Campaign.com CEO William Gondokusumo (center) with Kaskus’ Ken Dean Lawadinata (R) and David Soukhasing of Indonesia Angel Investment Network (L).

Ken Dean Lawadinata, best known for building Indonesian online forum Kaskus together with Andrew Darwis, told the media last year he’d take a break from tech after selling Kaskus.

Now he’s back, with an investment in Campaign.com – an early-stage startup that helps community leaders organize around a social cause.

The amount was not disclosed at today’s launch event. It was labeled an impact investment, and Lawadinata stressed he sees it as a long-term bet.

“When I invested in Kaskus in 2008, I thought it’s because Kaskus can bring a change, as a voice for the voiceless. Campaign, I believe, will also bring change. It speaks to my heart.”

Campaign, led by CEO William Gondokusumo, is essentially a tech-enabled community empowerment organization.

It works with communities who want to achieve societal change to define campaign goals, helps them set up websites and monitoring tools, and connects them to a wider network. It has a companion app that links community organizers to each other and, in the future, will be developed in accordance with the growing community’s needs, Gondokusumo said.

Books and tigers

Image from WWF’s “Double Tiger” campaign. Photo credit: WWF.

One cause Campaign has worked with is a scheme to save the Sumatran tiger in collaboration with WWF. Another was a campaign to spark interest in book reading.

While some of its consulting services are free, the startup plans to make money through additional consulting, delivering customized campaigning sites, and helping larger organizations run and monitor their campaigns.

Unlike petition sites such as Change.org, or crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter – both specialize in solving one specific need in a campaign’s lifecycle – Campaign.com aims to build lasting communities that continue to meet and collaborate on a regular basis.

Kaskus, the online forum Darwis started in 1999 and later joined by Lawadinata, who took over as CEO, is known for its community spirit. Frequent commentators developed their own coded language, which turned into everyday slang used by young Indonesians. Last year, a feature film about the founding story of Kaskus played in Indonesian movie theaters.

With the investment, Lawadinata plans to advise the startup but says he won’t be involved in the day-to-day operations.

This post Kaskus co-founder is back with an ‘impact investment’ appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Mobike.

The news:

• China’s smart bike-sharing company Mobike announced today the launch of its dockless bike-sharing service in Shah Alam, the capital of Malaysia’s Selangor state.
• To celebrate its launch in Malaysia, Mobike is providing one free month of services in September. Following the promotional period, Mobike riders can use the service for US$0.35 per half hour.
• The company claims to work closely with local businesses and governments to tailor a unique model for each market. In Malaysia, Mobike has partnered with Malaysian real estate developer S P Setia.

Why it matters:

• Malaysia is the third Southeast Asian country that Mobike has launched in. The company rolled out its service in Singapore in March, and it announced its entrance into Thailand late last month.
• Mobike’s key Chinese rival Ofo has also expanded to Malaysia and Thailand in the past few months. Singapore-based competitor Obike entered both countries earlier this year.
• Bike-sharing companies have been struggling to keep their operations viable in Asia. In June, Chinese bike-sharing startup Wukong Bike shut down, just five months after launching, when 90 percent of its bikes went missing.

Converted from Malaysian ringgit. Rate: US$1 = MYR 4.24.

This post Brief: Mobike rolls into Malaysia appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Synergo CEO and co-founder Domenico Tukiman (L) and CTO and co-founder Rhapsody Budiono (R). Photo credit: Synergo.

It’s difficult to translate the Indonesian word sungkan directly into English. A literal reading would be something like “hesitant,” or “shy.”

In the archipelago, the word is often used to describe an aspect of traditional east Asian workplace culture, where managers tend to prefer indirect communication with their team members in the hope of avoiding confrontation or creating feelings of disrespect.

A knock-on effect of this is that employees who perform poorly are less likely to be reproached openly – while employees who do exceptionally well miss out on praise, or appropriate rewards.

See: The struggles in managing human resources in Indonesia

Indonesian returnees Domenico Tukiman and Rhapsody Budiono realized that their home country might benefit from some of the more progressive thinking about HR management they had encountered while working in the US.

Because it is becoming… more expensive to hire new employees, people are really starting to consider: ‘Am I maximizing the resources I have?’

The duo conceived of an HR software platform that could help Indonesian companies track team performance and align business objectives goals with employees’ own goals, increasing the prospects of happier and more productive workplaces.

Named Synergo, the software suite Tukiman and Budiono have built also provides a structure for the appraisals process – something which is often seen as too time-consuming – and enables employers to run analyses on team performance data. It turns the old sungkan way of doing things on its head by giving businesses raw data and tailored tools to evaluate how their workforce is performing – and at a cost that is within reach for typical Indonesian startups and smaller businesses.

The boys are back in town

Tukiman and Budiono – who met and became friends while playing basketball in their down-time – have work experience spanning both Indonesia and the US. Among other roles, Tukiman has served as an investment analyst and financial consultant, and Budiono a software engineer and systems analyst.

Budiono also worked for a time at Cornerstone OnDemand, one of the world’s biggest employee management software producers – giving him invaluable market insight. They experienced the differences in workplace culture, and management of human capital, between the two countries first-hand.

Our biggest reason to leave the US was that we really think we can be a big game-changer for Indonesia.

A big part of the business idea “is how much salaries have started to rise in Indonesia,” Tukiman – who now serves as Synergo’s CEO – tells Tech in Asia. “Because it is becoming so much more expensive to hire new employees, people are really starting to consider: ‘Am I maximizing the resources I have right now? Do I really need new people, or can I get more production out the people I already have?’”

Compensation analysis is another one of several tools built into the software. Synergo’s feature can automatically suggest how much to raise an employee’s salary based on their performance review. It can cross-reference this with data that the Synergo team has collected from different companies across various industries using third-party sources such as Gartner and IbisWorld.

Photo credit: rilueda / 123RF Stock Photo.

