The COVID-19 pandemic has been brutal to startups and small businesses. How so?

Unlike big businesses, startups don’t have large cash reserves or profit margins to keep the wheels turning during unexpected slumps.

Reverse revenue churn coupled with business overheads have pushed many startups towards bankruptcy and shut down.

Startups in the seed phase (when businesses are low on liquidity since they are mostly bootstrapped or self-funded) have been most vulnerable. As their services/products were yet to generate revenue from real customers, they were forced to fold back operations before reaching maturity. 

While new-born startups had it extra-tough, the “valley of death” (in startup language) has engulfed startups in all stages.

Now, as the business world unlocks from global lockdowns, startups that we’re fortunate to survive the slowdown are looking for recovery plans to get their revenue engine up and running.

In this post, I’ll explain a few smart survival strategies for startups to emerge stronger in a post- COVID-19 world.

Let’s get started.

Also Read: What gaming industry can teach the fashion industry amidst COVID-19

How can startups get back on track after COVID-19

Being the worst-affected demographic, startups need risk-free survival strategies to resurrect. They might need to overhaul their business plans and long-term vision.

Whatever disaster management tactics you use, first conduct a risk assessment on them. If you miss this crucial step, you might end up investing heavily in a tactic that doesn’t give proportionate returns.

As a startup owner, here are the steps that you need to take to get your business back on its feet:

Reassess your expenses

Startups with liquidity problems need to control their expenses from mounting during this slump. You need to take a good look at your balance sheet and segregate expenses into fixed and variable categories.

Expenses that have a direct impact on revenue cannot be avoided without disturbing the income stream. On the other hand, running costs such as consumables and rentals can be minimised with smart planning.

For instance, manufacturers can automate inventory management so that they are alerted when stock prices fall. They can redesign product lines to use lower-priced items. 

Travel tech startups can divert resources from hotels and entertainment (which are halted at the moment) into more profitable service areas such as facility management. 

For startups in all domains, investment in digital experiences and tools can reduce travel overheads without affecting productivity. There is virtually no key operation area that can’t be facilitated through automated tools.

Also Read: How to emerge stronger in a post COVID-19 world

Anything else?

Yes. Monitoring your cost-revenue balance should not be a one-time activity. You need to reassess your situation every three months at least. While planning resource allocation, it’s best to create short and flexible plans as the market is very unpredictable right now. 

Approach your existing investors for reinvestment

Every business needs capital to survive. Startups, in particular, rely heavily on venture capitalists (VC) or high-net-worth individuals (HNI) for funding. Since it’s uncertain when this pandemic will end, VC/HNI investors are extra-vigilant and taking their time evaluating investment opportunities.

Sound familiar?

I bet it does. But you don’t have to panic. You can approach your existing investors with reinvestment plans. Since they already have a stake in your business, there’s a good chance that they will extend the collaboration.

If you support your investment appeal with concrete business strategies and data-backed profit projections, you can make it a no-brainer for investors.

What if your investors don’t buy your story? Should you press the panic button?

Not yet. 

If you have liquid reserves, you can tide through this period and wait till you are better placed. In the meantime, keep a close watch on your business valuation. Make a strategic call about when to approach investors for round two of funding.

I might seem too optimistic, but I’m not joking when I say that you can convert this adversity into an opportunity. Use your business acumen and adaptability to create more business opportunities for yourself and your stakeholders. That can convince your investors to increase their equity stake.

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

Check business model for feasibility

Your startup might be marginally lucky if you are covered under essential services defined by state governments. By tweaking your working format, your business model will be feasible during and after the pandemic. 

However, if your supply chain is affected by government-imposed lockdowns, you might have to revisit business plans. You’ll have to relook your current financial position with regard to sales, bad debts, credit cycles, and collections.

Here are some ways by which you can pivot your business model to align with the “new normal” conditions:

• Renegotiate your variable expenses (equipment rentals, office leases, and salaries).
• Change your selling strategy from in-person to virtual.
• Focus on recovering bad debts.
• Cut down on travel expenses of operations teams by allowing them to work remotely.
• Scale down your marketing plans.
• Revise sales targets and product delivery timelines.

Through all this, it’s essential that you stay connected with all stakeholders, including vendors, workers, and customers. In such uncertain times, it’s easy for them to lose faith and look for other business opportunities, which can be a big setback for you. 

Explore alternative business models

The pandemic has changed buyer behaviour in a big way. Consumers prefer to engage with trusted brands who can assure them real value, deliverability, and customer service.

Startups are suddenly finding themselves locked in a heated competition with established brands.

To capitalise on the situation, your startup can try an affiliate business model.

Also Read: Humanising customer experience is the best way to build loyalty in a post-COVID-19 world

What’s that?

