Indonesia’s Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education has confirmed that it backs DANAdidik.id’s student loan service

DANAdidik.id, an education-focussed fintech from Indonesia, officially announces the support from the president of the country, Joko Widodo, through his Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education.

Also Read: Go-Jek funding round aims for US$3 billion

The ministry provides its support through the program called PPBT (Perusahaan Pemula Berbasis Teknologi) or translated as Tech-based Startup program. The program is designed to back startups with funding, mentorship, and other facilities.

The program is essentially an incubator by the ministry to encourage entrepreneurship.

“All DANAdidik team welcomes the ministry’s program and we hope that more people, hopeful students can access DANAdidik’s benefit, fulfilling our mission #SemuaBisaKuliah (translated as #EverybodyCanGotoCollege),” said Nurlaila, Head of Marketing.

The ministry’s program aims to have the trust of the government, investors, and students in the student loan industry while also making sure everyone can have fair access to education without worrying about tuition fee.

Also Read: These 7 startups will be early 5G adopters under the guidance of APTG Accelerator Programme

The support through the ministry reflects the President’s mission that seeks to build student loan industry in Indonesia, announced in April last year.

DANAdidik is leveraging on crowdfunding to connect sponsor with university students under its platform. Launched in 2015, the fintech gives long term loan for four years.

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Photo by MD Duran on Unsplash

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Ofo must remove all bikes from public spaces by March 13 or else risk having its operating license fully voided

Chinese bike-sharing startup Ofo has had its operating license pulled by the Singapore Land Transport Authority and all bikes must be removed from city streets by March 13, according to Channel News Asia.

Ofo runs the risk of having its license fully cancelled if it does not remove the bikes by the deadline.

It is possible Ofo may not be able to remove the bikes because two weeks ago the company fired all of its staff in Singapore, some of whom were let go over the phone. The LTA said it will remove the bikes on March 14 to prevent public clutter.

The LTA is suspending the license because it failed to comply with regulatory requirements in Singapore — specifically the proper implementation of their QR code system. This means the company was not following new rules that requires bikes to be parked within designated parking areas. Furthermore, Ofo did not reduce its fleet to below the 10,000 maximum requirement.

In mid-January, the LTA gave Ofo one month to comply with the regulations or risk suspension. The company missed the deadline.

Also Read: Bike-sharing startup Ofo terminates staffs over the phone without compensation

Ofo is struggling to stay afloat in China and the Singapore situation feels like a company that is fighting to survive domestically and thus is struggling to manage its international business interests.

Ofo is backed by Alibaba. Last December the CEO Dai Wai said his company is facing “immense cashflow problems”.

Also Read: Kick start your Echelon experience with Echelon Roadshow 2019 Singapore

Once awash in pay-per-use public bicycles, the bike-sharing bubble has popped in Singapore, highlighted by the disgraceful exit of oBike last July.

MoBike and the smaller SG Bike are the two companies left with operating licenses. MoBike appears to be benefiting from the upheaval in the Singapore market, having applied to grow its fleet in the next licensing cycle, according to The New Paper.

In China (the global bike-sharing headquarters), it looks as if MoBike has the inside track for what will be an important, disruptive and rocky year for the industry.

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Online shopping games and digital payment are among some of the things Vietnam can expect

Last year, Vietnam’s e-commerce went through its most exciting year yet, starting with big funding news across the board and ending with Google and Temasek’s optimistic prediction of a 43 per cent growth from now till 2025.

This positive growth seems very likely to continue into 2019 along with that would be some interesting market movements.

Here are 3 things to expect from the Vietnamese e-commerce sector this year, according to experts from iPrice Group.

The rise of single-market merchants

According to iPrice’s data on the Vietnamese market, single-market merchants such as Tiki, Thegioididong, and Sendo.vn made several encouraging improvements in 2018 in terms of attracting both user traffic and investment.

The most impressive improvement belongs to Tiki.

Their monthly website traffic increased by a whopping 80 per cent within only six months, which took them from the fourth highest position among e-commerce websites in Vietnam to second place by December.

Similarly, Sendo.vn also grew by 55 per cent in monthly website traffic within a period of six months and maintained a healthy fifth place in Vietnam, one rank behind Thegioididong.

All three of these merchants also did well enough in 2018 to rank among the top 10 merchants with the highest monthly web traffic in Southeast Asia.

These positive results arrived soon after Tiki and Sendo.vn announced their success in raising new funding.

