We reached out to Chit Hnin Pwint Wai to talk about her company, Myhealthcare, a mobile-based health consultancy and health checkup booking in Myanmar

After winning Startup of the Year last year in ASIAN Rice Bowl Startup Awards in Malaysia, the name Myhealthcare started to gain traction in health tech industry, and that’s not without a reason. Enter Chit Hnin Pwint Wai, who’s an aid of women reproductive issue, and took the matter seriously to start a company.

“In Myanmar, there is a lack of reproductive health access directly to the expertise. Burmese (Myanmar) women are too shy to discuss issues about contraceptives with family members, friends, and even doctors face to face. They don’t want to go to the hospitals for sexual health problems due to fear of being stigmatised,” said Chit.

Also Read: Go-Jek acquires majority stake in Philippines’s blockchain fintech company Coins.ph

Chit then shared her knowledge about the staggering numbers that has taken its toll among Burmese women and overall health scene in Myanmar.

“The statistics show that 282 women die in every 100,000 live births. It’s all most probably because they don’t have the right health knowledge. On top of that, only 1.33 healthcare worker (or 0.6 doctor) is out there to look after every 1,000 people in Myanmar,” she began with the statistics.

Shyness about reproductive issue can no longer be tolerated, and Myhealthcare, looking at the problems in the bigger scope, also provides the platform to tackle the shortage of skilled health labor in Myanmar.

M-health solution

In May 2016, The Myanmar Times revealed that approximately 43.72 million SIM cards have been sold in the country, signified the high mobile penetration the country had had since the 2014’s revolution. So building the mobile-based platform is something that made sense.

“We built the mobile health platform so the users can access confidential counseling as well as to reduce delay in receiving appropriate care and improve preventive health knowledge. MyHealthcare app provides remote medical help for every citizen with the aim to save time, energy, and cost, resulting in greater efficiency,” Chit added.

Since Myhealthcare is built on mobile apps, the health space it manages to cover isn’t limited to healthcare assistance through online connection, but also health education. The education side on its own is an untapped potential to create awareness around reproductive health issues.

As for the general health practice, Chit added that the health education that the company provides aimed at decreasing the workload at public hospitals, thereby cutting national
healthcare expenditure.

Asking health-related questions

The company’s platform works with a simple approach of Q&A. Like many others health tech players, it would be the easiest way to connect doctors and patients and one way that has been proven to be working before.

With Myhealthcare, Chit explained that patients can ask health-related questions that are answered by doctors on their specialties via chatting, voice messages/voice calls, video message and video call. Information on the nearest hospitals and doctors as well as its reviews are also available with health articles.

In terms of patient’s confidentiality, Myhealthcare ensures that no other personal identities apart from age, gender, and township are shared.

Since the healthtech space is a crowded one, it’s hard to differentiate and offer something that’s entirely unique and needed. Bringing ‘Reliability, Safety, Confidentiality’ as the service it’s committed to give its users still needs a deal breaker that can convince people to be a regular user.

“The patients can get medical help from doctors round the clock,” Chit mentioned about the convenience Myhealthcare provides with the direct chatting system it has, which also becomes its strength

A competition frontrunner

In the case of Burmese startups, recognitions are often a part of immersing your business into the eye of the public. Since 2014’s revolution, businesses and ideas on the ground have taken another level in Myanmar, and so competition for the scenes become a regular thing.

As for Myhealthtech, the company first secured funding for US$40,000 in total right after they participated in Innovation Marketplace in 2017. The competition was hosted by USAID,
FHI360, and Phandeeyar.

The company was also the winners of Myanmar Women’s Social Business Contest and was able to take a part in the Women’s Social Entrepreneurship Conference in Tokyo, Japan, where they pitched their company.

As a woman-led startup, this is right up the company’s alley since they also won Women-led Start-up Pitch Contest organized by Women’s Forum Singapore.

What lies ahead

With 7,600 users on the platform, Chit said that the company has recorded a total of 2,400 direct consultation through the platform. The most popular feature according to their insight is Frequently Asked Questions, and some of their health articles.

“In the near future, we plan to improve the platform to be able to do e-Prescription and medicine delivery,” said Chit.

Alongside Chit Moe Pwint Wai as the COO, there are two more co-founders on board contributing their expertises: Chit Hnin Pwint Wai, who’s the CEO and also the director of Global New Wave Technology, specialising in Business Development, and Swam Saung Oo, who’s the CMO that brought his experience as a founder of the first mHealth social enterprise in Myanmar in early 2015, which operated 24/7 Healthcare Call Center partnered with Semi-Government MPT and Health Portal (www.healthcare.com.mm).

Chit closed up the conversation by sharing her opinion on the current health tech scene in Myanmar.

“It keeps on evolving, following the political and administrative system and roles in this country. The Ministry of Health remains the major provider of comprehensive health care, with the mix of public and private system both in the financing and provision.”

Also Read: FAQ: Paid-up capital and incorporating in Singapore

“Universal health coverage in Myanmar in the immediate future will be very challenging as a result of the low health service coverage, high financial risk, and inequalities in access to care. Thus, I believe health service coverage and financial risk protection for vulnerable, disadvantaged populations should be prioritised,” she ended.
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Image Credit: Myhealthcare

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The new e-hailing company manages to pull out a total of RM300,000 (US$73,000) on crowdfunding

EaziCar, a Malaysia-based e-hailing company announces that it has raised RM300,000 (US$73,000) equity crowdfunding using Ata Plus platform.

With the funding, the company plans to create a ride-hailing experience that’s centered around the drivers and passengers motivation and loyalty, which the company believes to be the future of e-hailing market. The company will further focus on marketing initiatives and product development.

Also Read: Vietnamese e-wallet service MoMo raises Series C funding led by Warburg Pincus

EaziCar offers peer-to-peer e-hailing services via mobile app and it aims to address drivers and passengers loyalty via both benefits and incentives.

As of January 2019, EaziCar said that it has signed 428 drivers on their platform and have since launched its mobile apps.

What differentiates EaziCar is that it gives drivers the flexibility and benefits like just a one-time registration to cover the region. EaziCar also takes pride in the control-free platforms that will not require its drivers to hit a certain quota of trips to be incentivised.

In addition to a more laid-back regulations for drivers, eligible drivers of EaziCar are also provided with medical benefits to ensure their basic necessities are covered.

From passengers side, EaziCar will offer incentives to its passengers with a cash reward system to merit passengers instead of using points. EaziCar’s long-term rebates offer passengers an additional 5 per cent for each reload on their Eazi Pay account.

Also Read: What I learned about procrastination while scaling my startup to 4.2M users

“Our focus is in ensuring the satisfaction of our drivers by providing attractive benefits, as well as taking preemptive measures in the safety and convenience of our passengers, we do believe we have an edge from our competitors.” says Alex Teow Boon Heong, Co-Founder and CEO of EaziCar.

