When he was 18, Careershe’s founder Steve Xie decided to pick electrical engineering as his undergraduate course. But he did not actually choose it himself. Like many other students of his age, it was picked by his parents, because they noticed he liked to “fix electrical objects like TV, computer, etcetera.”

In an interview with e27, Xie highlights that this is a very common problem in Asian households where parents wish that their children pursue the common career path of being a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. Even the slightest interest shown by their child in these fields can be confused as an indication of their passion.

But is this the best way to make career decisions?

A significant chunk of students believe that the decision made by their parents is indeed correct – but only until they near graduation. This is because decisions are made with extremely limited insights.

“Most people realise what kind of jobs they want only in the third or fourth year [of university], or nearing graduation. After that, they suddenly get more clarity on the kind of major they should have taken,” Xie says, adding that this realisation is attributed to the generic nature of first- and second-year subjects in university.

Also Read: You’ve heard about speed dating. Here’s what you need to know about speed hiring

Despite completing his undergrad in engineering with NUS (National University of Singapore), Xie only discovered his true love for the business world after nine years of working with SSMC and HeidelbergCement Asia. He then decided to pursue an MBA in Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

While some realise have the liberty to make a quick switch after realising that they are not fit for the subject, many don’t. Enter Careershe.

Clarity before confusion

The idea behind Careershe is to provide students with an in-depth knowledge of the different career options, outcomes, and the best university degrees towards the desired outcome to help people pick the right path along the way.

When a student signs up on the mobile platform, they can see contents on a range of different occupations from various industries, from aircraft maintenance to creative banding. They can further explore the options through videos and infographics, detailing information such as salary and work scope.

To put it simply, Careershe is designed as a “career encyclopedia”.

Apart from that, the platform also helps individuals to identify their strengths and weaknesses through different kinds of psychometric tests.

The platform currently operates in China and works as a subscription-based model which costs as low as US$25 in total for a year.

“Careershe focuses on two parts: The first is to help students identify the career of their dreams by providing them insights on a range of career options,” Xie explains.

“The next phase of our growth is to show students how to get there. We want to build a pathway for them where they can upskill themselves along the way so that they can reach their desired destination.”

Partnership with Oxford

In addition to raising a funding round with only a business plan in hand, Careershe says that it has become the first Singapore-based venture to emerge from Oxford University Innovation (OUI) startup incubator.

Chandra Sekar Ramanujan, Senior Licensing and Ventures Manager at OUI, says in a statement, “We are very much attracted to Steve’s vision for Careershe, as well as the thought and market research that has gone into developing the idea. We have supported Steve in validating his business model and connecting with Oxford University’s world-leading academic resources – notably in big data and AI. At this time we are particularly interested in promoting ventures and partnerships overseas.”

Also Read: Meet the first batch of e27 Pro Perks partners

The company has also been affiliated with the TusStar startup incubator programme which has incubated over 5,000 firms.

Having built the product, launched to the market, and gleaned insights from users over the past year, the company is now focused on raising funds from investors and seeking partnerships. For example, with schools in China.

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Image Credit: Careershe

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The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanise production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution builds on the third, the digital revolution, that has been occurring since the middle of the last century.

Best characterised by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the biological, digital and physical spheres; we have embraced it wholly, and it has fundamentally altered the way we live, work, and relate to one another. The scale, scope, and complexity of the transformation have been unlike anything humankind has experienced before.

And just like the revolutions that preceded it, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to raise global income levels and improve the quality of life for populations around the world. But let’s reflect on our own behavioural change and market expectation over the past decade.

Thus far, we, the consumers have tapped technology to increase the efficiency and pleasure of our personal lives — from requesting rides (GoJek), ordering in (Deliveroo), purchasing groceries (RedMart), making payments (GrabPay), watching films (Netflix), playing games (Sea) or simply communicating with each other (WhatsApp) — any of these can now be done remotely. Even more so, as we navigate life under the cloud cover of a global pandemic that is the COVID-19 virus.

And in general, the response has mostly been comprehensive and integrated, involving stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors, and to academia and civil society.

Also Read: Indonesia’s BCA launches 3rd SYNRGY Accelerator with 11 startups

From linear to circular

However research by McKinsey & Company shows a big shift across all industries, and the breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire ecosystems of governance, management and production. When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth is evolving at an exponential, rather than a linear pace.

In fact, the team of Andreas Waschto, Tanguy Catlin, Jahnavi Nandan, Johannes-Tobias Lorenz, and Shirish Sharma from McKinsey & Company in their article predict that ecosystems will account for 30 per cent of global revenues by 2025.

Moreover, the actual composition and shape of these ecosystems will vary by country and region, both because of the effects of regulations and as a result of more subtle cultural customs and tastes.

But what it means for businesses is that putting customers at the centre of every digital activity will help drive scaled adoption and capture previously unimagined value. You only have to look at Amazon, Facebook, Grab and Alibaba, as examples.

How does this affect us as individuals or even employees or business owners, you ask? Well in our new, multi-dimensional connected world, we are already moving from linear to circular, participatory value models. However, most organisations are still comfortable in traditional processes, where the buyer captures value by consuming the product or service.

