was Shinta Dhanuwardoyo, Head of Digital Business, E-Commerce and Start-Up Development with the Indonesia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KADIN), where she is currently creating a platform for start-ups and venture capitalists in Indonesia.

These leaders were all present over the course of the three-day event, crystalising their commitment to strengthening the startup ecosystem in Indonesia, and ultimately, in Southeast Asia.

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We are at a critical tipping point where truly intelligent technology has evolved to augment the knowledge workers’ abilities not just to drive productivity, or make things faster, better and cheaper, but scalable and more impactful

Data, analytics, automation and the rise of AI have been hot topics over the past 12 months. David Sanderson founder and CEO of data storytelling platform Nugit shares his insights on what marketing organisations, publishers and enterprises should be focussing on for success in 2019.

1. Using Automation to improve people’s experiences with data

As we transitioned from human to machine reporting, the quality of insight and storytelling in marketing reports has regressed. Telling stories has been replaced with slick dashboards. Previously, marketing analysts would share campaign performance results in well structured PowerPoint and Excel presentations that included annotations, key insights and recommendations. While this manual process placed a massive burden on analytics teams and dozens of hours required to process data, visualise and build these stories for each activity, the outputs were usually pretty good.

Enter automated dashboards a few years ago which offered a tempting alternative to alleviate this time suck, however it created new problems. While dashboards have undoubtedly driven efficiencies, the data is left to the client or reader to interpret for themselves and the story around the results has all but vanished.

The dashboard is considerably more appealing to an analytics teams (the report producers) than to the end business user (the consumers). Therefore, a more balanced consideration between driving productivity through automation and meeting and exceeding the needs of the end user is required for automation to succeed. After all, the report is built for readers, so make sure it’s what they need. This shift in thinking might seem nuanced, but it means a lot in terms of impact. I believe with maturity of automation technology will lead to a shift in focus from analytics technologies being all about the analyst and productivity enablement, to be focused on delivering a more complete story for the people that rely on this information to make informed decisions.

2. Tech will change marketing roles and AI will begin to bite

There has been a lot of hyperbole about the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning driving job losses. However, it’s actually really difficult to find examples of where this has lead to actual job losses thus far. In the coming year, this will start to change and marketing is likely to be one sector where it could be felt most. Particularly in agencies with reduced fee structures, productivity economics is front and centre in company planning. Teams are expected to manage more output per head, and one of the only places left to find margin is is reducing man-hours.

Also read: 5 blockchain and crypto predictions for 2019

Automation and new technology will also lead to massive changes in the nature of existing jobs. For agencies and marketing organisations this means questioning the skills and experience needed to fulfil these evolving roles. For example, in 2019 you can be an amazing analyst without knowing Structured Query Language (SQL) or programming language Python, but to be successful you must be a great communicator and storyteller. From what I can see, communication and presentation skills was at best a nice to have when filling data analytics roles in 2018.

These trends might be disruptive, but they shouldn’t be feared, they’re driving a lot of amazing opportunities. If you’ve been considering a new career path for a while, this could be the right time. There will also be more jobs created that haven’t existed before. Head of AI, Automation, Innovation, Data Storytelling, or some other buzzword are popping up everywhere. Because there isn’t a ready talent pool of people who’ve got five years plus experience, to find candidates employers will need to be much more open to transferable skills. What aptitudes and skill sets overlap from other fields? what are the critical requirements in the role to be successful vs. are just boilerplate requirements that have existed since the job description was first crafted? Most importantly, why do you need to have worked in an industry or vertical before? While the overhead of training is a bit higher than having someone hit the ground running, imagine the new ideas and thinking that can be introduced into the business with people from more diverse backgrounds.

