The latest financial report shows that the Indonesian tech giant achieved year-on-year (yoy) net revenue growth of 32 percent in the nine months through September, although its net revenue in this year’s third quarter was down 21 percent from the same period last year.

GoTo significantly cuts losses on reduced marketing spending

Indonesia's biggest tech firm PT GoTo Gojek Tokopedia will "prudently" make investment to maintain its market share after it reported a narrowed underlying losses in the third quarter, the company CEO said on Monday.

Indonesia's GoTo reports big drop in quarterly losses, to invest in market growth

Shares of GoTo have struggled to gain momentum in 2023 as losses mounted, leaving them down more than 80% since the company’s stock-market debut last year. Investors have pummeled GoTo this month on concerns that its main businesses of ride-hailing and e-commerce are facing tougher competition.

Indonesia’s GoTo closes in on profit goal after slashing jobs

Indonesia's biggest tech firm PT GoTo Gojek Tokopedia reported 942 billion rupiah ($59.30 million) in underlying losses for the third quarter, a significant drop from last year's 3.7 trillion rupiah,

Indonesia's GoTo reports significant drop in Q3 underlying losses

Gojek, the on-demand service business unit of GoTo Group, has launched a new jacket for its partner drivers symbolizing the collaboration and mutual

Gojek launch new driver jacket, symbolize of mutual cooperation

Tiktok: Indonesia's trade ministry banned e-commerce transactions on social media a month ago, saying it sought to protect small and midsize offline merchants and marketplaces, and to ensure users' data was protected.

TikTok, YouTube, Meta eye Indonesia e-commerce licenses

Despite heavy regulations by most Asian countries, social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Meta are very keen on expanding into the e-commerce segment. Meta, YouTube and TikTok are in fact loo

TikTok, YouTube, Meta are taking their e-commerce vision seriously, looking for special licenses

Indonesia's trade ministry banned ecommerce transactions on social media a month ago, saying it sought to protect small and midsize offline merchants and marketplaces, and to ensure users' data was protected.

TikTok, YouTube, Meta mulling Indonesia ecommerce licences

TikTok and YouTube are considering joining Meta in applying for e-commerce licenses in Indonesia after Southeast Asia's largest economy banned online shopping on social media platforms, people familiar with the discussions said.

Exclusive-TikTok, YouTube, Meta eye Indonesia e-commerce licenses- sources

Euromonitor reports that e-commerce operators dominated its Top 10 Fastest-Growing Retailers list in the region. Even if consumers now have the option to go to stores for shopping, they continue to purchase items online as a habit,

Persistent habits, digitalisation drive continuous e-commerce growth in APAC

Tokopedia

tokopedia

Hi everyone, I am really excited to present some of the insights and strategies that shaped my journey in digital tech business development, AI, and global market expansion. A Bit About My Background 📝 With 14+ years of international experience in the United States, Europe, China, and Southeast Asia, I have operated in nearly all walks of businesses. The work has taken me from building AI and ML solutions for Yandex and Toloka to running international sales for large enterprises, and even launching subscription services for millions of users across Asia. I want to share some strategies and lessons learned in this post, hoping to help you navigate this complex world of business development, lead generation, and AI-driven growth. How to Build a Sales Engine Without a Massive SDR 🏆 Building global door-opener teams doesn't always have to mean pounding the pavement with dozens of SDRs. I have built completely new international business operations for 7 companies. One of the most impressive was for pro-glance.com, an expansion from zero to exporting into 35 countries within six months. This is how we did it: Data-driven targeting: By focusing on perfectly accurate Ideal Customer Profiles, we could focus our efforts where they would reap the most value.
Negotiation Mastery: I learned how to manage a deal from multiple continents, where cultural nuances and negotiation tactics really made a difference in closing key partnerships.
**Resource Efficiency:**We focused on building a system that maximized impact with minimal resources, instead of building a huge sales force. Unorthodox partnerships can magic your business overnight—and they are usually the last things you expect. While working at RPC LLC, I was leading sales for the company in international markets since the pandemic. We closed multiple deals, each above $100,000, with Chinese partners, and all that with a shoestring marketing budget due to the closed borders of these countries. Key takeaways: 💥 Cultural Competence: My fluency in Mandarin was used to leverage trust and relationships beyond belief.
With a meagre marketing budget of $1,000, we were able to win hearts and get our job done excellently. This was possible due very specific and niche outreach in Chinese social media and also through accurate lines of networking. Think first, where your leads might be, what do they use, and what they read, so you can get in front and catch them. Despite all, cold calling doesn’t work, you need to engage smartly, and find those who really might be your customers starting from SEO and social media content up to search engine ads.