Synergo caught the eye of East Ventures while Tukiman and Budiono were still in the US. The VC firm’s seed investment in the startup was announced last week, but had been in the works long before the co-founders landed back in Indonesia just three weeks ago. “Our biggest reason to leave the US was that we really think we can be a big game-changer for Indonesia,” says CTO Budiono.

See: Indonesian HR software startup gets seed funding to take on SAP and WorkDay

Convincing traditional companies to change

The startup has several clients on board; they’re all in Indonesia, except for one that’s based in the US. Tukiman says that companies using the software come from a wide range of industries, including manufacturers, chemical distributors, and tech startups.

“We try to keep our system as flexible as possible to accommodate companies from all industries,” says Tukiman. “But we built it with the traditional company set-up in mind because we feel they are the ones that need the most convincing and most help in terms of changing their employee management systems. And because we designed it for the hardest segment, other businesses will be easier to onboard.”

We built it with the traditional company set-up in mind because we feel they are the ones that need the most convincing.

Synergo’s much larger and longer established competitors – such as WorkDay, SAP SuccessFactors, WorkDay, and the aforementioned Cornerstone OnDemand – are a little on the pricy side for the typical Indonesian small- and medium-sized business. They tend to charge costly installation fees and can require long onboarding processes.

Other potential rivals include US-based Performly and UK-based PeopleGoal, while closer to home in Singapore, startups EngageRocket and Hoorah offer employee feedback and engagement tools.

Synergo aims to differentiate through value-add services such as account management, and its subscription-based model. Several different options are available, ranging from low-cost basic packages to more expensive enterprise deals including things like enhanced server storage space, on-site training, and greater customization. Tukiman says that Synergo’s solution aims to combine the best features from competitors while meeting the specific requirements of Asian companies, and the subscription model allows smaller businesses to “pay as they grow.”

Beyond Jakarta

Selamat Datang Monument, Jakarta. Photo credit: xenovons / 123RF Stock Photo.

In terms of size, Synergo’s clients range from a small business of about 30 employees to a medium-sized company of around 150. The startup claims to be in talks with prospective clients that have over 500 personnel. It is setting its sights on expansion throughout Southeast Asia – where Gartner expects annual enterprise IT spending to reach US$62 billion next year – and to other regions, such as the Middle East.

Tukiman says that much of the seed money from East Ventures will be used to fund free trials that Synergo will hand out in an effort to build recognition in the marketplace. “Also, because we provide onboarding and consulting services, we need to hire qualified people from all over the world,” he adds. “That is especially true as we try to onboard bigger clients – and a lot of clients at the same time.”

Tukiman and Budiono say that Synergo is targeting a follow-on funding round at some point before the end of next year in order to get these hiring plans in motion. The Jakarta-based friends also want to open offices in Indonesia’s other cities to better serve regional clients.

Another piece in the puzzle is the expansion of Synergo’s educational features. Challenging sungkan culture is as much about helping employees to help themselves, as it is about giving management the tools to better manage their human capital. Part of this is giving employers and employees the opportunity to learn and gain new skills so that they can do their jobs better and improve their career satisfaction. Synergo is now working with local universities as well as other startups in the East Ventures portfolio to acquire relevant content.

See: Firing: How to do it right

This post This HR software startup wants to tackle sungkan culture in Indonesian workplaces appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: BandLab.

Singapore-based social music-making platform BandLab announced today that it has acquired UK startup Chew, a live-streaming service for DJs.

The acquisition allows the live-streaming tech to be integrated into BandLab’s web platform, as well as its Android and iOS apps, making it available for BandLab’s nearly 2 million users. Meanwhile, Chew will continue as a separate service, rebranding itself as Chew by BandLab.

BandLab’s co-founder and CEO Meng Ru Kuok said that performing live is one of the most important parts of being a musician. “With Chew in the BandLab family, it means we can deliver more great technology and a streaming product to our users, as well as welcome in a group of very talented and passionate people to our broader community,” added Kuok.

Chew was originally a graduate of the startup accelerator known as Ignite. Despite having a loyal and passionate user base of more than 380,000, the startup has been experiencing some financial difficulties over the last six months. In July, the company announced that it has raised more than US$15,000 in donations, after rallying its community under the #savedchew hastag.

BandLab previously made headlines after acquiring a 49 percent stake of Rolling Stone magazine last year. The investment gave BandLab part ownership of the magazine’s print and digital assets.

This post Rolling Stone’s Singaporean co-owner acquires UK DJ live-streaming startup appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Guess the engineer! Image credit: Tech In Asia.

Do you know what’s the highest-paid engineering job in Southeast Asia?

It’s not software engineering. It’s not app development. And no, it’s not data analytics.

DevOps and cloud management jobs rake in the highest mean salary out of all engineering jobs at US$4,040, according to Tech In Asia’s 2,760 published technical jobs data in the first half of 2017.

However, these job opportunities received the least number of applicants. It’s an overlooked area for tech job seekers and one for which employers are eager to hire.

Image credit: Tech In Asia.

The overlooked cousin in Singapore

A cloud architect isn’t someone who solely writes code – he or she is responsible for cloud computing strategy. This includes running applications related to the business, customer-facing cloud-based applications, and managing and monitoring the cloud.

A good architect can be hard to find. “It’s nearly impossible to hire anyone to do cloud in Singapore,” says Gerald Goh, lead developer of fintech startup Nickel.to.

“It’s hard enough to hire for backend, and it’s even more problematic to hire for infrastructure. Most people will get senior people to do cloud management. But even then, not many would have dealt with cloud,” Goh says.

But companies will continue to migrate to the cloud. Forecasts for spending growth in the public and private cloud markets are close to 20 percent year-on-year globally. Cloud computing spending itself is growing at nearly five times the rate of traditional IT spending, according to recruitment agency Hays.

Amazon Web Service (AWS) is ahead of the cloud services pack in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan), followed by Microsoft and Alibaba, according to research from IDC. Fun fact: Singapore’s public data is hosted on Amazon Web Services.

