Singapore to ban e-scooters from footpaths – Channel News Asia

Singapore’s Land Transportation Authority (LTA) announced that it will ban e-scooters from footpaths in the country starting from November 5, Channel News Asia reported.

The use of such devices will be allowed on cycling paths and park connector networks, and there will be an advisory period until December 31.

Food delivery services in Singapore such as Deliveroo and Foodpanda are known to use e-scooters to deliver customers’ food.

Responding to this issue, Senior Minister of State for Transport Lam Pin Min stated that the regulation is not a complete ban on e-scooters and that LTA will work with such companies to help their riders switch to motorcycles or bicycles instead.

Grab, which services such as GrabWheels and GrabFood commonly use e-scooters, has issued a statement.

The company said that it plans to “engage in further dialogue” with the government for the possibility of riders who had displayed “responsible riding behaviours” to be given the option to continue on using e-scooters “under certain conditions.”

It will also reach out to all affected riders by end of this week.

Specifically on GrabWheels, Grab said that:

“With the new direction, GrabWheels will also commence measures to suspend its shared ePMD service progressively from November 5, 2019. All existing ride-plans will be refunded in the next 30 days to users’ credit cards. Grab remains committed to serving Singapore and will explore other ways to serve our users with alternative active mobility options.

GrabWheels has been growing our shared e-scooter service in Southeast Asia, with a focus on Indonesia. Our service in Indonesia has seen six-times growth in number of rides over the last three months, and we remain committed to expanding the service to the rest of the region.”

Singapore-based spacetech startup Aliena raises US$1M – Dealstreet Asia

Singapore-based space tech startup Aliena raises US$1.5 million (US$1 million) in a funding round led by Cap Vista Private Ltd, Dealstreet Asia reported.

Aliena designs low power propulsion systems for satellites to perform advanced manoeuvres in space. According to Aliena CEO and Co-Founder Mark Lim, this allows for more complex operations to be performed onboard smaller satellites.

Also Read: E-scooter-sharing startup Popscoot pivots to FOUND, now gamifies your daily commute and rewards you for it

Didi Chuxing in talks to enter the Philippines – The Philippine Daily Inquirer

Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing is in talks with U-Hop Transportation Network Vehicle System Inc. (U-Hop) for a partnership to enter the Philippines, The Philippines Inquirer reported.

Politician Luis “Chavit” Singson, who owns U-Hop, confirmed the talks and said that the partnership aims to “break the monopoly of Grab” in the market.

Officials from Didi and the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) did not immediately responded to request for comments on Thursday.

U-Hop itself is one of the companies with licenses to operate a ride-hailing service in the Philippines.

TikTok declined to testify at US congressional hearing on risks to American consumers – SCMP

ByteDance’s TikTok has declined to testify at a congressional hearing scheduled by Republican Senator Josh Hawley to discuss its business and risks to American consumers, South China Morning Post reported.

“We appreciate Sen. Hawley’s invitation. Unfortunately, on short notice, we were unable to provide a witness who would be able to contribute to a substantive discussion,” a ByteDance spokesperson wrote.

In addition to TikTok, Apple was also invited to testify and had also declined the invitation.

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I recently got the chance to chat with an old industry contact of mine who now manages projects for a local business solutions firm. It was actually quite surprising to see him online on social media in the middle of the workday.

During our chat, he casually mentioned the reason — their internal network was down due to some incident. Their IT team was taking quite a while trying to figure out what went wrong and they pretty much had to twiddle their thumbs until they’d be back up and running.

I asked if they already use security information and event management or SIEM tools which should help them zero in on the possible causes of the issue. Proper log collection, management, and analysis could easily reveal all events, activities, and errors across computing devices and network appliances.

However, manually checking event managers and logs is tedious and inefficient. SIEM makes the process more efficient and automatic. Today, ArcSight, Splunk, and SolarWinds are just among the leading names in the segment.

Some SIEM tools that leverage machine learning now even boast of predictive capabilities that can readily notify or warn IT teams of potential issues before they even happen. I was hoping that a tech-related organization such as theirs should be leveraging such tools.

