Every worthwhile project starts with a problem to be solved.

You identify something that could be improved. You realise nobody has done it before you, or at least, nobody’s done it well enough.

When you’re driven forward by a concrete issue you want to resolve, it gives you a sense of clarity. You adapt and innovate, you pay attention to the details, and you know exactly what success and failure mean to you.

To do good work, you need good tools

Years ago, I Co-Founded Pronto Marketing, a digital marketing company. I used to be in charge of our customer service and production teams.

At Pronto, we used Zendesk to share CSAT and NPS surveys with our customers. But the data we received through these surveys was functionally useless.

Our CSAT (customer satisfaction) score was around 99 per cent. That sounds impressive, but it didn’t match up with reality. Our customer service was far from perfect. People just weren’t motivated to give us more information. When they were unhappy, they cancelled instead.

Also Read: What we can learn from the first Malaysian founder on NYSE, Foong Chee Mun

Without good feedback, Pronto was stuck. We wanted to improve the quality of our service, but we didn’t know what we needed to work on.

We also had a problem with our NPS (net promoter score) feedback. We’d manually send out emails asking customers whether they’d recommend our company to others. It took our team way too much time to send these out and then process the responses. Our normal operation was halted every time we collected NPS data.

We needed better ways to gather and process customer feedback. And it needed to be an automated, effortless part of our workflow.

We tried a few existing customer feedback tools, but they weren’t getting the job done. Some were overpriced and had a steep learning curve. Others came with a host of new problems.

My team and I decided to do something challenging but worthwhile. We would build a new feedback management tool to solve our needs. So, we created Simplesat.

You know your needs better than anyone else does

Even before Simplesat took off as a company, my team and I had a clear list of goals.

We wanted to build a survey tool that would:

• Encourage respondents to give honest and detailed feedback
• Centralise customer feedback data and make it easy to examine segment and share
• Make it effortless to respond to customer feedback very quickly (before frustrated customers decide to cancel their subscription)

It took us a ton of research and experimentation to build a tool we were satisfied with.

After reading David Willemsen’s The Measurement of Customer Satisfaction, we decided to use the SERVQUAL model for measuring customer service along multiple axes. Multi-question surveys proved essential in getting past the problem of high but uninformative rating scores. Customers are willing to share how they really feel if they receive the right questions with the right timing.

We knew from personal experience that design was crucial for engagement. We looked at animations and video games while prototyping our survey designs, and we also took inspiration from Tinder’s swipe feature. Simplesat surveys had to be eye-catching, friendly, and straightforward – everything we liked to see as customers! 

We also made them customisable from the get-go. As a brand evolves and branches out, its customer feedback surveys need to change too.

When we developed Simplesat’s dashboard, the keyword was simplicity. We made sure that the data was easy to visualize. In addition to our charts and leaderboards, we made it effortless to retrieve individual pieces of feedback and create filters. Sometimes, it’s necessary to drill down on specific problems to get the whole picture. We knew how frustrating it could be to work from half-remembered feedback comments.

Also Read: A guide on the go-to-market models that startups use

All in all, our feedback management tool was built to solve problems, not create new ones. And we soon found out that there was a need for that in the market.

Sharing the solution with the world

Pronto’s clients loved filling out the new surveys. They started asking if they could use them with their own customers. Simplesat split off from Pronto and became a company in its own right.

Since then, we have improved the product based on the needs of our clients. 

That meant a paradigm shift to a service-oriented approach. We had the bare bones of an excellent product, but we still needed to make sure that all of Simplesat’s customers could use it with intuitive ease. We wanted to give them the same peace of mind that we built for ourselves.

Some of the things we had to work on:

• Improved UI
• More survey types – we added CES surveys as we went along
• Integrations with other tools
• Quick responses to customer suggestions and complaints

Our team grew, and we made sure we had a robust customer support system in place. We did our best to remain flexible and open to changes. We made some mistakes. It was possible to remedy these quickly because we kept close track of customer sentiment. 

The team’s main motivation remained the same as always. 

We believe that customer feedback needs to form the basis of all big decisions, that it takes effort to get good data, and that feedback should never be wasted. 

With this philosophy, growth was relatively painless for Simplesat. Our clients did some of the work for us, telling us what their pain points were. We kept listening, as we’d once been in their shoes. We remembered what it was like to see customer feedback as a burden rather than an opportunity.

Don’t let your spark fizzle out

I know it’s not easy for new businesses to stay on track. Leaders and teams alike may lose motivation, and chaos is inevitable in the early days. Optimism isn’t always enough to keep a project going.

My main advice to entrepreneurs is this: harness the power of your frustration.

Listen to your customers, accept ideas from your team, but always keep the core problem top of mind. That’s what should drive you forward. It will give you answers when everything else seems vague or negotiable.

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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

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While there are only eight years left to decelerate the impacts of climate change, the world is yet to absorb the enormity of the crisis fully. Shockingly, less than 10,000 of the 400 million companies are measuring their carbon emissions globally. Grace Sai and her team started Unravel Carbon in 2022 to bring a transformation.

