As we head into the new year and a volatile business environment, businesses continue to face the challenges of a largely remote workforce, evolving digital business requirements and elevated customer expectations.

Entrepreneurs and business leaders need to be quick to join the dots, make new connections and find innovative solutions to problems. Opportunities abound for those who are ready to embrace a creativity-led leadership to steer their teams through these uncertain times.

To challenge the status quo and inspire your team, here are some insights and practical tips.

Culture influences creativity

Organisational culture is crucial to an innovative company, yet it can often seem like an elusive and intangible concept. Based on the results of the Adobe Creativity Quotient (CQ), only 29 per cent of APAC leaders have succeeded in creating a culture that embraces creativity.

Those who don’t are missing out on the opportunity to create value for their business and nurture employees to do their best work.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses that had embraced change and had the agility to launch new business models were better able to thrive in the new operating environment.

Those were the businesses whose leaders were competent in change management and were able to effectively guide their teams through a period of intense transformation.

As businesses increasingly embrace hybrid work environments, they need to find new ways to support a culture that develops employee creativity. Aim to recreate or simulate the aspects of the company culture that require in-person engagement, such as water cooler conversations and informal spaces for bonding, as these are familiar environments for collaboration that spark creativity.

Also Read: How to use Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to drive resilient leadership in 2021

Data centricity only matters if you have the right data

Successful entrepreneurs and business leaders understand that customer centricity hinges on data. However, only 36 per cent of leaders effectively use data at the start of every creative process and one in five use data retrospectively, to post-rationalise creative approaches.

One of Adobe’s customers in India, Tata CLiQ, brought up the ‘problem of plenty’ that organisations face when it comes to data.

Because businesses are collecting so much data from all their customer touchpoints and interactions, they are often overwhelmed by the amount of information available and hindered from making important decisions fast.

With the wealth of tools available to capture granular data, the priority must now shift to collecting and dissecting the right data. The use of data needs to be strategic, meaningful, and structured, right from the start.

It is also worth marking data collected ‘before’ and ‘after’ COVID-19, with insights drawn from it contextualised by how the pandemic has changed customer behaviour.

Blurring the lines between roles

The pandemic has changed what constitutes good customer experience (CX), and expectations will only continue on an upward trajectory.

As organisations move towards more agile customer experience management (CXM), different roles and teams within the organisation – including marketing, technology, and customer service– need to integrate for deeper collaboration.

Convenience is the main tent pole of CX today, and the delivery of that requires the collective intelligence within an organisation to understand the human experience as well as the emotional aspect throughout the customer journey. It is also what sets one startup apart from another in a crowded marketplace.

Empathy fuels creativity

According to Adobe CQ, only 25 per cent of APAC business leaders were driving the skills needed to navigate transformation and change. While technology can augment and enhance this, it cannot replace creativity and uniquely human abilities, such as empathy.

Empathy is increasingly vital in everything a business does – from understanding buying journeys to managing internal team processes, to analysing data insights. Data combined with empathy and creativity, equip a brand to deliver exceptional CX.

To innovate and drive business transformation in 2021, lean into fostering entrepreneurial skills that can be applied across business functions and roles. Technological skills, while important, will become less mission-critical as empathy, critical thinking, and the ability to problem-solve creatively, take precedence in the post-COVID-19 environment.

Also Read: 7 things to consider when distributing leadership roles among founders

Understand how technology augments human skills

While 2020 brought about a massive digital shift, offline channels remain an important platform to connect more intimately with customers. Companies that are able to understand the power of integrated CXM and apply that throughout the entire customer journey, will stand out.

Technology will continue to advance, enabling businesses to reimagine their operations. However, people also need the right skills to understand how to get the most out of that technology.

Leaders need to think not just about how to teach people technology skills, but also how to provide adequate time and resources to help employees apply that technology meaningfully and creatively across the business.

We’ve emerged from a year unlike any other and the year ahead remains uncertain. Those who lead with creativity will be well placed to thrive in the new normal.

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Finance teams in ride-hailing, logistics and food delivery companies can all testify to a common headache — consolidating data.

Due to the nature of their operations, these platform businesses deal with a high velocity and volume of financial data that makes monitoring and tracking it a stressful experience.

Despite the important role finance plays in both operations and growth of a company, it remains one of the few aspects that has not been digitalised. Financial data is still collated on age-old excel spreadsheets. While this would suffice for small businesses, it is not sustainable for high-growth businesses.

Saurya Prakash Sinha shares similar sentiments. At his former employers PhonePe (mobile payments) and Flipkart (e-commerce), Saurya noticed they were struggling to manage their financial data.

