In an era where people are exploring new ways of working and living, the need for new and innovative communication technologies that allow people to essentially be in two places simultaneously is increasingly in demand. A Japanese startup is promoting its vital technology, which functions as a teleportation space.

tonari’s technology is described as a room-sized portal where two physical spaces are connected, allowing users to feel like they are present together in a single seamless physical space. Unlike the metaverse, which is a separate virtual world, tonari is the life-like experience of being next to each other in the same room.

Starting in 2017 as a non-profit social venture, tonari’s initial funding to develop the technology came from a non-profit grant. After doing the initial R&D to develop the hardware and software in 2018, they incorporated tonari as a company.

tonari Cofounder, Taj Campbell, spoke to e27 to describe their technology and lay out their expansion plans as they look to establish a presence in Singapore. With a background in Computer Science, both Campbell and co-founder Ryo Kawaguchi are former Google employees who decided to join forces and start this venture.

tonari’s mission: connecting people in different locations

“It’s like teleportation” says Campbell. “If you take extremely high-end hardware and build the software, you can push the performance of video communication to its limit. Most of the time, we use video communication on a small screen like a laptop or mobile. In order to blow up the experience to be life-size and immersive, you need a lot more resolution and more fidelity, and you need to do everything fast,” he explained.

Everything tonari does is done with a real-time video display, thanks to their solution’s hardware and software capabilities. Campbell explained that in most video calls, you experience a lag, but for real-time immersive communications, you cannot afford that lag. “You must capture and process the image as quickly as possible. Video gets compressed and sent over the internet, and then it has to get decompressed and displayed on-screen — and you need all of that in 100 milliseconds, or less so people don’t notice a lag,” Campbell shared. “We built all of our software and hardware from zero to achieve that,” he added.

Also read: X-HUB TOKYO’s Demo Day: Welcoming the 9 aspiring Japanese

tonari’s co-founder believes everyone wants teleportation or some form of it. “You make a lot of tradeoffs in your life, so you don’t have to be everywhere all the time,” he remarked. The chief reasons people choose to live where they live are because of work, access to education for their kids, and where family members are. The motivation to create tonari comes from that basic human desire to have all these things even though we physically cannot be everywhere at the same time.”

What does he think is the general impact their technology can have? “There are a ton of applications from having the ability to be in two places simultaneously. All the things you need to do face to face but cannot since you are not in the same location are possible with tonari.” Based on what they believe are people’s priorities, tonari decided to focus first on the workplace, then education, and then the home.

Campbell elaborated that many companies have grown very quickly, building distributed workforces. However, the need to address how they can make their employees feel connected and collaborate better with team members arises. He cited their own company as an example — “We’re here from Japan, and we want to establish a presence in Singapore, but we want our teams to feel connected.”

Also read: Exploring corporate partnerships as a pathway to scaling your startup

“The workplace is much more distributed today,” Campbell said. “The job market is flatter, and way more remote positions exist. Companies are much more open-minded about remote work opportunities, and that change in the workforce will create massive changes. However, companies will still look to build cohesion in their teams and technologies that make people feel like they’re physically together will be essential. 

While the metaverse offers a platform, he thinks that no one wants to wear a VR headset at work, so you need a different solution. Video conferencing fatigue also builds up, and companies are starting to use the budget for remote work to spend on team get-togethers. In the future, he believes there will be many more lean companies that are remote.

Campbell explained that most distributed companies seek ways to build better relationships. tonari believes in people being face-to-face, and through their technology, distributed teams can spend a lot of time within the same life-like environments.

Facing the challenges of scaling up

When the co-founders started tonari as their first venture, they came from a background of building software applications. Learning to scale the operations of hardware manufacturing, installation, and service was a new challenge for them since installing physical hardware requires a hands-on process. People want solutions for different reasons, such as a casual meeting place or a formal desk meeting room. In each case, they need a lot of physical work and scaling has been their biggest challenge. It can be a very capital-intensive process, explained Campbell.

Deciding to expand in Singapore has meant the added challenge of certifying and licensing each aspect of their solution. However, they have experienced many pleasant surprises as well. The co-founder said he expected more failures and more maintenance costs, and has been relieved to experience almost no issues or downtime. Campbell is glad that the tonari team used the RUST programming language — which has delivered performance and security and has been less prone to failures.

As a startup, they continue learning a lot from installing tonari in office environments. They were curious to know if it would actually help people who don’t see each other all the time. Some insights they have noticed is that people are much more chatty in the morning and evening. tonari allows people to engage in more casual social interactions than any remote working tool. Such solutions have helped teams to build camaraderie similar to when they are in the same office.

Launching at Leave a Nest Singapore

tonari recently launched at the Leave a Nest office in Singapore last November 2022. They also have an installation in central Tokyo, a large co-working space called “Center of Garage” for various Japanese manufacturing tech companies working with entrepreneurs and startups in Japan. 

One of the Leave a Nest’s goals is to help researchers and entrepreneurs from Southeast Asia expand their operations in Japan’s huge market. Conversely, the organisation aims to help bridge innovators from the country to the rest of the world, penetrating unique global markets and exploring opportunities overseas.

Leave a Nest functions as a bridge between Japan and Singapore, and tonari is playing an essential role in helping them create this bridge, said Campbell. He added that people from both countries could meet and collaborate, and now, companies in Singapore can see how this connection is built without having to move between the countries physically.