You can partner with reputable brands that sell complementary products. Though these brands are targeting the same audience as you, they are not direct competitors. They refer their customers to you in return for a commission. 

In this way, you earn new leads without spending a bundle on direct marketing.

However, the affiliate model is feasible only if it’s mutually beneficial. You will need to keep a watch on performance indicators that you and your affiliates mutually decide. If you have multiple affiliates generating leads for you from multiple channels, affiliate marketing platforms can help streamline things.

You can also ask existing customers for referrals and retarget lost leads to save on customer acquisition costs.

Demonstrate empathy

Lastly, brands need to be empathetic in all of their communications with workers, suppliers, and customers.

Why is that important?

Once markets bounce back, people will remember and reward brands that displayed integrity and compassion when times were tough. 

Also Read: How to organise your workforce for the volatile world

Also, there have been cases where brands have received negative publicity for mishandling their stakeholders. That can be disastrous for growing startups.

Startups need to be mindful of how the pandemic has changed customer expectations from brands. They need to step up their customer service game to beat the competition and retain customers.

You can crowd-source service ideas from customers by asking for their suggestions. Create feedback forms asking customers to share which services they expect from your brand. Implement the suggestions on priority. In this way, you can improve customer loyalty and also prevent your existing customers from going astray. 

When it comes to workers, you need to strike a balance between their professional aspirations and your business needs. While salary cuts and lay-offs might be inevitable, it’s good to go about it in a compassionate manner. Discuss the business situation with them honestly and explain why the rollbacks are necessary.

Startups that are transparent in their communication can boost their credibility and trust quotient, which can earn them new business opportunities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has toppled the delicate ecosystem of startups. Even mature startups are finding it hard to adapt to the unprecedented challenges they are facing.

But new challenges build new capabilities. Startups need to keep up their efforts. The survival strategies in this post can help you sail through this period. Do you need more information on any of the tips I’ve mentioned? Leave your questions in the comments below. 

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Wavemaker Partners, Southeast Asia’s leading early-stage VC firm focussed on enterprise and deeptech startups, has announced the final close of its third Southeast Asia (SEA) fund at US$111 million, exceeding its initial target of US$100 million.

Also Read: Peace of mind: Meet the coworking space that aims to facilitate mental health professionals’ practices

The backers of the new fund include new investor Concentric Equity Partners will join existing ones Pavilion Capital, Temasek, IFC, and Vulcan Capital.

As per an earlier press release, Fund III aims to invest in 60 new companies with an initial check size of about US$500,000.

Since 2012, Wavemaker has built a wide-ranging portfolio across industry verticals (e.g. financial services, healthcare, food/agriculture), horizontal processes (e.g. HR, sales & marketing, cybersecurity), and technologies (AI, IoT, additive manufacturing). It has invested in over 130 startups, of which 100 (86 per cent) are enterprise-focused with over 40 (32 per cent) of these in deeptech and Artificial Intelligence.

Companies that have received funding from the VC firm include Zilingo​, ThinCI​,​ CashShield​, L​ynk​, ​Structo,​ ​Growsari,​ ​Igloohome​, Silent Eight, Novade, GudangAda and Transcelestial.

It also has some exits to its name, including Indonesian mobile point-of-sale system Moka (acquired by Gojek), cloud communications software company Wavecell (acquired by 8×8) and regional payments solutions provider Red Dot Payment (acquired by PayU/Naspers).

Wavemaker’s second fund worth US$66 million was one of the largest early-stage fund focused on enterprise and deeptech startups in the region.

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Patsnap’s software sales were actually higher in the past few months during COVID-19 than they were at the beginning of the year before the pandemic hit the world hard.

If you are wondering how, like us, then watch the latest webinar where we chatted with CEO of Patsnap, Jeffrey Tiong. He shared their transition from a sales-led to a product-led growth model and how COVID-19 actually enabled it.