“The existing financial tools were crumbling with the growth in transaction volume, omnichannel commerce and numerous payment instruments. We realised the financial demands of businesses were rising and new financial infrastructure would be required on top of which the new commerce and fintech companies would be built,” he shares with e27.

Having discovered financial processes such as reconciliations (an accounting process that checks two sets of records to ensure the figures are in agreement), calculation of commissions and accounts reporting were not catered for in the existing technological stack, he partnered with Prashant Borde to build Recko.

The Bangalore-based startup seeks to solve this problem by providing a centralised platform for businesses to manage their financial data. It achieves this by collecting data from a wide range of sources, including mobile payment platforms and banks, before consolidating and displaying it on an easy-to-read dashboard for finance teams.

How it works

Diving into the specifics of how the platform operates, Saurya shares individual financial “events” are created in real time for purposes, ranging from order approval to successful transactions.

According to him, this enables companies to monitor their financial operations at a more granular level and the real-time nature of it enables teams to identify gaps and plug them, instead of waiting for months.

Also Read: ‘gojek taught me the importance of making data-driven decisions’: outgoing CTO Ajey Gore

Once these events are created, they are organised into immutable and auditable ledgers that are ready for auditing or diligence checks — putting an end to the stressful experiences of finance teams when such tasks are due.

Recko’s platform serves a variety of purposes for businesses. In the case of calculating commissions, Saurya shares Recko stores commercial terms and payment cycles within its system. By eliminating human errors and guesswork, he says the company has enabled clients to recover incorrectly charged commissions from their business partners.

To support the reconciliation practice widely adopted by accountants, bank accounts can also be integrated onto Recko’s platform to enable companies to cross-check their transaction figures with their actual cash flow.

Protecting data

With over US$9 billion worth of transactions reconciled on Recko’s platform, we quizzed Saurya on how the company protects the financial data passing through its infrastructure.

“We follow a stringent set of security practices to safeguard data in transmission as well at rest. The infrastructure is regularly penetration-tested for any loopholes or gaps, both internally and our security partners,” he replies.

Also Read: Fall in line: What is the role of a Data Protection Officer at a startup?

He also claims Recko is ISO 27001-certified (the international standard for information security) and compliant with PCI DSS (the information security standard for organisations that handle branded credit cards from the major card schemes).

With new regulations governing data protection are likely to emerge amid the increased scrutiny on cybersecurity, Saurya maintains Recko’s infrastructure is designed to be flexible enough to accommodate them.

Growth

Adopting a usage-based revenue model similar to SaaS companies, including AWS, the flexible nature of the solution enables companies to scale their operations in tandem with Recko’s offerings, enabling it to cater to a range of organisations ranging from early-stage startups to large enterprises.

With Temasek-backed Vertex Ventures leading Recko’s US$6 million Series A funding last year, the company is set on expanding its operations to a global level.

“We quadrupled our customer base and onboarded customers in Southeast Asia and Europe. There is a large pipeline of customers from multiple regions. We are also having our initial pilots in the US and would be opening up the geography very soon,” Saurya discloses.

With Recko solving an age-old problem for finance teams, it certainly has the potential to change how companies manage their financial data. As they have discovered, when one solves a real need, the sky’s the limit.

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Image Credit: Recko

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There’s no denying that 2020 disrupted business norms. Driven by the pandemic, organisations were faced with the need to accelerate change in the way they do business and engage with employees and customers. As organisations, we grappled with how to reach our communities – wherever they may be – in a seamless way.

As one of the world’s leading and largest graduate business schools, INSEAD strives to deliver exemplary experiences for its students, staff and faculty alike. In the face of the pandemic, which closed off most of our global campuses like Singapore, we faced a new challenge: a seamless transition to digital learning experiences. 

What’s more, the pandemic motivated many to future-proof their skills and secure their position amidst a period of uncertainty.  Interest in MBAs grew significantly at the peak of the pandemic, INSEAD saw applications for its MBA programme increase by 58 per cent compared to pre-COVID-19 levels. 

In the face of this new challenge we found an opportunity to continue delivering the standard of experience our students and staff expect, underpinned by strategic digitalisation initiatives we’ve implemented to modernise our systems around student scheduling and enrolments.  

Overcoming our integration roadblocks

Unlocking and connecting data across applications and systems is one of the biggest challenge organisations face today. In a learning environment, a disconnect in the ability to bring student information together with legacy IT inhibits our ability to power undisrupted, digital learning experiences.