Based in Singapore, Unravel Carbon helps companies track and reduce their carbon emissions, specialising in Scope 3, focusing on Asia-Pacific. (Scope 3 emissions are the result of activities from assets not owned or controlled by the reporting organisation but that the organisation indirectly impacts in its value chain)

An AI-powered decarbonisation platform, Unravel Carbon converts any company’s accounting data into full supply chain carbon data in seconds, provides detailed emissions analytics, generates climate solutions, and auto-populates regulatory disclosure reports. It serves companies within the food & agriculture, tech, fashion & footwear, and built environment sectors — which account for more than 60 per cent of global carbon emissions.

We recently interviewed Grace Sai, who spoke about climate change, the company’s resolve to tackle it, and the climate tech space. She also talked about the significance of offline events like Echelon Asia 2022, where she will speak about climate change.

Why are climate-tech solutions like Unravel Carbon’s crucial in this era?

The Asia-Pacific region is responsible for 60 per cent of global emissions, and we house 70 per cent of supply chains worldwide. The burden of responsibility is on us, but many companies who want to take action have to go through the rigmarole of manual data collection. This process takes six to nine months and typically involves external consultants.

Unravel Carbon converts accounting data into carbon data in seconds. We want to make decarbonising painless — by switching around the effort/impact ratio, companies can now use their time on what really matters — implementing strategies to reduce their emissions.

Also Read: ‘Economic crises become less important when investing with a longer-term mindset’: Qin En Looi

Climate tech solutions are critical to enabling accelerated and aggressive action to limit global warming. We have a mission to decarbonise 1 Gt CO2-e by 2030, totalling 5 per cent of global carbon reduction goals. The power of computing makes this possible and is crucial, especially in an era of climate emergency.

While many companies are now emerging in climate tech, the space is yet to get its due attention. Is it because the world hasn’t fully realised the magnitude of the problem?

Public awareness of climate change has increased in recent years, especially with the rise of intense climate-related disasters. Regardless of whether society acknowledges it, the impacts are already at our doorsteps and felt by many.

I’ve observed that while there has been an increase in companies setting net zero targets, the urgency in achieving these climate goals is lacking — 40 per cent of them don’t even have a target year to achieve these commitments yet.

With the era of pledges behind us, the next critical decade must focus on pathways. Platforms like Unravel Carbon suggest these pathways and keep companies accountable for achieving them.

The amount of funds flowing into this space is also relatively low…

The investment focus for climate tech has seen significant growth in recent years in terms of fund allocations. We were told that we had raised the largest seed round for a climate tech platform in Asia’s history. The Y Combinator cohort we were part of (W22) had the most climate tech companies in YC’s history. Paul Graham, the founder of YC, even tweeted about that.

There are multiple reasons here, but we love the coming together for regulatory and personal reasons. Inflexion points happen when a multitude of motivations come together at the same time. It may take decades to reach there, but once that is reached, it accelerates in impact and magnitude. We believe climate tech is just at that inflexion point.

Also Read: ‘Events like Echelon are important during tough times because there’s strength in unity’

Emerging regulations such as the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) catalyses companies and investors to revise their business strategies. Similarly, under the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) March 2022 climate-related rule proposal, public companies must disclose their Scope 3 emissions. Thousands of companies have now made pledges to net zero or set science-based targets.

There is, however, still a lot of room for growth — according to estimates from BNEF and McKinsey, to reach net zero by 2050, the world will have to invest anywhere from US$3 trillion to US$9 trillion per year on average. Following this, we can expect climate tech investment figures to increase exponentially in the coming years.

As per a Bloomberg report of August 2022, carbon and climate startups have attracted record investments at a time when other industries are struggling to tap funds from venture capitalists. Buoyed by corporate and government pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions, a record US$1.4 billion poured into climate and carbon-focused startups in the second quarter of this year. 

How can companies like Unravel Carbon and VCs collaborate with governments to educate the market?

Companies like ours bring the power of digitalisation to solving the climate crisis —primarily in the lack of data and good user interfaces for companies, both large and small, to be part of the solution.

In many countries, governments can be powerful in driving digital adoption through their fiscal and legislative policies. The government also has the most expansive reach when it comes to the millions of SMEs that constitute a significant component of most economies. Governments working with the private sector represent the best of both worlds. They can represent a robust working model to educate the market that can affect real change amongst businesses on the importance of addressing climate change.

This public-private engagement model would marry the tools, know-how, and mission of a company like Unravel Carbon, with the reach and policymaking power of the government. VCs would play a powerful enabling role where their capital would provide the firepower needed to scale the deployment of climate tech solutions through the broader economy.

What is the role of governments here?

Presently, 140 countries have announced or are considering net zero targets, so we will see increases in climate legislation in the coming years as governments start applying pressure through regulation or policymaking. For example, implementing carbon taxes, setting standards or bans, introducing subsidies or public finance mechanisms, and green infrastructure investment.

This will drive accountability in the private sector as governments signal clear expectations and eliminate any ambiguity that might lead to inaction.

Why are offline events like Echelon important in tough times like economic slow-down? What do you expect from the event?

Offline events are a key component of a vibrant and healthy startup ecosystem. Not only do they propagate valuable thought leadership and ideas to the startup community at large, but these events provide a crucial avenue for networking and collaboration between entrepreneurs, investors, mentors, corporates, and other stakeholders.

