LK Weekly Precis - Corporate investors, monetising 5G, and hustle to complete deals before the slowdown..

March seems to be starting on a higher note with several startups raising late stage funds in th range of US $1 billion and more. This includes Grab, Go Jek, NYSE listed Sea Group in the recent follow on share offer and the Alibaba backed, Chinese influencer power blogger marketing platform, Rhunn.

Government initiatives are picking up steam especially in Southeast Asia for coaching services, co-working spaces, tax exemption, seed fundings and other resources but requires program owners to improve execution, assesment criterias and reach for better outcomes.  

Here are some key highlights to note this week;

5G Opportunities for Operators and Startups

The recent MWC 2019 in Barcelona, Spain may have been a routine yearly event, but visitors certainly caught a glimpse of a very different future for communication sector in the coming years. Change in business model, operation, partner eco-system, new customer and service segments is imminent. Operators will need to move upwards of the infrastructure, basic voice and data services for revenue and quicker ROI or risk running into massive losses at the point of the next network upgrade.

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Various participants including KT, China Mobile, startup communities and others demonstrated usecases on Smartcities, Smartfactories, 5G Cloud, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality connectivity, autonomous vehicles and many more, that is pointing to enterprises as the key segment to monetise 5G investments.

Traditional partners such as Samsung and LG are adding new IoT services to offerings, apart from a range of mobile and connected devices. For instance the grocery replenishment service with Samsung refrigerator.

Telco operators in Korea, Japan and China are certainly leading the race when it comes to implementing 5G use cases and without a doubt will be in the forefront of innovations, in this space. 

AirAsia launches Redbeat Capital in collaboration with 500 Startups

In our last weekly summary we covered how DBS was looking to invest in startups that can help distribute the banks products further into new territories. It seems that trend is here to stay with more conglomerates taking the same approach to unlock new markets and innovation.

This week AirAsia announces the launch of Redbeat Capital in collaboration with 500 Satrtups. The US$60 million  fund will be used to provide post seed funding for global startups making way into Southeast Asia in travel, lifestyle, logistics and fintech segments.

Huawei Cloud Region Opens in Singapore

Huawei adds a new cloud region in Singapore aside from China, Europe, Latin America, Hong Kong, Russia, Thailand and South Africa. Huawei Cloud now has 40 availability zones in 23 geographic regions. Offerings will include various platform services for artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Currently the company is actively hiring the regional team and is aware of the market's highly competitive landscape with several key cloud vendors already delivering values, where customers are rapidly adopting cloud for better IT efficiencies, investment flexibilities, consistent performance, geographic expansion and faster time to market.

In the past, Huawei depended on its portfolio of foreign based Chinese customers to penetrate into new markets, but we should anticipate some new field tactics beyond price cuts and equivalent services for businesses this time. A shift of sales focus on nailing at least sixty percent of revenue share from services that run above the basic compute, storage and networking infrastructure services is almost mandatory to differentiate from the rest of the pack.

Meituan-Dianping and Chope

Restaurant booking sites and apps in the region has certainly changed how restaurants perceive customer experience for better or worst.

On peak days, customers are rushed to cater next booking, cancellation fees for no show, constant interruption from servers to top up drinks and other add ons to keep the table, have just made it more of a hassle for diners lately.

However, this deal with Meituan-Dianping should particularly benefit Chope to increase utility of their app and tap into the chinese tourist market at the same time. But will these reservation and restaurant referral sites in anyway add value to diners experiences? Can they help restaurants create unique experiences with the data they are collecting?

Horizon Robotics Raises US$600 Million

The trade war is now opening up opportunities for AI chip makers from China including Huawei and Alibaba to accelerate release of products within this year.

Horizon Robotics is one of the highest valued unicorn in China currently, apart from Cambricon for developing AI chips. The company recently raised another US$600 million in funds to push through development, final designs and outsourcing of manufacturing processes.

With several Chinese AI chip makers planning to outsource manufacturing process and rush to release second generation chips by mid 2019, this could prove to be a prospeporous year for Taiwan based TSMC with a full factory load.

Some Cheers for Startup Communities in India

Finally some cheer from our startup entrepreneur communities in India as the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) in India announces changes in the definition of startups (turnover not exceeding Rs 100 crore) and set the confusion over 'angle tax' to rest.

Fintechs Refining Playing Field

Lastly fintechs everywhere in the region are refining market strategies to bridge cashless payment, cryptocurrencies, lending, mobile wallets, e-wallets, and other financial services for both consumers and businesses through new alliances, effective sales programs and much polished product releases. 