Key takeaways

• In today’s hyperconnected business environment, it is not the fittest that survive, but the most adaptable one. This is in line with the idea that British naturalist Charles Darwin had proposed years ago.
• In the 1980s, when Microsoft and other software companies came into the market, purchasing decisions were made on a top-down basis. It was done with the big bosses in command.
• Patsnap traditionally relied on a sales-led growth model where the sales team would make cold calls to potential customers.
• The typical funnel looked like this: “We talk to them and ask if they are interested. If they are, we qualify them. We will do a demo. And once they’re once they agree to purchase, we will onboard them.”
• But now the department managers have the power and the budget to make these decisions. “We are entering the end-user era.”
• With examples such as Zoom and Slack, the end-user is now opening up and guiding enterprise decisions. This is the bottom-up era that has been going on for the past few years and COVID-19 has accelerated it.
• Product-led growth is when the end-user sees the value in a product and how it can aid their lives thus influencing their companies, startups, or even communities to adopt them.
• Patsnap shifted gears to the product-led growth since COVID-19 struck China and seen considerable results.
• While they still do the typical marketing approach such as using SEO, SEM, Content marketing, and other channels, they started a free use of the product in Q1 in China. Surprisingly, it has led to higher customer interest and lead generation for them.
• This “freemium” model allows the customers to use and test the product even before the salesperson gets to them. This totally changed the customer acquisition model for Patsnap. Their conversion rate was higher and user acquisition cost went down considerably.
• “Use your product to become your spokesperson and let the customers experience its value.”
• Product-led motion worked well for Patsnap across markets such as the US, China, and Europe.
• It is important to make the product journey simple and easy to use for consumers. Even if the product is free but complex for a user to comprehend and avail without guidance, it will not yield results.
• Continue to monitor and analyse metrics for users that log in but don’t continue using the free product. So keep looking for answers to the “why”.
• The funnel looks like this: Acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, referral.
• The right timing, employee buy-in, and a strong product are the only essentials you need for driving product-led growth.
• Be prepared to change your full company DNA. It will not just affect your customer acquisition but also operations, product development, and other areas.

Also Read: From sales-led to product-led: PatSnap founder shares how COVID-19 shifted their growth strategy

Silver lining

• Tiong emphasised that usually shifting to a product-led growth model would lead to resistance from the sales teams but COVID-19 is actually a good time to bring in this model. The markets are in a tizzy and this is a great time to adapt and shift gears. It is the best time to make a big change.
• Even if your product is a service or not easy to sell, there are many valuable propositions. It can be a feature, it can be a part of the product, etcetera. So look harder.
• For an entrepreneur, anything is possible.

Worth mentioning

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”- Charles Darwin

“We have seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.” – Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft

Resources

To know more about what happens to your existing sales team when you adopt this model, or how to retain the new customers and more, check out the full video recording.

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Consumer spending recovers in Singapore: Revolut data

The story: Financial super app Revolut has revealed data showing the recovery of consumer spending in Singapore as it enters Phase Two of its post-circuit breaker measures.

More data: After facing a hit during COVID-19 lockdown, restaurant and in-store shopping transactions are returning to normalcy and have increased in growth up to 125 per cent and 168 per cent respectively.

Transport has also seen a spike of growth with Gojek increasing by 96 per cent and Grab by 41 per cent. Lazada and RedMart have also seen growth of 25 per cent followed by online marketplaces.

Analysis: Digital payments are expected to grow as more consumers turn to contactless transactions solutions in the current climate.

Also Read: Peace of mind: Meet the coworking space that aims to facilitate mental health professionals; practices

Walrus raises funding

The story: Bangalore-based neobank Walrus has announced an undisclosed amount of funding for its platform.

Investor: Better Capital (lead investor), Raveen Sastry (Co-founder, Myntra), Raghunandan G (CEO of TaxiForSure), Brijesh Thakkar

Plans with the capital: Hiring and enhancing current product

More about Walrus: A digital-only banking platform aimed for teenagers to help them manage their money smartly and incorporate good financial habits.

Through the app, parents will be able to set saving goals for their children, teach them how to invest small amounts of money in SIPs and mutual funds and teach them to budget their expenses. The app is currently still in its beta stage.

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Image Credit: Revolut

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Startup Impact Summit 2020 (#SIS20), a part of StartmeupHK Festival 2020, has wrapped up its online conference. Hosted by WHub, Hong Kong’s startup community platform and connector, and organised by Invest Hong Kong, the conference claimed to have attracted over 5,000 attendees across two days.

The conference featured a series of keynote sessions, panel discussions, fireside chats, and workshops with speakers from some of the biggest players in the startup scene, including Ester Wong from Sensetime, Alex Zaccaria from Linktree, Nick Halla from Impossible Foods, and Satya Tammareddy from Stripe.

“This is the first year we’ve held the Startup Impact Summit online and we are beyond thrilled by the level of attendance, the quality of speakers and the tremendous feedback from our attendees, supporters, partners and participants. Technology is changing the way we live and work and also the way we conference,” says Karena Belin, Co-Founder and CEO of WHub and AngelHub.

“This is a testament to the true potential of the startup and tech scene in Hong Kong and the power it has for doing business on an international level,” Belin added.

One of the session talked about the role of diversity and inclusion in impact and innovation. The panel of young entrepreneurs each in their own way discussed how they have developed their businesses based on different themes of diversity and inclusion within the context of the LGBT community.

Palis Pitsuttisarun, Founder of Prism; Jason Miao, Founder of Pacific Connect Group; and Ryan Figueiredo, Executive Director of Equal Asia Foundation; all found that diversity and inclusiveness in a startup ecosystem result in incredibly innovative ideas.