Long-Term Relationships: Partnerships do not mean a short-term gain. It is the relationships that helped us to secure continuous growth even in the most adverse of situations. Build trust with your potential partner, even if he doesn’t show interest in your product right now, he might help you with networking or other means. From Content Moderation to AI-Driven Success 🏦 🎰 The rise of AI has been a game-changer. At Yandex Toloka, I led efforts from development to launch in creating AI/ML solutions that are being used in a wide variety of mission-high scenarios, from content moderation to fraud detection. Here are a few highlights: Search Optimization for E-commerce Giants: Develop and implement search relevance models for big e-commerce players, from Zalora to Tokopedia, in a way that would optimize their search engines, making them better for customers and increasing the conversion rate. Content Moderation at Scale: Development of an AI content moderation system attuned to vast amounts of text, video, and image content produced daily across multiple languages and regions in Southeast Asia.


Advanced AI Applications: Projects in this portfolio include checking weather conditions using IBM Watson to developing a stock market fraud detection model. They show the adaptability and strength of Artificial Intelligence in solving a wide range of complex problems. Whether you are trying to leverage AI in your business for success or developing a B2B SaaS in generative AI, I have designed and outlined frameworks and methodologies that take you through the process seamlessly. When you’re trying to acquire leads within AI market, everything becomes more complex and you should be super sharp with your outreach. Types of lead generation and methods: 💥 Firstly, you should understand there 2 types of lead generation: inbound and outbound. Inbound is when you use GoogleAds or SEO to acquire warm leads that already showed some interest to your topic or even to your solution personally. Outbound is when you try to outreach through cold calling, LinkedIn messaging and emails cold leads that most probably didn’t show any interest or have little interest to what you’re doing/selling/promoting. For B2B SaaS products you should have both (inbound and outbound) and it might take time to set up efficiently the sales pipeline and marketing engine, but efficiency and accuracy are the keys to the door that will boost your sales. You will have to experiment in variety of ways and methods. One of the tools that helped me and which is crucial for both outbound and inbound lead generation is Zoominfo, and particularly “Buyer Intent” feature that shows you which leads showed interest to your topic and potentially your product. You can check for alternatives - Seamless.ai, Telescope App etc. Secondly, never forget to create target lists of companies and ICP profiles, this could help not only you, but other team members to identify which companies are crucial for you to get to and they will help you acquiring leads from them. Thirdly, for cold lead generation you should post a lot and use influence marketing. Think of tools like Ivee, Lempod, chatGPT and others that might help you launch your B2B influence marketing and generate leads as well. Building a B2B Empathetic AI Business 🪄 Currently, I'm building a B2B empathetic artificial intelligence business at Ex-human that would fundamentally change how humans interact with machines. Our goal is to create naturally human-like, empathetic, multimodal conversations long before any tool can be built, such as ChatGPT or DALL-E. This is what we are doing now: Next-gen GTM Strategies: Launching new technologies in competitive markets needs a savvy go-to-market strategy. Leading with this approach, we fuse both inbound and outbound lead generation with digital performance marketing to pave the road to success.