Unfortunately, this was not the case at my friend’s firm. With plenty of frustration in his language, he replied that their IT team actually looked like a pair of headless chickens inside their server room fiddling with racks and appliances trying to find the cause. Not even once did he see them even bring up Windows’ Event Viewer.

Also Read: Why SEA governments should adopt blockchain

This didn’t really come as a surprise. It isn’t uncommon for IT staff of smaller organizations on this side of the globe to serve more as computer and network repair technicians. And this is despite modern business wisdom dictating that IT departments should now cover a wider set of technical skills including (but not limited to) incident mitigation and response, cybersecurity, and governance. The skills gap between developers and IT staff can cause friction between the two teams.

Team synergy concerns aside, what’s more concerning is that businesses continue to fall short in adopting modern security measures.

SIEM tools have been quite valuable in helping IT teams track issues within their networks but they’ve become a huge thing in the US and in Europe due to the emergence of laws and regulations that required compliance from companies. Regulations like the GDPR have provisions that heavily penalize organizations that fail to disclose security incidences. As such, solutions providers swooped in to fill the need for tools that comprehensively keep tabs of everything that happens within an organization’s IT infrastructure.

SEA hasn’t generated as much buzz concerning the enforcement of data privacy though there have been some efforts to promote data privacy and security in the region. The Philippines has had data privacy signed into law even back in 2012 but it’s only recently that the government made real effort to spread awareness and enforcing the law. Recently, its privacy commission cracked down on online lenders that resort to debt shaming clients through their clients’ mobile phone contacts.

Other countries still appear to be trying to make sense of data privacy as well. Malaysia has the Personal Data Protection Act since 2010 but it has been criticized for its lack of provisions for cross-border data processing and online data. Indonesia has yet to establish similar stringent regulations.

Also Read:  Southeast Asia emerges as leader in conversational commerce; Thailand, Vietnam most advanced in adoption

And despite the presence of these regulations, companies, especially smaller enterprises still, have yet to warm up to investing more in their cybersecurity. Significant breaches in the SEA region have already been reported over the past years. Even the region’s tech leader, Singapore, was revealed to be vulnerable after suffering breaches that affected its citizen’s healthcare and identity data in separate incidences.

Most small businesses I have had discussions with concerning IT adoption share that they only allocate very meagre resources and attention to cybersecurity. IT security often consisted of free antiviruses installed on individual workstations. It’s rare to encounter companies to make use of measures that secure networks as a whole. Not everyone is even aware of good security practices. For instance, it’s still common to see them use Yahoo Mail despite calls by experts for users to ditch the service after the massive breach that affected the company a few years back.

Granted that many of these businesses aren’t necessarily involved in tech or software development. But it can be worrying to encounter even tech-related businesses, though relatively small, not to have what are now considered essential security tools like SIEM solutions.

SIEM tools are capable of tracking all activities across the network and even individual endpoints and devices. They can also be used to log and analyze access attempts and malicious traffic. So, should a breach or security incident should happen, companies will be able to accurately determine the vector of attack and the scope of the breach. On a compliance standpoint, such information should provide organizations with some legal cover in the event that disclosure must be made.

But even without the threat of penalties and legal action, SIEM tools can greatly benefit its adopters. IT teams can use them to capably diagnose root causes of issues that bog down networks thereby hastening resolution and minimizing downtime. Many SIEM providers now also offer their solutions as cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings making them more affordable and easier to integrate. Open source SIEM tools are also available for those with ample technical know-how.

This said SIEM tools are just a few of the many solutions modern enterprises must adopt to comprehensively protect their infrastructures and prevent cyberattacks and security breaches that seek to compromise their security.

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It’s generally accepted by the start-up that it’s easy to take ideas that have worked in developed markets and reproduce them in developing markets.

Cultural nuances, differences in propensity to spend at both the personal and corporate level, as well as differing opportunity sets,  mean that it’s rarely as easy as stencilling a solution onto Asia inc.