Also Read: Entrepreneurs share COVID-19’s impact on their businesses in a survey by Startup Genome

In addition to Startup Impact Summit 2020, Hack.Asia, the annual hackathon hosted by WHub and powered by Jardines, also took place from July 6-8. More than 800 startups, students and innovators participated in the final round of Hack.Asia, a 36-hour virtual hackathon with the support from educational institutions and startup ecosystems around the world.

This year, the hackathon received over 1,000 applications from more than 10 countries. Eighty-four finalist teams (comprising 34 startups and 50 student-led teams) were selected for developing and designing technology-driven solutions to address challenges faced by market-leading businesses in the region.

Winners received cash prizes and the opportunity to advance a Proof of Concept with the sponsor.

The final pitches and award ceremony took place on the Main Stage (powered by Visa) during Startup Impact Summit at StartmeupHK Festival 2020. The Grand Prize was awarded to FoodieXpress, an AI-enabled business intelligence platform from Boston.

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Image Credit: StartmeupHK Festival 2020

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Burgreens investment

The story: DealStreetAsia reports that Indonesian plants-based food chain Burgreens has raised an undisclosed sum in funding.

Investors: Teja Ventures, Angel Investment Network of Indonesia.

What is Burgreens?: It is a plant-based food company which operates restaurants as well as provides Asian taste plant-based meats alternative. Burgreens was started in November 2013 by a young vegetarian couple Max and Helga.

Started as Jakarta’s first organic healthy plant-based eatery and catering, Burgreens has now grown into a community-based social business connecting local farmers, a passionate team, and conscious customers to bring great tasting plant-based meals for everyone.

Shippit enters Singapore

The story: Australian SaaS logistics startup Shippit has officially launched in Singapore. The company has partnered with Shopify to launch a cash on delivery model for Southeast Asian merchants and retailers.

Plans: It aims to expand into Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia in the near future.

What is Shippit?: The Shippit platform enables retailers to instantly ship with Asia’s leading carriers, share tracking and notifications and access dedicated delivery support. Shippit serves more than 6,000 customers a month across Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. The company is backed by Aura Group.

SEA startups in MedTech programme

The story: US-based nonprofit accelerator MedTech Innovator, in partnership with Asia Pacific Medical Technology Association (APACMed), has announced the 20 companies selected to participate in its Asia Pacific Accelerator programme.

List of Southeast Asian startups:

• CellWave Technologies (Singapore)
• Credo Diagnostics Biomedical (Singapore)
• FathomX (Singapore)
• Magloy Tech (Singapore)
• Naluri Life (Malaysia)
• Recornea (Singapore)
• Sporogenics (Singapore)
• X-ZELL (Singapore)

More details: Over 170 companies applied for the programme, but only four startups from the 2020 Asia Pacific cohort will advance to compete in the Grand Finals. The winning company, which will be determined by audience vote, stands to win a non-dilutive cash prize and the title of 2020 MedTech Innovator Asia Pacific Winner. In total, up to US$300,000 in cash prizes and awards will be given out to Accelerator companies.

Plum’s seed funding

The story: Plum, a Bengaluru-based group health insurance startup, providing modern health benefits to corporates, has raised INR 7 crore (over US$900,000) in seed funding.

Investors: Incubate Fund (lead), Gemba Capital, Tracxn Labs, angel investors

Plans with the capital: To scale business and engineering teams so as to solve some of the hardest engineering challenges in insurtech and build innovative distribution channels.

What is Plum?: Plum claims to provide employers and employees with more flexibility, transparent pricing, and quality healthcare experience. The platform says it understands the needs of a corporate and guides them on setting up their group health insurance in a short time.

It is working with nine insurance companies and has got 100-plus companies as customers.

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It’s easy to assume that Fefifo is just another urban-farming-going-digital company on the surface. But dig deeper and you will understand why their approach to farming is different –if not revolutionary.

The Malaysia-based agritech startup brings in the concept of coworking space into farming. They called it co-farming, where aspiring smallholder farmers can come and rent a space to grow ready-to-buy crops and find buyers to buy the crops.

The idea of the company came when the two co-founders, Kelveen Soh and Chris Fond, were inspired by a mutual childhood friend who is a smallholder farmer. The friend started a two-acre farm three-and-a-half years ago, but still encounters many problems in ensuring the farm lives up to its standard in operation and profit.

“We realised that by focussing on solving our friend’s problem, we actually solve the smallholder farmers’ problems in general,” says Fong. So, the company was officially established a year ago in Malaysia.

The troubles with farming

After a thorough study of the problems encountered by their friend, the founders concluded that the key problems faced by smallholder farmers are along the lines of spending tons of money on farming infrastructures and securing networks of regular buyers.