In particular, Tiki received US$44.04 million from JD.com in late 2017 while Sendo acquired US$51 million from various investors last August.

It seems that by focusing on one market and utilizing their knowledge on local shopping behaviour, single-market merchants like Tiki and Sendo.vn have a certain advantage over the multinational competitors Lazada and Shopee.

Now that they’re starting to gain access to better funding, Vietnamese single-market merchants might surprise everyone and win big in 2019.

Digital payment gaining popularity

Right in the first month of 2019, MoMo – one of the most popular digital wallets in Vietnam, announced that they had successfully closed their series C funding round.

Before that, in 2018, Moca – a local competitor, also started a partnership with GrabPay and expanded their digital payment services.

In a similar fashion, other online payment services like ZaloPay and ViettelPay have been showing signs of becoming more serious in their attempts to acquire users.

All these movements promise to make digital payment more popular with Vietnamese online shoppers.

According to Google and Temasek’s report, only 25 per cent of Vietnamese chose to use digital payment, while the rest still prefer CoD (Cash-on-delivery) for their only transactions.

While CoD helps ease the minds of customers, extra charges on CoD transactions for logistics are a problem for e-commerce merchants.

Moreover, CoD is also shown to increases the risk of product return.

Therefore, the increase in popularity of digital payment in Vietnam thanks to advocating efforts from service providers like MoMo, GrabPay, ZaloPay, etc. will bring a lot of benefits to the whole e-commerce sector in Vietnam in 2019.

Entertainment and engagement while shopping

After focusing on price-based promotion campaigns in previous years, e-commerce merchants in Vietnam have started to adopt some innovative strategies in their user acquisition efforts in 2018.

In particular, they began to provide customers with more entertainment values.

The most prominent follower of this trend must be Shopee.

For this year’s Singles Day, besides their usual promotions, Shopee also introduced several interactive games for their app users as well as a live TV show featuring some of the biggest Vietnamese pop stars, the first of its kind in Vietnam.

Shopee’s main competitors in Vietnam, Lazada and Tiki also created interactive games on their apps and websites.

As we can see from these programs, e-commerce merchants in Vietnam have finally realized that the most effective way for them to acquire users and keep them around is by engaging with them and making them feel more involved.

This trend will certainly become even more notable in the upcoming year.

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Image Credits: amadeustx

Source: iPrice Insights

All data on the total visits on desktop and mobile web in this study were taken from global traffic figures from the respective regional sites. Insights based on SimilarWeb data.

iPrice Group is a meta-search website operating in seven countries across Southeast Asia namely in; Malaysia Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. Currently, iPrice compares and catalogs more than 500 million products and receives more than 15 million monthly visits across the region. iPrice currently operates three business lines: price comparison for electronics and health & beauty; product discovery for fashion and home & living; and coupons across all verticals.

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Smart Companies are globally-connected and blockchain-compatible companies with their own legal identity

The focus of most companies in the blockchain space is to empower users and give them a level of autonomy that they can’t find in centralised systems (formal institutions such as banks, for example).

A key part of the move for empowerment is to reward users for their contributions within the blockchain system.

Every company has tried to implement a form of rewards system, and while these systems may differ, the goal is the same — to give users a reward that empowers them financially.

Credits given within the blockchain system hold monetary value – or a value that is essentially equivalent.

These rewards can be used within a particular blockchain-linked industry or they can be exchanged for money.

The idea is to give users a strong incentive to continue with blockchain technology.

There are a few obstacles, however, that need to be dealt with in order for users to fully benefit.

With the growing developments in the blockchain space, and with the decentralised nature of blockchain, it is important that businesses ensure that they are in compliance with Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) regulations.

KYC is the process where a business verifies the identity of its clients and assesses potential risks of illegal intentions for the business relationship.

These are regulations that ensure that criminal activity is prevented, and transactions can occur securely and confidently.

In order for any financial institutions, regulated industries, merchants and/or service providers to run in any industry, they need to be in compliance with these regulations.

The same goes for many businesses in the blockchain space.

Companies are working their hardest to ensure that they follow these rules, but their implementation of these standards is very costly and has led to a major inconvenience for users, leading to a high drop-off rate in consumer onboarding.

In order for users of regulated blockchain applications to use a company’s services or purchase products, they typically will need to fulfil the KYC requirements.

For every application they make use of, they have to fill in the same details which very time consuming and cumbersome.