Companies that are looking to expand or replicate themselves in Asia need to be mindful that each market is inherently different. Solutions that work in one market won’t work in another. Lacking a strong rule of law, companies and consumers are less likely to “take a chance” on an emerging brand and will tend to rely on established brands.

Also Read:4 ways corporates can work better with Chinese startups

Further, the opportunity sets can differ significantly as the cost of labour in Asia can be negligible when compared to developed markets. This can be leveraged, creating more opportunity for local populations and allows different business opportunities to emerge in developing Asian markets than would be possible in developed markets.

Cultural nuances

It’s easy to be complacent if you’re taking models that have worked in largely homogenous developed markets like the US or Europe and then try to apply that model to Asia.

Laws and cultures may be more-or-less similar across the EU, which has a population of 341m, or all of the United States of America, which has a population of 372m. This isn’t necessarily the case with Southeast Asia, which has a population of 641m — looks like a bigger market, but it is it?

Commonly, I see start-up decks that extrapolate the population to insinuate that the revenue opportunities could be larger in SEA than they are in the other developed markets. SEA is an agglomeration of thousands of islands and subsets of populations, some of which are ideologically opposed to others. The strategies that work in one market won’t necessarily work in another.

In one of the most egregious cultural faux pas that I’ve heard of, one company that had offices across the region appointed a new general manager. The general manager decided that there was no place for pictures of the King in the Thailand offices.

Anyone who has been to Thailand would have noted the pictures of the beloved King in restaurants, bars and any other establishment. There was a significant decline in company morale which almost led to an internal mutiny. This is an example of a cultural nuance that could only be understood by spending a bit of time on the ground and talking to people.

Don’t let the numbers fool you. While it’s large in aggregate, SEA is composed of a number of small and heterogeneous markets. Companies need to be aware of the cultural differences and adapt their strategies accordingly.

Propensity to spend

Brands and relationships are important in developing markets, maybe more so than in developed markets. In developed markets, people are able to rely on the rule of law and consumer rights regulations. These facilities are less prevalent in emerging Asia. As a result, it can take a lot of time and capital to build up the credibility to get consumers or companies to trust an emerging brand.

In Singapore, there’s the concept of Kiasu, which could be interpreted as being afraid of losing in a relative sense to another person. This means that people will want to have what someone else has but they would be less willing to take a risk on a new and unknown product — because there’s no one to be jealous of. This is a hurdle that new brands need to conquer to be successful in one of the more developing markets in Asia.

Further, Go-Jek, which went from a “transport app” to an “everything app” knew early on that they needed to be focused on cash usage because credit card penetration is around 1 per cent.

They knew that transactions were typically going to be small ticket items and built out their platform around that, taking advantage of the differing incomes in the country according to the propensity to spend.

The things that high-earning time-strapped employees in developed markets are willing to spend money on don’t necessarily translate to countries where subsiding is more important than self-actualisation.

Opportunity sets

The opportunity sets that are available in each geography are markedly different. Clusters and ecosystems naturally form around existing players. It makes sense that a company could exist to supply tools to cloud providers improving efficiency or reducing costs if it’s surrounded by dozens of companies that can pay for the services as well as help to iterate the product. Proximity matters. This is a reason that Silicon Valley has an edge as the tech hub of America.

The opportunity sets in Asia are different. Different opportunities = different solutions. One example of this is Sampingan, an Indonesian-based start-up that helps companies scale by connecting them to a network of trained freelance agents who perform tasks on a pay-per-performance basis.

This takes advantage of the personal nature of business in Asia (people talking to people c.f. digital advertising) as well as the large casual workforce and the lower cost of living (relative to developed countries). This is an opportunity that likely wouldn’t be exploited in other developed markets.

Summing Up

Entrepreneurs in Asia that are able to find solutions in an environment where it’s difficult to get consumers to part with their cash are more likely to be successful in developed markets. Once a company has ground it out in an untrusting market, it will be easier for them to operate in developed markets with trusted brands already on their roster.