The road ahead

Campbell feels that even when tonari started their work, they knew that achieving the company’s long-term vision would take years. You can build many apps, but designing hardware and scaling it is an even more enormous undertaking. 

He compares it to the Tesla journey — they started by building only 100 cars in the first two years of operations. It took them a long time since they had to make each capability from the start. The co-founder thinks that while tonari is not as complicated, it has a lot of components. With each new iteration and application of tonari’s technology, Campbell feels they will have to learn how to scale each aspect of their operations — which takes time.

Also read: Customer retention strategies are getting trickier. Can you keep up?

Overall, their long-term goal is to build a product which anyone can buy off a shelf in 10 years. 

From connecting workplaces and families to connecting people who are sick and cannot be physically present, such as in ICUs or older family members living in nursing homes, he believes their technology can connect everyone for whatever purpose they want to be connected. 

“I think it’s imperative as a society that we continue to invest in technologies that give us this kind of connectivity,” he concluded.For more information on how their technology works, visit their official website.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, in partnership with Leave a Nest.

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With Thanksgiving and Christmas right around the corner, many people will think of their favourite charities and how they can offer support during the holiday season. Fundraising is particularly important to charities at this time of year when most are willing to part with a little to help the causes that matter to them most. 

However, according to the Fundraising regulator Annual Complaints Report 2021, the complaints about misleading information increased by 17 per cent. There are also concerns about fundraiser behaviour, citing pressure to donate. What people require is a safe way to transfer surplus income to causes that they want to support.

While the disparity between those who earn a lot and those who earn a little continues to grow wider, giving is a common ground for all who care about others in society.

Giving a little to make an impact

Crowdfunding is something that the public has become familiar with in recent years. Go Fund Me, Just Giving, and Patreon offers ways for the public to offer support for the projects they feel passionate about.

Gitcoin grants have taken this model into Web3. It is one of the best examples of fundraising in the Web3 sector today. It successfully allows anybody to support a mission, team or project they believe in. 

The beauty of their quadratic funding model is that you don’t have to give a lot to make a big difference. With over US$20mm funded, Gitcoin is currently the largest experiment of Quadratic Funding used to fund digital public goods. The idea is simple, all contributions to a project during the defined time period count towards the matching rewards. 

Also Read: Singapore gets an NFT-gated Web3 co-working space Metacamp

This is truly where blockchain technology shines. Although the model focuses mostly on developing Web3-related communities, products and services, it is certainly setting a precedent for future funding opportunities in other industries.

Partnerships in the metaverse

Charities have opportunities to use virtual worlds to engage new audiences, stimulate conversations around their biggest campaigns and help the wider public to understand their vision. Innovative charities are beginning to learn about the opportunities in the metaverse. 

Susan G.Komen, the world’s leading Breast Cancer Charity, recently teamed up with Upland during Breast Cancer Awareness month. Using digital assets to help fight breast cancer. Upland players can purchase unique assets and also display the iconic pink ribbon on their player profiles when they support the cause. This innovative approach to fundraising allows Susan G.Komen to reimagine its reach worldwide.

Engaging with the digital-first donors

How can we support the initiatives we care about and have those initiatives guarantee that the funding is going to those who need it the most?

The younger generation is hyper-aware of their digital footprint and also far removed from the traditional fundraising mechanisms of today. The transparency offered via blockchain technology offers a new, transparent way to track donations, ensuring that all support given to a charity ends up in the right place. 

Charitblez, a recent winner of the re-imagine fundraising award, is planning to use individual crypto tokens to allow existing charities to tap into Web3 communities and offer new ways for the younger generation to engage with a charity’s mission. Oxfam are their first case study, and it will be interesting to see how token contributions differ from existing 

Using crypto as an alternative way to support good causes is one way to disassociate giving from parting with hard-earned cash. This new approach to non-profit funding management adds potential new revenue streams for charities.

Cash is no longer king

How often do you pass a charity bucket on the street and wish you had cash to throw in? It happens regularly. Yet, nonprofits still struggle to find a solution to this predicament. If they hold out card machines, it appears as though they have money to invest in technology.

Also Read: How to create defensible moats in Web3

This creates a perception of wealth that causes people to question the need for support. However, mobile technology has quickly become a staple in all major cities across the world, with over 4.6 billion mobile internet users worldwide.

Many nonprofits recognise the value of mobile technology for meeting their fundraising objectives. However, the implementation can prove cumbersome when archaic systems are firmly embedded into the charity’s organisational culture.

The Giving Block provides an easy way for nonprofits to accept crypto donations and individuals who hold cryptocurrencies to donate to some of their favourite causes. 

As more nonprofits focus on addressing fundraising challenges in a digital era, new Web3 opportunities will allow them to tap into new audiences, create brand awareness and offer alternative methods of support for the younger generation sceptical of traditional means of fundraising. 

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Content marketing costs 62 per cent less and generates three times as many leads as outbound marketing. So why do many CMOs and marketing managers prioritise paid advertising?

Unless you have a pile of cash to burn, that’s something hard to understand. Consider just that about 70 per cent of people now get information from blogs rather than traditional advertisements, and bots make up about 40 per cent of all web traffic. But let’s now take a step back and see why focusing on content can be a game changer for your startup’s organic growth in the long term.

If you are trying to grow a startup, especially a B2B one, you know that generating leads can be tricky. Finding the right balance between being visible and providing valuable content that will help your target audience is vital. That’s where content marketing comes in. By creating quality content, you can attract leads that are more likely to convert.