Correspondingly, the number of job postings for AWS roles in Singapore has increased by 69.8 percent from April 2015 to 2017, according to jobs search engine Indeed.

Similar to how prospective coders can attend boot camps, instructor-led AWS authorized cloud-related courses are available to prepare fresh and mid-career professionals to make cloud their niche. Professional development is endorsed and funded by the Singapore government through the Critical Infocomm Technology Resource Programme Plus (CITREP+).

Image credit: Pixabay.

Not just picking up coding or cloud knowledge

Aaron Lee, CTO of healthcare-startup Jaga-me, says that AWS provides him a standardized way to assess tech talents.

AWS provides a standardized way to assess tech talents.

The Singapore-based startup allows people to book medical appointments on the go, send appointment information to healthcare providers, and track healthcare professionals.

He rattles off a list of Amazon services vital to their business, including the Lambda, EC2, and relational database services.

“Say five years ago, if I were to interview someone, I would be guessing if he knows how to do it based on his and my technologies. Right now, I can bypass a lot of that just by asking for their AWS experience,” Lee says.

Surprisingly, having certificates in PHP or Python doesn’t matter as much to Lee.

“You can pick up skills, but being a cloud services architect is about approaching a problem and creating a solution,” he says.

Cloud architects need to have the right framework and thought process for problem-solving. They need to know what cloud services to pool to create a solution.

“For instance, I could ask the candidate to give me a real-time stream of jobs. In the past, I would have to guess based on the technologies I am using. Now, if I want the candidate to do it, I just need to ask if he or she knows AWS Kinesis Firehost and Dynamo DB,” he says.

I just need to ask if he or she knows AWS Kinesis Firehost and Dynamo DB.

Goh says that being a cloud architect is nearly the opposite of being a developer. “As a dev you want to develop features as fast as possible. A cloud architect needs to keep the system very stable,” Goh says.

“I have automated scripts – my servers need to be specifically configured all the time.” There’s no room for typing errors or mistakes, Goh says.

Employers in Singapore will eventually expect a certain level of AWS expertise as the market continues to mature and the technology continues to evolve.

“Employers will prefer experience, a confident understanding of cloud platforms, and the ability to effectively leverage cloud solutions and services: even a minimum of an associate-level AWS Certification,” says Trent Rosenthal, CEO of Bespoke Training Services, the AWS authorized training partner for Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

How to begin working with the cloud

Starting out in IT infrastructure is the hardest part.

Lee recommends just diving in. “It’s nearly no cost to run an AWS service like Lambda,” Lee says. He says that his intern picked up nine different services within three months.

“I believe most people need a direction, like a project, to learn new skills,” says Goh. “Start off easy, build up a basic WordPress site, add a load balancer, and so on.”

Goh recommends that beginners start with a virtual machine first, such as Linux. “Linux will help you get into infrastructure as most of the servers are Linux-based. It’s open source so it’s cost-saving,” Goh says.

“If you come from an infrastructure background as a system administrator, it’s time for you to start building your understanding of scripting languages,” says Adam Edwards, business director of Hays in Singapore.

For example, Edwards recommends that candidates should know more about automation tools such as Ansible, R, SQL, and Python, and their applications in an AWS environment.

“The cloud is a regularly and rapidly changing environment, especially the AWS platform where updates and new tools and services are released every week,” Rosenthal says. Combining self-directed learning, on the job practice, and government-endorsed courses can help people become cloud specialists. He recommends the Architecting on AWS course, which trains cloud architects to use the AWS Well-Architected Framework to improve architectures, increase infrastructure and applications performance, and reduce costs.

It’s time for tech job seekers to evolve beyond coding. The opportunity for both training and jobs exist for those IT professionals that are ready and willing to step into the cloud

Bespoke Training is the only AWS-authorized training partner in Singapore (and ANZ) and delivers AWS training opportunities in 9 cities across Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. All courses are led by highly experienced, authorized AWS instructors and offer a combination of training, resources, and hands-on experience.

The Critical Infocomm Technology Resource Programme Plus (CITREP+) supports professionals who are Singaporean citizens or permanent residents. The current CITREP+ endorsed program is AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate. Learn more about available funding and register here.

This post Who’s the highest-paid engineer? It’s the overlooked cloud architect appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Illustration by Tech in Asia’s Andre Gunawan.

Cryptocurrency is getting popular in India. This can be seen from the sharp rise in bitcoin trading volumes from November last year, hitting a peak in the last week of May this year when it crossed INR 58 million (US$900,000). The spike coincided with demonetization as the government withdrew high denomination currency notes in a bid to reduce the use of cash and curb black money.

The following chart from Coin Dance, which tracks bitcoin trading in multiple countries, shows how the momentum has picked up in India – a nation of 1.3 billion people which is in the midst of a digital transformation.

Source: Coin Dance.

The increasing activity hasn’t gone unnoticed among global players in this space.

Blockchain – a six-year-old company based in London and New York, which takes its name from the blockchain technology underlying the digital currency – today announced its entry into India through a partnership with local bitcoin exchange Unocoin. “India is one of the top contenders for becoming the largest market for cryptocurrency,” Blockchain president Nic Cary tells me.

The four-year-old Unocoin is one of the more popular cryptocurrency exchanges in India, enabling its 400,000 users to buy, sell, and store bitcoin in wallets. The partnership with Blockchain, which has 16.5 million users with wallets, widens the scope for trading. It also promises to make transactions faster and more robust as Blockchain has a presence in 140 countries, with billions of dollars in wallet activity.

Another point of interest to Indian users is that the partnership will let them exchange bitcoin for ethereum. Blockchain deals in both cryptocurrencies, unlike Unocoin which trades only bitcoin. A user can buy bitcoin through Unocoin, then trade it for ethereum on Blockchain, explains Cary. That way, investors in cryptocurrencies won’t be putting all their eggs in one basket.