To deal with these gaps, one major field of interest among blockchain companies is identity verification, and this is one focus of platforms like Blockpass, which focuses on practical solutions in dealing with KYC.

A mobile approach to identity

The user-focused, user-controlled mobile identity application designed for smooth and immediate access to regulated services.

In its initial iteration, Blockpass is a KYC and AML application-as-a-service.

Its aim is to solve the current KYC problem that is present in the blockchain system and bring the blockchain industry into the mainstream with streamlined identity verification services.

Also read: Blockchain companies need to strengthen brand credibility for sake of ecosystem

Users can establish, verify, store and manage their identities while still maintaining full control over all personal data involved – something that plays well with current privacy regimes like the European GDPR and other regulations across Southeast Asia and beyond.

With an initial focus on human identity, such platforms provide a reliable and cost-effective KYC and AML services for regulated industries, merchants and service providers of all types. This means that the process of complying with these regulations will become easier for both users and companies.

Beyond transforming the way KYC and AML verification, a blockchain-based approach can also offer an opportunity for other companies to leverage the advantage of next-level technologies through API-based verification solutions.

It’s essentially a plug-and-play means to do KYC and verification without the need to build an entirely new solution from ground-up.

Mainstreaming the “Smart Company”

One concept being introduced into the mainstream is the idea of the “Smart Company”, which a startup called Korporatio is focusing on.

Simply put, Smart Companies are globally-connected and blockchain-compatible companies with their own legal identity.

Korporatio’s service creates legally recognised trading entities which can own assets and capital, and employ people – all through a blockchain approach.

Using smart contracts and blockchain technology, the platform is already changing the way that businesses start up and operate by removing the bureaucracy and red tape that often hampers progress.

The solution integrates with Blockpass’ KYC verification process, thus leading to a seamless and compliant user onboarding for new users.

With a tokenised approach, users also get benefits in the form of tokens as an incentive for signing up during a limited time.

Similar blockchain companies that are employing this KYC compliance solution include Infinito, GoSecurity and DSTOQ – all with focus on security, privacy, and ease of use.

Also read: Blockchain-based e-KYC platform claims the throne at Binar Academy and Tokopedia’s Hack of Thrones

The long-term goal: A seamless blockchain ecosystem

With all the new and different blockchain solutions being launched of late, the main goal is perhaps gearing toward a seamlessly functioning blockchain ecosystem that will allow more inclusiveness for users across the globe for individuals, businesses, or other organisations.

With secure verification, users will be able to participate in the ecosystem knowing that their information is secure, while being financially empowered at the same time.

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Make sure your customer service is on point!

With the advent of web-based advertising campaigns for internet companies, measuring customer acquisition metrics has become crucial for marketers everywhere.

Whether you are generating leads that bring actual revenue, or tracking consumer behaviour to improve the decision making process – analysing key parameters associated with customer acquisition can do wonders for your business

Understanding the customer acquisition cost (CAC) for your social media channels helps you assess your marketing spend, allocate a marketing budget, and determine the value proposition from conversion tracking. If you’re looking for effective ways to acquire customers online, try putting the following methods to test:

Superior social media customer service

Customers that have had an unsatisfactory experience with customer service are more inclined to take their business elsewhere. Therefore, investing in high-quality, solution-driven and attentive customer service is crucial for customer retention.

Responding to grievances and maintaining a direct line of communication with users also prevents negative publicity, especially in the digital age where word gets out fast and is never forgotten.

Once you are approached by a customer on any of your social media channels, acknowledge them, apologise for the inconvenience, and promise an estimated time-frame for resolution. Avoid being defensive and keep a professional tone even when you’re dealing with an impatient customer. Don’t try to shift the blame, and focus on escalating the issue as soon as possible.

As shown in the example below, the customer service of Victoria Bella Spa responds to its request on Facebook a customer seeking an appointment at the establishment.

Leverage the power Of LinkedIn

The majority of traffic on your platform consists of anonymous users, unless they’re specifically logging in, or identifying themselves in some form while browsing. Understanding user behaviour and creating buyer personas can be a game changer.

If you have at least the basic information about the person visiting your platform, and what they came looking for. With Leadfeeder, you can categorize your visitors according to their company’s IP addresses, by sifting through their browsing logs to get a valuable insight into what kind of websites, and portals each visitor is interested in.

What’s more? The app easily synchronises with your LinkedIn profile, to show you a list of closest connections at visiting companies, and also push all this data to your Customer Relation Management (CRM). Utilize the knowledge you obtain from Leadfeeder as a starting point for personalized, proactive engagement with new and existing customers.