A common error among startups is failing to create a content strategy from the beginning. This can lead to wasted time and resources down the road. A content strategy should be tailored to your specific business and audience.

Also Read: A marketing map to the world beyond third-party cookies

It should outline who you’re targeting, what types of content you will create, and how you will distribute it. By setting up a content strategy from the beginning, with a content calendar adequately planned, you can ensure that you’re getting the most out of your content marketing efforts.

If my direct experience is mainly with financial services, particularly B2B fintech companies from Europe and the US, where quality content is working much better than anything else to generate new leads, the reality is that content marketing works equally well in Asia and other geographies as well as for different verticals that have nothing to do with fintech, blockchain or crypto.

Here’s a closer look at why content is fundamental for startups’ lead generation:

Content helps you attract the right leads

The first step in generating leads is attracting the right ones. You want to make sure that you’re targeting individuals who are likely to be interested in your product or service.

Creating quality content is a great way to do this. By writing blog posts, whitepapers, e-books, and other types of content that can be helpful for your target customers, you are likely to attract relevant leads.

Content helps you nurture your leads

Once you’ve attracted the right leads, it’s important to nurture them, so they continue down the sales funnel. Quality content can help you do this by providing valuable information that will help your leads make a buying decision.

For example, let’s say you sell software that helps businesses manage their social media accounts. You could write a blog post about choosing the right social media platform or create an e-book with tips for creating successful social media campaigns. By providing helpful information, you can nurture your leads and turn them into customers.

Content helps you build trust

Another reason why content is vital for B2B startups’ lead generation because it helps you build trust with your audience. When potential customers see that you’re providing quality information, they’ll be more likely to trust your brand and do business with you in the future.

This is especially important for startups because larger corporations generally hesitate to do business with new companies.

Also Read: We can no longer adopt a cookie-cutter approach to marketing: Gunalan Ram of CINNOX

It is also crucial to remember that the key to success in content marketing is consistency. You need to create and distribute content regularly so that you remain top of mind with your target audience.

Additionally, it’s important to track how your content is performing and ask for people’s feedback so that you can better understand your customers’ needs and pain points and make adjustments as needed.

What is probably more important than anything else is that Inbound marketing is about creating content that solves people’s problems. When you do that, you become a trusted source of information, and people become more likely to buy your products and services.

If, instead, you create sales-oriented content that is not genuinely useful to your readers, then you are just wasting their time and yours.

Content is vital in generating leads, especially for B2B startups, and should be considered a long-term investment.

It takes time and effort to create and distribute content. And you can’t expect too much in the short term. But in the long run, the results can be remarkable and exponential.

So if you still need to start using content as part of your lead generation strategy and you’re looking for a way to grow your startup organically, then the time to start is now.

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Join us in the Singapore stop of the Big Leap roadshow.

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As I parked my car in the basement car park, I had no idea about the challenges ahead that morning.

Climbing the narrow series of escalators that threaded their way through the converted shophouse, I reached the office on the third floor. I walked over to my manager’s room, shaded by wooden shutters overlooking the busy street in Chinatown below.

I was surprised by his absence.

We had an important business meeting later that morning, and we depended on him to lead it. The economic downturn was depressing sales, and the meeting was an important opportunity we could not forgo.

We repeatedly tried to reach him but without success. The taste of silent panic was acrid and growing. It was time to breathe slowly and focus.

We had most of the materials we needed for the meeting and sixty minutes before our visitors arrived. We gathered a small team and set to work. I don’t think I have seen a commercial presentation come together so quickly before or since.

We finished the materials five minutes ahead, and the meeting started on time. Our visitors were completely unaware of the panic that ensued ahead of their arrival. The meeting progressed well, and we secured the critical partnership that we had been seeking.

Also Read: 6 leadership lessons I learned after we raised our seed round

We subsequently learned that my manager had been unwell and later moved to a new company. This presented an important choice: should I follow him to the new company and continue our partnership, or should I pitch for his now vacant role? I was young and ambitious, and the opportunity of a leadership role was too alluring.

I decided to take on the challenge. I worked every hour available and secured promotion the following year. I soon moved on to a new role and several more after that. In each new role, I would study the objectives obsessively and engineer a plan to achieve them. I became a finely polished cog enmeshed in a corporate machine.

However, the more I focused on corporate objectives, the more frustrated and unfulfilled I became. Through many restructurings and rationalisations, I came to realise how ephemeral corporate objectives could be: these investments could evaporate overnight.

Moreover, the people around me became disengaged, and I developed a reputation for being difficult to work with. I knew that I needed to follow a different path.

The wake-up call

One afternoon a text message from a former colleague popped up on my phone: “When you have a minute, can you call me?”

The company had announced plans to divest three-quarters of its business in the region. As major job cuts were imminent, I was concerned for his welfare.

I had several hours of meetings before I could make the call. I was apprehensive but looking forward to catching up. Six months earlier, he had come to me for guidance. I helped him rewrite his CV and review his career plans.

His joyful tone was unmistakable. He had just secured a promotion in a new and growing team unaffected by the cuts and wanted to thank me. I could not have been more pleased both by the news and his enthusiasm to reconnect so many months after I had left. I walked around the office with a broad smile and a light step that afternoon and for several days thereafter. Despite the dark clouds outside, it felt bright and warm inside.