See: Everything you wanted to know about initial coin offerings

Perhaps most important of all is the trust factor. A number of cryptocurrency wallets and exchanges have bitten the dust through mismanagement, fraud, or theft by hacking – the most infamous flameout of all being Mt Gox. Blockchain managed to ride out these upheavals. It is now expanding and scaling up in tandem with the fast-rising bitcoin rate, which has increased demand for the wallet.

Bitcoin and ethereum rates tumbled by 20 percent and 30 percent respectively after China banned ICOs (initial coin offerings) – a new way for companies to raise funds in exchange for digital tokens which can be traded. The Chinese government felt this unregulated form of fundraising risked huge scams and consequent social disorder.

Cary is unfazed by the slide, which appears to have leveled off. Such ups and downs have been par for the course in his four-year journey since taking the helm at Blockchain. But it does underscore the impact that new regulations could have on cryptocurrency wallets, exchanges, and users.

See: China’s blockchain industry looks overseas as ICO blanket ban stirs fear

Last month, Unocoin suspended access to all users after a theft from its wallets. It appeared to have caught the pilfering in time, and stopped it. It also accepted blame for not preventing the theft and returned the lost bitcoin to affected wallets in an attempt to keep up the confidence of users.

Nevertheless, the security and regulatory issues around bitcoin and ethereum are just as much a matter of debate as the potential of the cryptocurrencies to disrupt traditional modes of payments, savings, and banking. More on this in a Q&A with Nic Cary to follow.

This post It just got easier for Indians to buy and trade bitcoin and ethereum globally appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Conceptual picture of a hyperloop tube carrying pods. Photo Credit: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies.

The southern state of Andhra Pradesh will have India’s first hyperloop levitating pods whizzing between Amaravati and Vijayawada.

Tesla boss Elon Musk created a buzz when he tweeted in July that he had “verbal government approval” for levitating pods in a tunnel to whizz between New York and Washington DC in 29 minutes. Now, on the other side of the world in India, the state government of Andhra Pradesh has okayed a hyperloop project to commute 48 km between the cities of Amaravati and Vijayawada on the southern coast in five minutes.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, a US company using crowd collaboration to build the futuristic transportation inspired by Musk’s concept, yesterday announced a memorandum of understanding with the Andhra Pradesh government to build a hyperloop. This marks the first deal in India for the firm. Its other Asian forays include co-developing a HyperTube Express in South Korea, and a feasibility study to connect Java and Sumatra in Indonesia.

Andhra Pradesh was split into two in 2014, with the new state of Telangana being carved out of it. The capital city of Hyderabad will belong to Telangana after a transition period. Amaravati is a new greenfield capital city being built up in Andhra Pradesh, whose chief minister Chandrababu Naidu is keen to replicate the tech initiatives he had earlier taken in Hyderabad.

Conceptual photo showing a pod inside a hyperloop tube. Photo credit: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies

Hyperloop uses a crowdsourced approach in which 800 engineers and scientists from 38 countries are collaborating. Pods carrying people inside tubes use magnetic levitation to travel at the speed of an aircraft – that is, at nearly the speed of sound. Reduction of air in the tube produces almost zero friction.

Last week, China revealed it is building “supersonic flying trains” that will reach a top speed of 4,000 km and cover longer distances than the hyperloop. The Chinese too are using pods in tubes, but claim to have over 200 patents for new technology to outdo the hyperloop.

This post Hyperloop to link two cities in India with pods traveling at nearly the speed of sound appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Southeast Asia’s tech firms saw US$946 million in disclosed funding in the first half of the year, up slightly from US$827 million in the same period a year prior, the Tech in Asia Database shows.

Indonesia’s Tokopedia blew that figure to pieces in August with its US$1.1 billion injection. Alongside upcoming fresh funding for Go-Jek, 2017 looks set to be Indonesia’s biggest year by a large margin.

Here’s the line-up so far:

Artwork and layout by Matahari Indonesia.

Watch: Go-Jek’s Nadiem Makarim on being fearless

This post Indonesia’s 10 best-funded startups so far this year appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Indonesia Stock Exchange building. Photo credit: Everyone Sinks Starco.

Kioson, an online-to-offline ecommerce service, is on track to become the first Indonesian startup to raise money through initial public offering (IPO) at the Indonesia Stock Exchange.

It’s going to sell 150 million shares, equal to 23.1 percent of the company, at a price of just over US$0.02 per share.

Of the US$3.1 million to US$3.4 million Kioson targets to raise, it will use 76 percent to acquire another business, Narindo, the firm’s representatives said at its investor briefing preceding the IPO which is scheduled for October 3. The remaining funds will be used for operational costs.

Rural ecommerce

Kioson runs a network of small shops where you can buy things online and pay bills through agents. It’s meant for less tech-savvy people in rural areas who prefer to pay in cash through a person they trust.

The startup is similar to Kudo, which got acquired by ride-hailing firm Grab for a reported US$100 million.

“We chose to IPO because we want to show that startups don’t have to rely on venture capital,” said Jasin Halim, Kioson’s director, at the event.

Kioson’s team at today’s pre-IPO public expose and investor briefing.

Narindo, the company Kioson plans to acquire, is a payments company providing “modern retail” solutions, according to its website. It partners with mobile phone operators and ecommerce firms like Alibaba’s Lazada, Tokopedia, Blibli, and Indonesia’s two leading convenience store chains Indomaret and Alfamart are among its clients.

Kioson says it has 19,000 partner shops in 384 Indonesian cities. The number of partners is expected to grow to 30,000 in the coming year.

Its revenue for the period of April 2016 to April 2017 was US$1.9 million with a US$330,000 loss in the same year.

Halim says the company targets to be profitable in 2018. “The acquisition of Narindo will help our bottom line.”

The IPO is underwritten by Sinarmas Securities.

Converted from Indonesian rupiah. Rate: US$1 = IDR 13,326.

This post Indonesia to see first local startup IPO next month appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Image credit: Stephen Barnett

ComfortDelGro, Singapore’s largest taxi operator, is in a bad spot. Its stock price plummeted, wiping US$272 million off its market cap.