Leaders that are able to spot the opportunities in small fragmented markets won’t have any issues in driving a wedge into the larger opportunities in developed markets.

If you’re building a business in Asia that could scale more broadly, please reach out!

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Of all the later stage funding rounds that we covered in October, we noticed that there were several names that kept on coming back.

Apart from Indonesian unicorns such as gojek and Bukalapak, who are fundraising for an ongoing round, we also saw regional power players such as ZEN Rooms.

There were also some surprises from companies that we had not heard in a while such as TouchTen.

Check out the complete list of later stage funding rounds in October:

Mobikon
Funding: US$12.5 million in Series B
Investor(s): Binny Bansal (lead)

Singapore-based F&B customer engagement startup Mobikon will use the funding to further dominate the market share in its existing geographies and to establish a strong foothold in Australia and Indonesia.

Scommerce
Funding: Undisclosed
Investor(s): Temasek

Vietnamese logistics service provider Scommerce will use the funding to accelerate the nationwide expansion of its two business units.

Also Read: 5 ways in which crowdfunding can help your start-up grow

gojek
Funding: US$50 million
Investor(s): Cool Japan Fund

Cool Japan will work with Gojek to spread Japanese culture in Indonesia through both the platform’s food delivery and video streaming services.

Zenius
Funding: US$20 million
Investor(s): Northstar Group

The funding round could potentially be the first external funding that Indonesian edutech startup Zenius has raised.

Curiox
Funding: US$15 million
Investor(s): KB Investment, Dayli Partners, Quad Investment Management, IMM Investment, SV Investment Partners, and HB Investment

With the funding announcement, Curiox revealed plans to pursue an IPO on the Korean stock exchange KOSDAQ in the next 36 months.

Aerodyne
Funding: US$30 million in Series B
Investor(s): InterVest/Kejora Ventures, VentureTECH, Gobi Partners, and 500 Startups

Aerodyne Group, a drone-based managed solutions provider in Malaysia, plans to use the funding to undertake select M&As, further invest in R&D and technology, hire talent globally and continue to expand into its key global markets.

Also Read: Vietnamese healthcare startup Med247 gets seed funding from KK Fund, broadens users coverage

Alodokter
Funding: US$33 million in Series C
Investor(s): Softbank Ventures Asia, Golden Gate Ventures, Philips, Heritas Capital, Hera Capital, and Dayli Partners

The Indonesian healthtech startup will use the funding to expand the company’s network with hospitals and to develop an insurance service.

ZEN Rooms
Funding: Undisclosed
Investor(s): Yanolja, Access Ventures

ZEN Rooms and Yanolja will work to deploy automation technology to enhance customer experience and further reduce budget hotels’ operating costs.

TouchTen
Funding: Undisclosed
Investor(s): Prasetia Dwidharma, Sheila Tiwan, Indra Leonardi, CUEBIC

With the new funding, TouchTen aims to boost its efforts to address the often-ignored women gamers market.

Bukalapak
Funding: Undisclosed
Investor(s): Shinhan Financial Group, Emtek Group

Though the value of the company’s investment was undisclosed, a press statement by Shinhan GIB said that the close has brought Bukalapak’s valuation to surpass US$2.5 billion.

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The e27 Startup Database connects the community to the hottest internet companies in Asia. We encourage startups to visit their profile and regularly update their information.

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The Crewdible team

The e27 Community has voted –and the winner for October’s Startup of the Month is Indonesian micro warehousing platform Crewdible!

Startup of the Month is a fun initiative that gets our community on Telegram to vote for the startup that has made notable achievement or milestone during the month.

Crewdible stole our attention with its US$1.5 million pre-Series A announcement led by Global Founders Capital (GFC) recently.

The company helps small, individual online sellers on social media and e-commerce platforms by turning empty facilities (houses, offices, and warehouses) into a warehouse for their inventories.

Its history started in 2015 when founder Dhana Galindra ran a sporting brand called Lean. As his business grows, Galindra began partnering with staffs from logistics companies, paying them a commission for storing Lean’s inventories in their houses.