Learn more about your customers

Nobody wants their identity to be reduced to a faceless individual, with an email address that invoices get sent to –  especially not the customers you do intend to do long-term business with. To understand the psyche of an average customer, you need to know more about them as a people.

This helps you identify their pain points, anticipate their needs, fill the gaps in your CRM strategy and offer customized solutions to their problems.For a quick example, connect Salesforce with Clearbit, a nifty profile enrichment tool that will scour through all possible data sources, including social media, to create a detailed profile of every customer.

Also Read: 3 trends that will drive Vietnam’s e-commerce sector in 2019

These insights can come in handy for your team for when they need personalized sales pitches that directly appeal to the customer’s interest.

Experiment With The Most Popular Promotional Tactics

Although persuasive copy and creative call-to-actions (CTA) are crucial for garnering potential customers,  you can always rely on a few tried and tested methods to promote your brand on various social media channels like LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Here are a few excellent ways that are known to work for any brand, product or service:-

Conduct engaging polls: Get instant engagement from asking people to vote on a relatively easy, but interesting questions.

Host a contest or giveaway: With an enormous virality potential, contests are a great way to attract new customers, engage with the existing ones, and increasing your post reach or followers. To get more attention to your contest, you can also create a separate tab on your page that either redirects to your website, or takes you to the contest page on Facebook itself.

For example, Eggo, a popular brand of frozen waffles in the United States, created a separate ‘Recipe Contest’ tab to their page, and featured the same under ‘Apps’.

Ask for customer input on upcoming features and services: A successful business takes  customer feedback into account while pushing out new updates, features, products and services.  Use your social media channels to improve your digital marketing strategy, by asking your customers directly about suggestions!

Lions Club International, a non-political service organization from Illinois posted a simple text update, encouraging users to making suggestions on improving club meetings.

Use hashtagsCreate a company hashtag and encourage your followers to use it. You can also capitalize on the trending hashtags in your posts to piggyback your way into ‘popular’ tweets.

KitKat created the #HaveAbreak hashtag for their campaign, urging users to take to time out from their day to enjoy a KitKat.

Also Read: Go-Jek funding round aims for US$3 billion

Post motivational images, quotes and videos: Emotionally connect with your users, by sharing an inspiring story or a few words of wisdom from the experts.

In the above example, a Facebook user puts up a motivational quote image to increase engagement.

Recognizing your most engaging users:Create a quick list of users that frequent your page more often than the others, and reward them with a small feature in a post, or grant them access to exclusive events, contests, promotions, and services.

ModCloth, an American online retailer for women’s clothing, explains what features their ‘superfans’ will get access to.

Employ paid marketing: With the new Facebook algorithm, organic reach seems to be on a decline, and you should consider investing in paid promotions on social media. Experiment with A/B split testing to determine what works the best with your target audience, and the performance of your ads.

In the above example , Jasper’s Market, an ultra-premium prepared food market uses a carousel-type Facebook ad to promote their products.

Post incentives, deals, and discounts:Nothing attracts potential customers more than a post about a well-timed sale, discount, deal, or incentive, containing appropriate call-to-action (CTA) and trackable links.

As shown above, Amazon announces a Bonus Deal with an appropriate call-to-action to drive traffic to their website.

Post more native videos:Most platforms are now giving preference to natively uploaded videos over other types of content, so hop on the video marketing trend. Familiarize yourself with the best practices, concepts, and formats to post interactive, engaging videos.

Let customers spread the word about your brand

Approximately 39 per cent of adults have admitted to posting on social media about their experience with a product, service or a brand.

Regardless of you tapping into these conversations, it’s undeniable that they’re happening and you are missing an opportunity to tap into an important emotional trigger.Use Mention to get notified every time your business is mentioned across the internet. Share customer testimonials and experiences, and let the word-of-mouth do the marketing for you.

The simple approach to keeping your customer acquisition is understanding that customer loyalty can always be improved upon by implementing an efficient CRM, marketing campaigns can be optimized to succeed by keeping tabs on what your audience responds to , and the user value can be enhanced by upgrading your product or service to make it more appealing to your customers.

Break out a spreadsheet and closely document your customer acquisition budget (pay-per-click), customer lifetime value, and direct sales generated from your efforts for each channel.