Also Read: Nothing can truly replace the offline element of community building: Yinglan Tan

During tough times, increased connectivity within the ecosystem from face-to-face engagement can create significant economic value. These events are also versatile in offering multiple value offerings to different stakeholders.

For example, we hope the event will give Unravel Carbon more visibility amongst attendees, as greater awareness about our primary product positively impacts our vision and mission.

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27 will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon. 

Here’s the full list of the speakers for the 2022 edition, which will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

The post ‘There’s a lack of urgency among companies in achieving net zero targets’: Unravel Carbon’s Grace Sai appeared first on e27.

Southeast Asia’s online shopping and rewards platform ShopBack has signed an agreement with Temasek-backed 65 Equity Partners to raise US$80 million.

The announcement follows an earlier US$80 million tranche led by Asia Partners in July 2022, bringing the total capital raised in the Series F round to US$160 million.

The completion of the raise is subject to customary regulatory approvals.

Following the investment, 65 Equity Partners will join ShopBack’s Board of Directors and directly support its public readiness efforts.

The fresh infusion will help ShopBack grow its platform across the Asia Pacific region. The capital will also be used to launch new shopping products for users, develop growth and payments solutions for merchant partners, extend its services to more markets, and build capabilities for public market readiness.

Also Read: ShopBack acquires hoolah to strengthen ‘buy now, pay later’ offerings in Asia Pacific

Henry Chan, Co-Founder and CEO of ShopBack, said: “Over the coming months, we will be rolling out features that will enhance the shopping experience for our users, while to our merchant partners, we remain a trusted growth partner, delivering cost-effective marketing solutions to support their growth aspirations.”

Established in 2014, ShopBack offers many shopping deals, rewards and payment methods at the users’ fingertips.  The platform claims to serve over 35 million shoppers across ten markets.

The company said it powers over US$3.5 billion in annual sales for over 10,000 online and in-store merchant partners.  It has a presence in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

The group has advanced product innovation and regional expansion this year. In January, it launched ShopBack Pay for its 2 million users in Singapore and Australia to check out conveniently at more than 3,000 merchant outlets.

In November 2021, ShopBack acquired the buy-now-pay-later company hoolah for an undisclosed amount as part of its foray into financial services. A year earlier, it bought South Korea’s largest online cashback platform Ebates Jorea from Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, a backer of ShopBack’s US$45 million funding round in 2019.

“This investment aligns strategically with our mandate of supporting high-growth businesses led by founders and entrepreneurs in their continued business development, as well as facilitating their potential listings on the Singapore Exchange,” said Tan Chong Lee, CEO of 65 Equity Partners.

ShopBack also recently strengthened its management bench to spearhead its growth efforts, bringing on board CTO San Oo from communications giant Slack Technologies, Commercial MD Alessio Romeni, formerly CRO of Zalora, and Global Accounts MD Alexander Yardley, who previously headed up commercial leadership roles at Agoda and eBay.

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27 will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon.

The 2022 Echelon edition will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

The post ShopBack adds US$80M into its Series F kitty from Temasek’s 65 Equity Partners appeared first on e27.

Bizbaz, a Singapore-headquartered customer intelligence and risk assessment company, announced that it had closed a US$4 million seed funding round led by HSBC Asset Management (HSBC AM).

This round also received investment from Vynn Capital, a Southeast Asian venture capital firm specialising in early-stage tech startups; new angel investors; and follow-on investments from SOSV and existing angel investors.

“Most financial institutions and financial technology companies still use outdated financial-history based credit risk systems. Our solutions analyse all financial and non-financial data, which have meaningful impact on risk assessment for loans, insurance and other financial services. The new funds will accelerate development of new solutions and better support our growing client base of financial institutions and fintechs in Asia, Africa and beyond,” said Hayk Hakobyan, CEO and Co-founder of Bizbaz, in a press statement.

Bizbaz aims to empower financial services providers by offering them comprehensive customer intelligence and risk assessment solutions. This will enable these organisations to acquire and serve unbanked and underbanked populations in the region while also reducing their costs.

Also Read: Customer service agents are feeling burned out, how can we help them?

The solutions combine insights from applied behavioural sciences, anthropology, and machine learning technologies.

Financial-history-based credit bureau scoring as a means of assessing a person’s risk became a mainstream technology used by financial institutions in the late 1970s. According to Bizbaz, this made sense at that time as the only digital data available about the person was their bank-account-related records, if such existed.

Remi Bourrette, Head of Venture Investments, HSBC Asset Management, explains the firm’s decision to invest in Bizbaz.

“In ASEAN, the middle class is expected to more than double between now and 2030, to reach 334 million people. Financial services will likely expand at the same pace, if not faster. Our investment in Bizbaz provides a compelling exposure to this market shift in the region and other developing economies. It will support the development of its technology, which overcomes the major obstacle of onboarding clients with no previous financial records,” Bourrette said.

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Startup investments in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region in 2022 are not expected to exceed the record-high US$193.7 billion pulled in last year, according to a July report by KPMG and HSBC. Certain sectors are facing more bearish sentiments, such as the previously hot-ticket crypto sector, which has slowed its roll following the crypto crisis and global headwinds in May this year.

Against the backdrop of weaker sentiments and a capital downturn in 2022-2023, investors are understandably pivoting to focus more on profitable and sustainable growth. Here are three considerations for startups to better navigate uncertain times to achieve quality growth.

