LK Weekly Precis - New e-Commerce Regulations, Acquisitions and Expansions

This week, new ecommerce regulations in India shook the tech business community and indicated that government meddling and protectionism policies may continue to hinder progress of emerging markets in sectors such as ride hailing, hospitality and many others aside from ecommerce.

Ecommerce regulations was also a topic discussed in Davos at the World Economic Forum (WEF), lead by Singapore. In addition, the event for the first time hosted talks among tech executives and leaders, including from BAT, to shape up AI framework that addresses both the seller and buyer nations.

Other than that, ST Telemedia acquisition of Cloud Comrade and Travelstop expansion to 7 Asian markets simultaneously, along with JD.com's first drone delivery outside of China are some notable developments in the startup sphere this week.

ST Telemedia Acquires Cloud Comrade

Last year we saw a number of consultancy firms such as Deloitte and the likes, hunting for acquisitions in the partner space of large tech companies namely Oracle, Sap, AWS, GCP and Microsoft.  This trend is now picked up by several data-centre service providers in the region.

ST Telemedia is certainly moving in the right direction by acquiring Cloud Comrade to enhance its datacenter service offering portfolio, especially in cloud services, IT management, cybersecurity and overall datacenter performance. 

Cloud Comrade helps customers in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore deploy cloud to accelerate new development and migrate existing business applications for operational excellence. The startup works in alliance with almost all major public cloud providers such as Ali, Azure, AWS, GCP and Digital Ocean. 

Last year, ST Telemedia acquired stakes worth $27 million, in cloud management company, Bespin Global that operates in Korea and China. The new acquisitions will help ST Telemedia complete service offerings in cloud, AI, Bigdata, digital experience and cybersecurity.

https://bit.ly/2Uj7FKe

JD's Drone Delivers Books and Bags in Rural Indonesia

JD.com has been delivering to some rural parts of China using drones for the last two years. This week JD ran its first drone delivery trial outside of China after securing a government license for regional level operation in Indonesia. According to media the drone travelled 250km to deliver boxes of books and bag packs to school children.

Tencent has a 15% stake in JD.com and together the companies co-invested in a number of Chinese companies. Last year Google announced significant amount of investments in JD and Tencent to make inroads in China. 

Soon, same day and next day delivery will be a common offering, sighting of drones in residential areas should be expected and e-commerce logistic players may have to reinvent their game.

https://globalcosmeticsnews.com/jd-com-paves-the-way-for-drone-deliveries-in-southeast-asia-with-first-government-approved-flight-in-indonesia/

Travelstop Expands to 7 More Markets

Travelstop is a year old startup from Singapore, that simplifies business travel and expense management to the SMB and startup segments. Since inception, the T&E Saas platform has been updated continuously with features and functions to sufficiently meet the needs of both travellers and employers in a segment where such services were inaccessible. 

We believe they are in the path to join the likes of 'certify', 'coupa' and 'apptricity' to challenge other established players such as SAP Concur in the travel and expense solution space for the enterprises.

Recently, the company announced service availability in Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam.  The company also announced a mobile app for iPhone users to easily access services. 

https://www.eventsnewsasia.com/20190122052718000454-business-travel-startup-travelstop-strengthens-presence-asia-launches-seven-markets/

New e-commerce Rules/Restrictions in India

The new rule restricts online retailers or marketplaces from sourcing more than 25% of inventories from a single vendor, vendors where the online retailers may have a stake and exclusive deals that results in deeply discounted products. 

The new rules seems to be aimed at protecting millions of small traders, operating offline and suffering from huge losses due to deep discounting practices of both Amazon and Flipkart. According to analysts and mainstream media, the recent electoral losses is seen as one of the contributing factor to this unusually regressive move.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/india-issues-new-e-commerce-rules-to-check-amazon-and-flipkart/

AI Discourse at World Economic Forum, Davos 

Finally AI takes a critical spot in WEF this year with US (Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft) and China ( Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) seen as leaders of the space. Economic potential, social threat, globalisation 4.0., ethical practices, AI nationalism, global policies for both AI sellers and buyers were some of the issues beginning to shape the global AI agenda.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Asian-tech-execs-voice-hopes-and-fears-for-AI-in-Davos

Singaporean Ride-hailing Startup, 'Tada' in Vietnam

This year we might see more ride hailing players emerging in the region, including traditional players modernising their business and competing for their pie with larger competition namely Grab and Go Jek. 

New entries might come from taxi operators, affected driver groups and rental service providers. 

We might also see, new country level regulations, niche plays, convergence of industries/sectors, significant mergers and acquisitions in this space as we cool off in quarter four.

https://www.retailnews.asia/singaporean-ride-hailing-startup-tada-launches-in-vietnam/

HG Exchange

HG Exchange, a fintech industry backed initiative has recently submitted a regulatory application to Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). This move will provide investors in the region with better access to high growth companies such as Grab, Go Jek, Didi, Deliveroo and others. 