Also Read: 5 lessons from building a global tech platform in Malaysia

Moreover, I realised that the call had a deeper significance for me. It grounded a growing realisation that investments in people were more meaningful and valuable.

People first, please

I realised that my misplaced focus on organisation over people was a hindrance to my own growth and, more importantly, to those people around me. This focus was fracturing relationships, decreasing the quality of the working environment, and ultimately reducing the productivity of the team.

It became evident that when an organisation described their people as “human resources” either by intention or by implication, they were equating people with corporate commodities such as money, oil, steel and concrete. By using this term, they were diminishing the fundamental miracle of each and every person.

I learned that only by putting people first could I achieve personal fulfilment, create a productive working environment and ultimately optimise the shared value of the organisation. I learned that organisations are resources to achieve human objectives.

I leave you with a simple question:

Are you a human resource? If not, what are you doing to help yourself, your colleagues, and your organisation find a better path?

–

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Amidst talks of growing adoption and decentralisation becoming the norm, the great decentralised exchange (DEX) vs centralised exchange (CEX) debate is more prominent now than ever. This debate has many case studies for us to refer to.

The latest would be FTX. FTX owes nearly US$3.1 billion to the top 50 creditors and is estimated to have “more than 100,000” creditors.

Why trustless DEX is the way forward

• Individual data and asset control

CEX holds custody of your deposited assets and all your personal information. You have no control over how the assets and data are being used. While in a DEX environment, it is non-custodial; typically, only an individual wallet address is connected to the exchange. In other words, you have complete control over your assets.

• Liquidity and market depth

Historically, CEX is known for deeper liquidity and market depth. DEXes, in general, are trying to catch up with CEX’s efficiency in matching and executing orders. But the top DEXes have good enough liquidity and market depth for the major coins, and in fact, DEX’s liquidity is more accurate and traceable.

• KYC and accessibility

KYC is often required for withdrawals exceeding a specific amount or specific trading products, and it is typically region-locked for most CEXes. While DEX has no KYC, traders only need a wallet address. This helps to drive accessibility to true financial freedom.

• User-friendliness

CEX provides a wide range of products, including spot and fiat on-ramps, which is most familiar to traditional and crypto traders, especially beginners. DEX products may be harder to grasp with insufficient onboarding guidelines for traders. Again, this point for DEX is changing.

Also Read: To leverage Web3 technologies, Web2 companies may start by building the right culture

The user interface and experience have significantly improved; some of the newer DEXes look and function exactly like CEX.

• Transaction costs

CEX is known for high transaction or platform costs, especially when the system is hugely loaded with trades at a single point in time. An increasing number of DEXes are integrating scaling solutions that will massively increase transaction workload while keeping costs low and passing the savings on to traders.

• Community involvement

CEXes, are often one-way, non-reciprocal communication from a central operator to traders. Individual traders are seen as clients utilising as service that the CEX provides. While DEXes focus on community-building and involvement, where traders can become stakeholders and have a say in protocol changes or share in transaction fees on the platform.

• Transparency

DEXes offer strong execution guarantees and increased transparency into the underlying mechanics of trading. Trades are trackable, traceable and data is permanently on-chain. This is one of the core basics and the beauty behind the ideology of DEXes.

A new DEX era

The challenge with CeFi and CEXes boils down to a lack of trust and security. This is continually reinforced time and again; this year is no different, with funds, exchanges and even established projects hitting the buffers and leaving behind affected, concerned investors and traders fearing for their assets.

News of increased risk with CEXes come into question of insolvency and possible withdrawal delays, causing widespread panic amongst traders.

I would like to discuss the following DEXes for your reference and research purposes.

dyxX

dYdX is a decentralised exchange (DEX) platform that offers perpetual trading options for over 35 popular cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE) and Cardano (ADA).

Non-custodial exchange dYdX has climbed to the top of the DEX rankings by trading volume, beating out Uniswap, for the first time. More than US$9 billion has been exchanged on the trading platform in the last 24 hours in 2021, according to data provider CoinMarketCap.

Also Read: Should Southeast Asian startups look to transition from Web2 to Web3?

Also during the same time, according to CoinGecko, dYdX has facilitated more than US$4.3 billion worth of trades in the past 24 hours, beating out Coinbase’s  US$3.7 billion

They changed how DEXes were perceived back then.

ApeX Pro

ApeX Pro is set out to be a dynamic non-custodial derivatives DEX powered by StarkWare’s Layer two scalability engine StarkEx — all to deliver a made-to-order, permissionless platform designed for precision trading.

This comes after ApeX Protocol’s initial ApeX elastic Automated Market Maker (eAMM) launch, where popular inverse perpetual contracts were supported; automatic, fully permissionless and without needing KYC. With full spectrum asset support, ApeX Protocol was able to uplift decentralised derivatives trades.

To add on, they are multi-chain supported. This responded well to the demand from the market.

Just Ex

Another multi-chain DEX is Just Ex. They are relatively new, and currently, they support APTOS, SUI and Solana. They will support Ethereum and BNB Chain later on. This strategy is also different, as we all know that most of these multi-chain DEXes are usually based on Ethereum first.

At the point of publishing, I have not tried the DEX yet, but the fact that it has no slippage, open trade and infrastructure API ready and that they are order-book based are worth exploring.