Aside from startups, fintechs are increasingly seen as a lucrative attached revenue source for mobile operators, ecommerce platforms, conventional financial institutions and travel related sectors that has access to a broad audience of B2C and B2B buyers. 

Some noteworthy highlights of fintech activities this week are as follows; 

• Axiata and Singtel collaborating for cross border payment;
• Alipay having reached staggering 2 million users and 50,000 merchants in Hong Kong in just a year from launch;
• PayTM India introducing subscription programmes to increase utility;
• Razer launches beta services of Razer Pay digital wallet in Singapore;
• and Mobi Direct teaming up with Worldline for digital payment processing in Pakistan.

Some common trends persist and still an untapped B2B segment.... 

Overall the startup scene is still evolving around ecommerce, ride-hailing, logistics, travel, gaming, payment and other B2C segments where a majority of funding deals are channeled by investors at the moment. As a result, we continue to observe several common repeating themes from previous weeks as follows;

• Traditional sectors such as finance, telco and travel continue turning to startups eco-system to accelerate innovation, build new growth engines and discover business frontiers. 
• Chinese corporate investors such as Alibaba, Tencent, Didi and Meituan-Dianping continue to supply capital to various Southeast Asian startups in ride-hailing, travel, e-commerce and other lucrative B2C segments. 
•  Cloud companies such as Facebook (with IMDA) and Alibaba are working in deeper collaboration with regional startup incubators to lure and accelerate startup success on their platforms.

Nevertheless, this is an ideal period for startups in the region to reboot the drawing board in the B2B segments, leveraging the approaching 5G connectivity in IoT, augmented reality, virtual reality and smart factory arenas for new innovations. 

Telco operators in Southeast Asia are generally less prepared to monetise 5G services and may be more willing to pour investments in a startup ecosystem that fills the service gap in a shorter span of time. 

In addition, many of these telcos are positioned poorly for an internal transformation in terms of adding skills, reorganising business structures and constructing business capabilities for 5G use cases due to outdated business policies, practise of privilege systems and lack of diversity in workforce.  

LK Weekly Precis - A Quiet Post CNY Week

It's a quiet post CNY week with no major shifts really. Go-Jek gears up plans to add payment partners in the region, the ongoing Didi~OYO chemistry, DBS warming up to startups for fresh new growth, PayPal office closure in Malaysia, Huawei's security concern and impact to 5G rollouts are just a few things to highlight this week.

Go-Jek adds Coins.ph as Payment Partner

The battle to win ride hailing leadership in the region continues, with Go-Jek making several moves to progress in the past weeks. After completing alliance agreements with VietinBank with Go-Viet and Singapore's DBS last year, Go-Jek adds another fintech partner this week, called Coins.ph to mobilise things in the Philippines market despite some brush offs with regulators there, last year. 

Go-Jek, considers payment as the core of its super-app play and intend to complete payments gaps in every market. The Indonesian unicorn is currently backed by investors including Google, Tencent Holdings and JD.com and is pushing valuation to $9 billion.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Indonesia-s-Go-Jek-invests-in-Filipino-payments-startup-Coins.ph

The Didi ~ OYO Chemistry 

"Ride comfortably with Didi and Stay comfortably with OYO"! The Didi ~ OYO chemistry is catching on naturally with riders and travelers in China, that the Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing is investing $100 million in Indian hospitality chain Oyo despite cut backs in the Chinese market.

OYO is currently expanding actively in markets such as Southeast Asia, Europe and China apart from home market adopting similar campaigns with ride-hailing partners.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/oyo-gets-100-million-from-chinas-ride-hailing-giant-didi-chuxing/articleshow/67985663.cms

DBS is Open to investing in Startups

As more service sectors converge and customers turn to mobile app for all of their daily service needs, banks such as DBS too are eying the the app and super-app economy to realise new customer segments and growth engines. 

In a recent interview with the Nikkei Asian Review, Mr. Piyush Gupta stated that the bank is open to investing in Startups where the bank's products and services can be distributed to whole new segments. As stated before, DBS recently entered into a strategic partnership with Go-Jek for facilitating payment services but it's unclear if this will this result in new customer flow for the bank.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Banking-Finance/DBS-open-to-investing-in-startups-CEO-says

Huawei, 5G Rollout, Security Concerns - It's business as usual in Southeast Asia

In the backdrop of an intense US-China trade war, are claims made by US intelligence community that Huawei products (particularly the 5G base stations and mobile phones) may contain serious security vulnerabilities that empowers the Chinese vendor with capabilities to conduct undetected espionage. 