For a dramatic increase in revenue, you should aspire to a social media strategy that directly contribute to conversions by bringing in new customers, and produces interesting content to engage the existing users.

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Startups that launch products hurt the reputation of crypto, so it is important to point out the companies that are doing right by their investors</h3

Cryptocurrency has had a rollercoaster year and in hindsight we are starting to realise the hype may have been more than a little premature.

A study commissioned by Invest in Blockchain found that only 36 of the top 100 digital currencies by market capitalisation had a working product.

To look at it from an even scarier lens: 64 per cent of these projects are still knee-deep in product development – some of them may even have nothing more available to the public than a white paper and a community chat.

While the definition of what constitutes a working product is up for debate – the researchers used public availability, the release of a mainnet and consumer or enterprise usage as their criteria – there is no arguing that there is a serious issue afoot here.

These crypto projects are breaking a cardinal rule in the tech world: They’ve put marketing before product development, sometimes even to its exclusion.

Also Read: 3 trends that will drive Vietnam’s e-commerce sector in 2019

The focus on marketing would not be so problematic if the general public tended to compartmentalise crypto projects one-by-one, but they do not. A few bad actors will paint a pattern in their eyes: These initiatives are all hype, or even worse, they are all scams.

In short time, you might see a backlash against truly innovative cryptocurrencies or crypto companies, similar to how some skeptics doubted firms like Amazon or PayPal in the wake of the dot-com bubble.

The problem is rooted in the general public as much as it is in the crypto projects with no working product. Rather than celebrate any crypto project with a unique idea, we need to exercise greater discretion in choosing which initiatives, organizations, and firms to give our attention to.

We should focus on ventures that have a working product, as it’s their solutions that will improve the lives of users, and in the aggregate, build credibility and galvanize support for an industry in dire need of it.

Luckily, Asia Pacific is home to some of the most notable cryptocurrency companies with working products. Here are three of the very best, each working to cut through marketing speak with solutions that help enterprises or consumers.

QTUM

QTUM, based out of Singapore, was one of the few companies in Asia that made Invest in Blockchain’s list of working products. It is a smart contracts platform and value transfer protocol that takes elements from both Bitcoin and Ethereum. Though its price has fallen as of late, many enterprises and organizations are already building projects atop QTUM, in fields as diverse as health care, content creation, and online search.

Most impressively, some developers are using QTUM to build niche applications far from the usual technology subsectors. One example is Halal Chain.

Halal certification is the process of certifying food, medicine, and cosmetics as meeting certain standards established by the Islamic Council. Unfortunately, many companies try to game the system, as a bid to attract the Muslim market but cut costs on the actual work it takes to produce Halal goods.

Halal Chain will better regulate the Halal certification system by tracing the movement of goods at every stage of the chain – raw material supply, inspection and quarantine, and sales – through QTUM-enabled smart contracts. There are many other noteworthy projects being built through QTUM, which just goes to show its effectiveness as a platform: It is enabling others to succeed in ways they couldn’t before.

Pundi X

Pundi X was another company in Asia that met Invest in Blockchain’s criteria for a working product.

The term may even be an understatement for Pundi X, as the Indonesian company is in the midst of a global roll-out of their 100,000 Pundi XPOS devices, deploying so far in Singapore, Korea, Indonesia, Brazil, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and many other markets. These XPOS devices enable consumers to make in-store transactions using cryptocurrency via their Pundi XPASS card.

In July, the Pundi XPOS were launched at the eateries of the FAMA Group in Hong Kong, including Locofama, Sohofama, SUPAFOOD and the Hive Cafe. An even more impressive deployment came just last year at Ultra Taiwan 2018. In what would be a rain-soaked festival, close to 30,000 attendees would pay for their food, drinks, and merchandise using Ultra Coin – the festival’s official digital currency – at the XPOS terminals.

The two partners billed the event as the world’s first blockchain-powered music festival, but the significance of its success is arguably even greater: It showed that handling thousands of crypto transactions from consumers in a real-world setting was not only feasible but practical. Pundi X, in other words, is making crypto usage as mainstream as well, music festivals and hip eateries.

Bitmain

Bitmain was not on Invest in Blockchain’s working products list because it is not based on a cryptocurrency – the company manufactures miners – but it is just as important to highlight here because the wider ecosystem is as full of marketing hype as the cryptocurrency projects themselves.

Just think about how many miners, hard wallets, automated teller machines, and other solutions have failed to materialise after an avalanche of early hype.