Understand your market fit

It sounds simple, but a key part of deciding where your startup best lands on the profitability-growth continuum are truly understanding your competition and your target audiences. Convosight is a community creator monetisation platform that was formed in the heat of the pandemic in early 2020 in Delhi. The timing was opportune as lockdowns made online communities a ripe target for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands. Two years later, over 500 million members from over 50,000 communities in 75 countries use Convosight.

Co-Founder and CEO Tamanna Dhamija said, “Being first movers, much of our time early on was spent educating the market. On the demand side, we told brands the importance of online communities and how consumers are shifting to online spaces like Facebook or Reddit. Supply-side: we upskilled and trained community creators to sustain their communities and run campaigns, which adds value to brands.”

In comparison, Funding Societies/Modalku, which began as an alternative lender in 2015, was in the middle of the P2P wave that swept Asia between 2013 and 2018. Today, the Singaporean startup is Southeast Asia’s largest SME digital financing platform, a product of zigging while competitors zagged and understood subtle differences in the SME financing landscape between markets in Southeast Asia, China, and the US.

Funding Societies/Modalku’s Co-Founder and Group CEO Kelvin Teo said, “We intentionally made certain choices that differed from our peers. First, we prioritised compliance and regulations, while other foreign players indexed on growth. Second, we decided to become a one-stop shop for financing, went regional and invested in technology and data ahead of other players. These minute choices to deviate from the norm have enabled us to become a market leader over time.”

Meanwhile, Singapore-based digital verification startup Accredify is dodging the funding slowdown affecting other blockchain startups by understanding and serving its target audiences. CEO and Co-Founder Quah Zheng Wei said, “2020 and 2021 were excellent years for Web3 startups. However, the current process of obtaining Web3 funding is longer. Instead of talking about blockchain, we explain the unique benefits of what our technology, TrustTech, can do for clients in document and identity lifecycle management and verification. Uniquely, we’ve not been that affected by the drop in the Web3 funding cycle.”

Also Read: Avoiding costly mistakes: How cognitive biases can affect entrepreneurs

Today, Accredify counts on the public and education sectors as big growth drivers. In Singapore, it assists the Ministry of Health in digitising COVID-19 medical records to allow the ease of authenticating discharge memos, test results, and vaccination records. Due to the slowdown in COVID-19 testing, Accredify is exploring further opportunities in the healthcare industry, such as verifiable medical insurance claims.

Having started out in the education space in Singapore, Accredify made Australia its second market. Accredify’s decentralised mechanism helps educational institutions verify certificates, transcripts, and other qualifications frictionlessly. This mechanism allows Accredify to scale quickly and export its education solution to new markets very easily.

Let your stage inform your metrics

As startups progress from seed to early-stage and then growth and late-stage funding, they must continuously recalibrate between profitability and growth. Funding Societies/Modalku, which raised a US$144M Series C+ round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 in February, is passing the growth stage.

For Teo, this means giving almost equal attention to profitability and growth compared to the early days, when the scale was prioritised. The turning point was after 2018 when the revelation of WeWork’s losses saw a pivot towards profitability. “Our sense was that funding sentiments would eventually change, and we wanted to take control of our destiny, especially when there’s a funding gap in Southeast Asia for Series B-C rounds. Therefore, we made a choice of changing gears to profitability,” he recounted.

To better align with profit-focused investors, Funding Societies/Modalku’s profit and loss (P&L) statements have breakdowns between existing and new businesses. Teo explained, “For existing businesses, we prefer to break down to product unit economics. Though not strictly accurate, the numbers you get here are vital in giving you direction and guidance. For instance, our financing business is approaching profitability, while more experimental business units are consuming resources. Splitting them allows us to set expectations for when each unit can become profitable.”

Accredify, meanwhile, is still very much an early-stage startup, having wrapped up a US$2M round led by Qualgro in September 2021. Though the scale is the focus now, Quah believes Accredify’s high unit economics acts as a lever they can use to turn profitable.

“Around 50-55 per cent of our spending is on R&D, so we are building products for the future, either for our existing clients or products that can help us get new clients. At any point, we can flip that switch and be profitable. It does not make sense now at our current stage, but that option is always in the back pocket, giving us a strong bargaining position with clients, partners, and investors,” he said.

Also Read: Why we cannot talk of diversity without inclusion

Meanwhile, Convosight has been profitable since its founding, so the focus now is on growth and cash flows. Key metrics include burn ratio and cash flows. “We are getting into channel partnerships and hiring, which means there might be a small margin dent. Before taking this step, we stress-tested all our numbers while focusing on cash collection and ensuring that we had two years’ worth of Cash in the Bank. We want to figure out ways to shorten the cash collection cycle because eventually, it is profitability in terms of cash flows,” Dhamija said.

Always see the bigger picture

Whether it’s facing a once-in-a-century pandemic or a weakened capital environment with hesitant investors, both Dhamija and Teo took stock of different perspectives to make critical business decisions.

For Convosight, keeping a pulse on community sentiment throughout COVID-19’s various waves in India was essential. While the first wave saw large hygiene brands marketing within online communities resulting in massive demand for Convosight, the second wave was a different story.