“We are optimistic in EaziCar’s impact in the future growth of the industry, notably in the wellbeing in their passengers as well as their drivers,” said Kyri Andreou, co-founder and director of Ata Plus.
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There is an underlying science to listening that may just catapult your digital marketing initiatives to success

Nobody can deny the importance of Social Media Listening as a marketing tool. As a refresher, listening is a way of collecting and analysing the chatter surrounding your brand through tracking mentions about you or your peripherals. As businesses get right into social media in large, escalating quantities, latest tools and the number of experts in the field have also increased considerably. However, not everyone has managed to utilise listening to the best of its ability; when not dealing with the strategy with reproach, some become totally dependent on tools.

We don’t want you to be like them.

Simple as it may seem because of the gamut of tools available to you, it is actually really easy to butcher this otherwise effective strategy. However, there is an underlying science to listening that may just catapult your digital marketing initiatives to success.

We’ve gone through establishing the strategic benefits of listening for your brand, but let’s now discover five effective tips that can lead your listening endeavour to success.

1. Clarify Reasons for Listening

Social media listening concerns itself more about the analysis of data to complement strategy instead of providing immediate responses. Businesses should then remember to collect not just for the sake of collecting. You wouldn’t want data dump or to fill your data centers with information that doesn’t really give you anything. Our advice is to set a clear goal in mind for your social media listening endeavour. This could be a few or a combination of the following: monitoring reputation, generating leads, increasing brand awareness, leveraging on competitor data, etc.

It might help to ask yourself these questions when you brainstorm with your team:

• “How will listening influence the way we strategise for our brand?”
• “How will data from listening eventually influence our customers?”

2. Use Social Media Monitoring Tools

We mentioned that brands often butcher social listening, and this is because of their failure to initially set their values and goals right (for the audience and the brand).

Now, the internet is teeming with social listening tools that can answer most of the goals you defined for your brand. Just like any other digital tools, they conveniently sweep the internet to help you make informed decisions. They generate real-time information and even provide historical data to help you spot previous trends. Some even include sophisticated features that allow you to view activity in certain areas around the world.

You will never be short of tools to employ for your convenience as there’s one for every social media platform. You can check this list to see some of the best tools in the market today.

Some tools give leeway so you don’t feel forced into making premature commitments. They can offer free trials and demos so you can see what best fits the objective you set for your brand.

However, we advise you to be wary. While tools are proven to make monitoring more convenient, base your decision on the parameters you set: objective, budget, and the capability of your team to handle it.

Also read: Social influence is an essential part of doing business today, and you should engage customers whenever you can

3. Monitor Relevant Keywords

Keywords lie at the heart of social media listening. Initially, keywords guide audience by connecting them to their interests and showing options available to them. They work like connectors that the people use to find services and products that appeal to them the most. Brands, however, create and communicate their messages effectively to the audience by visiting frequently used keywords in social media.

Since the majority of the keywords are created by the market, businesses must consistently update their keyword list or the word combinations that they monitor. However, you must remember that these query words vary per platform and that what’s popular on one platform may not automatically capture the essence of customer sentiment on another. This is because there are notable behavioural differences across the platforms. The “one size fits all” framework will not work in this scenario. Effective listening welcomes and works around the idiosyncrasies within platforms.

4. Benchmark for Progress

To improve your process, you must remember to track not only your movement but your competitions’. Some businesses lose out on the benefits of benchmarking simply because they don’t do it. Others fail remarkably at implementing the insights that they do get (more on this later).

Benchmarking for progress means basically doing a sweep of your industry to see how well (or how bad, even) your competitors are doing. Keep track of the essential dimensions of your business and pit it against your competition. This way, you can improve the quality of your services and products.

Benchmarking doesn’t have to be costly; the key to generating great insights is by, again, setting clear objectives. Ask yourself what aspect of your competitor’s business you want to analyse; it could be the process, their campaigns, latest product innovations, etc. The key here is to make sure that you are moving with the trend of your industry and not lagging behind on improvements. This urges you to not be complacent and to always, always ensure that you maintain your market relevance.

5. Tie-In Customer Chatter with Campaign- and Strategy-Building

Most businesses fail because they dismiss the last step to successful social media listening—tying-in the customer chatter to their strategies. Some brands become too obsessed with classifying labels and providing prompt, yet short-term solutions to maintain brand reputation. Now, we are not dismissing the utility of listening to making real-time responses, but social listening can benefit your company in other ways besides reputation management.

Also read: 4 ways to achieve high-converting engagement with your customers

Grand, longer-term strategies are rooted in data acquired from listening. Companies can use social media listening to monitor and predict emerging trends to aid the brand’s overall strategy. Effective listening doesn’t stop at the collection of data but always makes sure that they capture the whole chatter picture.

Conclusion

Businesses expecting social media listening tools to do all the work for them are in for a very rude awakening. Recognise the importance of the human element and why it has to co-exist perfectly with the digital.

Marketing and translating these goals takes a lot of work, but reliable teams can provide you with solutions that use the valuable insights from your listening.

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e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

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Sometimes, conventional content marketing techniques are not good enough

In the 2018 Content Marketing Institute survey, 91 per cent of B2B brands and 86 per cent of B2C brands reported using content marketing.

However, most businesses struggle to get their desired business results. Merely 20 per cent of the surveyed B2B businesses rated their content marketing approach as extremely/very successful.

The reason most businesses can’t make content marketing work is because they get caught up in established best practices and tactics.

See, if you’re failing at content marketing, you need to shake up your strategy from the ground up. You need to go back to the drawing board.

What is the foundation of content marketing?

It is addressing the pain points of your target audience by publishing value-adding content. Then, building awareness for your brand by distributing it using appropriate distribution channels where your prospects hang out.

Based on the above foundation, here are three counterintuitive content marketing strategies small businesses have used to get terrific results.

1. Publish seldom, but only The BEST content in your industry

Traditional content marketing wisdom calls for publishing content regularly on your blog. It results in more indexed pages, traffic, and leads.

HubSpot found that companies that publish 16+ posts every month get more than 3.5 times traffic than companies that between 0 to 4 monthly posts.

However, as a small business owner, you know a high publishing frequency could compromising your content quality. Also, spending time on the distribution of your content is critical to ensure it reaches your target audience.

A counterintuitive approach to regular publishing is posting only once or twice per month and promoting it extensively. For the strategy to work, you need to ensure that:

• Every content piece you create has a proven demand,
• You create the highest-quality content on the subject,
• You have an extensive promotion strategy in place for distributing the content.

Suppose, you sell peanut butter. You researched and found that your audience is interested in cake recipes. Buzzsumo returns the most shared articles on the subject.

As you can observe, all the articles talk about different kinds of cakes. They contain text, high-quality visuals, and a video. Formatting-wise, the article on the second website has a good breakdown of Chocolate Peanut Butter Molten Cake. It neatly lays down the recipe in a succinct table.