The cause? On September 3, Grab announced giving ComfortDelGro cab drivers a discount of US$37 per day on car rentals, or US$1,110 per month, if they switch to any of its taxi partners: TransCab, Prime, SMRT, or Premier. Those who switch to a private-hire car will get an even bigger discount.

This followed an announcement from ComfortDelGro that it was in talks with Uber on a potential tie-up.

What’s Grab up to?

The rationale behind Grab’s move is clear; with a single stroke it seeks to cripple ComfortDelGro’s growth and by extension, Uber’s. Their combined network loses utility with fewer cars. As a result, consumers find it more difficult to get a ride.

This also hinders ComfortDelGro’s ability to stem its worsening income and balance sheet:

Contrasted against this tide of red ink is Grab receiving US$2 billion in investment from Softbank and Didi Chuxing.

The picture is clear. ComfortDelGro is losing cash and its ability to make more of it. Grab is raising tons of cash and investing heavily in its ability to make more.

What does this mean for ComfortDelGro-Uber?

To begin with, the timeline is now tighter than before to formalize an agreement that will stem the outflow of drivers. It also weakens ComfortDelGro’s negotiating position against Uber. Uber too will now face the additional headache of having to mirror Grab’s rental discounts or initiate an equally costly move to entice drivers to stay.

The options ComfortDelGro faces are stark – partner or sell. Unlike Grab, which is still a privately held company answerable to only a few investors, ComfortDelGro is a publicly-traded company. Its finances have to be made public (which gives Grab an asymmetric advantage in information) and it has to answer to shareholders who are hungry for faster and higher returns.

Thus ComfortDelGro needs to show that it’s making a move to increase sales (through a partnership) or that it has decided to quit the field to focus on its other profitable businesses such as SBS Transit by selling its fleet to Uber.

Given ComfortDelGro’s status as a government-linked company, we also can’t rule out the possibility of a “white-knight defense” – a well-heeled investor like Temasek with billions in reserves moving in to make an investment.

What would Uber do?

The stakes have changed for Uber. Partnering with a fleet would allow Uber to increase its asset base without having to make corresponding heavy capital expenditures. Now, Uber has to effectively subsidize its partner’s operations.

Bloomberg recently published an opinion stating that Uber cannot afford the fall of Singapore. Strategy is the art of practicing the feasible to achieve the desirable. So the question is, can Uber continue the fight?

While the above data does not take into account the varying operating costs across cities, e.g. Singapore’s high vehicle costs, it gives us a rough benchmark of how much they are each able to spend.

Further, Uber has yet to make the economics of ridesharing work for them. While this is a challenge Grab faces as well, its activity in fewer markets exposes it to less operating losses.

Uber is at a disadvantage to Grab in maintaining its foothold, much less expanding its market share. And the choices facing the respective CEOs are quite different. Grab’s Anthony Tan needs to consider which markets to expand to, while Dara Khosrowshahi needs to consider which markets he is prepared to lose.

ComfortDelGro’s numbers converted from Singapore dollars. US$1 = S$1.35.

This post Opinion: With Grab’s latest move, Comfort and Uber face stark choices appeared first on Tech in Asia.

At Tech in Asia, we take pride in selecting only the best speakers as they help build a smarter, stronger community by sharing their knowledge and experiences. Not only must they have made waves with their entrepreneurial efforts, they must also have an intimate working knowledge of the local ecosystem where the conference is held.

This is why we are delighted to announce that, following COO Willix Halim’s appearance at the Marketing and Growth panel last year, Bukalapak CEO and founder Achmad Zaky himself will be holding a fireside chat at this year’s Tech in Asia Jakarta conference. Come November 1 and 2, you will be able to glean insights from his experience running one of Indonesia’s most vibrant startups.

Taking the opening of stalls online

Like many pioneering figures in the startup industry, Zaky has weathered his fair share of ups and downs. While still a student at the Bandung Institute of Technology, Zaky was commissioned by a national television station to make a live counting software for Indonesia’s 2009 presidential elections. An unexpected setback followed when a culinary venture failed to take off, but founding Bukalapak in 2010 proved to be a turning point for the then-budding entrepreneur.

From its humble beginnings as the least funded e-commerce platform in the Indonesian market, Bukalapak has now made considerable progress down the road to profitability, with a special focus on empowering Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Its Series B funding rounds in 2014 and 2015 attracted big names such as 500 Startups, IREP, Aucfan and Emtek Group.

Its popular homegrown creative marketing campaigns on social media and television have also won a number of awards, making the company a favourite among Indonesian netizens. Over 2 million sellers (or pelapaks) now ply their wares on Bukalapak.com in transactions worth more than US$1 billion per year.

CEO of the Emtek Group Sutanto Hartono (left), CEO of KMK Adi Sariaatmadja (center) and CEO of Bukalapak Achmad Zaky (right) celebrate the investment in 2015. Photo credit: Liputan6.

Empowering community through innovation

Bukalapak continues to leverage on its leading position in Indonesia’s e-commerce market with new innovations such as BukaReksa (financial products) and BukaEmas (fine gold). Through these initiatives, the company hopes to foster a conducive ecosystem that provides opportunities for Indonesians all over the country. As the face and bulwark of Bukalapak, Achmad Zaky himself helps out many small businesses by making sure all the knowledge accumulated by his team is shared through various social media channels.

What’s next for Bukalapak?

These are indeed exciting times for Bukalapak and its various stakeholders. As previously mentioned, CEO Achmad Zaky will be holding a fireside chat on Day 1 of Tech in Asia Jakarta 2017, where listeners can catch up with the latest going on with Bukalapak, hear about its trends and future plans in Indonesia, and get advice on company building/expansion.

Passes are now on sale from US$197 and US$87 for international visitors and Indonesians respectively. If you secure your pass before 22 September, 2359 (GMT +7), you can even get 15 percent off the cover price with the promo code ‘tiajkt15’! Don’t miss this chance to catch Zaky as he puts any lingering doubt regarding Bukalapak’s future to bed once and for all. Get your tickets now!