3. Test and learn with automation

Businesses need to decide if they are going to embrace automation, or just react to it. Embracing it means not just talking about it and putting it on slides, but setting aside real budget to develop proof of concepts and experiments within the company. Even if it’s a modest investment, it will be vital in generating organisational learnings and build skills within the company. There are a lot of early adopters who are building this experience into their marketing functions now and it will be these organisations that will ultimately gain the biggest advantage as the technology matures. Sure there will be failures along the way. The key here is to plan for these failures, make sure lessons are learnt, and incremental knowledge is gained.

For example, we are running Jasmine by Saleswhale, an automated sales agent that often follows up with visitors to our website, helps schedule product demonstrations and shares content. She’s a key part of our sales team, doesn’t require a desk and does amazingly well covering all time zones. While Jasmine doesn’t always get it right, through the setup and management of this technology we were able to collect and view data that refined our customer lifecycle, together with optimising our messaging and content served to each user segment. She’s also improving every month and has the data to back up her performance.

4. Automation to drive increased transparency

One of the most dominant issues this year has been transparency. Marketers are rightly demanding increased accountability and evidence of return on campaign investment more than ever before. Automation, with machines sharing data, and making decisions, helps drive transparency and objective insights. Telling a preferential story is much harder to achieve with an automated system of data management than it is when humans are involved. As more marketers move to automated data analytics this will have a significant impact on investment decisions and overall marketing strategy.

5. Enterprise needs to be startup friendly

Many of the advances in AI and intelligent software are being driven by startups and for enterprises this poses an interesting question. Are they prepared to be startup friendly? Being open to work with startups is more than just doing a hackathon or starting an innovation centre, it requires a coordinated effort across business units, legal and procurement to create fast lanes for startups to engage with enterprises in limited capacities, before they have to go through the full rigor: This reduces project risks and helps projects move faster. It’s also less of a burden on the startups with limited resources so they can spend more time doing what they do best. .

We’re seeing this with some enterprises that now have short and friendly contracts for SaaS software, in place of the rigid and one-sided Master Services Agreements that we’re common place only a few years ago. This makes total sense and enables these organisations to quickly onboard cloud software, and gain efficiencies in legal and procurement as well as the business teams.

Another way enterprises are becoming startup friendly is through Innovation centres. it’s great to see these traditional organisations embracing open spaces and design thinking in sourcing new solutions to drive their business forward, however they still have fundamental problems to work through. In quite a lot of experiences with these centres, success is measured on the number of meetings held, number of startups they meet, or the number of introductions they make, but crucially, and frustratingly for business who participate in this very tempting form of business development, it’s difficult to get further than that because the innovation centers seldom hold budget and the traditional business teams are not working at the same pace.

We get invited to ‘pitch’ to the innovation teams at companies from telcos, finance and FMCG. In the vast majority of cases there’s a lot of introductions and excitement, but little decision making ability or budget to back it. Ultimately its unproductive for all concerned. If enterprise are truly investing in innovation they should be also backing their sourcing teams with enough investment to let them do the job, fund POCs directly, and not rely on core business teams that worry more about the day to day to fund activities. Only then will real innovation begin. A business getting this right is Singapore’s DBS Bank. Recognising the increasing headwines of technology disruption and the threat of being disintermediated, it started a digital transformation process, with data at its heart in 2013. But rather than platitudes, DBS has embarked on a company wide process of data and digital transformation that is being reflected across the culture of the organisation. As technology continues to advance at speed, many organisations will need to take a leaf out of DBS’ playbook if they want to maintain and grow their market share.

Also read: e27 AMA with David Sanderson, the Founder and CEO of Nugit

As we close out 2018, we have a lot to look forward too in terms of how technology can make our working lives better. We are at a critical tipping point where truly intelligent technology has evolved to augment the knowledge workers’ abilities not just to drive productivity, or make things faster, better and cheaper, but scalable and more impactful. While it’s natural to fear the changes happening in the business world, I hope you can embrace automation and a world where man plus machine work together in new and exciting ways. Knowledge workers still have so many advantages over these systems, and adding automation to your skill set is surely going to position you well for career growth and success.

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David Sanderson is founder and CEO of data storytelling platform Nugit.

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