This has lead global communication network operators, including long standing business partners such as BT, Vodafone, Dutch Telecom, Orange, LG U+ and others to temporarily suspend and reconsider Huawei agreements pertaining to 5G rollout. LG U+ also made a press statement recently, that the aforementioned equipment source code and various other materials have been sent to an international common criteria (CC) verification institution in Spain for security verification and the report is expected to be out in August or September this year. In the meantime LG U+ intends to rollout base stations for 5G in major city areas. Other Korean network operators such as SK Telecom and KT have suspended Huawei deals for the moment.

In the meantime, Huawei released a media statement informing clients that the company will work along customers with any additional security requirements or compliance towards meeting sufficient cybersecurity standards. The company has also set up a comprehensive FAQ Page to address accusations and correct misinformation.

In the meantime, it's business as usual in Southeast Asia with operators in countries like Philippine, Thailand and Malaysia affirming continued allegiance to Huawei.  Many have openly stated that it will be a tremendous effort to build the next 5G network without Huawei. Top executives further stressed the fact, that 5G is a non stand alone network, as it needs to integrate to LTE and other networks Installed previously, many of which use Huawei's equipments. As for Southeast Asian operators, rebuilding means undoing work accomplished in the last two decades, apart from acquiring huge losses and working forward with Huawei to patch any security concerns if valid, is the sensable way forward.

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/2185816/huawei-gets-vote-confidence-philippines-globe-telecom-which-says

PayPal closes Malaysian Operation Office 

Media reports this week that PayPal has offered VSS to all employees in Malaysia and is closing its operation office there. PayPal has been in Malaysia since 2011 and has offices in other Asian locations such as Philippines, China and Singapore. Reasons for closing the office is unclear but observers are pointing to competitive landscape and a weak business team as the contributing factors. The company however reaffirmed that the internal reorganisation will not affect customers in Malaysia.

https://www.bankingtech.com/2019/02/paypal-to-close-offices-in-malaysia/

aCommerce in Trouble?

aCommerce just released the upgraded BrandIQ line of products and services late last year. A relentless startup when it comes to helping clients accelerate online sales with many leading brands such as Unilever, Samsung, Nestle, Philips and L'Oreal in customer portfolio, the company like many other growing startups did change direction from purely an enabler of e-commerce to distribution of products. Operating in Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore, the Google Premier Partner Award winner provide services including logistics, fulfilment, delivery and digital areas like marketing. 

But a recent report by Dealstreet Asia is indicating that the company might be in trouble with key executives leaving the operation including in country offices.  aCommerce was planning IPO in 2020.  

https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/momentum-works-acommerce-120055/

That's all for this week and wishing everyone a belated CNY! 

How to Choose a Public Cloud ?

This is a popular question, especially for startup and SMB leaderships, whom may not have an advance tech team at their disposal to support with queries and selections when picking a public cloud that returns the most value for new development or migrate existing workloads. Please note that these questions and methods are skewed towards screening IT infrastructure and platform service provider and not so much the Saas provider (we might cover that in another piece of cheat sheet separately).

Ask Questions
Here are couple of things (in no particular order), that your team can use to prepare before meeting the service providers.  

Please note that it's a really bad idea to meet them unprepared, as it provides a white canvas opportunity for the vendor to paint anything they like. It is highly recommended that you avoid such situations. 

Here are the questions/ areas worth exploring;

1. A list of current IT operations (e.g. applications, tools, analytics, security, data-warehouse and etc.) and technologies in place (e.g Operating systems, databases, development tools and languages, security, infrastructure or even other clouds in place).
2. A list of projected/strategic business activities and their automation/digitalisation needs (e.g mobile app, big data analytics, buyer & seller optimisation, etc.)
3. Customisability of compute and memory requirements (in other words, how much control do you have on your VM or VMs).
4. Pro and cons of owning the PaaS level...
5. Standard tech questions - Interoperability, portability,  new app development cycle, security, redundancy, backup and recovery features.
6. The type and size of technology eco-system that the cloud provider connects to - here you are simply looking for three things; suitability of the technology to your operation; standardisation and; provider that connects with a larger eco-system of technologies (e.g Hadoop, ML, AI, Blockchain, Mobile App Platform and a host of other opensource pieces).
7. Pricing mechanism and projections for on-boarding; utilisation blocks (e.g by minutes, hours, monthly, yearly, types of workload - predictive and unpredictive); exit or off-boarding (be aware that some vendors charge even during off-boarding to migrate data and other intellectual assets off of their platform – this happens when you complete contractual term and don’t plan to renew);
8. Discount and rebate applications - when you get them, and when you don't (ask both questions)?
9. What is the lock-in period (e.g 1 to 3 years). What happens if you exit prematurely. What is the unnatural discontinuation cost?
10. What service guarantee does the vendor provide (e.g. SLA, compliance, security)?
11. What happens when vendor fail to deliver service (system performance, security, data, compliance)”according to contractual term? 
12. What support procedures are in place when a support request is registered?
13. What if you need to scale ? How quickly you can scale the needed footprint?
14. What about trainings and upskill activities?
15. What SMB focused programs does the vendor have in place? Some service providers might have special programs for you to mingle with other users in your category and connect. This can be an added bonus to your business as you can tap onto the knowledge and resources of a wider network.