This system enables the business to grow without renting a specialised warehouse or hiring dedicated staff, and the founder eventually developed a mobile app and turned it into a separate business.

Congratulations to the winner!

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While there may be turbulent waters ahead, Singapore’s leaders have reason to to believe better days lay ahead

For the most part, the world’s mature economies are looking ahead to the 2020s with some combination of trepidation and cautious optimism.

The issues faced by large mature economies such as the United States and the Eurozone are quite different from those faced by smaller economies, which by necessity must look abroad for human and fiscal capital.

Singapore offers a clear case study in the challenges and opportunities that smaller economies are likely to encounter in the decade ahead. With the caveat that we cannot know for sure what the future may hold, what can this city-state of some 5.6 million souls expect between now and 2030?

Silicon Valley, Straitside?

On an April visit to the United States, Singapore Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat told The Straits Times and other Singapore-based news organizations that fundamental transformation is necessary to maintain the competitiveness of the city-state’s economy in the years to come.

“I think we must position Singapore as a global Asian node of technology innovation and enterprise,” Heng said.

Speaking from Singapore’s Bridge Forum, in San Francisco, Heng nodded to the successes of America’s Silicon Valley, the ideal upon which most global innovation hubs model themselves.

Heng noted that the Valley’s innovators recognize the disruptive potential of technology, marveling at the “speed and scale at which they are taking this challenge very seriously.” To compete, he added, Singapore’s government and business community “must invest a lot of time and resources.”

Diversity as a Strength

Heng also marveled at the diversity of background and thought that characterizes Silicon Valley’s most successful enterprises.

While Singapore is known for a diverse cohort of Asia Pacific based financial services firms and an education system renowned for producing top-shelf finance graduates, Heng indicated that the city-state’s economy has room for improvement. A small city-state, said Heng, must necessarily look beyond its borders for talent.

Also Read: Aiming at deep tech startups, SGInnovate partners with five new co-investors

“That is another major area we need to look at — how we can grow this talent pool,” he remarked.

The Benefits of Limited Bureaucracy

Singapore does have one significant strength: a unified government with minimal bureaucracy and a streamlined framework for making and implementing policy decisions. This is an important contrast with representative governments in larger mature economies (such as the United States and the United Kingdom) as well as emerging economies (such as India).

Singapore’s low-friction government alleviates a perennial concern for central bank directors: keeping monetary policy responsive amid macroeconomic uncertainty.

“If there is a need for us to use counter cyclical monetary and fiscal policy to manage [a global economic slowdown], we will,” Heng told The Straits times.

The Elephants in the Room

However, central bank policy only goes so far. Singaporean decision-makers like Heng watch developments abroad with some trepidation.

A Bloomberg report on an earlier Heng trip makes clear that the ongoing U.S.-China trade dispute is a source of significant concern for Singapore and other ASEAN economies. So too is the Brexit saga, which remains far from resolution.

Reclaiming the Mantle of Globalization

Ultimately, notes Heng in conversation with the South China Morning Post, Singapore is in a strong position to prosper in an increasingly globalized world — provided it can demonstrate its relevance and appeal to a wide range of international businesses, not just the highly regarded finance firms that remain its core strength.

That includes redoubling incentives to attract new investment and prevent high-profile departures, such as the recent closure of an IBM technology plant. That plant’s closure was partially responsible for Singapore’s cratering electronics exports, a worrying sign in a traditionally strong sector.

“We must expect there will be changes in how companies relocate their operations in different parts of the world,” Heng said, according to the South China Morning Post. “For Singapore, as a small open economy, we must be prepared for changes in the global environment,” he added.

A Dash of Optimism, a Pinch of Caution

It’s clear that Singapore’s government and business community will contend with a host of challenges in the years to come.

In some instances, notably the long-running trade dispute between China and the United States, their ability to directly influence outcomes will be limited. Instead, they’ll need to act strategically, with an eye to minimizing collateral damage and finding silver linings in sub-optimal circumstances.