On the other hand, is a true circular, participatory value model, a distributed, decentralised value mechanism, embedded within the whole ecosystem, with value creation through a collaborative effort, comes into play.

Also Read: Has COVID-19 pushed us into the digital future?

In fact, if your organisation has been forced to move to a remote way of interacting with clients, this might be the perfect opportunity for you to involve the team in the build of their own bespoke version of this new, multi-dimensional world.

The eventual goal for organisations to thrive in this world would be to create a platform of co-creation, co-sharing and co-distribution among collaborating parties, as an “open value sharing” process, acting as an ongoing circular and participatory value model, as outlined by Annabeth Aagaard in her book Digital Business Models: Driving Transformation and Innovation.

If we reflect on which organisations are more of an ecosystem and less of a product-driven organisation, one might argue that product-driven “works”, as there are experts who spend years developing them. According to Kevin Kelly in his book The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 technological forces that will shape our future, another way of exploring this is by shifting towards creating an ecosystem that is “governed by co-evolution, which is a type of biological co-dependence, a mixture of competition and cooperation, where one’s success hinges on the success of others.”

That way, we will move away from just a core of experts, which can be deemed as stagnant, to a combination of a core while harnessing the power of a crowd, which is constantly, and dynamically, evolving.

What happens then?

In their paper –The importance of Non-Hub Elements – researchers Azusa Minamizaki and Euan McKay, argue that for organisations to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution, the “core” could be distributed at various sections of the highest centrality across the globe which is then able to develop active and scalable networks.

Also Read: Meet the 15 new startups that have received funding from Antler

According to Professor Matthew Jackson who authored the book The Human Network: The Science Behind our Hidden Positions in Life, such a network is known as the Eigenvector Centrality Network which relies on the measure of influence and strength within a network instead of relying only one individual as opposed to:

• Degree centrality: reliant on an individual being able to get a message out to millions of followers on a social medium gives a person the potential to influence what many people think or know. (extremely traditional), or
• Diffusion centrality: reliant on how well-positioned is a person to spread information and to be one of the first to hear it. Not a very scalable approach.

Simply put, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”, or so the old adage goes. Professor Jackson shows us through his ground-breaking research that the relationships in school, university, work and society have extraordinary implications throughout our lives.

By understanding and taking advantage of these networks, we can boost our happiness, success and influence. But there are also wider lessons to be learnt.

Ultimately, the ability of organisations to adapt will determine the survival of the Eigenvector Centrality Network. If they prove capable of embracing a world of disruptive change, subjecting their structures to the levels of transparency and efficiency that will enable them to maintain their competitive edge, they will endure. If they cannot evolve, they will face increasing trouble.

Also Read: Why the future of AI needs more of diversity and the arts

As the growing possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. Then suffice to say that the world is changing towards relying and creating access to infinite experts around the world, instead of depending on a finite few as we have done so in the past.

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Fresh out of ICE71’s latest cohort, Scantist captured our attention being the only Singaporean cybersecurity startup that made the cut.

Scantist’s story dated back to 2016 when Co-founder and CEO of Scantist and team found a critical vulnerability in the Adobe Reader software during the course of their research.

“This vulnerability allowed hackers to create a malicious PDF file which would trigger a denial of service attack when opened. We reported this vulnerability to Adobe, which promptly thanked us and even issued a bug bounty,” says Liu.

But his team got intrigued and even pursued the issued bounty. “Some of our researchers got excited and kept digging — and they found another two vulnerabilities with similar impact,” he explains.

They ended up applying this approach to other popular commercial software. “We found that these issues were everywhere which was extremely surprising. Every day our society uses this software with a belief that these are secure but turns out they are not,” he says.

Liu realised then that these vulnerabilities were present in applications built by multi-billion dollar software companies which presumably had the best engineering talents and all the resources they needed.

“If even they couldn’t be 100 per cent secure, what about the vast majority of software built and used every day by SMEs, government agencies, or even non-tech large enterprises?” he wonders.

Also Read: Meet the 9 cybersecurity startups graduated from ICE71’s 4th batch

So Liu and team set out on a mission to help secure software applications. “The idea was simple; translate what we had done in a research lab into a commercially viable product that everyone could use so that any piece of software (be it mobile, web, or IoT) can be free of security vulnerabilities. And that’s what vulnerability management is about,” he says.

Why vulnerabilities need management

Traditionally, firewalls and access control were seen as the key to securing systems. Software was used internally in an organisation – and as long as it can be used to keep malicious agents out, the theory is that it was secure.

But we have to take into account the present times, where everyone and everything is hyper-connected with software that is used increasingly to interface with customers, partners, and employees across the globe.

“Today’s situation made it no longer feasible to just ‘build a wall’. Accessibility is key, and you can’t control who accesses or tries to access your systems. If access cannot be limited and your applications are insecure, you will inevitably succumb to an attack,” the CEO explains.

Liu then drew an example from the Equifax breach in the US, which compromised credit ratings of over 140 million Americans. “That and the Panama Paper scandal, which began with a hack of the document management application at Mossack Fonseca. You see, the potential impact of vulnerable software is massive. An incident like that would be catastrophic for Singapore and it’s smart nation initiative,” he warns.