Request for a Pilot Test

if you are happy with the information gathered through the pre-meeting research and cloud salesperson's answers to aforesaid questions, move on to a test request for the tools and  platform services in question.  Scope the test areas according to your procurement needs to stay on course with your current needs. Look out for performance, usability, flexibility, scalability, security and inter-operability results to support and corroborate information you gathered (unless the test fail to do so).

Tap Talks in the Grapevine
It’s a good idea at this point to fraternise with other fellow startups and SMBs who may have already been using the services first hand.  Their experience could be a valuable addition of information to your decisions. Though, when collecting information from informal sources such as this, be aware of the timelines - a problem or disadvantage that existed a year ago may not apply anymore as cloud companies improve (especially the largest 3 or 4) at a rapid pace.

What is a Satisfactory Outcome?
What are you looking to map with these initial questions and explorative activities?

1. Your IT computing and operational requirement based on business roadmap.
2. Suitability of the service provider/s and their offerings to support your business and future growth.
3. Good understanding of tools and services recommended by vendor before you embark on them.
4. A clear idea on pricing matters; discounts and rebates applications; contractual terms.
5. Outline or scope of duties and responsibilities between you and your vendor in regards to your IT footprint. 
6. Cost of discontinuation of business relationship upon completion of contractual terms.
7. Cost and consequences of discontinuation of business relationship due to premature termination of contract.
8. Your rights when service provider fails you? e.g service delivery, compliance, security or data breach.
9. Exit and migration path to other clouds.

Finally, a piece of useful advice to stay productive and avoid frustrations. Expect for contact points to change at anytime while dealing with vendors or any external parties for that matter. As such, it would be wise to document all requirements, arrangements and agreements to terms, contractual and non. This will help you save time in the reestablishment and reinstatement of such interactions which looses sight due to change of contact points.

In addition, get feedback from both business(finance included) and technical team members on the selection before concluding.

Happy Screening!!!!

Let's Kopi IP Series – Featuring Codename.biz by Trytec Malaysia

Paper based Business Cards are now Officially Obsolete

Most successful business professionals are fervent networkers and constantly keep an eye out for new talents, potential customers, partnerships, investors and other useful contacts that can be cleverly leveraged to achieve growth objectives. In a fast moving business, executives routinely fill work calendars with professional events, calls and business meetings where new connections are initiated, usually through exchange of paper based business cards, that may be followed by LinkedIn invitations.

However managing and maintaining large number of contacts using this method over time can turn counter productive as executives move organisations, change career path, get promoted, shift to a different region or simply relocate to a new office.

The use of online tools in creating modern professional branding..

Paper based business cards are unable to capture and link to online profiles nor can the contact details presented, altered without reprinting.  Even when business cards are digitised by card scanners, such systems do not necessarily prompt an automatic connect to online profiles owned by card holders. The card formats vary and are not always an exact match for the mobile contact list, resulting in missing information during information capturing process. When there is a change in address, mobile number, email, company or new links such as blog or video is added, the paper based card has to be reprinted and redistributed to keep the network updated.

Codename.biz is a Virtual Business Card Platform 

Online networking, collaboration and content sharing platforms such as LinkedIn, Workspace, Reddit, Twitter, Quora, blogs, online professional groups and YouTube are changing the way professional profiles are composed and orchestrated. The new age workforce actively utilises multiple online avenues to creatively add personification, demonstrate leadership, command specialisation and keep

professional branding relevant with current market, industry and business trends.