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Photo credit: Dmitri Popov / Unsplash.

There’s plenty to look forward to in 2020: President Trump could be out of a job, and Japan will likely wow the world all over again as it hosts the Tokyo Olympics.

Japan’s 26 million visitors in 2016 will inflate to an anticipated 40 million in 2020 – and the nation’s startups sense an opportunity.

All those tourists will be doing a lot of ‘Gramming and Facebooking, so Fumiko Kato created a mobile SIM service called WAmazing that allows foreign travellers to register before they arrive, saving hassle once their trip starts.

Then, upon landing, you seek out the WAmazing vending machine at selected airports.

Photo credit: WAmazing.

The QR code you received upon registration can now be scanned by the vending machine. Then out pops a box that contains your Japan SIM.

Photo credit: WAmazing.

The startup is also taking advantage of Japan’s terrible wifi situation. It has been bad for years, with visitors mostly locked out of free wifi because of sign-up pages in Japanese that demand a local phone number. When I was in Japan last year, I tried some horribly convoluted system promising free wifi – the Travel Japan Wifi app – that involved following a 15-step instruction booklet and installing a “profile” on my iPhone. Then the bloody thing never worked. So I got a pocket wifi thingy I had to carry around all week.

A SIM that you jam into your phone seems simpler.

CEO Fumiko Kato. Photo credit: WAmazing.

Kato’s startup gives away the WAmazing SIM card plus 500MB of data for free, banking on most tourists opting to pay to upgrade to 1GB or beyond. You can’t ‘Gram many bowls of ramen with just 500MB, after all. Plus, that free allotment is only available for 15 days.

For now, the team is focusing on people coming in from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The startup is also offering hotel reservations within its app, which SIM users need to download before they arrive in Japan, giving it an extra way to make money. The app also provides an Uber-esque feature for travelers to hail a taxi, but that seems less useful when Uber’s own app already does that.

To help the business grow, WAmazing has raised US$9.2 million in a mix of investments and loans, it announced today. The cash is from Beenos, SBI Investment, Sony Innovation Fund, and an assortment of other backers.

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AI and facial recognition are combining for useful things, like unlocking your phone and boarding a airplane. But of course there’s a sinister side to all those cameras scanning your face – as shown recently in China.

This post Video: The dark side of facial recognition appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

That didn’t take long.

Razer today published its proposal for a cashless payments system for Singapore – true to its CEO Min-Liang Tan’s word to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

The proposal for how Razer plans to help is two-fold:

• Feedback and advisory services on the Common Epayment Framework (CEF), an initiative by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for an open, interoperable payments system that can accommodate several existing payment methods.
• The development and support of an epayment solution “by Singaporeans, for Singaporeans.” This will either be an existing solution, such as Alipay, or a bespoke product built by Razer, called Razerpay.

Razerpay will be aimed at “end-users, consumers, and businesses in Singapore to establish an epayment, cashless service to accept digital transactions over cash instruments.” Razer plans to pour US$7.4 million as seed funding in the project, and staff it with Singaporean experts who will develop and drive it. The proposal website includes open job positions for engineers, business leads, payment services experts, and legal eagles.

The company says it doesn’t expect its product should be the be-all and end-all of epayments in Singapore – if another solution shows up that is massively adopted by Singaporeans and is compliant with the CEF, the company will stop focusing on Razerpay and instead divert its resources to supporting that solution through an advisory board of experts.

It expects to sign up at least 1 million ewallets from October 2017 to May 2019.

The US-headquartered company, which is most famous for its high-end gaming peripherals, computers, wearable devices, and lately the acquisition of George Lucas-founded audio company THX, says it will fund and operate Razerpay under the open framework required and managed by MAS, and not deploy it as a closed, proprietary product for its own profit.

“By providing an open framework and requiring interoperability with other digital payment solutions, this would create an open and shared bridge between all funding sources and merchant acquisitions in Singapore,” the proposal says.

The proposal doesn’t limit its scope to just Singapore either, envisioning the product as a way for Singaporean users to pay their way in other markets across Southeast Asia with it – similar to how Alipay users from China can use their ewallets abroad. “Such implementation should be planned for in advance,” it notes.

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Photo credit: Pixabay.

The news (extracted from TechCrunch):

• Funding from digital token sales – or initial coin offerings (ICOs) – hit a record high in Q2 2017, according to research from CoinDesk. Between May and June, the total amount raised by companies via ICOs reached nearly US$800 million.
• The three largest token sales in history happened in June of this year: those of Bancor (US$153 million), Status (US$95 million), and Singapore-based TenX (US$83 million). These were central to the overall growth of ICOs.
• To date, there has been US$1.7 billion raised by token sales. 2017’s third quarter is expected to top the previous quarter.

Why it matters:

• The era of unregulated ICOs may have come to an end. China recently banned all ICOs pending an investigation, while regulators in Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Canada, Russia, and the US are among those wanting to put ICOs under closer scrutiny.
• According to CoinDesk director of research Nolan Bauerle, the uncertainty will contribute to higher quality ICOs, but of a lower quantity. However, Bauerle also believes that China’s ban might leave a door open to crypto-focused entrepreneurs in other parts of the world.

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An offline retail store in Hangzhou displays a Tmall logo after partnering with Alibaba. Photo credit: Alibaba.

The battlefield of Chinese ecommerce giants has shifted offline. The latest move is by Alibaba, which joins its competitors in venturing into the supplier market space for China’s mom-and-pop stores. The idea is to reach the 600 million Chinese consumers still unexposed to online retail.

Although online retail has been developing for 20 years in China, its share of total consumer retail was less than 15 percent last year.

TMall, one of Alibaba’s online shopping businesses, will now also operate as a supply chain platform for small shops conveniently located within 500 meters of consumers’ living compounds and buildings. It aims to reach out to 10,000 such stores in its first year, according to an article on its website last week. The shops will get Tmall branding as well as support with marketing, store design, and inventory management.