Also Read: An open letter to the Almost But Never Quite There

In other instances, such as talent acquisition and retention, Singaporean leadership will have a far stronger hand. If Heng’s San Francisco comments are any indication, the city-state’s public and private decision-makers understand what needs to be done to shore up its global competitiveness and position its economy for growth in the years and decades ahead.

That’s not to say any of this will be easy. But, at minimum, it’s encouraging that a consensus appears to be forming around a way forward. The same can’t be said for some other mature economies.

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Airalo Co-founders Duran Akçaylier and Ahmet Bahadir Ozdemir (R)

About three years ago, serial entrepreneur Ahmet Bahadir Ozdemir left his home country Turkey to find a more stable ecosystem that could genuinely support entrepreneurship. His hunt landed him in Singapore, where he decided to set up his third venture.

The startup, Airalo, which intends to disrupt the global telecom industry, has already become a darling of the VCs in town.

Airalo, a combination of the words ‘Air’ and ‘Alo’ (which means ‘hello’ in many parts of the world), is an eSIM store for travellers to access over 100 eSIMs at affordable, local rates. What this essentially means is that if you are on a foreign trip, you no longer need to go through the hassles of buying local physical SIM cards at the airport and installing it, or carry multiple cards — no matter where you are in the world.

“As travellers ourselves, we’ve faced the pains of not finding WiFi or losing the SIM card we carefully taped to the back of our phone and the horror of coming home to an unexpected roaming bill,” Ozdemir tells e27.

“We believe that in the modern world, connectivity and freedom should be accessible to all. Airalo is here to take away the pains and stress of researching and seeking out the best roaming deal,” he explains.

Airalo, incubated at the Antler startup generator in Singapore, was started early this year by Ozdemir and his friend and fellow Turk, Duran Akçaylier.

Also Read: Meet the 8 Southeast Asian startups who will receive US$1-2M each from Sequoia’s Surge programme

With a background in shipping and telecommunications, Ozdemir has in the past built two startups — Wossco, a Foodpanda for ship supplies, and Sim4Crew, a global mobile virtual network operator for sailors. Akçaylier has experience in developing web applications and building and managing development teams in both India and Turkey.

Ozdemir says he was confident of disrupting the telecom industry the moment Airalo was introduced to the market. “I have been in the telecom industry for the last three years and have dealt with physical SIM cards. When we introduced the eSIM technology, it was evident for me that this would disrupt the logistics of SIM cards, similar to how Netflix disrupted CDs and DVDs. We realise the world would need a Netflix for connectivity.”

How it works

Getting and installing an eSIM is simple: go to the Airalo.com site, or download its mobile app (Android and iOS ), choose your travel destination and purchase a local eSIM QR code for that country. Then you scan that QR code using your eSIM-compatible device, and the eSIM gets directly installed to the device.

(As of September 2019, the list of eSIM-compatible devices are iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 11 Pro Max, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, Nuu Mobile X5, Google Pixel 3 & 3XL, Google Pixel 4, Windows 10 PCs, Lenovo Yoga 630, HP Spectre Folio, iPad Air (3rd Generation), iPad Pro (3rd Generation), iPad Mini (5th Generation), and Gemini PDA).

To scan the QR code, go to ‘Settings’ of your device, tap ‘Cellular/Mobile’ and ‘Add Cellular/Mobile Plan’. Scan the QR Code and enter the 4-digit confirmation code when prompted.

Now, if you are experiencing issues scanning the QR code or receiving it, you can enter the code manually.

While you can have 15-20 eSIM plans, only one can be activated at a time. Switching between the cards is easy, and you can manage this using your device’s mobile/cellular settings.

At present, Airalo covers over 160 countries, including France, the US, Spain, China, Italy, Turkey, the UK, Germany, Mexico, Thailand, Hong Kong, Greece, Canada, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia. For this, the company has a partnership with as many local telecom operators around the world.

While opportunities are abundant, the startup is facing some challenges as the concept is still nascent. Continues Ozdemir: “The whole thing is very new. Plus, there are currently only 150 million devices in the market that are eSIM-capable. Educating the consumer is another challenge since not many people know that they are holding a magical device that can install a local digital eSIM in a couple of seconds.”