Codename.biz by Trytec addresses this challenge and simplifies the process of creating, sharing and updating virtual calling cards that includes additional online branding assets to various business networks simultaneously in realtime. Users can use a single cloud interface to create business contact information with links to social media profiles, websites, blogs, videos and other multimedia content that describes the business and expertise best.

The virtual business card is available in different colours and designs, easily shared via mobile, email or other messaging tools such as WhatsApp or Messenger.

QR codes are generated for users to facilitate connections by simply scanning the code using the mobile camera. Trytec is currently expanding on this idea and considering options to print the QR codes in the form of costume jewelries and watches to promote usability and convenience.

It’s only a matter of time before the traditional calling cards are abandoned…

Traditional calling cards are becoming less relevant as we move into a highly connected work environment where the lines of professional, social and personal lives are beginning to assimilate. Systems and algorithms are amassing data continuously on netizens to generate various types of scores on social, commercial and professional contributions. Making a novel online presence and an original personal branding, a crucial prerequisite for attracting business opportunities.

The simplicity of Codename.biz can turn it into the next de-facto method for presenting contact information and identity to business networks. It offers a compelling value to users by binding all critical professional branding assets in one place with features to add or edit sources in real time without complicating the virtual profile with a resume style outline.

Be an early adopter, try the beta NOW

Codename.biz is currently in beta run as work to lift user experience and robustness of the platform are carried out behind the scene with more user feedbacks becoming available. In the mean time, users are encouraged to take advantage of the free service period to try out the service.

Southeast Asian Tech Startups – Race for Alpha

Southeast Asia is bustling with thousands of tech-startups and budding entrepreneur communities mostly centred in cities such as Singapore, Jakarta, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Ho Chi Minh. Between 2015 and 2018 the region secured some US$ 11 billion in investment through 1,412 deals with Singapore (US$ 8.4 billion and 888 deals) and Indonesia  (US$ 1.6 billion and 228 deals) accounting for 85% of the deals. At least US$ 7 billion of this amount was locked in 2017 alone.

If that's not stunning enough, 2017 and the first half of 2018 also witnessed several unexpected moves by key players and most sublime moments in the sector with Uber selling operations to Grab, Grab’s over US$ 2 billion funding round, Lazada’s acquisition by Alibaba, Rocket Internet shaving down holdings, the emergence of the 4th Indonesian unicorn - Bukalapak, Amazon’s e-commerce service debut, several billion dollar funding rounds (Traveloka, Tokopedia, Go Jek), Philippine based Revolution Precrafted expanding into Latin America and most probably becoming the region's ninth unicorn.

The progression of local tech scene is rapid, driven by the confluence of state backed initiatives, access to best class of technology, availability of massive amount of data through connected devices and a booming Southeast Asian economy.

The region is integrating unexpectedly through a common digital cultural imagery

Business professionals however, have repeatedly warned of the insurmountable difficulties that is associated with scaling businesses and navigating the market in Southeast Asia. The inherent diversities geographically, culturally, and economically makes standardisation impossible but the region somehow brilliantly encapsulates the economic themes of some 10 to 11 different nations with a collective population of 650 million people through a common recursive digital cultural imagery. A digital society that is highly tech savvy, predominantly young, connects ubiquitously, consumes, plays, works and socialises online. Staying attuned to latest of technologies, apps, and tools, is a mandatory routine for this psychographic.

Abundance of opportunities

This highly interactive, well informed and sound ‘digital society’ is one of the key forces behind the stupendous growth of consumerism and staggering expansion of the SMB market in the region. This generation is open and willing to endeavour new methods in resolving growth challenges, rethink experience, update legacy utilities and foster new data driven services. These encouraging signs unlock infinite opportunities, especially for businesses centred on new technological frontiers namely mobility, artificial intelligence (computer vision, speech recognition, robotics), Bigdata, IOT, 3D printing, blockchain, and virtual reality.

Emergence of new type of data driven services

For instance,ViSenze specialises solutions in advanced visual search and image recognition solutions for eCommerce, mCommerce and online advertising. The company’s core research and development is anchored on computer vision technology and machine learning to help shoppers simplify search for items by uploading images on social media or video networks.

ADDO.AI is based out of Singapore with branch offices in Germany, Dubai, Philippines, and Pakistan. With no investor backing announced so far, Ayesha Khanna, CEO of ADDO.AI, has been striving hard to position the company as an artificial intelligence advisory firm that focuses on various multi-dimensional projects in agriculture, transportation, and finance. The company has been featured several times by media for successes with SMRT Singapore, a crop prediction project in Pakistan, and SmartDubai.