Fong adds that smallholder farmers often still find it hard to grow consistently as they lack access to reliable and consistent sources of knowledge. Moreover, the number of information that they can get their hands on are also limited, such as where and how to market their harvest.

There are also issues with the management and administration side of farming itself. Things such as financials and inventory ultimately become a hiccup in smallholder farm operations.

“We aim to take over all of these problems that smallholder farmers face, so they can focus on one thing that matters: growing their farms,” says Fong.

Not to be mistaken with urban farming

During the conversation with e27, Soh and Fong highlight the fact that they are not an urban farming company.

“We provide real farming spaces that are all ready to use,” says Soh.

“What we do is digitising the process of the farm operation, making sure the smallholder farmers get immediate access not only to the farming infrastructure but also to guaranteed markets and use a standardised digital growing protocol on Fefifo’s platform,” Fong adds.

In short, Fefifo takes away all the business formality side of farming, to give agropreneurs -the term they use to describe aspiring farmers- everything they need to start in the co-farming space. Joining Fefifo’s community, daily hassles such as expensive greenhouse and fertigation systems are all taken care of.

“We use the term co-farming because it’s much like joining a coworking space. Interested agropreneurs must first register and our team will have a look at the application. Once accepted to join the co-farming community, the agropreneur will pay up three month-deposit rent for a farm space and start immediately with growing crops, all curated by Fefifo,” says Fong.

What Fefifo provides in return is pre-harvest financial support, which is a loan that can jumpstart the agropreneur in running the farm. The agropreneur will then receive a one-week training to familiarise themselves with digital protocol to run the farm.

As proper commercial farm sources, Fefifo’s proprietary platform Digital Distributed
Farms Network (DDFN) allows for a digitalised and standardised crop financial models and crop growing, with SOPs of the entire seed-to-sale process. The digital workflow platform is all AI-empowered to help farmers control, manage, and grow more with less.

Also Read: These are the 5 game-changers in Indonesia’s agritech sector

“We focus on helping agropreneurs in monitoring the farm and making sure that it’s profitable with a guaranteed market. We welcome people who want to start right away, with or without a background in farming, without access to hiring CFO or COO for the farm, but want to learn anyway and make a steady income out of it,” Soh points out.

Soh notes that the agropreneur joining co-farming with Fefifo will be business owners themselves, with US$12,000 – 16,000 per year income.

The company targets fresh graduates and smallholder farmers as well as contract farming buyers. The last group is benefited by Fefifo’s regularly available supplies of crops.

According to Soh, there are many potential parties that can be contract buyers in the future, such as chilli sauce producers and grocers in Malaysia.

Going back to its roots in Malaysia, Fefifo also works with the local community in rural areas, villages, and nearby townships.

Confidence during crisis

When asked whether or not the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed down their progress, the answer is a yes for the startup.

“We’re forced to push back on the timeline, although there’s not much change in operation,” says Soh.

“If anything, COVID-19 made us relook at how to better design our systems, and how well we would stand up to in an event of a future pandemic. As long as we put a stronger scenario in a farm space and prepare from what we learned, we are optimistic that we can weather future pandemic,” he continues.

Fefifo says that having to take a second look at what they have been doing enforces the confidence in what they are doing.

“There’s a spike of visitors into our site during the pandemic, and it helps boost the confidence in this sector. Seeing the government trying really hard to keep supply chains open really propels people to open their eyes in the opportunity lies in this business model,” Fong points out.

What comes next

In August, Fefifo plans to start operating its pilot farm in Negeri Sembilan. So far, they have three agropreneurs ready to start in the first batch of five acres land, which consists of one farmer for two acres of chilli farm, and two other farmers each tending to one acre of greenhouse rockmelon crop.

Also Read: These 5 Vietnam-based agritech startups are tackling the country’s fragmented farming sector

Fong points out that while there are many new innovations meant to help smallholders farmers, such AI, vertical farming, and drones, they are still “very small and hard to work with.”

“All these wonderful things [such as] micro biotech, robots … It’s all promising for the future of farming. We play a critical role in bridging these technologies to smallholder farmers, to filter and pick out the techs, to structure the policies, and accommodate the curation that smallholder farmers can use,” he details.

Fefifo is optimistic that their 10-year plan will work out.

“Within two years, we want to get to 50 acres of land within the Malaysia market, then Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Our plan features an expansion of 25 acres each year, as we’re optimistic that it can be scaled quickly and suitable to replicate for Southeast Asia,” the co-founders said.

In the past, Fefifo has raised S$950,000 (US$682,000) from angel and corporate investors and has recently started its equity crowdfunding campaign via Ata Plus.