The challenge then is to ensure that the software the enterprise relies on is secure in and by itself.

“No matter who tries to access it, your applications need to be robust enough to ward off any malicious activity. But doing that in a manner that is cost-effective and does not add overheads or inconveniences the end-user is a massive challenge,” he admits.

Understanding cyber threats

When it comes to securing software applications, or any form of cybersecurity, there are two broad categories of threats.

“The first is the known threats — these are vulnerability issues that are well understood and have been seen in the past and are typically well-documented in the public domain. But despite that, they may still impact new software applications as there are just so many of them and keeping track of them is a humanly impossible task,” he adds.

Scantist steps in with its Software Composition Analysis — a lightweight, low cost scanner which looks at application (in source code or binary formats) and alerts the company if there are any known threats that exist.

Also Read: 5 cybersecurity strategies every startup must know

“And we don’t just stop there — we go one step further to give you the quickest way to fix these issues specific to your use-case so our customers can save time and money. This is a solution I believe every organisation needs to have in the digital age,” he says.

The second is the the unknown threats. These are vulnerabilities that are unique to your application and cannot be directly mapped against the existing known vulnerabilities. This however does not mean they can’t be found.

Liu claims that years of R&D has allowed Scantist to find these unknowns with its Smart Fuzzer. “This solution allows us to imitate a hacker by using intelligent brute-force to trigger application-level vulnerabilities at run time. We have gotten recognition internationally for it.”

What is Scantist

Software, in general, has all kinds of security weaknesses due to the design, implementations and even installation and misuse. “We call these problems software vulnerabilities, and what Scantist aims to provide is the automatic tools to help the developers and software end-users to identify these vulnerabilities so that these issues can be pacified before the attacks,” Liu summarises.

However, he notes that a one-time scan is not enough because vulnerabilities are found and disclosed every day, and secure software today can be vulnerable tomorrow.

Scantist serves even further by monitoring all the newly founded vulnerabilities in the world and informing their customers about these vulnerabilities so that they can take swift actions and manage the vulnerabilities.

NTU’s support and ICE71’s time

Scantist is heavily supported by Nanyang Technological University (NTU), so much that it’s dubbed the company as “cybersecurity spin-off from NTU”.

“There is no way we would have been where we are without the support of the local ecosystem, and NTU’s support is perhaps the largest,” Liu shares.

As a university faculty himself, Liu says that the ability to run a startup tackling the next generation of cybersecurity challenges would have been impossible without the university’s support.

“And so we take immense pride in letting the world know of our roots,” he says.

Liu himself graduated from NUS and joined NTU as a faculty member in SCSE in 2012. “Currently, I am a Chair Professor, Director of the cybersecurity lab at NTU, Deputy Director of National Satellite of Excellence of Singapore. My research is centred around cybersecurity, software engineering and AI,” he explains.

“We are aiming to bridge the gap between the theoretical contribution and practical software evaluation solutions for high quality and security,” adds he.

The other co-founder is Dr T Srikanthan (COO). He is the Director of NTU cybersecurity institute (Cysren) and a well-established researcher in hardware and a veteran in entrepreneurship.

As for their involvement in ICE71’s last cohort, Liu says: “As cybersecurity is even more crucial now, startups like us need more support to get our solutions to market more quickly to address the evolving cyber threats. Through ICE71, we’re glad to be connected to the vibrant cybersecurity ecosystems here and overseas. This will help us take off and expand internationally.”

Post-COVID-19 for cybersecurity industry

“Just like any other companies, we were forced to shift our operations to a 100 per cent remote workplace. As counter-intuitive as it may seem given the digital nature of our products, there were a lot of challenges as our customers still prefer on-premise deployments from a privacy standpoint. But our team was up to the challenge, and I am proud of how well we handled the situation,” Dr Liu recalls.

On the customer end, Scantist faced no significant adverse impact on the business. “We even found that organisations accelerating their digital transformation efforts and as a result really ramping up their security posture as well. We are working closely with our customers and partners to deliver our services in all sections,” he says.

What’s good about coming out of the other end of the pandemic is that there is greater awareness in the industry today that cybersecurity is critical and necessary.

“For me, what I see is that Southeast Asia is undergoing its next phase of accelerated economic growth off-the-back of the great digital revolution that is currently underway,” he says.

Liu then adds: “But still there is a lag — especially in cybersecurity — when it comes to best practices and latest trends. A big contributor for this lag is that we see cybersecurity as a hurdle, as an expense that adds limited value.”

What’s next for Scantist

Liu further explains that currently, the company is launching a new software architecture analysis tool to find critical software architecture issues and debts. “We hope this can help in a way that developers cannot ignore if they want to have better maintainability of the software.”

Next on the pipeline is that the company is ready to launch a new mobile app vulnerability assessment tool which aims to provide detailed security and privacy scanning for both known and unknown vulnerabilities for apps.

Also Read: Cybersecurity in the age of information warfare and IoT

An AI-powered vulnerability detection engines for source code and binary is also underway. “This could be more customised towards customer own code base with a low false-positive rate. The AI algorithms can make the tool smarter via self-learning,” he explains.