Dhamija recounted, “It was the worst time ever, and very different from the first wave. We were amid due diligence in April 2021 and decided to halt all community marketing campaigns, even if brands wanted to run them. We told our incoming investors that we would have zero revenue as it was not right to run ads in this climate. We had to take care of our consumers and team. We were worried about scaring off new investors, but the deal went through smoothly,” she said. Convosight closed it’s US$9M Series A led by Qualgro in June 2021.

Over in Singapore, when the first wave of COVID-19 hit in 2020, Funding Societies/Modalku spoke to every economist, investor, and analyst it could get hold of to pre-empt the market.

Teo recounted, “Considering the expected growth of the market and our cost structure at the time, we realised that every company would have to rightsize. We made the painful decision to rightsize ahead of others, to protect team members so they can find (new) employers earlier. It was very painful, immediate growth slowed down, and investors panicked. In the medium term, the team became more united and resilient. They saw that we were making the right decisions.”

The results bore these out: In 2020, Funding Societies/Modalku reduced its operational costs and cash burn by 50 per cent while keeping its default rate below two per cent.

Final thoughts

If founders are still unsure about their own profitability/growth trade-off dilemma, Teo advises erring on the side of caution: prioritising profitability and lower valuations.

“The risk is asymmetric. If you’re too profitable, you can still live to fight another day. If you left money on the valuation table, you can come back and claim it in the next round when you have better financial results. Conversely, if your valuation is too high, your down round risk will be massive. If you run out of money, you are dead in the water.”

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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

Image credit: Canva Pro

The post The profitability trade-off: How startups navigate uncertain times to achieve quality growth appeared first on e27.

Cosmart, an Indonesia-based membership-driven e-commerce platform for essential goods, has secured US$5 million in oversubscribed seed funding from Lightspeed, East Ventures, and Vertex Ventures SEA & India.

Angel investors Henry Hendrawan and Albert Lucius also joined.

The firm will use the money to step up hiring and invest in breakthrough technology. “We will deploy the funds to strengthen our technology and data infrastructure further, build a world-class team, and strong partnerships with principals and key players in the supply chain ecosystem,” said Cosmart Founder and CEO Alvin Kumarga.

Also Read: How e-commerce businesses can unlock growth using alternative funding

Founded in 2022 by Kumarga and Robert Tan, Cosmart is a one-stop solution for users to purchase their monthly recurring needs. Users pay a small amount to become a Cosmart member, after which they get access to high-quality products at competitive prices, among other membership benefits.

The startup leverages technology to make it easier for users to discover, explore and select new brands and products.

Since its inception, Cosmart claims to have delivered over 100,000 products and grown its volumes by 6x in the past three months.

The company has already partnered with over 80+ principals and 500+ brands and has thousands of SKUs in stock across ten core categories.

Pachara (Pinn) Lawjindakul, Partner at Lightspeed, said, “Today’s consumer is always looking out for the best deals and lowest prices on their monthly household recurring needs. Cosmart works endlessly to provide its members access to unmatched savings, an increased repertoire of brand and product selection and most importantly, an enhanced customer service experience. We foresee strong loyalty for the brand and offering they’re bringing to the market.”

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27 will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon.

The 2022 Echelon edition will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

The post Membership-driven e-commerce platform for essential goods Cosmart raises US$5M appeared first on e27.

In 1935, Stan Avery introduced the world’s first pressure-sensitive sticker. Off the back of a US$100 loan from his then-fiancé, Dorothy Durfee—an early VC investor, you might say—he created and patented the world’s first self-adhesive die-cut labelling machine, and The Avery Dennison Corporation was born. 

Fast forward 87 years and we are now looking at how to replicate Dorothy’s commitment to innovation through initiatives like AD Stretch, an accelerator programme that aims to pilot new technologies with a focus on value chain efficiency, sustainability, and materials innovation.

With more than 80 years of experience under its belt, and borne through the spirit of innovation, ambition, and sheer determination, Avery Dennison is partnering with like-minded startups to address some of the biggest challenges in packaging innovation.

In fact, the team has just recently announced its first cohort of the programme that will be working with them on pilots in Asia-Pacific and Latin America.

Specific challenges need targeted solutions

The challenges that the industry faces are specific, and we need targeted solutions to respond to the granularity of the problems. 

In setting out such challenges across three themes, Avery Dennison is aligning with partners who bring the right mix of ambition, expertise, and technology to help address them head-on.

Theme 1: Maximising consumer experiences

With packaging being such an integral part of the consumer experience, it has the opportunity to be both functional (delivering information and sustainable value to buyers) as well as inspirational (providing unique experiences that increase the value of products).

Also read: Women in Tech: Female leaders shaking up insurtech in Asia

Receiving packages should, in theory, be a positive experience for consumers; a moment of joy that connects them to brands through new experiences. Avery Dennison will be partnering with startups that can respond to this challenge by creating these sought-after experiences through both physical and digital capabilities. 

The second challenge within this theme draws on the old adage less is more. Consumers and brands alike are increasingly committed to reducing waste so the team is looking to improve demand planning optimisation, enabling them to design and produce short or limited runs of products for smaller brands with increased localisation and personalisation.