When you create a piece of content on “peanut butter cake recipes,” then you can top the existing content quality by:

• Including more than one cake recipes,
• Doing a video breakdown of the recipe,
• Using multiple high-quality photos.

Pinterest and Facebook have fared well for the existing content pieces. The articles got over 10,000 shares on these platforms. Hence, you can target distributing the content on these two platforms.

Brian Dean religiously follows a schedule of publishing one article every 4 to 6 weeks at Backlinko.

Also Read: How to acquire your first 1,000 loyal users and get them to actively use your product

With merely 53 live blog posts, Backlinko had driven 4 million visitors. The reason it worked was that Brian created the best piece of content on every subject he wrote. Then, he extensively outreached to build links and get shares for every piece.

He even sends 100 emails as a part of his pre-outreach for an article. Here is a break down of his promoting strategy by the man himself.

2. Go beyond researching your audience’s pain points

It’s copywriting 101.

You need to get inside your audience’s minds and find out their pain points, dreams, and fears. Next, borrow the “exact” phrases they use in your marketing.

In essence, you are trying to connect with your audience while showing them how your products fit into their lives.

The traditional way most businesses employ for researching their target customers is through online forums and audience research tools. Few take the pain of conducting online surveys to understand their audience.

How about you go beyond passively stalking your audience online? You do the scary offline bit of talking to your customers.

Pinterest user experience researcher Gabriel Trionfi used to gather with Pinterest designers and make house calls. He found that these visits help them understand how their customers use Pinterest. Sojourning the users also proved fruitful in gaining inspiration and building new things.

Wonder how the strategy falls under content marketing?

By talking to your customers about their problems and offering help, you earn their trust. You can find burning customer questions that you can answer on your blog. If you plan to launch a new product, you can understand your audience requirements and validate your ideas.

When Ryan Robinson wanted to launch a course on validating a business idea, he met a few of his most engaged subscribers. Besides helping him in planning the content of his course, 75 per cent of his early feedback group also bought the course during its pre-sale.

Even when he launched a new project, he validated his idea through text messages. And he even got pre-orders while building his product.

3. Try to achieve your business goals natively on other platforms

Brands practice content marketing to build an audience and in the long-run derive a profitable customer action.

A few years ago, here’s how marketing content on social media might have helped your business bottom line:

1. Publish content on your website.
2. Send link updates to your piece on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and the like.
3. Thousands of visitors land on your site.
4. A minor percentage of these visitors convert into your email subscribers.

Once you have your tribe of email subscribers that are interested in your brand, you can build a relationship with them. You can send them value-adding content and interact with them. Then, occasionally when you send an email to buy your products, a percentage of your subscribers will oblige.

Currently, there’s a large quantity of high quality content published every day. Also, social media networks are becoming increasingly selfish and want users to stay on their platform.

Also Read: What Tokopedia does to ensure high quality customer relations management

You can’t abandon social media because of the huge pool of prospective customers. However, building your audience solely on these platforms is also not intelligent because their algorithms will then dictate your brand’s reach.

The way out is trying to achieve your business goals on other platforms itself.

For example, on Facebook, you can retarget visitors that interacted once with your brand to make them familiar with your brand. Then, invite them to try your product.

You can even do without creating content for your our blog.

Author Benjamin P. Hardy hasn’t posted a single article on his site and built a personal brand entirely through Medium. Each of his articles gets multiple thousands of claps and hundreds of comments.

At the end of his articles, he offers a cheat sheet as a way into his email list. His Medium popularity has resulted in a list size of 300,000 subscribers.

When he launched his online course to the email list, not publishing content on his website didn’t hurt. He generated US$90,000 in seven days.

Final thoughts

The above three strategies want a little extra effort. However, as I showed you with data they work when implemented correctly.

As the landscape of content marketing evolves, we should not forget the intent of content marketing: adding value and helping your customers wherever they hang out. If it requires disobeying conventional wisdom, then so be it.

Which of the three strategies do you plan to experiment with in your marketing? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

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Investors are IVP, sXiomatic Gaming, Battery Ventures, Causeway Media Partners, CRV, and Samsung Ventures

Niantic raises US$245M investment [The Star]

Niantic, the developer behind Pokémon Go, finished its Series C financing with US$245 million on Jan 16, according to a press release.

The latest round of funding brings Niantic’s valuation to nearly US$4 billion.

The Series C funding was led by IVP, and additional investments came from aXiomatic Gaming, Battery Ventures, Causeway Media Partners, CRV, and Samsung Ventures.

The funding round comes just under two weeks after Niantic closed a US$190 million equity sale.

With latest e-commerce tax, Indonesia wants to cash in on its unicorns [DealStreetAsia]

Indonesia’s booming e-commerce industry is churning out unicorns such as Tokopedia and Bukalapak.com. It’s also creating a headache for the government and the rupiah. Authorities are trying to capitalize on this fast-growing cash cow by taxing e-commerce transactions.

Starting April, online retailers will need to collect, deposit and report income and value-added taxes. Small and medium-size businesses must pay income tax of 0.5 per cent of revenue, while large enterprises will be subject to a 25 percent levy on profits.

The government of Joko Widodo may feel it’s entitled to reap some benefit from an internet economy that CLSA Ltd. estimates will surpass India in market size as soon as 2020. As retail business shifts online from bricks-and-mortar outlets, the government may also get to improve its tax collection.

Roughly 65 per cent of all offline retail sales are conducted by unregistered businesses that don’t file or pay taxes, according to CLSA. Indonesia has one of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in the region.

Indian edtech firm Byju’s acquires US-based Osmo for $120M [press release]

Indian K12 edtech company Byju’s has acquired US-based Osmo, a playful learning system for creating healthy screen time experiences, for US$120 million.

This is Byju’s first ever purchase of a US company. This will see Osmo continue to scale as a standalone brand even as Byju’s taps the company’s physical-to-digital technology and content to expand and enhance its current offering.

With the integration of Osmo, Byju’s will also look to offer a unique, customised, engaging and fun learning solution for younger kids. This new acquisition will bolster team Byju’s international plans to innovate, explore and set new benchmarks for tech-enabled personalised learning solutions.

Osmo CEO and Co-founder Pramod Sharma will continue to remain at Osmo’s helm.

Instamojo raises funding from Japan’s Gunosy, Kalaari, others [The Mint]

Online payments company Instamojo Technologies has raised ₹50 crore (US$7M) in a Series B funding round from Japan’s Gunosy Capital and other investors. Existing investors including Japanese payments firm AnyPay, Kalaari Capital, Beenext Pte Ltd, and Rashmi Kwatra — founder of Singapore-based Sixteenth Street Capital –also participated in the round.

This is Gunosy’s first investment in India.