The long-term vision of Scantist is to provide a holistic intelligent software analysis framework for both qualities, security, maintainability, compatibility, and so on.

When it comes to application security in the vulnerability management domain, the world is moving to security by design principles and embedding security into every part of the software development cycle through the DevSecOps movement.

“Scantist wants to be the flagbearer for that change in the region. We are trying to play our part by providing comprehensive, accurate, and easy-to-use application security solutions.

Now what is critical is that the mindset around cybersecurity needs to change. Cybersecurity needs to be seen as an enabler. The true potential of technology – from self-driving to telecommuting and e-learning to contact tracing – can only be unlocked if cybersecurity is considered on every step of the digital transformation journey,” he concludes.
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Photo by Jefferson Santos on Unsplash

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Xangle’s US$3M funding

The story: CrossAngle, operator of the global crypto asset disclosure platform Xangle, announced that it has successfully completed its Series A2 investment round led by Hanwha Investment & Securities, a subsidiary of South Korean conglomerate Hanwha Group.

What is Xangle: Xangle is a public crypto disclosure service focused on providing transparent data for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

In order to provide its disclosure service, Xangle collects, verifies and integrates corporate disclosures from global projects and companies that have issued crypto assets. The platform provides the public access to both off-chain corporate disclosures and on-chain metrics and analytics.

Plans with the capital: The Series A2 investment is expected to enable it to develop an infrastructure for institutionalising crypto data services.

Uber gets new India, South Asia president

The story: The ride-hailing giant has appointed Prabhjeet Singh as the new president of its India and South Asia business. He replaces Pradeep Parameswaran, who was promoted to be the regional General Manager in the Asia Pacific region.

What is his role: Singh, who joined the ride-hailing firm five years ago, has helped Uber manage operations in dozens of cities in India and South Asia in recent years. His new job is to oversee the next phase of growth in what Uber sees as one of its “fastest growing and most strategic markets.”

 

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Over the years, the idea of rapid-fire dating has gained massive popularity and has spread across the world, due to its fast, easy and somewhat effective nature.

But what about speed hiring?

Similar to speed dating, speed interview is a method that allows hiring managers to meet and assess different candidates together during a short time.

With the COVID-19 outbreak, many employers were left with no choice but to reduce staff costs by laying off employees, cutting salaries, and placing hiring on hold.

As companies continue setting up directories for employees that have been laid off ever since Airbnb showed the way, a group of startups have joined forces to help employees get facetime on the speedinterview platform in Singapore.

Some of the companies who are a part of this initiative include Hireplace, Wantedly, TalentStork, and PeopleStrong.

In an interview with e27, the co-founder of Hireplace Stewart Chen spoke about speed interviews, how it is helping working professionals find jobs during the pandemic, and how to ace one.

Also Read: Hiring for startups: What founders really look for

What is the idea behind speed interviews? Is it a tested concept in the corporate world?
Speed interview is a format that has been applied in various recruiting events. I was in one, two years ago, that was meant for full-stack developers. The event completely sold out and there were around 50 candidates and 10 renowned employers. The event was a success with both the employers and candidates coming back for more the next year.

More importantly, it was not a career fair. It was small and intimate and I believe that’s the future of all hiring events. Having said that, career was pretty chaotic and waiting physically in a busy queue was not fun.

So I thought there must be a better way to do it, which is why we decided to have virtual speed interviews.

During COVID-19, what are some challenges surrounding human resource (HR)?
This pandemic has forced closures of many businesses but for those that are still standing, challenges in HR revolve around enabling remote or flexible work (WFH), digitising the HR infrastructure, employee engagement, but the most important issues are layoffs and furloughs.

Almost every day you come across news of layoffs from the smallest to the biggest companies and in Singapore, our jobless rate is at its highest in 10 years. There’s no longer a talent crunch. It’s now a job crunch and even graduates and interns are not spared.

How is Hireplace helping companies or employees during this time?
For companies that are still hiring, the number of applications has skyrocketed and HR might find it hard to cope with the sheer number of shortlisted candidates. I was talking to one of the banks in Singapore recently and they have 500 shortlisted candidates (out of many thousands) waiting to be interviewed.

So how do you do this effectively?  You can’t just put three candidates in one call and interview all of them in one shot without irking everybody. So here, we are helping the companies create speed interview sessions with these shortlisted candidates so that everybody gets a slice of 1-on-1 face time with the HR or hiring managers.

Also Read: Breaking down the hiring process for early-stage founders : team or product first?

Universities have tens of thousands of students that need to be placed under internships or full-time roles, and traditional virtual career fairs and job portals might not provide results quick enough.

We help some of these universities, such as NUS, by organising Virtual Hiring Events targeted to a specific role, companies and graduating or interning cohorts. These “events” can be completed under an hour like a meeting and employers can screen through 10 students easily from a particular area of study. Students like this as they get to speak to various employers in a short time.

If a company has never tried speed hiring before but want to try it, how can they prepare themselves? 

Speed interview can be really effective if the company has many candidates to interview for a role.

If they have that and want to try for their existing pipeline of candidates, they could contact us on hireplace or email us. On the other hand, if they want to attend an existing event hosted on speedinterview they could register their company on the respective event page.