Bitmain represents a welcome contrast. Headquartered out of China, Bitmain has created a lineup of powerful Bitcoin and Litecoin miners and has since diversified into managing the largest mining pools in the world and even AI chips.

As of last month, Bitmain even completed its pre-IPO registration in a bid to attract capital to accelerate production of its hardware, and cement its market leadership in crypto technology.

Also Read: Oriente partners with Indonesia’s conglomerate Sinar Mas to launch lending platform

This list is by no means exhaustive. There are plenty of crypto projects and companies in Asia that are doing great work.

This is merely a call to focus on those who are already walking the walk (i.e. helping consumers or enterprises with their products) and not just talking the talk (i.e. marketing what they will one day do).

Exercising greater discipline in who we chose to celebrate will no doubt benefit the industry as a whole, attracting supporters, winning over skeptics, and ultimately legitimizing cryptocurrency as a technology here to stay.
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The Hong Kong-based financial service startup Oriente joins Sinar Mas to launch lending platform Finmas, that would be the third fintech product from the conglomerate

Sinar Mas, a conglomerate from Indonesia, banded together with Oriente, a Hong Kong-based financial service startup to launch Finmas. Finmas would be the third financial product by the conglomerate and will serve as an on-demand lending platform aimed at millions of underserved consumers and MSMEs across Indonesia, which currently accounts for 66 per cent of 260 millions Indonesians.

Also Read: Go-Jek funding round aims for US$3 billion

Finmas is a mobile app that seeks to support financial literacy and inclusion in the country, simultaneously support Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK), the Financial Services Authority in Indonesia. It is specifically designed to give access to people with no traditional banking and formal financial services (including bank accounts, credit rating, or credit) history using mobile technology.

It allows the underserved people to have:

• multiple purpose-based financing options
• paperless, collateral-free and available 24×7 service via their own mobile device
• low-interest rates with no hidden fees
• real-time credit-scoring
• choice of the repayment schedule
• funding in as little as 24 hours

“Finmas aims to help millions of Indonesians unlock their financial potential through #SahabatFinansial practices that are founded on core principles of responsibility, security, convenience, and affordability,” said Peter Lydian, President Director of Finmas said, Mr. Hendrikus Passagi, Director Regulation, Licensing and Supervision Fintech of the Financial Services Authority (OJK).

Finmas’ features enable consumers to apply for a cash loan whenever they need access to credit for tuition fees, household expenses, specific consumer goods, emergencies, or to start and grow their small businesses via the app. Consumers are given full control to keep track of their loan application status and repayment schedule.

Also Read: Ofo operating license suspended in Singapore

Gandi Sulistiyanto, Managing Director of Sinar Mas also stated that Finmas will bridge to not only support financial services but also to equip the users with understanding so they can have comfort and privacy protection.
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Image Credit: Finmas

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The frowned upon policy includes a minimum of IDR 1 trillion (US$71.17 million) as a paid-up capital for a new trader offering future contracts for crypto assets

Cryptocurrency has been traded in Indonesia for a while now, but just recently got regulated by Indonesia’s Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency, known locally as Bappebti. It just authorised digital currencies as a trading commodity, setting an IDR 1 trillion (US$71.17 million) as the minimum paid-up capital for a new trader offering future contracts for crypto assets.

The authorisation is under regulation No.5/2019, as told by KrAsia. Since October last year, the capital of Indonesia Jakarta has gone ahead and allowed the trading to protect customers from crypto fluctuations.

Also Read: 5 Indonesian state-owned enterprises merge mobile payment services

The regulation focusses on technical provisions for the implementation of cryptocurrency exchanges, which effectively treats currencies like bitcoin as commodities to be traded legally.

“We want to give protection to people who want to invest in crypto assets so that they aren’t cheated by fraudulent sellers,” said Head of Bappepti, Indrasari Wisnu Wardhana.

Cryptocurrency exchanges have been around since 2014 amid the legality uncertainty, inflamed further by Indonesia’s Central Bank banning it as a payment option.

One of the requirements for trading cryptocurrency in the country is that the trader must pass a risk assessment that rules out that they’re being misused in money laundering schemes or the funding of terrorism. Other requirements include the client support division that the traders must possess, the employment of at least one certified security practitioner, five-years-old of transaction data, and have a server inside the country.

Despite addressing the issues in the country, this regulation has been frowned upon, especially in the country’s crypto community. Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF), for example, has an opinion that this regulation came “a bit too late”, as told by INDEF economist Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara.