“We believe that digital and cashless economy has grown rapidly in India, and its e-commerce market is also expanding. From that background, Instamojo has been doing great business in the market and is expected to continue expanding,” said Yuki Maniwa, Director of Gunosy Capital.

CometChat selected for Techstars Boulder accelerator programme [press release]

Mumbai-based CometChat, a communication-platform-as-a-service startup, has been selected for the Techstars Boulder accelerator programme. CometChat claims it is the first Indian startup to be selected for the three-month long programme.

As part of the program, Techstars will seed fund CometChat US$120,000 and incubate the company in its US location. Under the programme, CometChat will have access to Techstars resources such as mentors, financial, legal and infra resources for life. This would include access to Techstars network of more than 10,000 entrepreneurs, 2,700 investors and 1,200 alumni companies.

At the end of the programme, selected companies will be showcasing their progress and refined product to investors as part of demo day, which is likely to result in further growth stage funding and visibility.

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Many leading organizations from different parts of the world are already doing their bit towards social reform

If you’re running a business with the sole aim of selling stuff and making huge profits, then you are missing the bigger picture. While profitability is essential to sustain business operations and pay your bills comfortably, it shouldn’t be the only thing you seek. You also ought to aim to give back to society in any way you can and help it grow further.

Many leading organizations from different parts of the world are already doing their bit towards social reform. Perhaps now it’s your turn to stand up and do something that can change the lives of others for the better.

If you are looking for some motivation to pump your spirits, here are some few examples of businesses that have gone out of their way to make a change in society. Have a look at their social reform initiatives and learn from them.

CrushXO

This is an excellent example of how a business works to maintain profitability and have a positive impact on society through philanthropy. Crushxo is a beauty startup that designs vegan-friendly makeup products infused with various gemstones, such as Sapphire, Rose Quartz, Amethyst, Jade, and Tourmaline for women.

What sets it apart from most other companies exploiting the same niche is that CrushXO donates 5% of its total sales to various charitable causes dedicated to increasing education and awareness on breast cancer, female education, women empowerment, and spreading awareness about female reproductive health.

Over the years, many fashion models and digital influencers have come on-board to support their mission and spread it across the globe so that more women can achieve their true potential and live a healthy life. Going forward, the company seeks to take many new initiatives that could shape up the world into a better place for everyone, especially women.

Also read: 10 social impact startups in Southeast Asia that caught our attention in 2018

I-Drop

The second name on this list is I-Drop, a for-profit organization that helps people drink clean water. Instead of selling plastic water containers and bottles, it installs state-of-the-art water purification and dispensing machines at local grocery shops. People can visit these shops, refill their multi-use water containers with purified drinking water and make the payment. The payment then splits between the store owner and I-Drop.

Most people in African countries are deprived of clean water. An initiative like I-Drop is their best chance to have purified water at a reasonable price. There is no denying that I-Drop is doing business, but the model is purpose-driven and providing hundreds of thousands of people access to safe drinking water.

Many aspiring entrepreneurs can learn from this business model. For instance, Soarer Industries from Malaysia has already set up a similar business model in Southeast Asia. The company’s primary objective is to provide clean water to people who cannot access it. In the coming years, several other startups are expected to come forward and implement unique ideas to permanently fix this problem and build a profitable business along the way.

Bookshare

Millions of people across the world don’t get an opportunity to read their favorite books due to health issues like blindness, dyslexia, cerebral palsy, etc. Bookshare has come up with a unique solution to fix this problem. It provides customized reading experience using ebooks, audiobooks, highlighted texts, and braille to those who want to read but aren’t able to do so because of their physical and health condition.

There are more than 6.7 lakh titles in their online library of bestsellers, textbooks, career resources, children’s books, and other reading material. Many schools and students get free access to their online library of books, while adults can subscribe for the service for less than $1 per week.

It’s a fantastic way to nurture a reading habit among people and make sure that nothing can stop them from achieving their true potential.

Chapter W

Chapter W is a non-profit organization that operates in Indonesia and Singapore. The organization aims to increase access to non-toxic sources of lighting. Most rural women in Indonesia are forced to use kerosene lamps to provide lighting in their homes due to lack of electrical power in the country. The use of kerosene lamps has been linked to one death every 20 seconds in the country.

Chapter W uses the latest technology to build solar lamps that can replace kerosene lamps and ensure that no one dies due to indoor air pollution. The best part about the initiative is that they train rural women to design solar lamps, solving two problems simultaneously — poverty and indoor air pollution.

Also read: Can social impact be growth hacked?

Currently, the organization has created 186 women entrepreneurs, cut down 159,548 tons of CO2, helped over 28364 individuals, and saved about $226,912 in energy costs. The numbers are incredible and projected to increase in the coming years.

There are many other startups which have made social development an integral part of their business models. We will keep sharing their stories with you in upcoming posts. Meanwhile, don’t forget to tell us in the comments section what you think about such social entrepreneurship initiatives and their relevance in today’s business world.

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e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

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Mistakes will be made; but learning how to get back on your feet  will be more crucial

While I was reading through most of the success stories that were published on IndieHackers.com, it occurred to me that my project GetData.IO really took longer than most others to gain significant traction, a full 5 years actually.

The beginning

I first stumbled upon this project back in December 2012 when I was trying to solve two other problems of my own.

In my first problem, I was trying to identify the best stocks to buy on the Singapore Stock Exchange. While browsing through the stocks listed on their website, I soon realize that most stock exchanges as well as other financial websites gear their data presentation towards quick buy and sell behaviours.

If you were looking to get data for granular analysis based on historical company performance as opposed to stock price movements, it is like pulling teeth. Even then, important financial data I needed for decision-making purposes were spread across multiple websites. This first problem lead me to write 2 web-scrappers, one for SGX.com and the other for Yahoo Finance, to extract data-sets which I later combined to help me with my investment decision-making process.

Once I happily parked my cash, I went back to working on my side project then. It was a travel portal which aggregates all the travel packages from tour agencies located in Southeast Asia. It was not long before I encountered my second problem… I had to write a bunch of web-scrapers again to pull data from vendor sites which do not have the APIs! Being forced to write my 3rd, 4th and maybe 5th web-scraper within a single week lead me to put on hold all work and step back to look at the bigger picture.

The insight

Being a web developer, and understanding how other web developers think, it quickly occurred to me the patterns that repeat themselves across webpage listings as well as nested web pages. This is especially true for naming conventions when it came to CSS styling. Developers tend to name their CSS classes the way they would actual physical objects in the world.

I figured if there existed a Semantic Query Language that is program independent, it would provide the benefit of querying web pages as if they were database tables while providing for clean abstraction of schema from the underlying technology. These two insights still prove true today after 6 years into the project.

The trough of sorrow

While the first 5 years depicted in the trend line above seem peaceful due to a lack of activity, it felt anything but peaceful. During this time, I was privately struggling with a bunch of challenges.