Cross-Industry Applications: Our AI technology is versatile, as shall be the applications in a broad range: in-game NPCs to dating sites, smart gadgets, and AR/VR environments. I am quite excited to share more with you as we continue to build and refine our strategies. To Close I hope these insights shared valuable strategies and perspectives that you can replicate in your own ventures. I for sure have had my own journey full of lessons learned across industries and markets; I am always open to sharing more. Do not hesitate to contact me in case of any questions or thoughts. Let's grow and learn together! Hi everyone, I am really excited to present some of the insights and strategies that shaped my journey in digital tech business development, AI, and global market expansion. A Bit About My Background 📝 A Bit About My Background With 14+ years of international experience in the United States, Europe, China, and Southeast Asia, I have operated in nearly all walks of businesses. The work has taken me from building AI and ML solutions for Yandex and Toloka to running international sales for large enterprises, and even launching subscription services for millions of users across Asia. I want to share some strategies and lessons learned in this post, hoping to help you navigate this complex world of business development, lead generation, and AI-driven growth. How to Build a Sales Engine Without a Massive SDR 🏆 How to Build a Sales Engine Without a Massive SDR Building global door-opener teams doesn't always have to mean pounding the pavement with dozens of SDRs. I have built completely new international business operations for 7 companies. One of the most impressive was for pro-glance.com, an expansion from zero to exporting into 35 countries within six months. This is how we did it: Data-driven targeting: By focusing on perfectly accurate Ideal Customer Profiles, we could focus our efforts where they would reap the most value. Negotiation Mastery: I learned how to manage a deal from multiple continents, where cultural nuances and negotiation tactics really made a difference in closing key partnerships. **Resource Efficiency:**We focused on building a system that maximized impact with minimal resources, instead of building a huge sales force. Data-driven targeting: By focusing on perfectly accurate Ideal Customer Profiles, we could focus our efforts where they would reap the most value. Data-driven targeting: Negotiation Mastery: I learned how to manage a deal from multiple continents, where cultural nuances and negotiation tactics really made a difference in closing key partnerships. Negotiation Mastery: **Resource Efficiency:**We focused on building a system that maximized impact with minimal resources, instead of building a huge sales force. Unorthodox partnerships can magic your business overnight—and they are usually the last things you expect. While working at RPC LLC, I was leading sales for the company in international markets since the pandemic. We closed multiple deals, each above $100,000, with Chinese partners, and all that with a shoestring marketing budget due to the closed borders of these countries. Key takeaways: 💥 Key takeaways: 💥 Cultural Competence: My fluency in Mandarin was used to leverage trust and relationships beyond belief.
With a meagre marketing budget of $1,000, we were able to win hearts and get our job done excellently. This was possible due very specific and niche outreach in Chinese social media and also through accurate lines of networking. Think first, where your leads might be, what do they use, and what they read, so you can get in front and catch them. Despite all, cold calling doesn’t work, you need to engage smartly, and find those who really might be your customers starting from SEO and social media content up to search engine ads. Long-Term Relationships: Partnerships do not mean a short-term gain. It is the relationships that helped us to secure continuous growth even in the most adverse of situations. Build trust with your potential partner, even if he doesn’t show interest in your product right now, he might help you with networking or other means. Cultural Competence: My fluency in Mandarin was used to leverage trust and relationships beyond belief. With a meagre marketing budget of $1,000, we were able to win hearts and get our job done excellently. This was possible due very specific and niche outreach in Chinese social media and also through accurate lines of networking. Think first, where your leads might be, what do they use, and what they read, so you can get in front and catch them. Despite all, cold calling doesn’t work, you need to engage smartly, and find those who really might be your customers starting from SEO and social media content up to search engine ads. Cultural Competence: My fluency in Mandarin was used to leverage trust and relationships beyond belief. Cultural Competence: With a meagre marketing budget of $1,000, we were able to win hearts and get our job done excellently. This was possible due very specific and niche outreach in Chinese social media