In terms of preparation, they just need to make sure they are on a good internet connection with a working mic and webcam for their laptops. Really it’s just like a normal interview but time-boxed so really focus on the questions you want to ask, keep an open mind, and network!

What do people need to know about making a good first impression during speed interviews?
I think it’s the same way you make a good impression with any stranger. Be curious, interested and courteous.

However, since they could be your potential employer, I think it’s very important to do your research about the company and the role before going into the chat. Make sure you are prepared. It would also help if you have something that they could remember you by, a particular hobby, skill, story or even a cool hairstyle.

Also Read: Morning News Roundup: Indonesia proposes law that makes foreign talent hiring in startups easier

Do you think that speed interviews have some amount of bias in the process?
Firstly, bias is innate in everyone and this affects our actions, thoughts and how we choose our friends. The same bias creeps into systems, business rules, policies etc.

The field of AI which a lot of HR tech is built upon is not spared either. If your resume uses words such as “executed” and “captured” frequently, you might be a favoured applicant in Amazon (once upon a time), and there’s also a high probability that you are a male according to few articles. If algorithms can be biased, how do you expect humans not to be?

There’s no silver bullet to fix this and it’s simply our responsibility to be conscious of our actions as it would hurt those that are discriminated against. And the one thing in common in all job applications is that you need to be interviewed by another person.

We simply speed this process up but it does not introduce new biases that someone might already have.

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Image Credit: Unsplash: Kyle Glenn

The post You’ve heard about speed dating. Here’s what you need to know about speed hiring appeared first on e27.

Wavemaker closes its third SEA fund at US$111M, exceeds target; Backers include Concentric, Pavilion, Temasek, IFC; The new fund aims to invest in 60 new firms with an initial check size of about US$500K; Wavemaker is an investor in Moka (acquired by gojek), Zilingo, Red Dot Payment (acquired by Naspers). e27

Tinder co-founder, SpaceX backer invest in Filipino edutech startup Avion School, which helps Filipinos become software engineers in 12 weeks; Avion follows a concept called ‘income-share agreements’; The Philippines has 750K potential students, and there is a trend among people to learn coding. e27

5 survival strategies for startups in a post-COVID-19 world; While new-born startups had it extra-tough, the “valley of death” has engulfed startups in all stages; Startups have to reassess their expenses, approach existing investors, recheck and explore alternative business model to stay relevant and be successful. e27

How Fefifo aims to make farming cool again for the younger generation; The Malaysian agritech startup brings in the concept of co-working space into farming; The startup takes away all the business formality side of farming to give agropreneurs everything they need to start in the co-farming space. e27

Why the future of AI needs more of diversity and the arts; We have reached the point in time where humanity and technology co-exist and our lives get more intertwined with tech in one way or another; We need all sorts of minds in harmony orchestrating every gender of different myelinated fibre strength, not just in STEM but also in art to create the magic of AI. e27

What gaming industry can teach the fashion industry amidst COVID-19; With the consumer shift online, businesses should consider enhancing their digital marketing strategies to build a stronger e-commerce presence but entice customers to visit physical stores when they reopen. e27

Why the digital workforce needs more women; COVID-19 has the potential to decimate gains in gender equality or act as an accelerator for change; A UNDP study found 90% of people are biased against women and over 40% believe men make better biz executives; In AI, only 22% of professionals are women. CWT

Facebook reveals 13 participants selected for its Community Accelerator programme in APAC; From community leaders of LGBTQ to mental health awareness, participants have been selected from Australia, Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines; Leaders enrolled in the programme will receive up to US$30,000 in capital. e27

Chatbots are backfiring, ‘driving away customers’; Study says unpleasant chatbot interactions are caused by inauthenticity when customers feel tricked into conversing with a non-human; Such interactions are caused by inauthenticity, excessive questions or repeated answers on the part of the bot, failure to deal with complex queries due to a limited operational scope. InsideRetail Asia

China’s aggression is undermining its tech giants’ global ambitions; The likes of Alibaba, TikTok have long sought to transform themselves into global operations; But geopolitical tensions are making this harder; The main beneficiary of TikTok’s troubles will be other US tech groups, like Facebook. Nikkei Asian Review

Thai fast-food chain Central Restaurants to open 100 cloud kitchens by 2024; The country’s food-delivery services generate US$1.1B in sales annually; Such centrally located kitchens are on the rise across SEA; Grab, gojek are already in the biz, while Jollibee Foods has plans to spend US$141M to open cloud kitchens. Nikkei Asian Review

It is all about survival of the most adaptable, says PatSnap’s Jeffrey Tiong; With examples such as Zoom and Slack, the end-user is now opening up and guiding enterprise decisions; Use your product to become your spokesperson and let the customers experience its value. e27

Upskilling to thrive in the new digital normal; The unicorns of the 2030 decade will be born in the digital transformation, automation and modernisation of traditional arms of existing business; COVID19–induced digital innovations are shaping the customer experience journey in travel and mobility, tourism, service industries and public spaces. Digital News Asia