Getting a fresh ‘Surge’

Airalo is among the eight startups selected for the second edition of Surge, a rapid-scale programme launched this year by Sequoia India for early-stage startups in India and Southeast Asia.

Airalo’s journey to Surge was eventful. “After Antler’s Demo Day, we received a significant amount of investment interest from every VC in town. At that time, Sequoia was speaking to the companies from Antler’s cohort. Their analysts met with us, too.

Also Read: How to think and grow rich like Elon Musk

Strangely, we did not hear anything from Sequoia for ten days. I was a bit surprised because our project was attractive to VCs. I had this gut feeling and decided to approach the Sequoia team directly. They invited me to their office. They loved our idea, and we got into Surge in 20 minutes,” Ozdemir recounts the story.

As part of the programme, the startup raised US$1.75 million in seed funding, led by Surge with participation from Antler.

“A big reason for choosing Sequoia was their approach. While most VCs would adopt a structural approach to collaboration, Sequoia would go the extra mile to address our concerns and challenges,” he says. “As a startup founder, I appreciate the extent they would go to help us, including the phone calls at 2 in the morning.”

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Meetings with your employees aren’t an uncommon occurrence. You might call everyone together to discuss important aspects of your business, go over plans, or assign jobs. When was the last time you spent time with your employees one on one, though?

However, it is just as important to have on – on one meeting too and make it a point to have it regularly. Here’s why.

Build better relationships with your employees

Meeting with your employees one on one aids in building a stronger relationship with your team. During your meetings, you get the opportunity to know each of your employees as individuals. While work is an important topic during your meetings, you don’t have to be so formal. You can learn what they’re good at, what they like to do, and what they might not like to do.

Also Read: Google’s best leaders use this simple tool to show care and concern for their employees

A good leader cares about more than just the project at hand. By expressing a genuine interest in each of your employees, you let them know that you truly care. You let them know that you value them and what they have to say.

Improve office productivity

It’s a common misconception that taking the time out of your day to meet with your employees individually is detrimental to your productivity. After all, you have to take each person away from their tasks to speak with them.

The truth, however, is that regular one on one meetings can help to improve the productivity of your team.

By holding these meetings, you don’t have to take the time to hunt down your employees during the workday or send out several emails to get important information. These tasks usually take more time out of your day than having a regular meeting with each of your employees.

Create a routine with your employees

One on one meetings helps to create a routine with your employees where you take the time to discuss updates, employee concerns, updates, obstacles, and more. For the best results, they should be made a regular part of your work routine.

Whether you hold them once a week or once a month, if you hold them in your office or you reserve Los Angeles meeting rooms, regular meetings can boost productivity, morale, and accountability.

Provide and receive feedback

During group meetings, you can give your employees some feedback. However, it’s difficult to address each employee individually during these types of meetings.

Also Read: 6 strategies to give valuable feedback that sticks

At the same time, your employees may not feel comfortable bringing up their concerns in front of others. One on one meetings provides the perfect opportunity for you to talk to each employee.

You can talk about their strengths and weaknesses and provide them with tips on how to improve. It also gives your employees a chance to freely express their concerns. They may also be more likely to share ideas that they might not have felt comfortable sharing in a group meeting.

Reduce employee turnover

There are several reasons why employees leave jobs. Some of these reasons include poor management and a lack of communication. One on one meetings can greatly improve communication between you and your employees.

These meetings also allow you to get to know your employees and allow them to get to know you. As a result, you can help to increase employee engagement and boost morale. You also help to reduce employee turnover. When your employees are loyal, they are much less likely to leave.

Regularly scheduled one on one meetings with your employees is crucial for the success of your business. Choose a frequency that works best for your office. Get yourself in the right mindset.

It can be helpful to keep the meetings informal. When you meet with your employees regularly, you can help to boost morale and improve the productivity of your business. This can make you and your employees happier people.