The exchanged will be built by blockchain developer Zilliqa and Taiwanese digital asset platform MaiCoin.

https://www.techinasia.com/in-brief-hg-exchange-seeking-launch

It's seems to be a slow week in anticipation of CNY next week but we believe businesses will keep up momentum till quarter 3 as a slow down is expected in quarter 4. 

Happy Sunday!

Application Interoperability in Multi-Cloud

Some business problems, never gets old. Interoperability among systems or application is one such issue that requires varying degree of treatment depending on the type of organisation and business stage. This article penned by Let's Kopi is most suitable for startups and SMBs.

A hybrid technology environment is inevitable for any business

Organisations depend on business applications to empower various capabilities to optimise operations, generate growth, enhance customer experience, and accelerate innovation. A typical enterprise technology architecture today delivers these

capabilities by cleverly balancing in-house solutions with a number of Saas services (e.g. Salesforce, Service Now, Box, etc). Though, most post millennial startups are built on cloud-first strategy, which means an internal datacenter does not emerge until business matures with a satisfactory level of solution adoption and customer base.

Business processes transcend cloud and non-cloud applications 

In either scenario, businesses ends up with an enterprise technology environment that spreads across the in-house datacenter, hosted datacenters and various public clouds. Stringent industry compliance, data security, privacy, and call for other regulatory requirements will continue to push at least some parts of the business systems to on-premise deployment. This means critical business processes will continue to transcend several applications to invoke one another in completing workflows, share data, exchange messages, and push results to performance dashboards across a hybrid and multi-cloud environment.

Building integration between applications is necessary….
Linking and integrating applications residing in cloud and non-cloud environment is a common undertaking for businesses that depends on automated processes, mobility, data, and insightful predictions for superior performance, productivity, and production. For instance, a business may integrate a Saas CRM with on premise sales systems to trigger ‘billing’ and ‘delivery’ request when an order is received. A CSP may connect a cloud based customer loyalty mobile application with on-premise ERP and CRM to make offers and process purchases in realtime.

Plenty of tools and methods to isolate integration between applications

There are literally hundreds of tools and services to link on-premise applications with SaaS services to connect processes, orchestrate end to end workflow, ensure data synchronisation, promote data consistency, standardise business rules, enforce security policies, and achieve a seamless business façade (in terms of UI) for users.

Most SaaS service providers offer a range of APIs and even offer PaaS services to extend their SaaS offerings (e.g. Salesforce, Service Now). Pure play integration vendors focus on solutions such as SOA middleware, ESB, EAI and other GUI based tools which enables developers to create interfaces and APIs to suit respective business need and use case.

For instance elastic.io, WSO2 and Cloud Elements are pretty decent option for SMB and smaller companies (based on product and price) looking to isolate integration layers that connect the various technology environment owned by the organisation. While companies such as Mulesoft, Infomatica and Snaplogic may carry a much mature and extensive range of offerings, suited for larger organisation with much complex IT environment.

What approach and which solution?

Ultimately, developers can choose between performing a point to point integration or establishing a middleware integration layer that promotes fluid linkages between systems without changes or minimal impact to source applications. The later being the best practise of the majority. The selection of methods and tools however depends on three critical factors as stated below:

1. The use case – what the business intend to achieve with the integration? For instance data consistency, data exchange, message exchange, end to end workflow or a common UI to access all business app.

2. Requirements – the relevant systems may run on different operating systems, databases, libraries, and written in different languages. The selected tools must be able to support and mediate these environments.

3. IT realestate – how big is your environment? How many business applications? Where they reside? In a very small setup, point to point integration may prove to be fast and economical solution. A rapidly growing environment on the contrary, can benefit from a middleware integration layer.

Sizing up the above can help determine the level of complexities and resources, when it comes to integrating requirements in hybrid environments, switching Saas providers, and ensuring business compliance.

Recommendations - don't overpower integration requirements

There is no single silver bullet for enterprise application integration challenges especially in our current state where public clouds are gauging more of our datacenter and on-premise systems. Selection of tools rely heavily on the specifics of the use case, requirements, dependencies, existing IT landscape and even business strategies to avoid vendor lock-in.

Nevertheless, good decisions can be made by zooming into the problem in hand with a bit of foresight. For example if connecting two applications, then making use of available APIs will be sufficient without the need of any high end integration middleware. But if the this scenario continues to involve other systems and applications, then an integration middleware or tool becomes mandatory. In intermediate situations, the business can also custom build integration interface on-premise or on a PaaS platform provided by cloud vendors.

A final reminder is that to meet integration requirements sufficiently without the need to overpower the integration layer for tasks that has not emerged in the integration roadmap, just yet. A common mistake many small companies make, is to purchase tools that are sold as future proof and broader in application at higher premium. These tools end up under utilised while businesses continue to pay a premium year after year. Tools change radically as new technologies enter our environment and should only be selected based on known business requirements.