Our technology ecosystem was composed of more than 100 disparate and siloed applications, which made it difficult to keep up with evolving student and faculty expectations.

During high-traffic periods, such as enrolments and scheduling, this created a frustrating experience for students while overwhelming staff with manual work and driving up IT costs for operations and maintenance. 

We needed to modernise our legacy systems, unlock important data–wherever it was and promote connectivity and reusability across our technology systems. An integration approach was critical in bridging our data divides and overcoming silos across our applications and systems.

Put simply, we needed to modernise how we operated on the backend to meet the expectations of our students and faculty.

In an increasingly crowded market, where people have the choice between several business schools and programmes, digitisation and integration were no longer ‘nice-to-haves’ but ‘must-haves’. 

Streamlining scheduling and enrolments through automation

Scheduling and managing course enrolments are tedious, time-consuming tasks for students and staff alike. By far one of the biggest challenges faced was not having a universal system to navigate scheduling, which led to weeks’ worth of additional manual work on the part of staff and often led to technical issues scheduling classes on the part of students. 

We needed a more efficient system, one that freed our staff from having to manually book thousands of courses when the system failed to do so. We also needed to provide a universal scheduling view for staff across various departments which had become accustomed to using their preferred specialised scheduling tools.

Also Read: For the digital economy, traditional education needs an update

By building 36 APIs, supported by platforms such as MuleSoft, we’ve been able to reduce manual work across the organisation by 60 per cent and increase developer speed by 44 per cent. This has also allowed us to automate the enrolment process, further liberating staff from extra work.

Less time spent on cumbersome processes such as scheduling and course bookings means we can focus on boosting our digital learning experience through new services. 

Furthermore, we’ve also been able to integrate our student information system with other systems to give all staff access to a universal and holistic view of scheduling while using their preferred tools. 

Building the classrooms of tomorrow

Organisations today need to take a holistic approach to understand their core audiences and the education sector is no exception. 

Empowered by MuleSoft and a focus on reusable assets, we’ve boosted productivity across the institution, cutting around two weeks of manual work and development every semester to enrol and deliver student life capability. 

We plan to continue innovation in the future, such as relaunching our Alumni Portal so past students can reap the benefits of a connected experience too. The way we work and live is constantly changing – the way we learn must also be reimagined to meet students’ needs and build the digital classrooms of tomorrow. 

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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Yoan Kamalski, the co-founder of co-living startup Hmlet, has stepped as the CEO of the Singaporean firm, Business Times has reported.

Peter Kennedy, senior advisor at Burda Principal Investments, an investor in Hmlet, is serving as its interim CEO starting this month.

As per this report, Kamalski’s stepping down is the latest in a series of departures by the top management. Hmlet CTO Pramodh Rai is set to leave in June.

Hmlet, hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, had cut its workforce in December last year after it struggled with sales and change in customer habits.

The post Yoan Kamalski steps down as CEO of Hmlet: Report appeared first on e27.

Meet Jenny Gustafson, who uses psychology to cultivate better relationships with her team and clients.

Today, she helps you understand WHY psychology is so powerful.

We discuss:
– How has knowledge of psychology helped us in life
– Why is psychology important for all founders to know
– How psychology can help you better understand your team members
– Why you MUST learn empathy NOW
– How psychology can help your team members better understand each other
– What it’s like to be a working mom
– And more!

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This article was first published on We Live To Build.

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The world is collectively experiencing an accelerated shift to the digital age due to COVID-19. Consequently, innovation is now more than just a trend, it is a necessity.

Within Southeast Asia, startup ecosystems in countries like Singapore and Indonesia are thriving and their neighbours such as Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines are not far behind. Demand for digitisation and digitalisation is growing fast in these undeserved markets.

Today we will take a look at the Philippines, a country with a booming internet and mobile economy and a growing startup ecosystem. Here are five reasons why you should expand your startup to the Philippines.

1. Excitement in the Philippine economy

With a population of almost 110 million people, a GDP of US$367B, and a GDP growth of 6.6%, the Philippines is a developing market economy—ranking 3^rd highest in nominal GDP among other Southeast Asia countries, just behind Indonesia and Thailand. Compared to 2019 where they ranked 5th, the Philippines saw one of the fastest growths in the region and projects an even higher growth in 2021. According to Oxford Economics and economist Sung Eun Jung, although the Philippine GDP was contracted by 9.6% in 2020 due to the pandemic, it is predicted to grow by 7.7% in 2021.

The main contributors to the Philippines’ GDP are the service, industrial, and agricultural sectors. Making up 60%, the service sector is mainly driven by the business process outsourcing (BPO), tourism, and export services industries.

