Asia Tech Podcast

Quote: “I see Angel Investing as a way to channel capital towards productive use.” In this episode of the Asia Tech Podcast, Michael Waitze is joined by Jed Ng, a Tech Investor, Advisor and Business Head of Rakuten Rapid API – the world’s largest API marketplace. They discussed how Jed got started in angel investing, key pieces of advice on doing so and some insight on the best business practices through his own experience. For many entrepreneurs, acquiring an abundance of angels has become almost like trophy collecting. However, this is a chase that may come with some risks. To learn more about Jed Ng and his Angel Investing journey and his buildout of the world’s largest API marketplace, listen to this episode of Asia Tech Podcast today.

In this episode of the Asia Tech Podcast, Michael Waitze is joined by Jennifer Ho, a Principal at Dymon Asia Ventures. They take a deep dive into how the COVID-19 outbreak will digitise business practices in Asia’s financial and healthcare sectors. The healthcare industry can be very conservative. There is always a worry that adopting the wrong technology can be detrimental to the hospital. However, the outbreak has changed this attitude, lowering the barrier of adoption for many healthcare technologies. But how will this change the way healthcare services are provided? To find out more about the aftermath of this global pandemic, check out this episode of the Asia Tech Podcast today.

In this episode of the Asia Tech Podcast, Michael Waitze is joined by Sumit Khemani, CEO of SmartFuture, Singapore-based HealthTech Platform whose aim is to improve health literacy and allow individuals the option to own their own health data.  SmartFuture is transforming traditional medical inefficiencies through the use of IoT and AI while streamlining the most effective solutions for its users – the healthcare providers, health insurers, employers and most importantly, individuals. They talked about how Sumit became interested in providing healthcare technology to people, the value that Smart Future offers, COVID-19’s impact on the company, and more.

The Asia Tech Podcast spoke to Dima Djani, the CEO of ALAMI in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis.  At university, Dima majored in Entrepreneurship because he was confident that one day he was going to start and run his own business.  During his university years, he also went on an exchange program to the University of North Carolin at Greensboro which was kind of a cool introduction to college hoops.  Dima graduated in 2008, just after the collapse of Lehman Brothers which made finding work back in Asia harder than it needed to be.  By the time he arrived in Singapore, the initial consulting job he was offered was gone, but Dima is a survivor.  He was fortunate to find a job back in Jakarta at Citigroup and spent the next seven years working there. After a fruitful career in traditional finance, including three more years at Societe Generale in Jakarta during which Dima enrolled in the Executive MBA Program at INSEAD in Singapore.  It was during this time that his entrepreneurial juices started flowing again and he turned to something that was very personal for him and an idea about which he was quite passionate.  He left his job at SocGen and founder ALAMI, which he dubs, ‘The Marketplace for Sharia Financing.’ I learned some new terms from Dima that I wanted to share: Mushraka and Mudharaba – These are both terms that describe a financial partnership in which profits are shared.  See a more detailed definition here. Murabahah – This is akin to cost-plus financing.  See a more detailed definition here. Wakalah Bil Ujrah – This is akin to a paid agency model.  See a more detailed definition here.

In August of 2019, I had a super conversation with Chitransh Sahai, one of the co-Founders of GoComet.  When that conversation was over, I was sure I would want to catch up with the team and I was lucky to be able to do that recently.  I had the pleasure of talking to Gautam Prem Jain, another graduate of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and the CEO of GoComet, an enterprise software company that helps manage freight shipments in a way that is easier, smarter and less expensive. Remember, for context, that Gautam was part of the team that built and sold Plat to Housing.com while they were still at university.  The entire team, with Gautam as the CEO, wanted to change the world and build something with real impact.  Depending on how one measures, the global Logistics Industry is somewhere between $8 to $12 trillion.  Yet, in relative terms, very little technology has been applied to the industry in the form of digital transformation.  GoComet is filling that gap by building all of the necessary components for freight shipments to be modernized. It was good to catch up after more than 6 months since the last time we spoke with the team.  We discussed in detail some of the advancements GoComet has made, but also how the markets have changed and the things that customers are requesting.  We talked about global expansion, sales cycles and the challenges of hiring only the best people.