Farm-to-fork models, new retail drove US$165M agrifoodtech funding in Indonesia last year; With 7 deals, East Ventures was the second most active investor; The ‘farm to fork’ model will be a door opener for more tech innovation that promotes food, agriculture, and the sustainability of farmers’ livelihoods. AgFunderNews

Google to buy 7.7% stake in Jio Platforms for US$4.5B; The two firms will develop an Android-based smartphone OS; The telco is looking to roll out an e-commerce initiative that will tap into its huge 388M-strong subscriber base; Facebook, Intel and others have already ploughed some US$15B into Jio. CNN

Is the supply chain shifting to Vietnam in a post-COVID-19 world?; The country is a rising manufacturing hub for electronics, textile, footwear; FDI holds 80% of the local market share of electronics sector; However, the nature of the manufacturing industry in Vietnam poses a potential threat. e27

Thailand is ahead with 5G rollouts in SEA amidst the pandemic; Its usage in enabling remote healthcare devices, including AI and robotics used in hospitals, has heightened perception that it is instrumental to the national recovery; Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore are also pushing ahead with their 5G plans. Tech Collective

Singapore’s Her Capital launches debut women-focused fund for SEA; Plans to raise US$10M: To invest in startups led by at least one female founder/startups which develop products/services leveraging ‘she economy’. DealStreetAsia

Robotic automation potential catalyst for jobs growth in Malaysia; With cobots helping to increase productivity, companies often find themselves in a position to hire more people, thus creating jobs and not eliminating them; Recently, the government announced pilot programmes to explore the use of robotic tech in various sectors to reduce the country’s reliance on foreign workers. Bernama

Vietnam struggling to reach 5K science and tech firms target this year; It currently has only ~500 such firms; The government has found many barriers to reach the target; The country has improved policies and institutions, including amendments of some laws on investment, enterprises and corporate income tax. Vietnam News

Taiwanese scooter-sharing platform WeMo gears up for international expansion; It has a fleet of 7K+ scooters and registers 1M rides/month; WeMo recently raised Series A led by AppWorks; Its local competitors are GoShare, Gogoro. TechCrunch

E-wallet SmartPay offers online savings with Viet Capital Bank tie-up; SmartPay users including small traders can now save online at high interest rates and get other benefits; Since its launch in May last year, the e-wallet has signed up 185K+ merchants, ~1.7M users. Vietnam News

Thailand’s Digital Service Sandbox ready for businesses; The sandbox allows service providers/e-transaction services firms to test their innovations or services before release; Applications for the first round of selections are open till July 31. OpenGovAsia

GrabPay partners with InstaPay, allowing users to transfer funds to and from e-wallets; No card or bank details are saved in the app when you use your banking app or e-wallet; Users can save GrabPay as a transfer template in their respective banking or e-wallet apps. YugaTech

The post Ecosystem Roundup: Wavemaker closes US$111M 3rd fund; Her Capital launches women-focused fund; New retail drove US$165M agrifoodtech funding in Indonesia in ’19 appeared first on e27.

Global startup generator and early-stage VC firm Antler has announced the 15 new companies that have graduated and received investment from its fourth Singapore programme.

The list also includes two startups from Antler’s COVID-19 Initiative. Launched earlier this year, the initiative aims to invest in startups that are working on ideas that respond to the impact of COVID-19.

About 61 per cent of these 15 companies had previous entrepreneurship experience, and 38 per cent have at least one female co-founder.

Antler held its fourth Singapore Demo Day and the first virtual one to an audience of investors, VCs and entrepreneurs from the global startup ecosystem.

“There has been a drastic change in consumer behaviour and we want to help create companies that keep this in mind when building…While most of the second phase of this programme was conducted remotely, the level and frequency of engagement increased and was intense,” Jussi Salovaara, Co-founder and Managing Partner Asia at Antler.

Also Read: How to craft your startup’s financial projections

“The Antler team adapted quickly to operating online and the current situation does not in any way deter us from working with the most exceptional founders to help them build and scale high-performing early-stage tech startups,” he added.

Below is the brief of the 15 ventures

Approvd: A SaaS for businesses to identify and assess external data risks. It  empowers businesses to check, assess and onboard external vendors quicker and cost effectively, for data protection, cybersecurity and responsible AI use.

Chloropy: An AI startup, it automates the collection and management of crop health data from farms using drones for agrochemical companies.

Empala: Works with companies to enable their employees to drawdown the salary they have earned on demand.

Moneko: Developing an AI-powered personal finance mobile app, which application combines behavioural science and game design to help millennials in Asia get better at saving and managing their money.

Pawjourr: The Yelp for pets, helping pet owners discover new products, read reviews from other pet owners and directly book pet-related services.

Pretepop: An all-in-one platform for anyone looking to organise and run retail events online.

Skibre: A social and mobile-based e-sports platform. Skibre hosts skill-based mobile game tournaments for casual games across genres like puzzles, action, and strategy

Vikree: An enterprise SaaS platform to help companies break organisational boundaries and engage with partners to build a powerful ecosystem.

Volopay: Modernises the way companies manage spending by fusing financial management software with a smart corporate card.

Workclass: A social hiring platform focused on the accelerated hiring process in the blue-collar labour market.