Team management mistakes and pre-mature scaling

First and foremost was team management. During the inception of the project, my ex-schoolmate from years ago approached me to ask if there was any project that he could get involved in. Since I was working on this project, it was natural that I would have invited him to join the project. We soon got ourselves into an incubator in Singapore called JFDI.

In hindsight, while the experience provided us with general knowledge and friends, it really felt like going through a whirlwind. The most important piece of knowledge I came across during the incubation period was this book recommendation — The Founder’s dilemma. I wished I read the book before I made all of the mistakes I did.

There was a lot of hype (see the blip in mid-2013), tension and stress during the period between me and my ex-schoolmate. We went our separate ways due to differences in our vision of how the project should proceed shortly after JDFI Demo Day. It was not long before I grew the team to a size of 6 and had it disbanded, realizing it was naive to scale in size before figuring out the monetization model.

Investor management mistakes

During this period of time, I also managed to commit a bunch of grave mistakes which I vow never to repeat again.

Mistake #1 was being too liberal with the stock allocation. When we incorporated the company, I was naive to believe the team would stay intact in its then configuration all the way through to the end. The cliff before vesting were to begin was only 3 months with full vesting occurring in 2 years.

When my ex-schoolmate departed, the cap table was in a total mess with a huge chunk owned by a non-operator and none left for future employees without significant dilution of existing folks. This was the first serious red-flag when it came to fundraising.

Mistake #2 was giving away too much of the company for too little, too early in the project before achieving critical milestones. This was the second serious red-flag that really turned off follow up would-be investors.

Mistake #3 was not realizing the mindset difference of investors in Asia versus Silicon Valley, and thereafter picking the wrong geographical location (a.k.a network) to incubate the project. Incubating the project in the wrong network can be really detrimental to its future growth.

Asian investors are inclined towards investing in applications that have a clear path to monetization while Silicon Valley investors are open towards investing in deep technology of which the path to monetization is yet apparent. During the subsequent period, I saw two similar projects incubated and successfully launched via Ycombinator.

The way I managed to fix the three problems above was to acquire funds I didn’t yet have by taking up a day job while relocating the project back to the Valley’s network. I count my blessings for having friends who lend a helping hand when I was in a crunch.

Self-doubt

I remembered having the conversation with the head of the incubator two years into the project during my visit back to Singapore when he tried to convince me the project was going nowhere and I should just throw in the towel. I managed to convince him and more importantly myself to give it go for another 6 months till the end of the year.

Also Read: Rethinking content marketing: 3 new ways to catapult your startup’s revenue

I remember the evenings and weekends alone in my room while not working on my day job. In between spurts of coding, I would browse through the web or sit staring at the wall trying to envision how product/market fit would look like. As what Steve Jobs mentioned once in his lecture, it felt like pushing against a wall with no signs of progress or movement whatever so. If anything, it was a lot of frustration, self-doubt and dejection.

A few times, I felt like throwing in the towel and just giving up. For a period of 6 months in 2014, I actually stopped touching the code in total exasperation and just left the project running on auto-pilot, swearing to never look at it again.

The hiatus was not to last long though. A calling is just like the siren, even if somewhat faint sometimes, it calls out to you in the depths of the night or when just strolling along on the serene beaches of California. It was not long before I was back on my MacBook ploughing through the project again with renewed vigour.

First signs of life

It was mid-2015, the project was still not showing signs of any form of traction. I had by then stockpiled some cash from my day job and was starting to get interested in acquiring a piece of real estate with the hope of generating some cash flow to bootstrap the project while freeing up my own time. It was during this period of time that I got introduced to my friend’s roommate who also happened to be interested in real estate.

We started meeting on weekends and utilizing GetData.IO to gather real estate data for our real estate investment purposes. We were gonna perform machine learning for real estate. The scope of the project was really demanding. It was during this period of dog fooding that I started understanding how users would use GetData.IO.

It was also then when I realized how shitty and unsuited the infrastructure was for the kind and scale of data harvesting required for projects like ours. It catalyzed a full rewrite of the infrastructure over the course of the next two years as well as brought the semantic query language to maturity.

Technical challenges

Similar to what Max Levchin mentioned in the book Founder’s at work, during this period of time there was always this fear in the back of my mind that I would encounter technical challenges which would be unsolvable.

The site would occasionally go down as we started scaling the volume of daily crawls. I would spend hours on the weekends digging through the logs to attempt at reproducing the error so as to understand the root cause. The operations were like a (data) pipeline, scaling one section of the pipeline without addressing further down sections would inevitably cause fissures and breakage. Some form of manual calculus in the head would always need to be performed to figure out the best configuration to balance the volume and the costs.

The number 1 hardest problem I had to tackle during this period of time was the problem of caching and storage. As the volume of data increase, storage cost increase and so did wait time required before data could be downloaded. This problem brought down the central database a few times.

After procrastinating for a while as the problem festered in mid-2016, I decided that it was to be the number 1 priority to be solved. I spend a good 4 months going to big data and artificial intelligence meet-ups in the Bay Area to check out the types of solutions available for the problem faced. While no suitable solutions were found, the 4 months helped elicit corner cases to the problem which I did not previously think of. I ended up building my own in-house solution.

Traction and Growth

An unforeseen side effect of solving the storage and caching problem was its effect on SEO. The effects on SEO would not be visible until mid-2017 when I started seeing an increased volume of organic traffic to the site. As load times got reduced from more than a minute in some cases to less than 400 milliseconds seconds, the volume of pages indexed by bots would increase, accompanied by an increase in the volume of visitors and reduction in bounce rates.

Continued education

It was in early-2016 that I came across an article expounding the benefits of reading widely and deeply by Paul Graham which prompted me to pick up my hobby of reading again. A self-hack demonstrated to me by the same friend, who helped relocated me here to the Bay Area, which I pursued vehemently got me reading up to 1.5 books a week.

These are books which I summarized on my personal blog for later reference. All the learnings developed my mental model of the world and greatly aided in the way I tackled the project.

Also Read: 5 strategies for effective social media listening

Edmodo’s VP of engineering hammered in the importance of not boiling the ocean when attempting to solve a technical problem, of always being judicious with the use of resource during my time working as a tech-lead under his wing. Another key lesson learned from him is that in some circumstances being liked and being effective do not go hand in hand. As the key decision maker, it is important to steadfastly practice the discipline of being effective.

Head of Design, Tim and Lukas helped me appreciate the significance of UX during my time working with them and how it ties to user psychology.

Edmodo’s CEO introduced us to mindfulness meditation late-2016 to help us weather through the turbulent times that was happening within the company then. It was rough. The practice which I have adopted till to date has helped keep my mind balanced while navigating the uncertainties of the path I am treading.