2. Unmatched internet and mobile consumption

The average internet user spends 10 hours a day online which makes the Philippines’ internet and mobile economy an important one, ranked 1st place globally for amount of time spent online daily. Nearly 4 hours is spent on social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, with trends such as social commerce picking up rapidly.

The Philippine internet economy is estimated at US$7B, with top verticals being e-commerce, online travel, online media, and ride hailing. Among the population of 109 million people, 67% of them are internet users. The internet economy is projected to grow by four times to USD$28B by 2025, primarily driven by the growing e-commerce sector, according to research by the Department of Trade and Industry.

Also read: How leveraging a corporate innovation challenge helped CAWIL.AI fuel its growth

3. Strong ecosystem support

With the economy improving, and an internet and mobile-savvy market, the Philippines is also showing initiatives to advance innovation. For one, the country ranked 50th in the Global Innovation Index in 2020—making it to the top 50 for the first time, which gives them one of the most significant rank progress overall.

Government efforts to further the innovation industry are exemplified by the Philippine Innovation Act and the Innovative Startup Act, both of which have objectives to further the science, technology, and innovation environment in the Philippines. Particularly, the Innovative Startup Act includes:

• Providing visas to foreign owners, investors, and employees establishing, investing, or working in a qualified innovative startup business or support business;
• Providing incentives and subsidies to startups in the Philippines;
• Establishing Philippine Startup Ecozones; and
• Providing assistance to startups in processing of business registration requirements and protection of intellectual property.

Complementing this is the government’s Philippine Development Plan which ensures delivering equitable tax reforms, improving market competition, and improving ease of doing business in the country. Although the Philippines still has a long way to go in terms of ease of doing business, they jumped 24 spots in the EODB 2020 report.

Offering additional support are the enablers and major stakeholders within the Philippine startup ecosystem. These organisations are more than willing to open doors for startups that would opt to set up shop in the country, accelerating their access to working space, talent, clients, or capital. In terms of infrastructure, improvements are found with the likes of a new telco player, DITO, who just surpassed the required minimum average broadband speed, for example.

4. Financial services—digital disruption in progress

Financial services was one of the first industries to be disrupted by technology and startups—coming out of the country’s emerging startup scene are notable companies like Coins.ph, First Circle, and Paymongo, all of which are in the fintech space. Gcash of Mynt (917Ventures of Globe Telecom) has over 33 million users, while Coins.ph, which was purchased last year by Gojek, has about 10 million users.

Naturally, these success stories emerged out of the huge o in the financial services sector, where 52 million Filipino adults are unbanked and underbanked, (making up 77% of the adult population), and the 2,745 rural bank offices within the country. An example of a startup that addresses this market is Brankas, with Founder Todd Schweitzer having successfully set up shop in the country.

With the largest Philippine export being its people, the 10 million OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers) and its market is one that has yet to see significant technological advances. The $30B remittances that enter the country annually present multiple pain points that drive startups to address this.

5. Agriculture—an industry ripe for innovation

Agriculture is one of the most important industries in the Philippines, accounting for almost 10% of GDP. The CoVid-19 pandemic created chaos in global supply chains, disrupting supply of essential goods and services and causing shortages of basic food supplies. Local authorities provided cash subsidies and vegetable seeds for households to grow “survival gardens” while residents resorted to eating alternative foods such as corn fungus.

Agriculture is a traditional, labour intensive industry, and with the average age of farmers in the Philippines rising, the use of technology for next-generation farming as well as to attract the younger generation to consider farming as a career has increased in importance. Innovation in Agritech is gaining pace, from the use of IoT devices and data analytics to improve crop yield to the use of e-commerce and digital platforms to offer farm-to-table and other solutions that improve efficiency in the industry. As the middle class continue to grow, demand for meat and other proteins provides opportunities for a new generation of startups focused on alternative foods.

Also read: Philippines creating US$5M venture fund for local startups

Partake in the journey of Philippine digital transformation

Foreign startups that saw the Philippine market’s potential earlier on have successfully converted early adopters and have help shift consumer behavior of 70% of the population towards digital businesses. International startups looking to enter the Philippines now need to develop a deep understanding of their target markets and focus on matching their strengths to the gaps in respective industries.

The Global Innovation Alliance Manila Accelerator Program by Enterprise Singapore in partnership with Plug and Play is a market sensing and acceleration program for Singapore startups that are looking to expand their business in the Philippines. Through this program, startups can expect exposure to mentorship and workshops led by local industry leaders, as well networking, fundraising, and business development activities.

