Southeast Asia Connect: Recent Episodes
Southeast Asia Connect
For founders and investors of Southeast Asian Startups. Connecting the Southeast Asian Ecosystem to the World.
Get the money, build the dream and grow to win.
The Chinese character for crisis is danger and opportunity. Every crisis produces winners, and today’s giants were yesterday’s survivors (Amazon, Alibaba, Zoom and hundreds of other examples). In this webinar we discuss who the COVID-19 winners will be, the trends they are riding and what are the winners doing differently.
When we say winners and losers of COVID-19, we want to highlight that the pandemic is a massive tragedy for health and for the economy. This is our humble attempt to help businesses with big and small to come out stronger from this crisis.
Topics Discussed:
- What Is The Next Normal – Discover the implications for how businesses should reinvent and stay relevant
- Where Are The New Opportunities – Understand the trends that businesses can ride to become stronger
- Fundraising In The Current Situation – Companies now may not have enough cash runway as they think
- How To Communicate – Guidelines to increase your communication with all stakeholders
In the last 5 years, we have witnessed the increasing relevance of startup initiatives globally. The likes of Station F in Europe, AIS The Startup, Sequoia Surge, and Antler, in Asia have thousands of startups combined that receive help in growing their companies. In China similarly, Chinaccelerator, operated by venture fund SOSV, has more than 140 startups in its portfolio.
The astonishing growth in the number of such initiatives worldwide from 200 in 2011, to well beyond 10,000 now (or 5 times now), proves that there is an increasing need for them in the making of a startup.
In this webinar, we speak with Keziah Quek from Capgemini Applied Innovation Exchange, and Janise Tan, who manages Google’s Accelerator program in Southeast Asia.
On the final episode of this year's series on Southeast Asia connect, we talk about:
Bridging startups and B2B enterprises, and how startups can win pilots with corporates Working with local players in the ecosystem and enabling digital transformation Ecosystem success stories
Soundbites
Janise Tan - "The earlier you are, the bigger village you need"
Keziah Quek - "It's like alchemy, you're looking for the right person, chemistry, KPI, matching of place and time"
Google talks about finding the next “billion” users – is it the case that a significant part of the next billion users will be served and acquired indirectly via the millions of MSME merchants embedded in the emerging markets of Southeast Asia? In this episode, we explore:
The shift to B2B Super Apps – BukuKas is an app for merchants digitising their bookkeeping and is a gateway to electronic financial services, BukuWarung is arguably in a similar space. Moka purchased by GoJek gave them an enlarged presence into merchants and Fave has a tie-up with Grab and a strategic investment from the largest Indian non-bank merchant network Pine Labs Size of the “Merchant Enterprise segment” – MSMEs make up the bulk of the economy, not the major conglomerates Economics around merchants – Are revenue models different, better even? What is the path to profitability?
Soundbites
Nigel Lee - "If it's a B2B model, I get to go and play golf with people."
Joel Neoh - "Financials: How big, how long, how fast and strategic do we compete or cooperate "
Over the past decade, Asia’s startup scene has been led by China, which created some of the world’s most valuable unlisted startups that are now household names like Alibaba and Tencent. Of course, we all know the hits keep on coming with TikTok operator ByteDance. After India, Southeast Asia has followed up with 13 unicorns. In fact, the rate of growth in valuation of startups has accelerated over the last 5 years and is a pace on par, if not greater, than the average for the rest of the world. In addition, the old “funding” valley of death series A, B, or even C is well gone, and we are in the age of “plugging the gap” between VC and PE stages, with a thick blur in between. Topics discussed:
The unicorn DNA – What technology, talent, economic and legislative tailwinds have created the current unicorns What factors will create the next wave and is there a shift in the nature of unicorns to come e.g. more B2B, more fintech, more logistics? To what extent do the US, China, and India unicorns provide models for SEA unicorns, or do they not? Do unicorns “suck up” all of the capital? How will the unicorns exit
Soundbites
Shaun Chong - "People only see the success stories, they don’t know the hardships."
Watch the full episode here.
Fintech in Southeast Asia is the only sector set to nearly double funding in 2020 compared to 2019. Out of 109 Fintech startups in Southeast Asia, 35 startups are now valued at more than $100 million. Ant Financial is the most anticipated IPO of the year at a rumoured $250 billion, which would make it roughly the 5th largest “bank” in the world. Fintech is not only impossible to ignore but too important not to understand. Topics discussed:
Whether the smaller players will be able to compete for market share with the larger Unicorns like Grab, GoJek, ZaloPay, OVO, etc. The revenge of the banks Digital banking, and what it means in 2020 Embedded finance What is next in the Fintech space
Soundbites
Pinn Lawjindakul - "I want a relationship with you longer than your marriage."
Kelvin Teo - "My parents are Asian so I wasn't allowed to drop out."
Watch the full episode here.
Threats created by disinformation campaigns have created cyber insecurity. These challenges create opportunities for the next-gen of cybersecurity startups – the cyber defenders. A global […]
Impact investment is not about “doing no harm.” Rather, it is a proactive investment to make an impact and drive positive change. Impact investing is […]
McKinsey says that consumers “vaulted” 5 years of digital adoption in just eight weeks recently. One of the undeniable trends here is social commerce. Social […]
The HealthTech sector is utilising technology to improve the digital delivery and outcome of healthcare services. In fact, the most-funded HealthTech categories in Southeast Asia […]
Southeast Asia has ten of the world’s largest cities, behind only China and India. Since urbanisation is the key to economic growth, in this webinar, […]
Rising wages in Southeast Asia has always meant a need for a more productive workforce in order to maintain real income growth. However, the new […]
94% of enterprises now use cloud software, and according to the US Tech Bank, Raymond James, despite recent volatility, top Cloud SaaS companies still command […]
The Chinese character for crisis is danger and opportunity. Every crisis produces winners, and today’s giants were yesterday’s survivors (Amazon, Alibaba, Zoom and hundreds of […]