YourRent: A fintech startup on a mission to improve flexibility, efficiency and fairness within the real estate rental ecosystem.

Zealth-ai: A personalised digital health intervention platform to provide patient reported outcomes monitoring and intelligent symptoms tracking.

Zopnik: Connecting local boutiques with pop-up shows at home in India.

Biogenes Technologies (COVID initiative): Develops, produces and markets aptamer-based (synthetic antibody) diagnostics products via their proprietary technology platform.

Path BioAnalytics (COVID initiative): Proprietary technology to quickly produce respiratory cell cultures, known as organoids, that are biologically-relevant and ideally suited to this task.

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Image Credit: Antler

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Brian Cu leaves Grab

The story: Brian Cu is leaving his role as president of Grab Philippines.

Why: Cu has decided to focus on other business interests as an entrepreneur in the startup scene, as per a press statement.

His contributions to Grab: Cu managed Grab’s operations in the Philippines since its launch in the country seven years ago. He has steered the company since it started as a ride-hailing app and eventually transitioned into a “superapp” with multiple verticals including food and package delivery and other services.

He also oversaw the company’s merger with former competitor Uber in 2016.

NUS to nurture fintech talent

The story: The NUS School of Computing has launched the NUS-FinTechSG Programme, which aims to nurture Singapore’s next generation of fintech talents and full stack developers, FintechNews has reported.

What is it?: The programme offered by the NUS FinTech Lab and Strategic Technology Management Institute (STMI) is a platform for students to gain knowledge about contemporary issues, integration of financial domain know-how, consisting of lending, payments, insurance, regulation and management. Students will also learn about front- and back-end development, cloud systems, blockchain and algorithmic trading.

Also Read: How travel startups can survive when investors withdraw

More details: The launch of the programme builds upon the concerted efforts to strengthen Singapore’s US$861 million fintech market and to ensure that the industry can continue its growth momentum alongside financial institutions.

MDEC’s startup funding initiative

The story: The Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) has launched the Founders Grindstone, its sixth funding initiative in four months.

This comes after the facilitation of five alternative funding initiatives for companies seeking financial relief during the Movement Control Order that was implemented on 18 March 2020.

What is it?: The Founders Grindstone is a six-month programme, consisting of three blocks of intensive workshops conducted by global partners from venture capital firms, equity crowdfunding operators, startup-centric media and the legal practice.

Objective: It aims to offer the opportunity to leverage funding platforms of the partners on-board, granting Malaysian entrepreneurs’ access to investment offerings by the global funding network.

When: The first block of workshops will be conducted virtually by MDEC and Draper Startup House Ventures (DSH) on July 15. Participants will be guided on the creation of effective pitch decks and the art of storytelling.

Following the workshop, participating startups will be eligible to submit their pitch decks on the DSH Ventures platform where 20 chosen start-ups will be invited to pitch in the coming weeks.

Fefifo’s crowdfunding campaign

The story: Malaysian agritech startup Fefifo has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign on Ata Plus with a 50 per cent discount on its valuation as part of its initiatives in view of the global COVID-19 crisis.

How much: Fefifo seeks to raise up to RM4.5 million (US$1.05M) in return for a 25.25 per cent stake.

Also Read: Meet the 15 new startups that have received funding from Antler

What is Fefifo: A technology-driven, co-farming company that focuses on empowering a new generation of progressive smallholder farmers in ASEAN.

Its co-farming model enables smallholder farmers and young agriculture graduates to start their own commercial farming business with zero capital expenditure, by providing them with modern, ready-to-farm spaces called ‘co-farms’ and access to agri-science, technology and training.

‘Agropreneurs’ in Fefifo’s network can expect attractive returns and benefit from Fefifo’s established partnerships across the entire agri-value chain. Agropreneurs are also given financial support to start their farms, manage their crop growth and operations using a purpose-built digital platform, and they sell their crops to guaranteed buyers.

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Indonesian privately held Bank Central Asia (BCA) announced the launch the third batch of the programme of its SYNRGY Accelerator.

With GK Plug and Play as a collaborator, the programme focusses on supporting the startup ecosystem in Indonesia and to give a platform to new startups from many fresh industries.

The event focussed on exploring the topics of insurtech, data analytics, proptech, Enterprise 2.0, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, mortgage, and blockchain technology.

The programme started off with Kick Off Day, held virtually on July 15 to comply with the physical distancing rule of the country.

The participants will receive one-on-one mentoring and sharing sessions with key experts from different fields as well as workshops. They will also have a meeting with BCA Group’s business units, a chance to collaborate with Central Capital Ventura (CCV) and BCA Group, as well as media exposure.

“We aim to facilitate a launchpad for many potential startups that are hindered of significant growth, and SYNRGY Accelerator Program is BCA’s effort in opening many doors for these startups, be it in a form of partnership, investments, or other collaborations,” said Evans Charles Benny Hartawan, Group Head of Digital Innovation Solutions BCA.