We welcome you to apply to join the inaugural batch of the GIA Manila Acceleration Program here.

The Philippine startup ecosystem has a long and exciting way to go. The trends of its economy, the internet behavior of its people, and the encouraging results of various stakeholders’ efforts suggest that there is great potential in the market — a growing market for your growing startup.

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This article is produced and sponsored by Plug and Play APAC.

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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Indonesian e-commerce giant Bukalapak is facing a lawsuit by real estate developer PT Harmas Jalesveva, according to various local media reports.

Registered in South Jakarta District Court on Wednesday, March 24, PT Harmas Jalesveva sued Bukalapak for “illegal acts” though the reports did not specify what these acts are.

The company also filed 14 requests in the lawsuit which included the confiscation of 75 per cent of Bukalapak shares as collateral until a verdict is returned. It also petitioned Bukalapak to pay IDR90 billion (US$6.2 million) as compensation for losses.

e27 has reached out to Bukalapak to find out more details about the lawsuit and how the company will deal with it.

In addition to Bukalapak, PT PT Harmas Jalesveva also filed a lawsuit against local property advisory and marketing company PT Leads Property Service Indonesia.

Also Read: Bukalapak co-founders invest US$5M into Indonesian cloud service provider IDCloudHost

One of the unicorns of the Indonesian startup ecosystem, Bukalapak started out as a C2C marketplace before expanding into various verticals, including fintech.

It has recently announced a partnership with Standard Chartered to launch a digital banking initiative.

Last year, it has also announced a strategic investment from Microsoft. As part of the agreement, the e-commerce firm will use Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure to support its services.

More on this story as it develops.

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Image Credit: Bukalapak

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Indonesian travel unicorn Traveloka has teamed up with SCB 10X, the venture arm of Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), to set up a joint venture to offer digital financial services in Thailand.

Coined Trex Ventures, the JV will utilise Traveloka’s platform to distribute these services, targeting travellers and lifestyle consumers.

More details on the partnership will be announced soon, according to a joint statement.

Caesar Indra, Group President of Traveloka, noted that the financial services market in Thailand offer “abundant opportunities” for the travel firm to expand into, with only 30 per cent of the population owning credit cards.

Also Read: Cooperation will be the shortcut to recovery for financial services in Singapore and beyond

“Leveraging our strong track record in Indonesia, we look forward to bringing tailored and accessible financial solutions that empower the people of Thailand to enjoy new experiences and explore the world around them,” he added.

This is Traveloka’s first JV and is part of its ambitions to expand its financial services platform, the statement said. The Jakarta-based company first started offering financial products in 2018, launching a ‘buy now, pay later’ product in Indonesia. It has since released similar products including a pay later credit card.

SCB 10X’s chief business development and financial officer Pitiporn Phanaphat shared Trex will leverage Traveloka’s understanding of user behaviour, gathered through its engagement platform and data analytics platform. Also, the venture arm will access its parent company’s customer base, which it claims amount to over 16 million people across Thailand.

According to a Bloomberg report, Traveloka is set to publicly list in the US this year through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). The company is said to be valued at close to US$6 billion.

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Image Credit: Traveloka

 

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Malaysia’s conglomerate Sunway Group has been the forefront of corporate innovation by partnering with different stakeholders of the country’s tech ecosystem.

Of late, the group has started several initiatives including a startup incubator, corporate venture capital fund, and also runs several programmes in partnership with renowned VCs funds such as Gobi Partners, Tuas Capital Partners, and The Hive.

In this conversation with e27, group Chief Innovation Officer and Director of Sunway iLabs, Matt Van Leeuwen, sheds lights on Malaysia’s corporate innovation scene and how the group contributes to the overall innovation culture in the country.

Edited excerpts.

How does Sunway define corporate innovation? Is it about inculcating into and fostering innovation among its employees? Or is it about partnering with startups and working with them for a long term? Or is it much beyond that?

Corporate innovation is a phrase that means different things to different people.

We believe that for corporate innovation there is no one-size-fits-all model, but rather a model that is unique to its own ecosystem.

For example, Amazon’s innovation drive centres around customer obsession, Apple is famed for their design approach, and Toyota has innovated around the ‘kaizen’ process improvement concept.

Sunway Group defines corporate innovation as implementing new innovation opportunities into our existing businesses through different innovation vehicles or programmes: we have both an inside-out and an outside-in approach.

The inside-out approach is based around our own research and development initiatives in our businesses for more incremental innovation initiatives such as product, service, or process innovation.