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Asking which industries are going to be the most impacted by AI in the coming years is like someone in the 80s asking which industries are going to be the most impacted by computer chips and software.

In 1980, it was possible to see that computers were going to revolutionise retail and medicine, but impossible to forecast the advent of Amazon or Taobao.

Predicting the influence that AI will come to possess in the future is harder than ever, due to the exponential nature of change in an era of unprecedented connectivity. The only thing clear is that AI and its associated technologies will continue to advance.

In Southeast Asia alone, the adoption of AI technologies stood at 14 per cent in 2018, a marked increase from the 8 per cent in the previous year.

The use of AI will only increase as organisations turn to it to plug skill gaps created by the digital transformation of traditional industries. This is set against the backdrop of a potential talent deficit of 47 million workers across Asia Pacific by 2030.

As AI becomes mainstream, its capabilities will open up to more general uses — Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Once this happens, more of our tasks will be performed optimally with regards to efficiency and economically.

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Before we get there, we must acknowledge that generally speaking, AI will not take over the human workforce all at once — it will not instantaneously eliminate jobs or job functions.

Instead, it will start by prompting businesses to reorganise their structures to best leverage the strengths it has to offer. In doing so, pieces of people’s jobs will be reallocated to AI, giving way to the creation of new roles and requiring humans to upskill themselves accordingly.

For instance, AI will first take on more routinised accounting work (such as calculations and backend processes, similar to intelligent adaptive Excel macros) while allowing accountants to handle strategic decision-making and customer interaction. Only with the emergence of AGI over time, will we see AI taking over these roles and by then, only a handful of humans will be needed to oversee the running of an organisation’s entire finance function.

When this happens, we would be living in the reality of the hyper-intelligent workplace, where humans will simply provide critical thinking and rely on the intuitive skillset of AI for increased productivity.

Using the case of biological lab testing as an example, equipment which are mostly already computerised will become more automated and intuitive. Lab robots will then start bridging the gaps between the lab equipment — be it carrying materials from one machine to the other, or keeping each equipment informed about their respective test subjects, parameters and results.

This weeds out the role of a lab technician gradually as it is replaced by an integrated lab robot system that takes verbal instructions directly from the scientist in charge of the lab. Eventually, the scientist’s role will mainly be to rubber-stamp the AI’s suggestions, knowing that what he needs from the AI, has been effectively executed.

Of course, this is not to say that there will be a widespread of automation within all industries. While generic graphic designs can now be done with AI design programs, the conceptualisation of deeply creative new images and visual themes will remain largely in the domain of humans, especially on highly subjective matters which require a highly nuanced understanding of consumer taste and preference.

In general, one may say that among the last job roles to be eliminated will be those relying heavily on novel creativity, strategic decision-making, critical thinking and physical manipulations in life-or-death situations.

Yet, among these roles, the routine and labour-intensive tasks will most likely be automated first as that is where most cost-savings will be obtained. To put into context – there is more money to be saved by autonomous car driving than helicopter piloting, and more to be saved by automating medical research than particle physics research.

In my view, the reduction of the need for humans to work for a living should be massively positive. In an ideal world, that would free up people’s time to pursue more social, artistic, intellectual and spiritual endeavours.

Imagine living in a society where through the work achieved by technology, the psychology of defining one’s importance, status and identity no longer relies on one’s career or income.

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While that is almost sure to be a rocky road given the realities of geopolitical issues and income inequality, projects such as the decentralised AI movement led by SingularityNET aims to smoothen the path towards it in a democratic and participatory way.

If a substantial portion of the world’s AI brainpower is running on decentralised networks that are owned and controlled by their participants, it is more likely that the replacement of human labour with AI will unfold in a way that is beneficial for a large percentage of humanity.

When that happens, we know that the AI revolution has reached the point of full success.

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Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

For more on how AI can contribute towards a hyper-intelligent workplace and a possibly post-work society, you can join me on a panel titled ‘Let’s Get Real About the Magic of AI and its Benefits to the Society’ at ConnecTechAsia2019 Summit, Day 1, 18 June at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore.

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