As usual, I will end with a quote:

The answer is to return to the basics of what blockchain is supposed to be. It is decentralisation and transparency. DeFi is one of the solutions, and we need to work together to build the future. For now, it cannot replace CeFi completely for obvious reasons, but this will not stop us from trying.

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FWD Group, a pan-Asian life insurance company with 10 million customers, has partnered with Malaysian VC firm Artem Ventures to launch TIM Ventures, an RM45 (US$10.2) million VC fund.

TIM Ventures seeks to invest in emerging startups in insurtech and Islamic fintech in Malaysia.

“We at TIM Ventures hope to support early-stage entrepreneurs in Malaysia by not just providing them with financing but also helping connect them with the networks and expertise they need to succeed,” said Sim Preston, MD and Group COO at FWD. “We hope to invest in businesses that share our vision as we work together to change how people feel about takaful (a Sharia-compliant insurance product).”

Also Read: How Islamic finance can work with fintech to promote financial inclusion in Malaysia

TIM Ventures has already invested in four startups:

Senang: an on-demand subscription-based insurance company

Pewarisan: an online platform providing digital solutions for Islamic inheritance planning

Du-It: a Malaysia-based fintech company

Blueduck: a zero-deposit insurance agency

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are a critical component of the Malaysian economy, contributing more than a third of the gross domestic product and providing job opportunities to more than four million workers in Malaysia.

Mahadhir Aziz, CEO of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, said: “We welcome the establishment of this venture capital fund to support the growth of Malaysia’s SMEs operating in these sectors. We will strive to ensure further effective collaborations are formed to support this growing technology ecosystem in line with our new national strategic initiative, Malaysia Digital. We are particularly focused on the innovative Islamic fintech segment, where Malaysia has been a global leader for eight consecutive years.”

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In an extended report recently published by the Coalition for Digital Prosperity for Asia (DPA), it was found that the full potential of Asia Pacific’s digital economy has not yet been realised.

Numbers paint a clearer picture: the value of the region’s digital economy, if captured in full, is estimated to be US$2 trillion in 2021, of which the region was only able to capture a mere 30 per cent.

Within the region, countries sit along the spectrum between “digital isolation”, where digital openness is restricted in order to protect and foster the development of local digital capabilities, and “digital globalism”, where digital openness is encouraged to facilitate cross-border dataflows and foreign direct investments.

By and large, governments have traditionally always needed to make a choice between these two extremes, viewing them as largely incompatible strategies to achieve disparate outcomes.

Yet, with most assumed dichotomies, humanity almost always finds a way to integrate seemingly opposing concepts to reap the best of both worlds, if you will. In this case, the DPA proposes a new approach to governing the digital economy, called “digital prosperity”, which combines the rapid innovation characteristic of “digital globalism” and the nurturing domestic environment of “digital isolation”.

To pursue “digital prosperity”, governments will have to focus on four key enablers of digital economies:

• Policies that facilitate data flow
• The establishment of a competitive business environment
• Strategies to build local digital capabilities
• Setting up the appropriate and adequate infrastructure to support the nation’s digital transformation

Yet, while the directions toward regional prosperity are clear, there is the fundamental groundwork upon which all else is built that is required to ensure that the full value of APAC’s digital economy can be realised.

Also Read: How insurgent brands are redefining India’s consumer growth story

This groundwork is the evolution of our relationship with trust in the digital economy.

Growth from within local economies: Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs)

To illustrate how evolving our relationship with trust is necessary to facilitate “digital prosperity”, let’s explore the critical mechanism by which countries can pursue local enablers of digital economies – the establishment of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs).

In this piece, we take PPPs to refer to a broader relationship in which public and private stakeholders collaborate and pool resources to achieve a common goal. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) succinctly describes the necessity for PPPs in their Global Innovation Index report – PPPs create opportunities to reduce the risks associated with innovation, as it is shared between public and private partners, and this drives the development of new technologies that do not yet exist.

In other words, PPPs are both a means and an end to building local digital capabilities, as well as the set-up of adequate infrastructure to support the country’s digital transformation. In fact, the relationship between PPPs and digital projects is “symbiotic”, as described by the same report.

With PPPs, digital projects are able to find the financial support required for their undertaking, while on the other hand, public sector networks allow the outcomes of these digital projects to be put within reach of citizens – both financially, physically, and digitally.

Take India’s e-Mitra as an example – this is a PPP project that has allowed the government, through local service providers, to deliver e-services to its citizens (such as forms and birth certificates) via dedicated centres and kiosks.

It goes without saying that trust is important in such collaborations. Public and private stakeholders involved must be assured of their mutual participation in the project. Beyond the project’s partnership, if public funding is involved or if the outcome is meant for the larger community, it is important to foster open and trusted communication to earn society’s buy-in and support.

Information quality is the first ticket to building trust between partners and the wider community. In the latest Edelman Trust Barometer report, when it comes to establishing trust for corporates, NGOs, governments, and media entities, information quality is the “most powerful trust builder”. When stakeholders are able to rely on your information, many outcomes instantly become reliable and trustworthy – such as your communications, financials, mission, and vision.

There are numerous ways to preserve information quality, from detailed reporting to effective summaries. The most important element of information quality, however, is the authenticity of the information. Such authenticity (whether the information is true-to-source, has been tampered with, or can be verified) can be achieved through the use of verifiable data – and this is the evolution of our relationship with trust.

Instead of relying on traditional, fallible ways of preserving information integrity, such as official stamps, signatures, and the like, we can create new standards of data formats that have trust built into their structure.