The outside-in approach involves partnering with different entrepreneurs and startups for more disruptive innovation such as new products/services, markets, or business model innovation.

Also Read: How leveraging a corporate innovation challenge helped CAWIL.AI fuel its growth

Our innovation ecosystem comprises quite a few stakeholders. We have Sunway Ventures (corporate venture building arm), Sunway iLabs (an incubator and accelerator which is a partnership between our education arm Sunway Education Group and the corporation Sunway Group), as well as SunSEA Capital (a regional-focused corporate VC arm which can provide funding for bigger ticket sizes, such as Series A/B).

We also partner closely with other VC funds, such as Gobi Partners, Tuas Capital Partners, and The Hive. These initiatives give us a view on the latest technologies and trends in the market and is a mechanism to build successful innovations.

In the past few years, internally, we have been focusing on the digitalisation of our businesses as well as building an innovation ecosystem. We have invested more than RM200 million (US$48 million) in our digital transformation initiatives which include digitalising our procurement processes, integrating robotic automation for operational efficiencies, and developing customer focused apps for Sunway Medical Centre, amongst other things.

Generally, we have defined six verticals as areas which are synergistic for us, where we will invest in and where we have the know-how to scale: smart cities, edutech, digital health, agrifood-tech, e-commerce and fintech.

Sunway City Kuala Lumpur, the group’s flagship township, now functions as a living lab where these new solutions can be test-bedded.

When we evaluate startups, we are looking a lot at the strategic fit with the Sunway Group and how we can leverage our existing businesses to help grow the startups. This strategic fit is sometimes more important than just financial returns.

What kind of a work/business culture does the group follow — a startup culture or corporate culture? How are these two cultures different from each other, from a Sunway standpoint?

We are very fortunate to be operating in a corporate culture where our founder and Chairman, Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah, himself is an innovator and entrepreneur, and therefore is committed to drive innovation with a long-term vision.

Sunway Group itself started as a small tin-mining company and has grown into a conglomerate with 13 business divisions with three public-listed companies with a combined market capitalisation of circa RM 16 billion (US$3.9 billion), and operates in 50 locations worldwide.

Innovation and sustainable development is part of our DNA and there is a culture of experimentation where we have a history of taking good bets on the future and doubling down on the ones that work really well — that’s how Sunway Group has grown. We have been successful in scaling up our many businesses to become market leaders in their own right.

One of the reasons we started up the CVC and other components of the innovation ecosystem is to deepen this culture of entrepreneurship by enlarging our entrepreneurship community. We believe that by bringing in students, researchers, investors and external entrepreneurs together, we can expand our innovation horizons beyond what we are already doing ourselves.

I think that Steve Blank puts it best when describing the difference between a startup and a corporation. According to him, a startup is a temporary organisation designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Corporations are organisations which already have these repeatable and scalable business models.

He also said that in the early stages of a startup, focusing on “execution” will put you out of business. Instead, you need a “learning and discovery” process so you can get the company to the point where you know what to execute.

Also Read: How Inmagine is Googlising its workplace to foster an inclusive and collaborative work culture

Corporations, on the other hand, are organisations which have perfected the execution but need to be reminded, perhaps to partake in the learning and discovery process again for future growth.

Sunway is fortunate to have the best of both worlds, so both these can work in symbiosis. There’s the corporate environment for talents who enjoy a more regimented role and thrive in repeatable, scalable businesses; and the startup environment for a more social work culture, and an agile ecosystem that can drive the start-up thinking forward.

In addition, Sunway Group is also a corporation with a purpose — to drive sustainable development, which is centred around societal value and a powerful impetus for innovation to take place. Here, people come to work with the expectation to channel their imaginations and effort to create something of value for the community at large.

As you said, you have multiple business interests and divisions and are capable of developing your own tech products and solutions. But why do you think you still need to partner and work with startups to support your various businesses? How do these benefit each other?

Our internal R&D programmes are currently more focused on digital transformation, driving operational efficiencies and incremental innovation.

For example, Sunway Construction, the group’s construction arm, is focusing on advancing Virtual Design Construction (VDC) technology to develop 7D models which are capable of performing efficient energy, heat emission, light and sun path analyses on buildings which will result in compliance to Green Building Index specifications as well as 8D models which will bring mobility to the Environment, Safety & Health processes.

Another example would be where Sunway Paving Solutions has innovated permeable concrete pavers, where rainfall can permeate through the tiles and into the soil underneath to prevent flash floods.