Theme 2: Creating sustainable, responsible, and efficient value chains

Responding to the need to develop innovations that advance the circular economy and reduce the environmental impact in their operations and supply chain, Avery Dennison is looking to partner with startups that are developing solutions around recycling, upcycling, and biodegradable packaging and labelling. Of course, this is with a focus on new materials that are cost-effective and will enhance the overall sustainability of packaging and labels. 

Avery Dennison is also looking for startups that can help them leverage digital and physical technologies to reduce the environmental impact of perishables. In short, the team seeks to improve food waste sustainability through labelling and packaging.

Theme 3: Materials and packaging 2.0

Theme three looks to the future. As a leader in materials science, Avery Dennison is continuously investing in new materials’ innovation, always seeking ways to reduce packaging, and increase its value and usefulness via both digital and physical means. As such, Avery Dennison will be partnering with startups that can develop functional and digital labelling and packaging solutions that enhance trust, transparency, and connectivity throughout the journey — from production to end-user delivery. 

Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum

In essence, AD Stretch offers the opportunity for innovation in its earliest form to receive the financial support, infrastructure, expertise, and insight to bring new products to market that will change the way we interact with packaging. It’s an opportunity that will place ambitious entrepreneurial minds at the cutting edge of the industry.

While Avery Dennison was founded by Stan Avery and his singular invention of the self-adhesive label, today’s reality is that innovation relies on collaboration. It will rely on the coming together of multiple minds, disciplines, and approaches, united by shared goals.

Also read: Meet the 6 companies you can connect with at Echelon 2022

The fact of the matter is that in a world facing common challenges, we can’t rely on localised solutions. The next frontiers for innovation are collective: being sustainable—to ensure that we leave behind a planet worth inheriting for the next generation; bringing transparency to supply chains—helping consumers make informed decisions, and enabling a better customer experience—personalised but not invasive. 

The years (decades, in Avery Dennison’s case) of learning, expertise in the established supply chains, customer bases, and reputation means AD Stretch can expedite the ideas of smaller companies far quicker than if they were doing it alone. It’s a journey that Avery Dennison is incredibly excited to embark on together.

To know more about the Avery Dennison’s accelerator programme, visit ADStretch.com

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by Avery Dennison

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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The startup ecosystem has been relatively resilient amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. Sure, the pandemic’s economic impact is no joke, but it also opened doors for entrepreneurs to innovate and accommodate the market shift towards digitalisation. Likewise, startups became Singapore’s lifeline as the world reeled from the global health crisis, with budding tech companies forging ahead and carving their paths towards the new normal.

Also read: Meet the 6 companies you can connect with at Echelon 2022

Think of the post-pandemic as the new era of “cloud kitchens,” telemedicine, agritechs, online shopping, fintechs, SaaS, e-sports, and regtechs, among others. As such, it is wise for governments to encourage emerging enterprises by infusing money into the startup ecosystem for early-stage and late-stage startups to thrive in a volatile market. 

The years ahead will still be all about survival

However, many challenges are still to be weathered. Survival remains the theme in the new normal as investors expect a slowdown in investments due to the pandemic’s lasting effects. Startups, in particular, will be the ones feeling its brunt. 

Another roadblock could be lower valuations as larger companies divest their assets through mergers and acquisitions. Startups may also want to pay attention to debt restructuring, expenditures, marketing, and fundraising to get to the other side.

Also read: 2022 invite-only edition: Echelon is focussing on business matching and sustainable growth

Despite the challenges, though, startups’ decision-making holds a crucial role in strengthening the economy. It’s all a matter of understanding the landscape that erupted from the pandemic by answering key questions: What are the most significant fundraising trends? What lessons can we learn from the collapse of companies? What are the fundamental shifts in customer behaviour today? Is investment really slowing down? What are the available opportunities for startups?

Hear it straight from the experts

Find the answers with Mohan Belani, Co-Founder of e27, as he moderates a panel discussion on the state of the SEA tech startup ecosystem today at the Echelon Asia Summit 2022. He will be joined by leading industry experts, Yinglan Tan (Insignia Ventures), Carmen Yuen (Vertex Ventures), Sonny Sudaryana (KOMINFO), and Aaron Tan (Carro). 

Echelon Asia Summit 2022 (October 27-28) returns after a three-year hiatus. It aims to gather the most influential decision-makers and industry leaders from the Southeast Asia tech and startup ecosystem. 

Register for Echelon Asia Summit 2022 now!

The post Echelon 2022 to discuss the state of the SEA startup ecosystem appeared first on e27.

A week ago, NYSE-listed cybersecurity company SentinelOne launched S Ventures Fund worth US$100 million to invest in the next generation of security and data companies startups.

The fund, which seeks to invest across all stages, will focus on security and data companies that bring innovative use cases to the Singularity Marketplace. It is SentinelOne’s open application ecosystem that allows security teams to extend Singularity extended detection and response (XDR) use cases. 

The firm has already invested in Armorblox and Noetic Cyber.

SentinelOne CMO Daniel Bernard was in Singapore recently and spoke to e27 about S Ventures and investment opportunities in the Asia Pacific market.

Edited excerpts:

Can you give us a brief about SentinelOne?

SentinelOne is a cybersecurity firm specialising in XDR, meaning our tech protects endpoints, cloud and identity. We pioneered behavioural AI. It lets us monitor every single process happening on an attack surface. Understand using AI when something is malicious, take action to stop it, and remediate and reverse it — all without human intervention. That’s something we call autonomous cybersecurity.