I had the opportunity to speak to Rachel Lau, a co-Founder and Managing Partner of RHL Ventures.  RHL started out as a self-described hobby amongst three friends…investing their own money in transformational, early-stage companies.  At some point, it started making sense to institutionalize the processes and structure and a GP/LP fund was born.  There is also a private equity component to the fund that leverages off the same team and invests in the same Southeast Asia geography, but at a slightly larger size. Rachel has a great sense of humor.  When I asked her what she loved about investing, she noted, “That’s the only thing I know how to do…I only know how to make money.”  To be fair, while we both chuckled, she was being serious.  As you listen to this episode, you will hear some very well-developed thoughts and insights on a wide range of topics.  I worked in the global investment business for almost 25 years and Rachel definitely impressed me.  As she noted, her personality, including her natural curiosity and her ability to analyze new information, is perfectly suited to her chosen profession. Rachel and I covered a lot of ground.  We talked about the intersection of Venture Investing and Private Equity.  We discussed the need to train the next generation of investment professionals, something about which Rachel sounds quite passionate.  We touched on how the market for VC/PE investment has changed over the last five years.  We also covered the ideas about what real returns should be and how to create a sustainable business.

Just over a year after our first episode with the co-Founder and CEO of Workmate, Mathew Ward joined me again for another insightful and information-packed conversation.  In the year since we last spoke, Mat notes that so much has changed it is hard to determine if it was only a year ago…or just yesterday!  We talked about a lot of things, but the focus was on the results of Workmate’s Series A raise, the company’s re-branding and how they think about expansion. The company originally started as Helpster, but about 18 months in, the business model pivoted to on-demand staffing and at that point, the name remained the same.  As management and the sales teams went around the market, they realized that when people heard the company’s name, it was no longer clear what business they were in.  Often, the first impression was that it was service for maids and cleaners…but this was simply not true.  In essence, the name of the company was not telling the story really well. There was a sense that in Southeast Asia, it is often the case that the name of a company distills its product and or services.  A decision was made that a re-branding would help tell the story of what the company does and the team settled on Workmate…’providing people with work and providing businesses with high-quality workers.’ Mat also pointed out that they have spent a lot of time and effort into using technology to make the business smarter.  When we last spoke, a lot of the intelligence around matching workers with jobs was good but quite rudimentary.  Since then, Workmate has focused a lot on understanding all of the data it gathers.  This helps it manage the entire workflow through technology.  From the moment a worker gets on-boarded to all of their activities during any particular workday…even down to when they clock-in and clock-out. This data goes both ways, though.  It also means that Workmate can have a much better idea about the types of employees the companies prefer and see which workers they are rating higher.  In the end, this provides Workmate with a granular level of detail that makes it difficult for other companies to compete.  There are so many other ways to use this data to help the workers as well, including providing previously unattainable micro-loans and insurance. There is so much more here…and if you really want to know how much things have changed, go back and listen to our original episode with Mat here.

I have wanted to have Arvin Singh come on to the show for a while, and with all of the news around Hoolah, now was a perfect time.  Arvin is a co-Founder and the Chief Operating Officer of hoolah.  On the occasion of announcing a significant Series A funding round, we had an interesting conversation about what has changed since we had another hoolah co-Founder, Stuart Thornton, on the show a bit more than a year ago. hoolah essentially allows consumers to buy the things they want now and pay for them in three installments with no interest payments.  It also helps merchants drive conversion, both online and offline and hoolah helps drive traffic to its partners websites.  By making this process transparent it makes it easier for consumers to purchase the items they want.  One of the fundamental ideas of hoolah is to allow consumers to purchase these items via ‘responsible affordability’. Interestingly, the results of a merchant joining hoolah’s network are pretty consistent across verticals.  On average, merchants are seeing anywhere from 25-35% increase in conversion rates and in the basket size as well.  Let’s be clear as well, that with 90% of retail still occurring offline, hoolah is an omnichannel solution, working with both online and offline merchants. Arvin and I discussed in more detail about their Series A raise.  This was a double-digit million dollar raise, that included some of hoolah’s existing investors and some new, strategic investors as well.  Some of these include Genting Ventures, Allectus Capital out of Australia, Max Bitner (Former Group CEO of Lazada) and Tim Neville (CEO – APAC, FNZ Group). The significance of this raise is about funding growth which also means bringing on talent, but also business expansion starting with officially announcing a move into Malaysia.  It also means building and creating hoolah into an omnichannel solution for merchants across the board.