Also Read: BCA, Digitaraya launch coworking space, accelerator programme Synrgy

There are 11 startups selected to join this batch:

• Aman, a startup that provides health insurance for employees and aims to simplify the complexity of the insurance benefit’s administration
• Bangku, a business loan marketplace that helps SMEs find the right loan through a free online service
• InvesProperti, a crowdfunding platform that lets people invest in property with a small starting capital and transparency guarantee.
• Katalis, a digital business app that provides digital bills, multifunction digital card, as well as academic administration system.
• Moodah, a platform that helps to digitalise SMEs, allows them to track their loss and profits, as well as their bookkeeping
• Nimbly, a mobile-based solution that converts manual checklists into real-time to-do list, with the goal to help frontliners in applying their SOPs and automating their works.
• Sales1, a startup that offers a CRM platform for the sales team to manage accounts, directions, and other activities from anywhere and anytime in different verticals.

Also Read: BCA, Digitaraya, Google team up to launch SYNRGY Accelerator

• Shortlyst, a human resources startup that provides a data-based and AI-based recruitment and talent solutions.
• Smarteye.id, a startup within state-owned telco PT Telkom Indonesia that focusses on immersive technology such as VR, AR, MR, and XR that offers solutions for business and consumers.
• TapHomes, a startup that provides alternative solutions for aspiring homebuyers, with an affordable monthly fee that allows them to keep building on their future homeownership portion.
• Vexanium, a startup that provides a public blockchain protocol network, allowing companies to create Smart Contract directly without any third party

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Image Credit: SYNRGY Accelerator

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A recent survey by a major publication in Singapore sparked a discussion about the value of art and artists in society. The survey found that over 70 per cent of the respondents picked artists as non-essential jobs.

It was later highlighted that the survey responses were closely tied to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic where essential needs such as health and food were arguably top of mind. However, the debate over the value of art and education in the arts persisted.

As a former scholar of an unusual combination of applied maths, engineering, and studio art, I am keen to reflect on what this will mean for the future of STEM, particularly in the field of data and AI.

There is plenty of discussion about diversity but acceptance of diversity is a larger economic, political, socio-economic question. Diversity is about accepting differences and not forcing men, women, NLP engineers, data artists, decision scientists to fit into the same mold.

In AI, this is especially true. As we advance towards a data-driven future, AI will require not just data and engineering skills but increasingly, and some argue, more importantly, there will be a need to emphasise judgment, decision-making, and people skills.

I have spent over 10 years in technology, moving from science-based health projects to pure technology across three countries. However, I didn’t choose a career path in tech. I knew from very early on that I wanted a people-focused career and tech was just the medium. My real passion was and remains mathematical storytelling.

Also Read: How learning like babies can be the future of AI?

By choosing to study the different areas that I did, I was able to combine both my analytical and creative talents and get involved in game-changing innovation like building robotic arms for smart prosthetics and then moving across the world to delve into the world of insights for large technology companies.

In my current role at GitLab, what I love most is making tech work for customers around the world through new innovation. We now have the capability to solve things that we couldn’t before through the lens of AI, but we can do this effectively only when we embrace the diversity in passions and talent.

As humans, we find comfort in certainty and reproducibility. For employers, to hire a good data scientist, they would fall back on a checklist of the robotic skills (python, stats, presentation). However, to build a good AI model, one not only needs a mathematician but also poets, storytellers, linguistic specialists, among others.

Instead of viewing analytics and soft skills as two distinct skill sets, they should be considered as part of the same genre of human problem-solving skills. How we use tools is the craft but how we apply these tools to creatively solve a human problem is an art. Analytics is, therefore, a subset of soft skills and vice versa.

In our day-to-day lives as STEM professionals, we have to be active listeners to understand the needs of customers, their problems, and their desires. Only with that understanding can we creatively craft the analytics solution to solve the need and articulate how the solution fits in the holistic journey of the customers.

We have reached the point in time where humanity and technology co-exist and our lives get more intertwined with technology in one way or another. While there is no denying that enhancing our technical skills is paramount, I believe that skills such as critical thinking, communication, and decision-making are equally important.

For example, Pure Math is a craft but Applied Math and how we use it to solve problems is art. Similarly in AI, we have data, tools, fast computing engines, fast mathematical solutions such as tensor flow, DevOps frameworks extended to Machine Learning (ML)Ops, AIOps and DataOps, but how we apply all these tools and concepts to solve a human problem is a work of art.

Also Read: How this project uses artificial intelligence to help develop restaurants’ menu

We need all sorts of minds in harmony orchestrating every gender of different myelinated fibre strength, not just in STEM but also in art to create the magic of AI. Diversity in AI is having a platform where passion and individuality are embraced and creatively used in unified machine prediction and storytelling, embracing the personalisation of strengths and complementing each other’s weaknesses, finding freedom through problem-solving in the harmony of different backgrounds, age, sex, mindsets without altering each other.

At GitLab, the phrase “Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging” (or DIB) refers to the terminology for the initiative to create a diverse workforce and an environment where everyone can be their full selves.

The approach will help us not only in creating better AI models but fundamentally change the way we interact with computers, to make human interaction and society more efficient and ultimately enable a digitised ecosystem to solve critical problems and barriers to our evolution.

In order to achieve the true potential of an AI-driven world, we need to support young people in genuinely choosing their passion without any discrimination, whether they be science, technology or art, philosophy and international relations.

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