Sentinel has more than 9,000 customers around the world. We went public last June on the New York Stock Exchange and have about 2,000 employees. Just over 30 per cent of our revenue comes from international markets.

We have teams in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, Japan, India, and South Korea. We have hundreds of customers in the region. We are in every vertical, from airlines, banks, healthcare providers, manufacturers, transportation companies, shipping companies and logistics to pharmaceutical.

What was the motivation behind setting up S Ventures? What are the fund’s objectives?

We created S Ventures because we want to do our part to invest in innovators, disruptors and promising founders. Part of XDR is that it integrates our cybersecurity platform into various other products and use cases.

Also Read: Why firms need a multi-layered approach to cybersecurity

We view this in two ways. 1) From an investment perspective, we can have an opportunity to invest in the next generation of exciting and innovative companies. 2) we have an exciting opportunity to help our customers and propel our growth through integrating with these companies and leveraging them to help Singularity XDR evolve and do more for our customers.

How do you differentiate from other crybersecurity funds in the market?

From a funding perspective, what makes us unique is we have the industry’s most cutting-edge XDR platform. We have over 9,000 customers, and there are a lot of companies out there looking to plug into a partner that can help them get clear that can help cybersecurity be a part of their go-to-market, and they’re offering set.

What is the structure of S Ventures? Do you have any external LPs in the fund?

It is a fund owned and operated by SentinelOne. It doesn’t have any other partners.

We invest in companies all around the world. So we’ll look at companies opportunistically in Southeast Asia as well. We’ve already invested in companies in the US and nothing in Southeast Asia yet. So far. We have four investments that we’ve announced – one each in the US and Israel.

What is S Ventures’s investment philosophy?

We are looking at cybersecurity innovation and data innovation area because our philosophy is that data is really at the centre of cybersecurity. It means we train our AI models and empower our technology with data. Attackers are looking to exfiltrate data. So we’re looking for not only cybersecurity companies that disrupt, innovate and change things but are also looking at interesting innovators in the data space and how data is understood, how we leverage data to make decisions, etc. 

What is the average cheque size? How many companies do you plan to invest in from this point?

So far, the cheque sizes have been sub-US$5 million. We have the flexibility to do what we want to do with this fund. We’re not looking to lead rounds. We are looking to either invest alongside other investors or make strategic investments opportunistically.

Also Read: Best cybersecurity practices for startups to stay ahead of the curve

The number of deals depends on how big the cheques we write and the companies we see. We can support many companies with a US$100 million fund and a cheque size of US$5 million. We can help them grow and use our expertise.

Do you see any exciting opportunities for S Ventures in Southeast Asia?

We are looking at the market, and there’s a lot of innovation going on here. And we will want to see more cybersecurity companies coming from Southeast Asia. We don’t care about markets; if an innovator is doing something interesting here in Southeast Asia, we will invest in it. It is the same for other markets, be it the US or France. So it is all about the technology, the team, and the opportunity.

What are some trends you read in the region’s cybersecurity industry?

We see a trend for desired automation. The tools in the market today have been there for decades. They produce too many alerts and ultimately create too much human work for cybersecurity teams. So automation is one trend.

The second trend is consolidation and simplification. In general, our customers are looking for companies to help them replace multiple technologies with one solution that can do more and make it easier for them to operate.

The third is cloud security. Most of the last decades have focused on securing devices and attack surfaces that are more on-premise.

With the explosion over the last decade or so of cloud services — be it SaaS apps, storage in the cloud or cloud marketplaces — we see the customer looking for new ways or purpose-built cloud security.

From a cybersecurity perspective, the Asian market still uses legacy tools. So there will be a huge revolution here as the region’s largest companies, and even SMEs modernise, revolutionise, and come up to the global standard. That’s why leading legacy anti-virus and legacy database on-prem technologies are going for cloud-based technologies like SentinelOne with Singularity XDR.

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27 will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon.

The 2022 Echelon edition will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

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Founded in July 2013 in Beijing by a metaverse engineer Dr Guo Cheng, STEPVR has emerged as a leading company in VR technology R&D and product marketisation.

STEPVR is the only VR company in the world that has cracked the secret to rebuilding the human five senses in the metaverse through the utilisation of core technologies such as laser positioning technology, full-body motion capture, haptic feedback and omnidirectional treadmill. 

Indeed, STEPVR hardware equipment is optimised for a holistic sensorial engagement instead of solely focusing on visuals and auditory senses like their competitors Meta and Pico. Dr Cheng has likened Oculus’ device to a toy compared to STEPVR’s gadgets. “Compared to STEPVR products, I can’t take Oculus seriously, I can’t help but see it as a toy with toy-like quality.” 

The company’s three business segments include large space multi-player and multi-prop free-roam VR arenas Future Battle, virtual-influencer projector called iMetastar cameras, and the world’s first portal to the metaverse, a VR treadmill called Gates01. 

From its business perspective, STEPVR is the only VR company in the world that has proven its market-product fit and become cash flow positive within two years of its consumer product launch. Within seven months in the past year, STEPVR has opened 140+ stores in China alone, onboarded up to 90 virtual influencers monthly and reached over one million repeat customers. Last month, Beijing governor Cai Qi visited Beijing’s office and officially announced STEPVR as a leading metaverse company in China. 