The development that’s already in the pipeline will get the platform starting on big data while doing research with universities in Malaysia, as well as augmented reality and machine learning to close the financial gaps between farmers. It will help them get loans with AI-based credit models, forecast problems, and assess credit risk.

The platform will also provide access to profit and loss data recorded.

“There’s no more going to the bank, where these smallholder farmers financial histories are usually required. In their case, not many smallholder farmers can provide that, and hopefully in the future, with our platform they can provide the digital record of it,” says Soh.

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Image Credit: Fefifo

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Avion School, which helps Filipinos “become software engineers in 12 weeks”, has secured an undisclosed sum in pre-seed funding, led by Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, a top executive of the edutech startup disclosed to e27.

San Francisco-based angel fund HEX Collective, besides several unnamed angels in the US and Europe, also joined the equity round.

“We will use the capital to help finance the next 15 batches of students within the next 12 months. This will allow us to bring over 400 new software engineering jobs into the market,” Avion Co-founder and CEO Victor Rivera said.

Also Read: How Fefifo aims to make farming cool again for the younger generation

“We are also keen on bringing an even stronger pool of engineers as instructors to ensure that their graduates are not only ready to get hired in the Philippines but also all across the world,” he added.

Avion was launched in Manila in May by Rivera and John Young (COO).

Rivera previously led Customer Success for PayMongo and also worked with WeClean (as Head of Growth) and Lalamove (as Logistics Consultant), whereas Young held various product roles in PDAX and MedGrocer.

Avion is building a new way for Filipinos to learn software development and other technical skills without having to pay upfront.

Its lessons/courses are derived from the specific skills that top startups in the world look for in their new hires.

Currently, Avion teaches a full-stack web development course, designed by MIT and Stanford computer science (CS) graduates and CTOs from well-funded startups.

The course is broken down into three parts: (1) frontend development under HTML, CSS and JavaScript; (2) backend development under Ruby and Ruby on Rails, and (3) learning to work with engineering teams.

As for the business model, Avion follows a concept called ‘income-share agreements’, which enables students to only pay for their tuition after they are hired as software engineers.

Learners are also free to make upfront payments of PHP 80,000 (~US$1,600).

The edutech venture is currently running two batches, comprising students from non-CS engineering and business school graduates to product managers. It also has a few CS graduates.

“We know the struggle of learning to code. This is why we try very hard to ensure that the courses we design are not just for computer science students, but also non-technical students,” Rivera said.

“We hold part and full-time courses on software development monthly, build real projects taken from startups in the US and Europe, and push our students to get hired globally,” he explained.

In addition to the core services on offer, Avion also helps its students find a job. For this, it has partnered with several hiring partners locally.

Huge market 

Rivera said that the Philippine market is huge with over 750,000 potential students, and there is a trend among people to learn coding. “The trend of learning to code is driven by the current shift from businesses relying on traditional business models and moving towards online. With that, we’re seeing more and more people learning not only to understand the fundamentals of programming, but more to build a new wave of products.”

Plus, the local internet economy is growing, so is the demand for more engineers.

“The country’s internet market is expected to reach US$25 billion by 2025, and we’re excited to build the engine supplying new startups with engineers,” he said.

Mateen connection

Avion School marks the Tinder co-founder’s second deal in the Philippines after a capital infusion into the online payments startup PayMongo last year.

Also Read: Facebook reveals 13 participants selected for its Community Accelerator programme in Asia Pacific

Rivera revealed that Mateen was introduced to him by PayMongo founders. When Mateen got to know about Avion’s pre-seed funding plans, he jumped in and saw potential of being able to use Southeast Asia-based engineers in Silicon Valley.

Mateen has also joined in as a Direct Advisor to the company.

 

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Image Credit: 123rf.com

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Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hits the world hard this year, the coworking space industries have been making headlines in global media, thanks to companies such as WeWork. Their IPO failure had led the public to question the future of the industry.

According to Yuanzheng Lee, founder of A Space Between, the future lies in industry-specific coworking spaces, which is going to see growth in demand.

“An observable example of innovation with regard to a central kitchen model for the F&B industry – a specific shared facility that caters to a particular vertical (i.e., bakery, desserts, hot kitchen) coupled with a business’ operational needs to manage the supply chain, versus a generic shared central kitchen that simply provides a kitchen with shared equipment,” she explains, likening the typical coworking spaces to shared central kitchen model.

“While it is industry-specific to tech startups and entrepreneurs, the primary focus caters to those reliant on desk-bound duties and traditional interactions for collaboration. I believe that there is incredible value to the sharing economy; that will evolve to provide a more customised approach to serving each vertical within the different industries,” she points out.

Understanding this insight, as a newcomer in the Singapore coworking space scene, A Space Between aims to make that differentiation by offering spaces for a specific kind of tenant: Mental health professionals.