This move follows the company’s recent forays into other physical outlets, including a supermarket chain that offers fresh foods and a staffless grocery store. What it calls its “new retail model,” or integrating the offline and online worlds, is in fact a way to boost its online traffic by luring more offline retail channels to use its online wholesale marketplace.

Fighting for a place in the offline world

The reason for the online-to-offline move is obvious – slowing growth in both new users and per capita online retail spending. According to a report by Zhiyan Consulting Group, Chinese online retail sales growth per year is expected to slow to 13 percent in 2020 from 26 percent in 2016.

Alibaba isn’t the first to jump on this train to expand its offline footprint via small shops. JD, its largest domestic rival, announced earlier this year ambitions to become the supply channel partner to one million local convenience stores in the next five years.

Fellow tech giant Tencent has launched mini programs or lightweight apps embedded inside WeChat that users don’t have to download. This caters to offline users who prefer ease of use, and its scan-to-use capability is expected to convert offline users into online traffic.

See: WeChat wants to use mini programs to tap into offline traffic

A row of knockoff stalls in China. Photo credit: PublicDomainPictures.

“The offline market is still the main theme in domestic consumption. Although online retail has been developing for about 20 years in China, its share of total consumer retail was less than 15 percent last year, according to our data,” says Cao Lei, director of the China E-Commerce Research Center.

Alibaba has reached a bottleneck in driving revenue from its online platforms, and traffic dividends from new users is also dwindling, Cao adds.

Why mom-and-pop stores?

In the past, ecommerce companies had focused their competition on more durable consumer products such as clothing, books, and electronics. But there is a large potential market in the fresh food and grocery segment that could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, according to Cao. The market also extends to the more remote areas and smaller cities, where the prevalence of online shopping lags behind major cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

The key challenge may lie in integrating the online and offline spheres. This will call for a stronger logistics network and regional distributors.

Both JD and Alibaba are competing for this segment, which is relatively underserved and still growing fast. Both companies are leveraging their existing infrastructure in platform and logistics resources. And both have adopted a franchise model, where shops will be assisted with a channel supplier that offers a one-stop service in product procurement, logistics, marketing, and even some value-adds such as redesign of shelves.

But the key challenge and differentiator may lie in integrating the online and offline spheres. This will call for a stronger logistics network and regional distributors.

Alibaba is soliciting third-party suppliers and distributors to make it a fully functioning network. It is also hiring on-the-ground personnel to help small shops make the transition. Cainiao, a logistics network backed by Alibaba, plans to expand its rural network. (Alibaba has not responded to a request for comments on its offline strategy.)

What’s in it for small stores?

Local shops are where people pick up last-minute items or stock up on small volumes of groceries. Typically owned by small business owners unfamiliar with the online retail space, many of their customers, too, are elderly people and children who have not yet been reached by online retailers. There are estimated to be six million such stores across China, with 70 percent of them located in third-tier cities or smaller ones, according to Alibaba.

Traditionally, shop owners need to regularly contact individual suppliers when a product runs out, arrange for logistics, and predict what customers will want based on their own previous sales. This hands-on small-scale operation not only requires lots of effort in daily maintenance, but also deters new product tryouts as the risks are larger and results unforeseeable.

See: How Chinese unicorn Tujia altered the Airbnb model

Utilizing Alibaba’s existing online B2B (business-to-business) platform for online small businesses as a supplier channel, offline mom-and-pop stores could improve their cash position by having a smaller inventory that also goes out faster. Here, Alibaba’s big data capabilities can help them make purchase decisions, says Cao.

This post Understanding Alibaba’s latest move to jumpstart next phase of ecommerce growth appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Sean Pavone / 123RF.

Malaysia-based iResidenz is an online property management platform that connects property owners, managers, and tenants. Tenants can use the portal to access bills, make payments, book facilities, and submit complaints. Meanwhile, property owners and managers are given access to real-time reports and an automation feature for select administrative tasks.

As a part of its user acquisition campaign, the platform employs a freemium model, without any subscription or setup fee. It generates revenue mainly through its payment gateway services, where users are charged US$0.76 each time an online payment is made in the platform.

Competitors: Pegaxis, GuestReady, Yardi, Skyline

How it compares to competitors: iResidenz claims to provide value-added services to tenants. Tenants can book on-call doctors, home improvement services, as well as laundry pick-up.

Traction 

iResidenz now has 55 condominiums across Klang Valley, Johor, and Sabah accessible on its platform, with 100 more said to be on the pipeline. In June, the total amount of transactions made on the platform hit US$234,000. The startup also plans to expand into Penang, and aims to get 1 million users by 2020.

Funding Details

Amount raised: Undisclosed
Funding stage: Pre-series A
Investor: Interbase Resources
Investment type: Equity
Purpose: Market expansion, product development, and team growth
Total disclosed funding to date: Undisclosed

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Driving in Bali, Indonesia. Photo credit: Harsimran Julka.

When Uber launched in Indonesia in 2014, the vast majority of the country’s 260 million people couldn’t use it. Credit card ownership isn’t common here, and payment by credit card was the app’s only option.

Uber’s magic depends on it: You add your credit card number once and never worry about payment again. Everything happens in the background.

To serve more Indonesian customers, the ride-hailing firm had to sacrifice some of its dearly-held user experience and had to learn to handle cash.

Indonesia, like many developing countries, lacks established cashless payment methods and that’s a major hurdle to digital economy growth.

It’s not just credit cards. Per World Bank’s 2014 data, the majority of the adult population didn’t even have bank accounts.

For the digital economy to reach its expected US$130 billion target by 2020, it needs a breakthrough in cashless payments.

Now, government agencies, banks, telcos, and fintech startups are scrambling to lead the shift away from cash.

There are two main scenarios: one involves the formal banking sector casting a much wider net, dramatically increasing the number of bank accounts, debit, and credit cards in use. In the US, for example, credit cards are a ubiquitous form of cashless payment. According to Statista, there are over a billion credit cards in circulation there. That’s for a population of around 320 million people.