The startups whom we are partnering with are more focused on disruption and regional scalability. As they say ‘we don’t know what we don’t know’, and the startups that we partner or seek to partner with bring new ideas and even new markets where we can accelerate our innovation ambitions.

It is widely perceived that corporates, especially in Asia Pacific, are often resistant to change and are unwilling to break the status-quo. How true is this when it comes to Malaysia’s conglomerates? Where does Sunway stand here?

Asian companies such as Samsung, Huawei, Alibaba Group, Sony, Tencent, LG, Xiaomi, Toyota and Hitachi are often ranked as some of the most innovative companies in the world including BCG’s 50 most innovative companies of 2020.

According to the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s Global Innovation Index (GII), Singapore and the Republic of Korea rank in the top 10 on the index, while Hong Kong, China, Japan, Malaysia, the UAE, Vietnam, Thailand, India, and Philippines rank in the top 50 countries in the world. Malaysia is the second most innovative country, only next to China in the middle-income economy category.

Sunway Group’s ethos, as a conglomerate with an ambition to drive the goals of sustainable development, aims to play an important role in driving the innovation culture across the nation and the region.

The B40 community is a big opportunity for Malaysia. Affordable housing, digital banking and education are areas where we are looking to address challenges and be inclusive for people in the lower socio-economic groups of society.

I believe that Malaysia is really a great locale for startup incubation. It has relatively low cost to start a business, high quality of living and progressive talent, offers fast-tracked visas and has robust government support for entrepreneurs.

Can you talk about the different corporate innovation drives initiated by Sunway?

Here in Sunway, we believe ideas are everywhere, so we aim to make innovation everyone’s job, and doesn’t just belong in one department or function. There are always multiple projects happening at several levels across the group.

We have invested >RM200 million (US$48 million) in digital transformation for last 10-plus years and build up a number of success stories, e.g. e-invoicing to enhance procurement practices, robotic process automation to gain operational efficiency, customer focused apps for healthcare.

We have built an entrepreneurship ecosystem comprising Sunway iLabs, Sunway Ventures and SunSea Capital. Sunway iLabs has run more than 250 days of hackathons/industry challenges, built a community of over 60,000 students, entrepreneurs, and investors, accelerated over 75 startups, and created 4 venture builds in a period of less than four years.

We have ventured into the fintech space with Sunway Money and Sunway Credit, as well as preparing to venture into the digital banking space.

For some consumer-facing businesses, we have built some apps that improve and personalise customer experiences, such as the Sunway Property App and Sunway Medical Centre App (Sunmed Go).

Most recently, we partnered with Huawei and Celcom (an Axiata company) for the implementation of 5G technology in our flagship township and to test-bed 5G powered innovations.

We have also launched a telemedicine Command and Control Centre at Sunway Medical Centre.

One of the more recent initiatives, which we launched September 2020, was the Sunway Innovation Matching Fund where we connected our business units’ problem statements to the Sunway Education Group for solutions building by our researchers and students. Funding support is provided by the business units themselves while resources and ideas come from the Sunway Education Group.

We have started with three projects with more in the pipeline. In addition to the innovations coming out from this programme, we also intend to establish an innovation culture and mindset.

To complement this top-down approach, we will also look towards launching a programme this year with a bottom-up approach where we will tap into the younger talents to identify some of the problems as well as come up with solutions to these problems.

With this new initiative, we hope to cultivate a new generation of intrapreneurs within Sunway comprising of our millennial and Gen Z talent pool.

You are currently working with the Singapore government, through Enterprise SG, to source partners for its business units as part of its OIC programme? Can you share more details about this programme? Which of Sunway’s business units are seeking innovation partners?

We participated in the inaugural Southeast Asia Open Innovation Challenge (SEA OIC) as one of Southeast Asia’s largest conglomerate to match their problem statements with startups, scaleups and SMEs which have the solutions to these problems.

We have currently selected the companies according to our designated verticals which will embark with us on three- to six-month pilots, where solutions may be adapted in digital health, edutech, and agrifood tech.

Is the government doing enough to promote a culture of innovation among large conglomerates/corporates? Are there any specific initiatives?

The government has a range of incentives including tax allowances (ITA), pioneer status programmes (allowing for tax exemptions), super deductions, MSC-Malaysia status, reinvestment allowances, special economic region allowances, special tax incentives recently launched under the PENJANA programme, green tech initiatives, halal tax incentives, and bionexus incentives.

The latest efforts such as the launch of the MyDigital blueprint and initiatives by MDEC and other agencies are also helping corporations become more innovative.