Also Read: Holmusk closes US$21.5M Series A to build real-world evidence platform for mental health

A safe space to practice

Launched in Q2 2019, A Space Between is a coworking space that specifically targets mental health professionals –from psychotherapists to coaches to counsellors– as its tenants.

“In essence, A Space Between provides a conducive environment to conduct mental health therapy sessions with a minimal commitment on the part of the practitioner,” Lee explains in an email interview with e27.

As a space that will be used by therapists to work with their clients, there are several details that A Space Between needs to pay attention to.

“On the most basic level, it should make one feel safe, comfortable and be easily accessible. We spared no expense looking over the tiniest of details, from the size of the rooms, to the colours used, even to the layout of the furniture. All of these have been critically considered to optimise the experience for a therapy session,” Lee further elaborates.

“We are community-driven and what that means is that we are constantly working with our members to identify areas of improvement, so we can adjust according to their needs and enhance the overall experience for our members and their clients,” she continues.

Currently home to 20 therapists, the company is aiming to grow to 200 by 2022.

Also Read: Why Khailee Ng puts mental healthcare support as key to successful founders-investors relationship

“We acquire our users largely through digital marketing, social media outreach and traditional word-of-mouth referral programmes,” Lee says.

A safe space during the pandemic

It is no longer a surprise that the recent global health crisis has shaken up the global coworking space industry, or even the office space in general. In an article, Vox even detailed on how the COVID-19 pandemic will “likely change the way office looks and works.”

Interestingly, Lee says that the COVID-19 pandemic and the Circuit Breaker Measures as implemented by the Singapore government did not impact the company’s business “too severely.”

Instead, she even believes that the measures will impact the business positively.

“I believe the circuit breaker measures and its impact on the way we work and communicate, will steer practitioners towards a plug-and-play sharing model like ours, where one is empowered to be self-employed yet unencumbered by lofty rental deposits and renovation costs,” she points out.

As the public struggle with having to stay and work from home in the greater part of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has also brought greater attention to mental health issues in various countries, including Singapore. As an example, Straits Times reported that the National Care Hotline in the country saw more than 6,600 calls within just one month since its launch in April.

Also Read: Leaders, it’s time to talk about mental health

“I would say that the pandemic has brought attention to what basic healthcare services are and prioritised the need for easier access to mental health support services. We have seen an uptick in the demand for our shared space, primarily from those who traditionally have been working out of a shared clinic or office space,” says Lee, citing various reasons behind the uptick.

A safe space to expand

The history of A Space Between began when Lee’s friends –a group of psychotherapists and counsellors– moved into private practice and were looking for a suitable space to conduct their sessions.

“We discussed the issues they faced in setting up their private practice. Traditional coworking solutions such as WeWork and JustCo were not conducive and appropriate to conduct mental health therapy sessions as they are essentially an office space built around an energetic startup environment that is neither discrete nor soundproof,” Lee elaborates.

There were also other technical considerations such as lease and renovations, and the idea that traditional mental health service setups tend to be clinical and rigid.

To tackle this, Lee taps into her formal education background in strategic design management, which she describes as giving her “the ability to synthesise a business solution with a design thinking process.”

Also Read: Photographers, food loss, and mental health: Meet the winners of Startup Weekend Jakarta 2019

The company is currently self-funded but Lee says it is open to external funding opportunities.

“We are refining our current business practices and looking to secure our next few locations to provide better accessibility for our members. Regionalisation and internationalisation are part of our pipeline,” she closes.

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Image Credit: A Space Between

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Fengru Lin, a passionate cheesemaker, was working with Google Singapore as a Territory Account Manager when she met her future co-founder Max Rye, an expert in the stem cells-based alternative food.

Lin, who was looking for unadulterated and pure milk to make her dream cheese but to no avail, wondered if the same stem cells-based technology can be applied to make lab-produced milk — which is richer in nutritional value and offers the same taste as those produced by real mammals.

This research ended up with the duo starting TurtleTree Labs in 2019.

What does TurtleTree do?

Singapore-based TurtleTree offers patent-protected technology as a solution to make full-composition, full-functionality, full-flavour milk referencing humanely selected dairy cow cells, then mimicking the natural process of milk production in the lab.

This is done with the efficient use of natural resources (land, water and energy) and without pollution, pathogen and disease risks. The result is the product will be 95 per cent less resource consumptive.

In other words, the biotech startup seeks to challenge the value gap created by an insufficient and unsustainable animal-based dairy industry. The firm does so by using cell-based methods used to make ‘clean milk’ and cultured milk products.