5 Levers to Optimise Learning

“Nothing is ever Achieved without Enthusiasm”, Emerson

Ever wondered how Uber, ANT Financial (Alipay), Xiaomi, DiDi Chuxing, or Airbnb turned into world's largest unicorns in 2017 (and yes, please note that 3 out of 5 are actually from China) ?

Perhaps it was the early market lead, a disruptive technology, platform inspired business model, successful fund raising rounds or simply favourable government policies. Each firm hacked growth based on different mix of factors but shared one similarity. Their leadership and workforce was able to keep pace with the supersonic growth and recalibrate repeatedly to the next future state.

Entrepreneurs whom are in constant pursuit of new knowledge and finds a thrill in the perils of solving difficult business problems are effective learners. They promote sharing of information, inferences and team collaboration for optimal execution of every business function. Making optimising learning capacity of individuals and teams in organisations an imperative measure in driving and sustaining growth. A metrics closely observed by leaderships and funding ventures alike.

Technology to Assist and Augment 

Businesses operate in an extremely fast environment today, where advancements in consumer gadgets and enterprise technologies have enabled us with massive computing power capable of deciphering quintillion bytes of data in nano seconds. Artificial intelligence and machine learning is further sophisticating automation of softwares, machines, neural networks, robots and humanoids.

Ignoring such developments and their benefits in assisting and augmenting work in sectors such as health, legal, high tech, retail and financial will only leave the business irrelevant to market over time. Instead every technology disruption provides a purposeful learning opportunity to move higher in the work chain that should be embraced.

Make Sense of Data

Similarly online business models, platforms and devices are flooding us with data and information. Researching a customer or partner, means pulling and collating information from various sources internal and external (e.g. within the enterprise walls, certified agencies and what is available publicly).

Using analytics to make sense of the different data sets and correlation to business helps to build better reasoning for business cases, speedily scratch the surface of critical operational issues, dive deeper into situations, or anticipate an upcoming threat (or avoid the ‘boiling frog’ phenomenon). It expands cumulative ability to uncover answers to inherent business questions and expose unchartered frontiers for seeking new understandings. This improve resources allocation and focus for all the right business activities in product innovation, sales, marketing and support.

Practice Problem Solving

Growing startups exposes entrepreneurs to various types of business constraints. Some problems are clearly defined with goals, while others are inhibited by vagueness, thrusting us into a panic zone. The iterative process of identifying, classifying, defining, diagnosing, understanding and breaking down the problem, results in expansive mental progress that improves strategies and methodologies in problem-solving over time.

However, exhausting teams with repetitive problems (which is a target for complete automation anyway) will only erode this cognitive exercise to an inertia. Instead refocus them to address complex challenges, where the process of active revealing and listening in search of a solution mechanism takes place. It is here, where many startups stumbles over a lead, growth engine, untapped market, or a golden opportunity to gauge market share from conventional players.  Riding back on the iceberg parable illustrated in the previous point, the deeper you dwell into business inhibitors, the more questions you will uncover. The journey to answer these questions will lead to breakthroughs.

Failures multiply Worth of Lessons

It's bizarre but success and failure lies in the same direction. Success is reiteration of adjustments made from failure to failure without ever loosing the excitement for the venture.

If Abraham Linchon would have shied away from numerous disappointments and feared the angst that may arise, it would have taken a lot longer to abolish slavery and build a modern America. If Nelson Mandela would have stopped fighting apartheid in South Africa at the thought of being imprisoned for life, South Africa will still be torn in civil wars and severe human rights crisis.

Failure teaches value of resilience, focus, reflection and to bounce back stronger each time a pursuit hits a dead end. Only by apprehending the lessons of defeat, one can gain clarity to amend path forward and avoid repeating mistakes. In fact, no one successful is ever reserved from having to confront calamities, criticism, and temporary standstills. After all, success is sweet when you can tell a story that can inspire others.

Performance Support Tools

Performance support tools, such as collaboration platforms, portals, advance analytics (including bigdata), case and content management solutions (e.g.  JIRA, G Suite, Slack, Asana, and other SMB SaaS Services) that are integrated across the various business functions in the organisation is a great way to distribute and update team members of newly available learning assets. In addition, the design and representation of these tools across functions can influence how quickly complications in process or product can be resolved.

The Act of Perfecting the Game

Using the levers mentioned above will speed learning pace and get us quickly to the deeper composite nature of any business riddle. This creates more room to effectively piece personal mastery with cumulative learning assets garnered from others in a collaborative manner. Pushing teams to increase adoption of core capabilities to understand complexities, prioritising what matters most and develop effective conversations to perfecting the game.

Practise does make us perfect (or at least better) but equally important is to break away from bad habits of not seeing the big picture quick enough, getting stuck in management myths, or living in a delusion that learning comes with experience (The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge). As they say, you can’t gain without pain or by being oblivious.