For instance, MDEC has several initiatives such as the Digital Transformation Acceleration Programme Grant, and the Digital Transformation Labs.

Having said that, we hope to see more corporations joining the space to build a more robust startup ecosystem in Malaysia. Agencies like MAVCAP are actively encouraging more corporates to get involved.

Towards this end, I’d suggest for corporates to try out different corporate innovation activities and ultimately built their own unique model.

Again, there is no one-size-fits-all for corporate innovation. Experimentation is important. You can dip your toes in the water by exploring partnerships with startups or by running hackathons and industry challenges. But ultimately, it needs to be clear what the longer term vision and objectives are.

Otherwise, it stays with what we call “innovation theatre”, which is good for show, but won’t move the needle for the corporations.

CVC plays a vital role in encouraging innovation. However, Asia seems to be lagging behind the West in this area. What are the reasons for this lagging? How can Asia overcome its barriers, if any?

In the recent years, CVC activity has caught up in Asia. According to the latest report by CB Insights, CVC-backed deals shares in Asia has hovered about 40 per cent from 2018-2020, which is a little higher than the deal shares in North America. However, CVC has still a long way to go in Asia, where a lot of corporates are only still scratching the surface.

Where does Malaysia’s corporate world stand in terms of CVC?

There has been increased corporate interest in setting up CVCs with market leaders such as Sunway, Axiata and Petronas setting up their own CVCs.
Sunway has Sunway iLabs, Sunway Ventures and Sun SEA Capital which provides funds at several ticket sizes, covering the early seed stages up to Series B rounds.

CVC is not just an important source of funding for the country’s ecosystem but also a source of mentorship and market access that startups need to thrive.

How crucial is ‘intrapreneurship’ for the corporate world? Does Sunway foster an intrapreneurship culture? Can you share details?

Prior to COVID-19, companies were already facing a challenging and unpredictable environment. As we prepare for a post-pandemic world, industry digitalisation is continuing to happen at an even more breakneck speed, market trends will continue to shift, and new business models must emerge.

According to business strategist Kaihan Krippendorff, research data shows that 70 per cent of transformative innovation are conceived, developed and commercialised by employees working within large companies.

Sunway fosters intraprenuership through several initiatives, including conducting design sprints and hackathons, Innovation Matching Funds, accelerators and others.

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Image Credit: Sunway Group

The post ‘There’s no one-size-fits-all for corporate innovation, experimentation is key’: Sunway Group’s innovation chief appeared first on e27.

Homebase, a Vietnamese proptech startup, said today it has raised US$125,000 from renowned US-based accelerator Y Combinator (YC).

This comes off the company’s recent funding announcement from Troy Steckenrider III (COO of Zerodown), Darius Cheung (founder of 99.co), VinaCapital Ventures, Class 5 Global (Silicon Valley-based venture fund), Pegasus Technology Ventures, 1982 Ventures, and Antler.

The company said that it will use the proceeds to further develop its proprietary technology and financing solutions with the aim to empower aspiring homeowners in Vietnam and across Southeast Asia.

What makes this round special is that it is also the first time that a Vietnamese startup has been accepted into Y Combinator.

The accelerator is well-known for having invested and accelerated billion-dollar startups like Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase, and Dropbox.

“Homebase feels extremely honored to be among the first companies in Vietnam and Southeast Asia to be accepted into YC and be among the company of previous YC Southeast Asia alumni including Aspire, PayFazz, and Xfers. We feel a huge responsibility and privilege in representing the burgeoning Southeast Asia ecosystem in the global tech scene,” Phillip An, co-founder of Homebase said in an emailed response to e27.

Also Read: Homebase bags 7-figure pre-Series A round to expand property financing platform in SEA

The pandemic has revealed a need for alternatives to the traditional modes of renting and buying, as consumers demand more flexibility while seeking to build equity in assets uncorrelated to their primary means of employment.

To solve the problem and help people buy their dream homes easily, Homebase utilises technology to offer home-buyers and investors across Vietnam and Southeast Asia customised financing solutions for their properties.

“COVID-19 has revealed a need for superior alternatives to the traditional modes of renting and buying, as consumers demand more flexibility while seeking to build equity in assets uncorrelated to their primary means of employment,” added An.

“Housing prices in countries like Vietnam have risen as the Southeast Asian real estate markets continue its recovery post-COVID-19. We believe technology is unlocking tremendous value in real estate across Southeast Asia and we look forward to offering solutions to uplift the sector with more innovative, compelling, and empathetic solutions for those who aspire to own a home,” he said.

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Image Credit: Vietcetera

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