With verifiable data, stakeholders can be assured that the information they are working with is true-to-source and not tampered with – and when in doubt, they can instantly verify the information to validate its truthfulness.

Growth across economies: cross-border partnerships

When it comes to pursuing digital prosperity, we have to look at the other side of “digital isolation” and embrace “digital globalism” in the form of cross-border partnerships.

Cross-border partnerships are key to regional enablers of digital economies by facilitating data flows and the establishment of a competitive business environment. They do so through the creation of opportunities for technology and talent transfer and the influx of Foreign Direct Investments. When managed well, countries can harness such transfers of capability and resources to foster an environment of mutual learning and healthy competition.

Also Read: How technology has revolutionised operational efficiency in consumer finance

In a policy research paper undertaken by the World Bank, technology transfers that can result from cross-border partnerships can be encouraged through the establishment of joint venture partnerships, grant matching, and the improvement of information flows (such as business and regulatory information).

Yet, here is where we face the hurdle of trust again. Quoting Edelman’s Trust Barometer 2022 report, circles of trust are becoming more local, where an individual’s trust in people from other countries has decreased. Increasingly, individuals are more trusting of those who are close to them.

This trend of burgeoning distrust towards “outsiders”, when examined from a policy and business context, is harmful to the pursuit of digital prosperity. It espouses “digital isolation” and rejects “digital globalism”, but for digital prosperity to work and for us to realise the true potential of APAC’s digital economy, we must do both.

Again, we have to change our relationship with trust through the use of verifiable data. If data and information cannot be disputed by virtue of their verifiable and tamper-proof nature, then new doors for cross-border collaboration can open – despite circles of trust retreating inwards.

In fact, one could say that verifiable data is dismantling such circles entirely; when trust is an undeniable and guaranteed fact, when you can take trust for granted, then such circles of trust are no longer necessary.

Embrace the new trust and usher in an age of digital prosperity

To realise the full potential of APAC’s digital economy or even grow the pie, we have to facilitate the smooth transition of local economies towards digital ecosystems and technologies.

We have won half the battle if we begin focusing on the key enablers of digital economies:

• Policies that facilitate data flows
• The establishment of a competitive business environment
• Strategies to build local digital capabilities, and
• Setting up the appropriate and adequate infrastructure to support the nation’s digital transformation

The other half is won through transforming our relationship with trust. The digitalisation of our economies must go a step further than simply adopting digital data but also embrace verifiable data – to create the guaranteed trust necessary for digital prosperity to be possible.

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As we enter the era of Web3 that yielded an uptick in financial technology developments, many opportunities have arisen. However, along with this rise comes its associated potential threats. Such risks emphasise the importance of adopting better cybersecurity solutions to further ease and protect digital transactions at scale, especially in the cryptocurrency space.

To discuss the matter, e27 sits with Ze Chong Tan, Chief Strategy Officer at UKISS Technology, a tech firm specialising in blockchain solutions, network security, file encryption, identity authentication, and crypto wallets.

A closer look at cybersecurity with Ze Chong Tan of UKISS Technology

As a veteran in the cybersecurity space with over 30 years of experience in the cybersecurity and tech spaces, Tan shared a look back at his career beginnings in IT. It was at the time of the first dot-com boom in the Southeast Asian region where he was working in the connectivity provider and distributed server solutions industry. He then became part of the National Computer Board and NETS to create the first Public Certificate Authority (CA) in the Southeast Asian region.

Also read: RareSkills to help Web3 engineers harness their potential

“Security considerations played a significant role in the growth of the internet, and identifying and authenticating users coming to websites was the first purpose of setting up the Public CA. In a way, it was SingPass 1.0.,” explained Tan. “I was fortunate to participate in driving that development as public key infrastructure (PKI) was still an evolving standard at the time. Today, the mass proliferation of public key cryptography has created whole cybersecurity industries, with technologies like SSL, TLS, VPN, Symmetric/Asymmetric Encryption, and eventually, blockchain,” Tan added.

Fast forward to today, digital businesses transitioning their operations of running digital transactions from on-premise set-ups to the cloud have paved the way to more relevant cybersecurity solutions that adapt to this new web infrastructure, especially in Web3.

How UKISS Technology was founded

The need for a more robust cybersecurity system also applies to consumers, where the risk of preventing bad actors from entering these networks increases as the information is now online and data assets are no longer locked with a simple perimeter. This was the premise of how UKISS Technology was founded: to address the pain points of Web3 users by creating a haven to protect the entire life cycle of their private keys. 

“In Web3, private and public key cryptography forms the basis of all transactions. It is a world where the proof of ownership of the private key is central to enabling things to happen. This nature of Web3 security caused crypto owners a lot of pain when they lost access to their wallets, had their wallets hacked, or were conned into disclosing their private keys. We want to empower users to engage and navigate the decentralised world of Web3 easily and safely”, Tan shared.

Also read: Is “teleporting” between workspaces truly possible?

Tan has pioneered blockchain developments in Singapore and has played a significant role in creating Singapore’s first public Certificate Authority and the region’s earlier B2B digital payment solutions. In the advent of cloud computing, Tan shared further about the ramifications of how cybersecurity is delivered.