“Bitcoin prices in the last two years have fallen by 81% from US$ 18,269 at the end of 2017 to US$ 3,464 per coin in February 2019. The legal uncertainty surrounding bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in Indonesia has caused many to miss out on opportunities during the trading heydays,” said Adhinegara regarding the late policy.

More complaints from the traders also highlight the new rules that requires a high minimum capital for traders. Trading is indeed allowed, but the payment option ban from the central bank is yet to be lifted.

“Regulation is needed to support a sector, help the economy and protect people “but it should not kill an industry,” Oscar Darmawan, Chief Executive of digital asset trader Indodax, or used to be known as bitcoin.co.id, said to Channel Asia Singapore.

Darmawan felt that the amount of minimum capital level is much higher than the IDR 2.5 billion minimum paid-up capital for a futures broker of other commodities.

Also Read: Walking the walk: Three Asian crypto companies gaining real-world traction

Currently, it’s believed that there is no recorded data on the size of Indonesia’s crypto-currency market. However, people in the industry are positive that the number of investors has nearly matched that of the country’s main stock market.
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Industry experts are doubtful the new cartel can compete with Go-Jek or Ovo

In a sign of just how important Go-Jek and Ovo have become in Indonesia, five of the largest Indonesian state owned enterprises are merging their mobile payment services to compete with the two tech companies, according to Nikkei Asian Review.

The companies are in the banking and communications sector and the new mobile payments service will be called LinkAja. It is expected to launch in March.

The SOEs involved are as follows:

• Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telekom)
• Bank Mandiri
• Bank Rakyat Indonesia
• Bank Negara Indonesia
• Bank Tabungan Negara

The state-owned oil company Pertamina is expected to join the group. The future of LinkAja will probably include a move beyond just payments and into other financial services.

LinkAja will be run by Fintek Karya Nusantara, a subsidiary company of Telekom. Telekom has a 25 per cent stake in the new venture while three banks (Bank Mandir, Bank Rakyat Indonesia, Bank Negara Indonesia) will hold 20 per cent. Bank Tabungan Negara will have 7 per cent of LinkAja.

There is also talks to onboard Alipay and WeChat Pay onto the service.

As e27 reported in our ecosystem report, 2018 was the year Indonesians began to adopt digital payments (driven by Go-Jek/Ovo and the government’s move to integrate digital options into highway toll payment infrastructure).

These state-owned enterprises seem to recognise the importance of having a digital solution while recognising they have a long way to go to catch up with Go-Jek and Ovo. They seem to have decided that the only way to compete was to work together.

Because Go-Jek is so widely used as a do-everything app, its payment infrastructure was able to leverage the network affect and grow into one of the most popular mobile payment options in the country.

Ovo started as a mobile payments company and partnerships with the likes of Tokopedia have helped it grow into the next potential Indonesian unicorn. It received major investment from the Indonesian conglomerate Lippo Group and is the main payment service for Grab.

Industry experts cited by Nikkei Asian Review were skeptical that LinkAja could compete with GoJek or Ovo.

Digital wallets are seen as important by the Indonesian government, with Nikkei Asian Review citing a statistic that 50 per cent of people over the age of 15 do not have a bank account.

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Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash

 

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You can also get predictions related to marriage, love life, career, or health over phone calls and chats via AstroTalk.in

He never believed in astrology, and made fun of people who followed what he termed a “pseudo science”. To him, astrology was not something a learnt and educated person would follow.

However, his destiny was already written when he was born. And this destiny brought this entrepreneur to the very pseudo science that he once rejected with derision.

Puneet Gupta’s story is a perfect example of how destiny plays a big role in one’s life, and how human beings, at times, end up doing things they never wanted or expected to do.

“I was working for investment bank BNP Paribas in India back in 2015. I was not satisfied with the corporate life and always wanted to start a company on my own. But my earlier experiences as a founder deterred me from launching another one,” he tells me.

Willy-nilly, Gupta once again decided to take the plunge.

The colleague’s prediction

“When I was typing my resignation letter, a colleague of mine came over to my desk. She told me ‘You look lost. Are you okay. Do you need any help’. I showed the resignation letter and also shared with her my past struggles as a startup founder. After listening to my story, she asked me to share my birth details and that she would tell me what I should do next. She had a fair knowledge of astrology,” Gupta says.