The Asia Tech Podcast had the opportunity to speak with Rishi Ramchandani, the Founder of Cafe Cash Flow and its Chief Financial Coach.  Rishi was born and raised in Hong Kong, was educated at the university level in the United States and got a job at Merrill Lynch upon graduation in 2007…right before the explosion of the Global Financial Crisis.  I was at Citigroup in Tokyo at the time, so I know exactly what that must have felt like.  Rishi was on the Portfolio Sales Trading team…which sounded eerily familiar to me as I also did that kind of job for over a decade.  When one does that job, you end up dealing with some of the largest institutional investors in the world, including GIC, Temasek, Blackrock, and SSGA.  We ended up realizing we knew a lot of the same people as well.  This was a great way to start our conversation. Eventually, Rishi and his wife moved to Singapore in 2018.  Rishi got an Entrepreneur Visa and started taking a bottom-up approach to figure out what kind of company he wanted to start.  He started participating in hackathons, meeting Venture Capitalists and some of the accelerator programs and generally became part of the startup ecosystem in Singapore.  He met a co-Founder and together they started a company called PinAlpha, which essentially employs artificial intelligence and natural language processing to generate fully automated financial analysis.  Fundamentally, PinAlpha is a B2B business and Rishi realized that he was more interested in helping individuals learn how to more effectively manage their money that gives a trading edge to hedge funds and other large institutional investors. Even though PinAlpha was about to get funded, Rishi decided to leave and started working on the platform that would become Cafe Cash Flow.  Rishi likens Cafe Cash Flow to a personal trainer for your financial well-being.  Rishi believes that money and trust have a complicated relationship.  The Cafe idea was built on the premise that the first conversation with a prospective client should be in a relaxed place.  Rishi notes that financial coaching is different than financial advising in that a coach is there to enable you to make better financial decisions, not profit from them.  There is no conflict of interest because as a coach, one is not restricted to any particular set of products…but is empowered to continuously educate his clients about what is available in the overall market. I was interested in how this type of business uses technology to scale and Rishi has thought this through as well.  think about other platforms that offer either tangible or intangible assets or services at scale and you can begin to get the idea of what Cafe Cash Flow can become.

Michael Waitze spoke to Matas Danielevicius, a co-Founder of Gaorai, a Partner at WhatNot Innovation Studio, and a marketing manager at the KX Knowledge Exchange.  Matas has a very interesting background, part of the high caliber Lithuanian team that founded and runs WhatNot.  (There is a good story in the first third of this episode as to how they came up with the name…Matas tells the story better than I ever could.)  After high school Matas took a traditional path, studying business development and management in Lithuania, but he soon realized that he longed for more. He picked himself up, went to the UK and studied acting, graduating with a degree in drama…something I wish I had done.  I forgot to mention that in his spare time (How could he possibly have spare time?!), Matas is also an actor.  He is currently working with the Culture Collective Studio on a production of “A Streetcar Named Desire”.  We had a fascinating conversation on how show production, acting and getting in and out of character is more related to startup and venture building than one might imagine. Matas combines these things rather seamlessly. I was curious to find out why three Lithuanian venture building partners ended up in Thailand…and frankly, it was really straightforward.  They were traveling through Bangkok on their way to Sri Lanka (Just imagine what might have been.) and intended to stay for only a couple of days.  A big project on which they were working became more urgent and they had to stay in Bangkok to finish it.  The rest, as they say, is history. Finally, we talked about Gaorai, “Gaorai is an agri-tech platform connecting farmers to freelance agri-drone pilots. We are improving precision application and sustainability of crop protection products in Thailand and the region. Our goal is to turn Gaorai to a day-to-day farm service, e-commerce, distribution and intelligence platform.”