“Hybrid and complex connectivity meant it took a lot of work to guard gateways. Cybersecurity then evolved to take on a Zero Trust approach, which deemed any connection coming in or out of a machine hostile until proven otherwise. Blockchain technology provides an evolutionary public/private key mechanism that is effective and has widespread potential to enable trust in Zero Trust environments. UKISS Technology believes in bringing our users to a world where they are protected when providing proof to Web3 services. We’re engineering our solutions with the best security technology for the masses,” Tan explained.

Forging a path towards a more secure future

As global standards for cybersecurity solutions evolve with emerging needs and contexts, the industry is expanding its adoption of Decentralised Identifiers (DID), decentralised validation, and authentication, among others.

In this field, Tan foresees more structures of trust in the internet, delivered through the language of blockchain. “We have seen pandemic travellers producing health or vaccine certificates to prove they have been vaccinated or have not contracted COVID-19. The certificate, or some would call it Health Passport, is a form of Verifiable Credential. It is a Web3 application that leverages the certificate issuer’s DID for verification purposes. I believe trust in online documentation can be established quickly for the masses. I also foresee mainstream financial systems adopting blockchain ledgers to provide immutable evidence, just as we have seen in the crypto world,” Tan cited as an example.

Also read: The Big Leap roadshow kickstarts in Jakarta with a panel on the Gen Z market

Looking further ahead, this new way of digital exchange emphasises the imperative to build solutions that forge trust among actors on the web. This presents a challenge in cybersecurity, given the lack of trust in centralised systems and the concentration of critical data for financial gains. On the other hand, this also presents an opportunity to build a more robust infrastructure around transactions in the decentralised financial processing space. 

“Data and hacks could happen, and threats from outside and within centralised data institutions and financial exchanges will be palpable. To counter such threats, enhancing system resilience by decentralising data and security control will become more realistic,” Tan elaborated.

“Technology vendors should strive to break this cycle by establishing fundamental trust in all connections on the internet. Pushing for Web3 is one such way. I wish to see UKISS Technology providing the best and simplest Web3 tools for the masses. You do not need to be a crypto native to access the best protection of your assets and data,” he remarked.

For more information on UKISS Technology and its pioneering cybersecurity solutions, visit their official page.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by UKISS Technology

We can share your story at e27, too. Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. Visit us at e27.co/advertise to get started.

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Tiger Global-backed Ula lays off 134 employees
It is about 23% of its workforce; The B2B e-commerce marketplace cited market turbulence, commodity price volatility, supply shortages, regulatory changes, and rising crude oil prices as its reasons for the move.

Temasek’s FTX investment scrutinised in Singapore parliament
An internal unit at Temasek will conduct the review separately from the team that decided to invest in FTX and will report directly to the board; This is a step up from the company’s usual review process for all its investments.

Animoca Brands to launch US$2B metaverse fund
The firm has made a staggering 66 investments in H1 2022, making the record for the most done in the cryptocurrency space; Animoca was valued at US$5.9B last July after raising US$75.3M.

Binance reenters Japan with crypto exchange acquisition
Binance has acquired a 100% stake in Sakura Exchange Bitcoin (SEBC); In 2018, Binance exited the country after receiving a warning from the Japan Financial Services Agency for operating without a license.

GoTo shares fall to a new low after stock lockup expires
The stock price plunged 6.6% to US$0.009 on Thursday morning, down 58% from the IPO price of US$0.022; Its valuation has now fallen to ~US$10B from US$15B in October-end.

Carousell posts US$49.5M in revenue in 2021 as growth slows
In the year ending December 31, 2021, the Singapore-based firm’s losses before taxes narrowed 33.5% year on year to US$43.9M as it trimmed total expenses by 14.4% to US$95.4M.

Asia Partners eyes US$600M fundraise for SEA fund
Asia Partners invests in startups with ticket sizes ranging from US$20M to US$100M, which commonly lies within the Series C or Series D rounds of investments.

SG’s Iterative closes US$55M Fund II for early-stage investments
The LPs include Cendana, K5 Global, Village Global, and Goodwater Capital; The new funding will allow Iterative to increase its check sizes to US$500K and add more programmes for founders in different stages.

Beenext said to be raising large Asia fund
Sources told DealStreetAsia that the fund could target a corpus of around US$280M and may rope in a Japanese bank as one of the leading LPs; The fund has already raised a few double-digit million dollars.

Alibaba launches e-commerce platform in Spain
Miravia’s launch comes after Lazada received infusions of US$912.5M and US$378M in funding from its parent firm Alibaba this year; It was reported then that Lazada was eyeing an expansion into Europe.

Indonesia’s top Islamic group trains slights on tech investments
It plans to launch an endowment fund to invest across various sectors; The organisation made its first investment in Jakarta-based healthtech firm Zi.Care.

Igloo extends its Series B to US$46M with a US$27M tranche
The investors include InsuResilience Investment Fund II, WAM, Finnfund, La Maison, and Cathay Innovation; Igloo provides “competitively-priced” insurance for delivery riders in Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

MAS awards major payment institution license to MetaComp
With a major payment institution license, the crypto platform can provide digital asset services to corporates as well as traditional and crypto-native institutional investors.

Malaysia’s Al Rajhi Bank launches digibank offering
ARBM said a wide range of services is already available on its digibank app Rize, including deposits, account and personal finance management, debit card application, and ATM services.

In photos: SCB 10X’s 10,000 sqft web3 collaborative space DISTRICTX in Bangkok
The space is equipped with meeting rooms, a town hall, an operational war room, a podcast room and a dining space; DistrictX will host a bi-monthly workshop to engage the community by sharing knowledge and building projects.