Also Read: Startup of the Month, January: Singapore-based biotech startup TurtleTree

TurtleTree acellular technology works by culturing mammary cells in-vitro and inducing their natural ability to produce all components of milk. Cellular agriculture is entirely safe and widely used in the market today.

The first step involves obtaining stem cells from sources such as milk. They are then transferred into an environment where they convert into mammary gland cells.

The mammary gland cells interact with a special formula which causes the cells to lactate. The end product is the milk is obtained through a filtration process.

The human breast milk the company is trying to recreate is to mimic the richness of human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), which are the third most abundant solid component in human milk after lactose and fat.

According to an article posted by TurtleTree Lab, the research increasingly demonstrates that much of breast milk’s value lies within these components.

Furthermore, HMOs have prebiotic properties and are incredibly complex to replicate. Previous studies have underscored the value of HMOs in infant prenatal and postnatal development.

“We are able to produce the complete biomatch of the nutritional content of human breast milk. All HMOs, proteins and fats are replicated with our technology. A few areas that are unique to the mother are antibodies (coming from the mother’s blood) and the microbiota (coming from the mother’s gut),” highlights Rye.

According to Harith Behren, who heads Business Development at TurtleTree, “For human breast milk, we’re in no way trying to replace mothers from breastfeeding their babies, but as we all know, not every mother has the ability to breastfeed due to medical conditions or other situation, and then forced to turn into a formula feeding.”

Infant formula in the market today lacks the bioactive component found in breast milk. That’s what prompted TurtleTree Lab to recreate this bioactive component in the lab, to come up with a more improved and better milk in nutritional values for mothers and babies with no access to breast milk.

TurtleTree is trying to address the US$716 billion global dairy market and environmental crisis with what they called ‘clean milk’. It is optimistic that it can transform the US$45 billion infant nutrition market, which is set to grow to US$103 billion by 2026.

Seed funding

A couple of weeks ago, the startup secured US$3.2 million in seed funding to march ahead with its plan to produce lab-produced cow milk and human breast milk from stem cells. Investors include Green Monday Ventures, the renowned Prince Khaled’s KBW Ventures, CPT Capital, Artesian, and New Luna Ventures. All they were involved in TurtleTree’s pre-seed round.

According to Behren, the returning of its previous investors despite expected delays due to pandemic is a form of reaffirmation of their trust in the company and its team.

“We’re at the scale-up stage with plans to commercialise the products according to our timeline,” says Behren.

Also Read: Singaporean biotech startup TurtleTree secures pre-seed from Saudi entrepreneur Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed

Government support

Thanks to the support from the government agency Enterprise Singapore and the firm’s investors who provided resources, the biotech startup made good progress. TurtleTree’s ability to move forward despite the heavy pandemic has a lot to do with the government’s direct support.

Besides, the company also benefitted from the support from other government agencies such as Singapore Food Agency (SFA) and the national research institute A*STAR. It is aligned with the country’s goals to produce 30 per cent of its own nutritional needs by 2030.

“We think the government is doing a good job on food security emphasis as an urgent matter. It certainly helps boost the investors’ confidence that their money is going into an established, mature ecosystem of future food security,” says Behren.

An in-country-operated biotechnology company like TurtleTree Lab seeks to modify the way people consume certain foods with heavy carbon prints, and it certainly a cause that the country should rally behind.

Commercialisation stage

Contrary to popular assumption, when tech businesses were mainly forced to adjust and manage operations, TurtleTree managed to keep up with the research and development work it was doing.

“We didn’t slow down our progress. We are committed to still having a small team coming in and taking turns week by week, carrying on despite the pandemic with strict protocol in place,” says Behren.

Right now, the company seeks to first address a propitious market opportunity in Asia, then move into other promising market areas similarly driven by increasing populations seeking better nourishment or encumbered by poor dairy infrastructure and declining environmental quality.

To be able to get on the wagon, the company said that once finalised, it will offer licensing technology to powerful local processors and distributors.

TurtleTree will own the technologies that make the milk, leveraging and enabling its IP across global regions, and manufacturers.

The company’s principal revenue streams include licensing, enablement consulting, and royalties. Additional revenue may include branded consumer products distributed regionally by global dairy companies.

“Now we are laser-focussing on the technology design and creating pilot plan activity to make sure we can bring the cost down on price point, as well as working on the regulation side. We’re hoping to work with SFA closely so they can develop a regulation on this sort of novel food,” says Behren.

With the country’s economy slowly opening up, Turtletree Labs continued its strike by winning US$1 million from Temasek Foundation, plus US$100,000 in investment funding and a spot on Antler’s accelerator programme from Planet Rise.

With that being said, the company is on track of providing accessible nourishment while staving off the threats of food, economic, and socio-political insecurities, which also include cow’s and other mammals’ milk as variety.

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Image Credit: TurtleTree Labs

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