“But I categorically told her I did not believe in astrology. But when she started sharing some of the experiences that I had had in the past, I had no option but to believe her. It was as if she knew my past life well enough. I was still unconvinced. But she persuaded me to go ahead with the decision to quit BNP Paribas and pursue my entrepreneurial dreams,” he reveals.

She predicted then that the coming two years looked very promising for Gupta’s startup. But the business would  still face some challenges in the initial months. She also prophesied that his co-founder might leave him after two years and then the business would be pivoted. Once pivoted, it would flourish. The colleague also asked him to stay in the IT domain and explained to him how ‘Saturn’ and ‘Rahu’ in his birth chart would support IT.

As she advised, Gupta started an IT services startup, called CodeYeti, in April 2015. The business grew fast and bagged around 15-20 clients, including big ones like Yamaha. The startup also clocked a revenue of US$500,000 in the first year.

Also Read: Will US President Donald Trump get impeached anytime soon? This startup could help you predict it

“After one and half years, my co-founder (who was my school mate) came to me and said he was not happy with the services business and that he wanted to launch products. I agreed with him, and we together started investing a lot of our time researching, and then launched a few new products. But none of these products saw the light of the day. The products were shut down, and I decided to focus on the the services business again,” Gupta reveals.

“True to the prediction of my former colleague, my co-founder resigned exactly after two years of starting our business. This is when I realised that there is something about astrology that is addictive. It doesn’t matter whether you have faith in it or not, but once someone starts telling you about your future, it is very fascinating and you want to know a lot more,” he goes on.

After his co-founder’s departure, Gupta dialled his the former astrologer colleague to apprise her of the events occurred in his life, and told her that all her predictions came true. She smiled at him and asked if he wanted to check his birth chart once again to know what future holds for him.

“I paused for a moment. And then I proposed an idea: how about I start a product in the field of astrology and I become your first customer?’,” Gupta adds as he narrates the story. “This was the beginning of AstroTalk.in.”

The beginning

Launched in October 2017, Noida (near Delhi)-based AstroTalk is an online astrology predictions destination. One can talk to an astrologer over phone, or over chats, and get answers to all his/her worries by seeing the future life through ‘Astrology Kundli Predictions’ from the best astrologers in India. One can get predictions related to marriage, love life, career or health over phone calls, chats, queries or reports.

AtroTalk targets people in the age bracket of 23 to 25 as of now. According to Gupta, the company receives enquiries not just from different parts of India, but the US, Canada, the UK, Singapore and Dubai as well.

“We offer an e-wallet for customers. They can recharge it and then speak to an astrologer. We have more than 125 astrologers on our panel,” Gupta adds. “We charge on the basis of the duration of the session. Customers have an option to end the session at any time or else it ends automatically when they run out of balance.”

The company banks on multiple monetisation models. In addition to charging a customer for every session, AstroTalk also allows users to get a detailed report from the astrologer for a charge. Additionally, users can get online puja (offering) performed, or buy gemstone, Rudraksha, Yantra etc.

Gupta reveals that since inception, AstroTalk has had many interesting customer stories. “We had a customer in India, who asked us when can he change his job. Our astrologer told him that he will be working on a foreign land after three months and will be earning quite well. But he was unconvinced, since he had no contacts outside India and has not applied in a foreign company,” Gupta reveals.

Also Read: This Bangalore-based startup has built an on-demand marketplace for spiritual gurus

“So, he left a very bad review of the astrologer and even complained to our support team. We then gave him a complimentary second opinion from another astrologer, who also predicted on the same lines. He got frustrated and left a ‘one star’ review on the app and said we are fake. We were disappointed to lose a customer. But after four months, he updated his review and told us that he was messaging from the UAE. He also sent a personal gift to the astrologer. Since then he is our regular customer,” Gupta smiles.

Well, Can AstroTalk also predict whether an entrepreneur/startup would be successful or not? And what do astrologers say about the success chances of AstroTalk?

“That’s an interesting question. When we started AstroTalk, we were told that the period till October 2018 would be tough. As he predicted, we went through a lot of ups and downs till July 2018 and our numbers were stagnant. However, in August 2018 (instead of Oct 2018), we achieved the product market fit and started scaling up. We have been growing 25 per cent month-on-month since then. As per Astrologer, AstroTalk would see an exponential growth when Ketu Antardasha starts in Rahu Dasha after April 2019. Rahu supports online business and Ketu supports spirituality,” he concluded.

(Disclaimer: Neither e27 nor this writer doesn’t believe in/promote astrology).

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