CeFi, a ‘necessary evil’ today: 7 reasons why trustless DEX is the future
An increasing number of DEXes are integrating scaling solutions that will massively increase transaction workload while keeping costs low.

Connectivity, infrastructure are key barriers for fund managers to adopt tokens: Calastone
How can we eliminate this barrier? According to Ross Fox of Calastone, adoption is a key challenge for tokenised investments.

Is “teleporting” between workspaces truly possible?
How Japanese startup, tonari, helps people “teleport” to different workspaces in our increasingly remote work environment.

Are you a human resource?
When an organisation describes their people as “human resources”, they were diminishing the fundamental miracle of each and every person.

Building bridges: Asia’s fintech firms look to DIFC to cross into MEASA markets
Fintechs from Singapore and wider Asian markets are looking to establish themselves in DIFC and make sizeable investments in our ecosystem.

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The post Ecosystem Roundup: Ula lays off 134 employees, Iterative closes US$55M Fund II, Temasek’s FTX investment scrutinised in parliament appeared first on e27.

From public health scares to ongoing conflict and geopolitical tensions, supply chain disruptions are becoming more frequent.

Past lockdowns in key port cities, military conflicts, and trade disputes slowed the flow of raw materials to manufacturing hubs and finished goods to consumer markets, forcing companies to reconfigure their supply and production networks. More companies are following in response to ongoing conflict-related shortages.

Aside from strategies such as near-sourcing production and regionalising supply chains, companies are also investing in digital solutions to address disruptions. These include tools that enable complete supply chain visibility for decision-makers, the utilisation of data and analytics for better planning, and predictive models to identify future disruptions.

But while enterprises are progressing in these fields, the trade finance sector continues to lag behind other components of the supply chain network. Financial institutions’ processes are still paper-intensive and highly manual, slowing down the entire supply chain and generating more operational costs for all parties involved while remaining vulnerable to fraud.

Traditional processes are holding the trade finance sector back

Trade finance has been a paper- and labour-intensive sector throughout its long history. But with the astronomical growth in supply chain networks’ complexity, as well as the sheer volume of goods being shipped, the highly-traditional trade finance system is hindering business efficiency, agility and scalability.

Also Read: Can blockchain function as a medium for social good and digital philanthropy?

With its preponderance of manual processes and overreliance on physical documents, supply chains are littered with process inefficiencies, susceptibility to fraud, and unnecessary increases in costs.

Large amounts of physical documentation, such as product, shipping, and transaction details, are exchanged through multiple parties. Fairly straightforward processes can take up to months to complete.

Meanwhile, this is all against a backdrop of more stringent due diligence requirements such as know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML). These regulations are precisely in response to the lack of transparency that legacy processes exacerbate.

And failure to comply will have serious consequences on businesses’ ability to continue driving Asia Pacific’s economic growth. According to the Asia Development Bank (ADB), the region has the highest rejection rate of trade finance proposals at 34 per cent.

Little wonder, as fraud — especially duplicate trade financing — continues to be a thorn in the side of trade finance. In one of the most prominent cases in recent history, Singapore oil trading company Hin Leong, led to US$3.85 billion in losses for 23 banks. While this type of fraud, which involves financing a single invoice multiple times, is not new and has occurred in the industry as far back as decades ago, institutions are unable to make significant progress against it.

This is a result of the lack of visibility and transparency between stakeholders due to the difficulty in sharing critical data in a timely fashion. In turn, the collaboration between stakeholders takes a blow and opportunities for malpractice become commonplace.

Blockchain tech makes processes faster, cost-efficient, and transparent

When trade finance is done on a decentralised blockchain, all transactions are recorded in a secure database which is accessible to all parties to the trade.

This addresses the three major challenges facing trade finance transactions: inefficiencies stemming from the use of large quantities of physical documents, increased costs of complying with regulatory requirements, and the lack of total visibility, which makes the system vulnerable to fraud.

Also Read: Busan Blockchain Week 2022: Trends shaping the future of NFT

Conducting transactions through a decentralised blockchain entails digitalising the documentation created, exchanged, and processed by the various stakeholders in a supply chain.

Transmitting the electronic versions of these documents through the blockchain reduces transaction times from months to hours because all involved parties have access to it. The costs associated with such paper-intensive processes are also reduced.

In addition, stakeholders with access to the blockchain have complete visibility over the whole process, significantly reducing the risk of duplicate trade financing. At the same time, parties are assured of the integrity of their data due to the unprecedented security of digital ledger technology.

Successful blockchain adoption is a network-wide effort

For the utilisation of blockchain technology in trade finance to be successful, all parties must buy into it. If just one of the multiple parties in a cross-border trade scenario is not part of the decentralised blockchain, other parties will not be able to have full visibility on all transactions, and confidence in the latter’s integrity against fraud would not be possible.

Improvements in transaction speed and lowered operational costs would not reach their full potential as well. There would still be a need for physical documentation in certain links in the whole supply chain, as well as slower processes.

Financial institutions and other large organisations must take the lead with blockchain adoption. They can be the drivers of change in trade finance, influencing other stakeholders to become more efficient via improved transparency and collaboration. In addition, this can also fine-tune legislation and regulatory mechanisms to enable the pivot towards blockchain technology in the overall supply chain process.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page

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