Indonesia’s Central Bank (BI) counts roughly 17 million credit cards in a country of around 260 million people.

It looks a bit better when it comes to debit cards – 143 million are in circulation according to BI. Most of these cards can’t be used for online shopping, and there are only about one million card readers (EDCs) across Indonesia, which means that debit card owners often can’t use them when they want to.

Photo credit: Eko Susanto.

The other scenario looks toward China, where third-party payment providers like Alipay and Tencent Pay have seemingly all but replaced cash overnight.

This was made possible because of the smartphone boom. Credit stored on mobile wallets can be transferred instantaneously and at low cost. In China, the ecosystem of mobile payments has branched out to the point that you use your WeChat app to pay whether you’re at the restaurant or a traditional market.

With regard to mobile phone adoption, Indonesia has done well: 91 percent of the population now own a mobile phone, 47 percent of those are smartphones.

With a payments-ready phone within everyone’s reach, Indonesia might leapfrog card-based payments altogether, some analysts believe. Macquarie Research, the intelligence arm of global financial consultancy Macquarie, suggests this as a possible outcome in its recent Indonesia fintech report. KPMG, which has also created a substantial report on payments in Indonesia, comes to a similar conclusion.

The scenarios aren’t mutually exclusive – traditional bank payments and alternative forms of e-payments can co-exist. Both depend on the technical innovation and agility brought about by fintech startups.

But at this point, no one can say how the shift from cash will play out in Indonesia – and which businesses and institutions will reap the largest rewards.

The state of pay

So how do people pay for things in Indonesia?

In traditional offline retail, there’s little choice but to pay in cash. Shops in malls, restaurant chains, or hotels have card terminals, but once you’re outside of established retail, that option no longer exists.

To settle bills like electricity, water, or internet, Indonesians use ATMs, online banking, or pay in cash through agents, for example at convenience stores.

Convenience stores let customers pay bills and buy digital vouchers at the counter. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

For payments in digital environments, there’s no obvious solution. Shoppers are smothered with choice.

Screens with an overwhelming amount of payment options – here from popular shopping site Tokopedia – are common during the checkout process.

Screenshots from Tokopedia app.

The most common methods to settle online payments are ATM transfers and online banking, followed by cash-on-delivery (COD) – when you pay in cash through the delivery person.

The Indonesian Association of Internet Providers (APJII) and Xendit, a payment gateway, both come to this conclusions in their research.

Chart: Xendit.

A slightly different view is presented by eCommerce IQ in its analysis of data from ecommerce enabler aCommerce.

Chart: EcommerceIQ.

It sees an overwhelming demand for COD, with ATM payments coming in second. That’s because the data was collected mainly from e-retailers that send out physical goods, aCommerce IQ told Tech in Asia. This skews results in favor of COD.

Xendit and APJII’s research includes people’s preferences when paying bills and digital goods like tickets and gaming vouchers.

Consumers may have arranged themselves with ATM transfers, online banking, and COD payments, but these methods have obvious disadvantages.

It’s risky for businesses to trust a delivery person with cash. It also adds to cost of transactions, delays in settlements, and more returns or undelivered items. ATM payments and online payments are a hassle for customers, and they’re also not instantaneous. Overall, this friction leads to many unsettled payments. Industry players speak of a 80 percent card abandonment rate.

In 2017, card payments and other forms of cashless payments, such as through mobile wallets, only account for a small fraction of overall payments in Indonesia – even though they promise a smoother experience.

In part two, we’ll explore how Indonesia’s formal banking sector is adapting to change.

This post Indonesia’s long road to cashless payments appeared first on Tech in Asia.

An online platform for ICOs, which will run its own ICO, has just raised US$15 million from JAFCO, an established Japanese VC firm.

The platform, called Comsa, is owned by Japanese startup Tech Bureau. The firm describes Comsa as a “one-stop solution for Japanese companies seeking ICO funding, providing expertise, consultation, and solutions helping them integrate blockchain technology into their business practices.”

Comsa is built on top of Tech Bureau’s other technologies, which include its own take on a blockchain and a cryptocurrency marketplace.

Tech Bureau has raised about US$24 million to date. For its upcoming token sale in October, the company says 145,000 people have registered to participate, including four venture capitalists and one angel investor.

It’s been an eventful September for the initial coin offering (ICO) scene. China banned the mode of unregulated fundraising out of fear that it has become a vehicle for scams. Ethereum and bitcoin prices fell, but recovered shortly after the news broke.

We’ve reached out to Tech Bureau for comment, and are waiting to hear back.

(Update on September 8: Clarified that Tech Bureau’s token sale hasn’t happened yet.)

This post Platform for ICOs raises $15m from prominent Japanese VC appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Mark Warner.

Uber is piloting a new “premier service,” which offers select riders an enhanced experience at UberX fares, says a statement from the company. It appears similar to the concept of Amazon Prime.

The pilot program is starting in the cities of Mumbai and Pune in India. Uber does not spell out on what basis riders will be selected for the premier service, but presumably they will be frequent users.

Shailesh Sawlani of Uber India explains that it is conceptualized as the next step towards the goal of doing away with the need to own private cars. “While private car ownership remains an aspiration for many, riders are seeking a ride that matches the experience of travelling in their own car. Premier will provide that,” says Sawlani.

See: Uber will go public within three years, new CEO tells staff

The basic deliverables include the highest rated drivers, sedans in good condition, and extra attention from customer support. Apart from that, Uber is working on crafting rides during the trip to suit different needs – such as multiple business meetings, shopping sprees, outings with friends and family, or taking rides to the airport.

It says the new service has been developed from feedback collated from riders.

Uber’s rival in India, Ola, launched a Select service last year which offers a host of benefits to frequent riders – priority booking, no surge pricing, free wifi, and airport lounge access, apart from the best drivers and cars.

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