Trax Image Recognition is another revolutionary service provider, also based out of Singapore. The company’s image recognition and deep learning solutions can empower enterprise data science capabilities - all using pictures taken by smartphone cameras as input for analyses by algorithms that decipher the images into a series of real-time actionable insights. For example, consumer brands can monitor and analyse retail shelves across stores and enforce more control over how products are arranged on retailers’ shelves.

A growing fraternity of prestigious unicorns

The region is now cohabiting colonies of startups at different stages (development, optimisation, growth, expansion, mature) with some 9 unicorns, namely SEA, Bukalapak, Go Jek, Traveloka, Tokopedia, Grab, Lazada, Razer and Revolution Precrafted. Both Indonesia and Singapore are tied in terms of the number of existing unicorns, while Singapore is leading in the number of total startups and advance technological solutions. Crunchbase cited that more than half of the 2,151 seed and early-stage rounds recorded between 2008 through 2017 were involving startups based out of Singapore.

3x more funding than the previous year

In 2017 alone, the region secured an astounding US$ 7.8 billion in venture fundings, threefold from the earlier year, though the number of deals dropped significantly from 335 to 320,  according TechAsia. A significant slice of the pie was captured by ride-hailing, fintech, e-commerce and gaming segments. These excludes the latest fund raising activity undertaken by Grab for a staggering US$ 2 billion, lead by its Japanese investor, Toyota. Go Jek, Tokopedia and Lazada each raised funds exceeding the range of US$ 1 billion in their last late stage funding rounds.

Signature investors

China’s tech giants namely Alibaba, Didi, Tencent and JD, the region’s conglomerates owned by some of the region’s richest families, and venture capital funds are some of the biggest investors in the region's startups.  In addition, as the scene intensifies with new innovations, super apps, vibrant research and development offices, several new funds have emerged, specifically targeting the region – the likes of  500 Startup, KK Fund, Kejora, Insignia Venture, Meranti Growth Fund and Vertex. Southeast Asia is now fully loaded with funding to grow a lot more startups aiming for high yield exits.

Is there enough ‘fish’ in the pond

As deal activities ramp up with several high profile funding rounds last year, investment patterns begin to signal a strong shift to quality rather than quantity. Mature segments such as e-commerce and ride-hailing witnessed execution of several higher value deals whereas massive amounts of early stage fundings was issued in other growing segments such as fintech, gaming, crypto economies and AI infused customer experience.

For now there are still plenty of startups in the pipeline though unevenly dispersed across the region with more than half based in Singapore, followed by Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and others. Besides, many more early stage startups are predicted to enter the pool as governments race to campaign acculturation of state owned innovation platforms and compete for intellectual properties.

Still nascent but the tipping point is near

As expected, Singapore is the leading destination for startup businesses in the region.The ease of doing business, a global talent pool, mature infrastructure, supportive government initiatives, and a US$ 13 billion research and development facility are some of the reasons why startup community sets-up shop here.

Singapore hosts an impressive line of startups namely, Trax Image Recognition (Computer Vision), AirTrunk (Datacenter), Advance.AI (AI driven Financial Services), Ninja Van (logistics), Tessa Therapeutics (Bio Medical), oBike (Bike Sharing) and many other well funded venture, mostly focusing on B2B models. Many are migrants from neighbouring countries to take advantage of the flexible business conditions there.

Singapore’s comfortable seat is fiercely challenged by Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, all picking more pace than ever. Indonesia alone is aiming for 8 or 9 unicorns in the coming years, with some rising names such as Matahari Mall (e-commerce), HaloDoc (online medical services), Pundi X (Crypto marketplace), Snapcart (Bigdata for consumer brands), and Akulaku (lending services).

The rest of the region seem to be focused around fintech, blockchain and B2C e-commerce platforms. Some upcoming names worth mentioning - iflix, MOL, Supahand and iCar from Malaysia; aCommerce from Thailand; Tiki.vn from Vietnam; and Cogito from Philippines.

It will take time for Southeast Asia to catch up with other global startup hubs in China and America, but chances are, the region will become a critical trade bet between east and west. This unique time bound opportunity, can be cleverly exploited by the region's startup community if only more speed can be acquired in mobilising their visions to fully tap the market.



Links to references

• SEA focused seed funds - CBInsight Report
• Grab picks up another US$ 2 Billion - TechCrunch Report
• List of Top funded Startups in SEA - TechinAsia Report
• State of SEA Startups Report - by Slush
• Crunchbase for Startup Data
• Let's Kopi Unicorn Tracker