Edmodo’s VP of product sent me for a course late-2017 which helped consolidate all the knowledge I have acquired till then into a coherent whole. The knowledge gained has helped greatly accelerated the progress of GetData.IO. During the same period, I was also introduced by him the Vipasanna meditation practice which coincidentally a large percentage of the management team practices.

One very significant paradigm shift I observed in myself during this period of continued education is the observed relationship between myself and the project. It has changed from an attitude of urgently needing to succeed at all cost to an attitude of open curiosity and fascination as one would an open-ended science project.

Moving forward

To date, I have started working full time on the project again. GetData.IO has the support of more than 1,500 community members worldwide. Our mission is to turn the Web into the fully functional Giant Graph Database of Human Knowledge. Financially, with the help of our community members, the project is now self-sustaining. I feel grateful for all the support and lessons gained during this 6-year journey. I look forward to the journey ahead as I continue along my path.

While I was reading through most of the success stories that were published on IndieHackers.com, it occurred to me that my project GetData.IO really took longer than most others to gain significant traction, a full 5 years actually.

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This post first appeared on Medium.

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Wavemaker startups lean heavily towards B2B but range from agriculture to IoT security

With over 100 companies in its portfolio and over US$70 million assets under management, one would imagine Wavemaker Partners to be a large firm with dozens of employees running across Southeast Asia.

In reality, the company stays lean, having only 18 people. Pretty impressive for a firm that has seen exits from Pie, Luxola, Caarly and Gushcloud.

Wavemaker is heavily focussed on B2B companies — with 80 per cent of its investments coming in that space. 28 per cent of the portfolio is in deep tech or AI. 

Finally, the Founders they back tend to lean on the older side of entrepreneurship. 88 per cent of their companies have Founders over the age of 30 and 39 per cent are over 40.

Yesterday, Wavemaker hosted an event whereby 19 companies pitched in front of an audience of around 300 people.

Before we meet the companies, here is a list of the startups that announced they are currently raising funds (and their ask).

• Omnistreet: Raising a Series A
• Sprout solutions: Raising a Series A
• RateIt: Raising a Series A
• GizTix: Raising a US$10 million Series B
• Neebo: Raising a US$2.3 million Series A
• Savonix: Raising US$2.5 million to close a US$10 million Series A
• Kiddo: Closing a US$15 million Series A
• Yulu: Raising US$15 million in equity and US$7 million in debt
• Securezapp: Just closed a seed round

Let’s meet the companies!

Jumper.ai:

Jumper.ai converts social media posts into shoppable links that allow people to shop directly without being redirected to a website. It leverages hashtags and chatbots to facilitate transactions within the given platform.

With this technology, Jumper can also allow for automated customer service.

The team estimates they are working in a US$400 billion social commerce market and partners include Unilever, Toyota, Disney, Johnson and Johnson and Killiney.

Nugit

Creating data storytellers is the ethos of Nugit. They believe the problem of the Big Data industry is “why is it still so hard to share?” . The big data industry healthy, but for the average user, it is often overly complicated to analyse. Companies are not able to get the data they need.

Nugit’s customers are people who are not analysts and helps them use data with their story building and sharing.

The company is launching a a new product next Friday called datalab by Nugit.

Omnistreet

Omnistreet helps retailers use data create actionable results when it comes to assortment (goods on shelves). The problem is that, for most retailers, 80 per cent of products introduced are no longer on shelves in a year.

Omnistreet combines a bunch of data — including statistics like changing population density — and combines it with internal data. It combines this information to provide automated suggestions on whether a retailer should keep or trash a product like toothpaste.

The interesting part of Omnistreet is their decision to pursue a hyper-basic UI. It looks like an excel sheet with some basic product information and then a “keep/trash” decision provided by Omnistreet.

The startup is raising a Series A.

Sprout Solutions

Sprouts Solutions is working to transform the human resources process in the Philippines. Coming from his previous experience as an entrepreneur in the country, Patrick Gentry found that HR and payroll management is painful in the Philippines.

The product is an all-in-one digital HR solution and the company has moved beyond SMEs/Startups and is now also targetting corporate clients. 

Also Read: Surina Shukri appointed CEO of MDEC

Products include everything from hiring and on-boarding to payroll and attendance.

Sprout is currently raising a Series A.

RateIt

RateIt wants to provide live customer experience feedback so companies can adjust their customer service. The story used to explain RateIt is a fairly common experience for people:

You are at a retail store hoping to buy a shirt. You are probably a very easy sale, coming into the store with the hopes of walking out with some goods. But then the customer service is so bad that you just leave. It’s not worth picking a fight, but it’s definitely not supporting the company. In these cases, the business may not even be aware it was the customer service that ruined the sale.

This is what RateIt wants to solve. It bundles an app with a device for real-time user feedback and uses machine learning to ask the correct question at the right time.

RateIt is raising Series A.

Novade

Novade is creating an all-in-one solution to help digitalise the construction industry — which is particularly analog despite its massive size (contributing 13 per cent of the global GDP).

The goal of Novade is to help construction sites “manage basically anything on site”. This includes quality, activity, logistics and productivity. Novade has 200 clients in 16 countries. One of its most famous projects was the construction of Changi Airport Terminal 4.

The startup has just closed a Series A.

eFishery

eFishery is out to target the main problem plaguing the industry — feeding. Right now, feeding is often just a farmer dumping a bunch of product into the water, which can pollute the water, kill the fish and even spill into the greater environment.

eFishery has built a piece of hardware that feeds the fish automatically. Farmers put it on the side of the pond and connect it to a sensor that adjusts to the fish’s behaviour. For example, if they are being aggressive, it is probably a sign they are hungry.

Now, the startup is starting to get into the world of financing. It gathers data and if the information suggests the farmer is good at their job, eFishery hopes it can use this to make it easier for them to get loans.

Ricult

Built with both a social mission and profitability plans, Ricult is trying to help farmers break the debt cycle that traps them in poverty – specifically in Pakistan. 

In Pakistan, there is usually a gap where farmers have not received payment for their harvest but also need to purchase goods to kickstart the next cycle. The farmer needs to take out a loan just to keep their farm moving forward but doing so traps them in a debt cycle.

Ricult is trying to speed up the payment process so Pakistani farmers can buy seeds, fertilizer and tools with their own money. It also has built a platform to help provide farmers access to information so they can educate themselves.

GIZTIX,

GIZTIX, an Echelon Top100 finalist from Thailand, is a transport management system. The product helps fleet owners and drivers manage their drivers digitally. It also gathers data on supply, demand and consumption. 

Its main set of customers are companies that produce medium-to-high-value goods. The company has grown to employ about 40 people. 

It is currently raising a US$10 million Series B after nabbing a Series A round in November, 2017. 

Portcast

A graduate of Entrepreneur First in Singapore, Portcast helps shipping companies accurately predict supply and demand of cargo. 