Now freshly relocating its headquarters to Singapore, STEPVR plans its global expansion from the city-state. Dr Cheng said that as a global technology hub in Asia, Singapore is a perfect home base to recruit talent for R&D and map out its global strategy. Talks to expand to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines, and the Middle East are underway. America and Europe will be next in line. 

First-hand experience

I visited their pop-up store at the recently defunct New World Carnival at 313, Somerset, to give the products a try. 

Also Read: A Founder’s journey from sewing machines to blockchain gaming

Being a VR enthusiast myself, I have tried a few different products in the past. I had spent a few hours at the New World Carnival, trying out their zombie and shooting games. I had visited a few house parties where the host made us play VR games on Oculus before.

Suffice it to say that while I enjoyed those activities, it was unlikely that I would get hooked on any of the VR games. First off, neither of them was very immersive or realistic. The only reason I tried them was because of the “VR” buzzword and knowing that I was trying out cutting-edge technology.

I would only go to New World Carnival once in a blue moon as something fun to do with friends when running out of other options. Personally, I would not get any Oculus headset myself because I couldn’t imagine using it frequently enough to justify the purchase, as well as lacking big enough space at my house to fully enjoy the experience. 

As such, STEPVR’s free-roam bodysuit and headset device truly took my breath away. It was impressively immersive! I thought I was stepping into an amusement park-level entertainment ride, the likes of simulators and so on. The headset was very lightweight, and it fits snugly to cover my eyes, my nose and my ears. The team told me that the full-body VR suit helps distribute the computing load concentrated on the headset, hence making it lighter and better fitting than the likes of Oculus, and without any motion sickness side effects. 

I had never tried anything like that before, so I was blown away by the quality of the Dinosaur game I was playing. I walked around freely in a 250m2  arena inside the New World Carnival, navigating labyrinths, jungles, monsters and enemies in my field of vision.

There were a few contraptions and scaffoldings with robotic switches and handles that functioned as checkpoints in the game. Upon touch, these robots gave haptic feedback to my haptic gloves and hence my hands and my body were able to feel the sensation as intended in the game. In the metaverse, I was riding lorries, riding elevators up and down, and other forms of vehicles with utmost conviction. 

Next, I tried the Megastar camera. It also came in the form of a headset and a full-body suit. We need to download their proprietary software to use this camera on our laptop screen or our smartphone device. What is cool with this camera is that it can project our bodies into virtual characters in the metaverse.

The software was able to map the whole of my face and my expression so that my virtual character managed to convey a full range of human emotions. Meanwhile, the body suit gave me an unlimited range of motions. I was able to do yoga, cartwheel, somersault, and all sorts of athletic feats in the metaverse, and my virtual characters followed perfectly on the dot! 

STEPVR team told me that they had many influencer partners who accumulated up to eight million followers and earned up to US$200k monthly live streaming as virtual celebrities. Apparently, virtual influencers have become somewhat of a trending phenomenon in China. 

The only downside to the software that they were using was that there was a limit to the types and variety of characters to choose from. And also missing was the user’s ability to construct their own avatar persona from scratch. The team told me that the Megastar camera is compatible with many other XR software and hence a lot of influencers work separately with professional designers to construct more intricate avatars for themselves. 

Also Read: Can free-to-play models ignite new player interest for Web3 gaming?

Last but not least, I stepped onto their hallmark invention, Gates 01, a 3m2 vertical cage reminiscent of the metaverse portal in Spielberg’s seminal movie Ready Player One. Dr Cheng told me via correspondence that he did draw his aesthetic inspiration for the portal from this Hollywood movie.

“We incorporated an omnidirectional treadmill in this gate. Thus we solve the problem of positioning and spatial awareness within a confined physical space. With the 360-degree rotating treadmill, players can cover large distances in the metaverse. This is the only VR device so far that enables limitless walking and running in the metaverse.” 

I needed to wear a pair of special shoes, a headset, and a body suit as well before stepping into the gate. The shoes felt a little bit heavy and awkward, akin to wearing bowling shoes. The treadmill itself felt quite heavy. I have never been a treadmill fan at the gym, so I needed quite some time to get used to Gates01, but I would say that the sensory and muscular engagement needed were exactly the same as that of any treadmill equipment at modern fitness centres.

Once I was able to achieve my balance, Gates01 was hands down way more fun and imaginative, as I was able to participate in all sorts of immersive individual and p2p games while walking and running in all directions.  I could see this being ubiquitous in gyms and people’s houses as a wellness and entertainment machine.

The game quality for Gates 01 was not as immersive and realistic as what I played at their free-roam VR arena, and the team told me this was because I was playing games developed by external parties that are compatible with Gates 01. The games being played for Future Battle have been developed in-house with better quality control. 

In conclusion, I was all over impressed by the level of VR technology developed by STEPVR. After trying out their products, I realised that a synchronous, persistent, and ubiquitous metaverse is not so far away anymore from becoming our everyday reality. 

The company has massive ambitions for the future, aiming to penetrate and transform all industries outside gaming, such as retail, fitness, healthcare, museums, entertainment, education, community and many more. They are just getting started.

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