At the moment, a lot of shipping companies use historical data and market averages to predict supply/demand. This can be problematic if trade between two countries falls or rises sharply. Portcast uses machine learning to find live patterns within the industry and make forcasts. 

It claims to have a 90-95 per cent accuracy rate. 

Neebo

Neebo is building an all-in-one monitoring device for babies. This includes traditional sleep monitoring, but also services like vitals, health trends and other safety metrics. 

The company is raising a US$2.3 million Series A.

Savonix

Savonix is a product to help analyse, diagnose and prevent the various types of dementia. It’s mains selling point is that it makes classifications more specific. 

Not all tyes of dementia are the same. Some, like Alzheimers, affect memory. Others impact emotional impulse control, the ability to express thoughts or visual learning. Savonix provides a test that helps people understand their unique risk factors.

Furthermore, it can deploy tests for between US$2 and US$5 dollars, which makes it accessible to people who would normally never be able to afford personalised dementia treatment.

The company is raising US$2.5 million to close a US$10 million Series A.

Kiddo

Kiddo is an IoT device that generates analytics to make healthcare for kids cheaper and more effective. A lot of pediatric healthcare options (especially insurance) are not tailored to the kid’s specific needs. So, by providing data, Kiddo hopes it can provide real-time analytics to help parents more accurately treat their children.

The startup leverages a subscription model with a tiered pricing structure. It is targetting healthcare clinics, insurance companies, schools, the research industry and even commercial brands.

Kiddo is nearing its close on a US$15million Series A.

Yulu

Yulu is an urban micro mobility startup that uses small bikes and scooters to get people to/from to public transportation for their longer journey. 

It hesitates to call itself a bike-sharing service because the vehicles are not meant for free-for-all use. Rather, the goal is to reduce traffic congestion by providing vehicles that can take people the 1-5km between their home and the train station. It leverages a QR-code operating system (like bike-sharing) but cannot be dropped anywhere. Yulu forces people to take it between parkting stations (but tries to build 700-800 locations in each city). 

It is currently raising US$15 million in equity and US$7 million in debt.

Involt

Another alumni of Entrepreneur First, Involt is developing a next generation battery for electric vehicles and grid-level storage. The battery can charge 10x faster than other batteries on the market without degrading after usage.

The metaphor used during the pitch was, “If lithium batteries are long-distance runners, we are building a sprinter”. The batteries should reduce the strain on electric vehicles while simultaneously increasing the distances between charges. 

Transcellestial

Transcelestial is a Singaporean company that wants to provide commercial-grade internet speed to the whole world. The startup leverages lasers and nano-satellites to build a Space Laser Network that would greatly improve internet connections to even the most remote of areas.

Currently, our internet is moved around via transcontinental high bandwidth undersea cables, which are extremely expensive. A Google-built cable between the US and Japan in 2016 cost about US$300 million to complete.

Also Read: This Singapore startup thinks it can revolutionise internet infrastructure

“We started Transcelestial because we saw an exciting future for humanity in the next 100 years but no action plan to build a scalable, underlying infrastructure needed, either on the planet or in deep space, to support that,” said Rohit Jha, the CEO and co-founder of Transcelestial in a previous e27 article.

Microsec

Microsec is building IoT cybersecurity products for enterprise clients. The startup provided the statistic that between January and June of 2018 there were 900 IoT cyber breaches across the globe.  

The company currently boasts projects that work on smart lamp posts, smart homes, industry control systems, utilities, and automotives.

Cyber Intelligence House

Cyber Intelligence House is an internet intelligence company that specialises in the dark web. They scour the Tor network for clients to discover if information has been leaked, credentials exposed or if the company is being targetted by hackers, among other things. 

A lot of companies can figure out their cyber exposure on the standard internet, but have a more difficult time finding this information on the dark web. Cyber Intelligence House is in the business of providing clarity on this information.

One major client are local police forces and Cyber Intelligence House says police have used its platform to arrest 89 people.

Securezapp

The problem: There is a lack of visibility as data moves across the enterprise security perimeter.

In today’s corporate environment, a massive amount of data is built on third-party infrastructure. This means data needs to be transmitted across platforms. Usually, this transfer process is obscure which makes security a secondary focus. 

Securzapp wants to make sure companies can track and manage risk as they transfer their data built on third-party infrastructure. 

The startup has just closed a seed round.  

—

Photo by Christian Becker on Unsplash

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Tokopedia believes that the spirit of customer service should not be limited to only the members of its customer care team

Customer relations management (CRM) is one of those factors that will determine whether your customers will stay or go. Major tech companies are investing heavily in it, including Indonesia’s own e-commerce and fintech giant Tokopedia.

In an interview with e27, VP Operations Rudy Dalimunthe explains why CRM is considered “super important” for the company.

“If there is a white space for differentiation to make Tokopedia stands out amongst the [existing] e-commerce players, it is through CRM, since all other promos are typical and can be copied by anyone in a short time,” he says.

Customer interactions –and their expectations of what they can get from Tokopedia– escalate as the company grows bigger, pushing them to continuously evolve in how they deal with customers.

Starting off with a simple, basic CRM system, Tokopedia then moved on to use tools such as Zendesk and eventually Salesforce, which the company’s product and engineering team has customised to suit their needs.

It also runs its own in-house online dispute resolution system, which includes the use of bot for simple and basic interactions. The bot has been integrated to the platform’s back-end, from chatrooms to emails.

Also Read: Tokopedia appoints former Indonesia Finance Minister as its President Commissioner

However, Tokopedia still gives space for human interaction, especially when the situation demands more than what the chatbots are capable of.

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) and bot investments are driven by our need to increase both efficiency and customer intimacy – a deeper understanding of customer needs leading to customised and personalised solutions. But building human sensitivity into algorithms is not an easy thing,” Dalimunthe says.

“Hence, I would say it will never replace human touch experience by human CR officers. There are situations where human presence is still required, even at some point you are required to come and meet them directly in person. Those are the moments we build emotional connection between our brand and our customers,” he stresses.

Exclusively for e27 Academy, Dalimunthe explains what founders need to know about CRM –and how to get it right.

The basics

 

Dalimunthe begins by explaining the five key principles of CRM, which should include:

1. The ability to uncover hidden customer needs

“This is the key ingredients for surprise effect in your CRM. Good CRM should think beyond hygiene factors and cater end-to-end customer journey; if it is only to cater customer complaints reactively then it is an outdated CRM version. We know move to CXM that enables us to see what customer doesn’t see since the early stage of their journey, and proactively engage with it.”

2. The ability to capture all interaction details in real time

This includes a 360 degrees customer profile in single view, real-time insight flow, and time-stamp for SLA capture.

“In short it is about ‘who, what, when, and how the interactions [happen]’ which covers both inside-out data (historical user profile including social media profile) and outside-in data capture (customer voice and survey results on their feedbacks and how they perceive us).”

Also Read: After raising US$1.1B, Tokopedia will remain focussed on Indonesian market

3. Being easily customisable

“Every business and every customer are unique, there’s no one-size-fits-all.”

4. User-friendliness

“Even your non-CS staffs should be able to use it and get the best of it in very short time.”

5. Integrity

“… Business is about trust and transparency, so we must act in a very professional, personal, open and transparent to engage with the customers. We should avoid at very most the impression that your people, process, and system can not be trusted and unable to present transparency on what happened. Even if it happens, service recovery process must be done in a very fast, precise, and most personal way. That’s CRM.”

The last point led to a very important question: How about in times of crisis?

Dalimunthe says that when he joined the company in 2017, to set up a crisis management plan was one of the key deliverables prioritised for immediate completion.

By the time, it could take two to three weeks for a crisis situation to get back to normal, leading to lower key customer metrics and trust from customers. It even led to a public relations crisis for the company.

“We are talking about multiple times increase in users traffic in every big campaign, where any small glitch will impact million of users. That eventually will flow big numbers of negative comments in social media and support channels,” Dalimunthe points out.

To handle a crisis situation, the company needs good preparation, collaboration, and the obsession to “always put customers at the centre of business.”

Also Read: How Tokopedia uses localisation strategy to reach out to Indonesia’s uniquely diverse society

“Good preparation means you actually know what will happened. Good, proactive communications before the fire gets bigger is key, so we’re talking about speed and communications accuracy,” Dalimunthe says.

“It requires good collaborations with product or tech team way before product launch, at least two weeks before, so you know exactly every single details of the campaign and how to deal with any issues when things get worse. And all of the CS staffs should be well-prepared, most importantly in closely monitoring on the crisis level. The team at the front must actively inform if this is a minor, major, or even a crisis level situation where corporate communication involvement is required to release a holding or stand-by statement,” he continues.

The principles of customer relations crisis management plan according to Dalimunthe are:

1. Understand clearly the scope and magnitude of the issues –minor, major, or crisis– since every level requires different treatment and communications. The team should also create clear and quick internal communications line.

2. Become a trusted voice in crisis. Avoid lies and one-shot statements; communicate regularly until the situation gets back to normal.

3. Give the crisis situation your full attention, even up to management level. Give fair compensation to your customers; do not just disappear and expect they will go and forget.

4. Monitor all social and traditional media closely. In addition to using social listening tools, companies need to know influencers and their level of reach. While holding statement is required when the situation has reached crisis level, companies need to know when to handle a situation using personal approach. They also need to carefully consider the words that they are choosing.

5. Take every problem seriously. Never repeat the same mistakes and blame other parties.

6. Last but not least, be responsible and take all the bullets.

Also Read: Tokopedia reportedly raises fresh US$1 billion funding

Case study

As a company, Tokopedia is run with these principles that the company considered as its DNA:

1. Focus on customer
2. Growth mindset
3. Make it happen, make it better

These principles are expected to be implemented not only by its employees, but also the partners that the company is working with.

Dalimunthe mentions one instance that he considers as one of the greatest challenges Tokopedia has faced in terms of providing the best service for their customers.

In Q3 2017, the company was going through the process of appointing a new party to manage its process when it faced integration and alignment issues. They had to synchronise with three organisation at one shot, involving 500 people in the process, and this is something that Dalimunthe’s team had never done before.

“They were directly facing and dealing with key person in partners’ side … to negotiate business terms, OKR, and strategy alignment in a very short time. At the same time, Tokopedia’s programmes and businesses keep running fast, with more and more new products set to launch in Q3-Q4. I have to minimise the impact of these changes to Tokopedia users,” he explains.

But the company was able to survive through the process by living its DNA, and onboarding its partners to ensure that they are able to implement it through their works.

“In fact, we’re expecting to book almost US$4 million of savings from this improvement, while the quality of the delivery is at even higher number compared to last year,” he adds.

Also Read: [Updated] Tokopedia, OVO team up to offer the payment service on the e-commerce platform

Advice for startup founders

 

At the end of the interview, Dalimunthe says a study has revealed the high rate of failure in CRM strategy execution to be the result of over-dependence in “cutting edge” CRM system.

“[If you spend] too much focus on the CRM technologies and not enough time to build a team that is armed and able to handle the gun, all will be for nothing. ‘It’s all about the man behind the gun’,” he explains.

He then shares the secret recipe of building the best CRM team:

1. Get a clear CRM direction and strategy available for all team as a blue print will help them to prioritise every steps and think creatively to support the strategy.

2. Identify and set up a strong group of people with Analytics, CX, and customer journey (process) skill as a thinker and designer. This should be followed by setting up another group with strong people skills to execute the system designed by the “thinker” team, and another group to oversee the process.

3. Identify and build leaders from the smaller level of the team.

4. Have a strong mindset to always put ourselves in customer shoes, the bravery to take direct decision on customer’s behalf, and the knowledge on when to drive the business and tech team to take actions related to CRM (instead of the other way around).

5. Have a company-wide understanding about the importance to put customer at the centre of every decision. CRM goes beyond the responsibility of a particular team; it is actually a mindset that every employees need to have regardless of their job description and division.

A simple check-list that founders can go through include questions such as: Do you involve your customer care team in product launch preparation? Do your product and business units have all customer metrics in their score card? And finally, is everyone ready and brave enough to see customer complaint reports every day and work upon it?

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Images Credit: Tokopedia

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With the new funding round, Bukalapak aims to continue on innovating for small businesses in Indonesia

Indonesian e-commerce and fintech startup Bukalapak today announced an undisclosed funding round by Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund, a joint venture between Seoul-based Mirae Financial Group and Naver, the company behind LINE Messenger service.

The announcement confirmed a report by DailySocial on January 10, which stated that the company is set to reveal a new funding round that includes the participation of Naver Corp, following its ninth anniversary.

In a press statement, Jikwang Chung, Head of New Growth Investment Mirae Asset Capital, said that the company will support the growth of Bukalapak through a series of strategic collaboration.

Also Read: Bukalapak allows payment installment for customers via BukaCicilan

“We hope that this support will help accelerate our steps in creating tech innovation that will help elevate small businesses in Indonesia,” said Bukalapak President and Co-Founder Fajrin Rasyid.

Starting off as an online marketplace, the company has expanded into various fintech verticals such as gold and mutual funds trade.

Bukalapak claimed to have more than two million transaction happening daily on their platform, and the company expected this number to continue on increasing.

The company has worked with four million small businesses in Indonesia.

It has named EMTEK, Ant Financial, and GIC (Government of Singapore Investment Corporation) as its investors.

In December last year, Bukalapak’s competitor Tokopedia announced a US$1.1 billion funding round.

Like many Indonesian online marketplaces, it plans to remain focussed on local market instead of expanding internationally.

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Image Credit: Bukalapak

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