and also through accurate lines of networking. Think first, where your leads might be, what do they use, and what they read, so you can get in front and catch them. Despite all, cold calling doesn’t work, you need to engage smartly, and find those who really might be your customers starting from SEO and social media content up to search engine ads. Long-Term Relationships: Partnerships do not mean a short-term gain. It is the relationships that helped us to secure continuous growth even in the most adverse of situations. Build trust with your potential partner, even if he doesn’t show interest in your product right now, he might help you with networking or other means. Long-Term Relationships: Partnerships do not mean a short-term gain. It is the relationships that helped us to secure continuous growth even in the most adverse of situations. Build trust with your potential partner, even if he doesn’t show interest in your product right now, he might help you with networking or other means. Long-Term Relationships: From Content Moderation to AI-Driven Success 🏦 🎰 From Content Moderation to AI-Driven Success The rise of AI has been a game-changer. At Yandex Toloka, I led efforts from development to launch in creating AI/ML solutions that are being used in a wide variety of mission-high scenarios, from content moderation to fraud detection. Here are a few highlights: Here are a few highlights: Search Optimization for E-commerce Giants: Develop and implement search relevance models for big e-commerce players, from Zalora to Tokopedia, in a way that would optimize their search engines, making them better for customers and increasing the conversion rate. Content Moderation at Scale: Development of an AI content moderation system attuned to vast amounts of text, video, and image content produced daily across multiple languages and regions in Southeast Asia. Advanced AI Applications: Projects in this portfolio include checking weather conditions using IBM Watson to developing a stock market fraud detection model. They show the adaptability and strength of Artificial Intelligence in solving a wide range of complex problems. Search Optimization for E-commerce Giants: Develop and implement search relevance models for big e-commerce players, from Zalora to Tokopedia, in a way that would optimize their search engines, making them better for customers and increasing the conversion rate. Content Moderation at Scale: Development of an AI content moderation system attuned to vast amounts of text, video, and image content produced daily across multiple languages and regions in Southeast Asia. Search Optimization for E-commerce Giants: Develop and implement search relevance models for big e-commerce players, from Zalora to Tokopedia, in a way that would optimize their search engines, making them better for customers and increasing the conversion rate. Content Moderation at Scale: Development of an AI content moderation system attuned to vast amounts of text, video, and image content produced daily across multiple languages and regions in Southeast Asia. Search Optimization for E-commerce Giants: Advanced AI Applications: Projects in this portfolio include checking weather conditions using IBM Watson to developing a stock market fraud detection model. They show the adaptability and strength of Artificial Intelligence in solving a wide range of complex problems. Advanced AI Applications: Projects in this portfolio include checking weather conditions using IBM Watson to developing a stock market fraud detection model. They show the adaptability and strength of Artificial Intelligence in solving a wide range of complex problems. Advanced AI Applications: Whether you are trying to leverage AI in your business for success or developing a B2B SaaS in generative AI, I have designed and outlined frameworks and methodologies that take you through the process seamlessly. When you’re trying to acquire leads within AI market, everything becomes more complex and you should be super sharp with your outreach. Types of lead generation and methods: 💥 Types of lead generation and methods: Firstly, you should understand there 2 types of lead generation: inbound and outbound. Inbound is when you use GoogleAds or SEO to acquire warm leads that already showed some interest to your topic or even to your solution personally. Outbound is when you try to outreach through cold calling, LinkedIn messaging and emails cold leads that most probably didn’t show any interest or have little interest to what you’re doing/selling/promoting. For B2B SaaS products you should have both (inbound and outbound) and it might take time to set up efficiently the sales pipeline and marketing engine, but efficiency and accuracy are the keys to the door that will boost your sales. You will have to experiment in variety of ways and methods. One of the tools that helped me and which is crucial for both outbound and inbound lead generation is Zoominfo, and particularly “Buyer Intent” feature that shows you which leads showed interest to your topic and potentially your product. You can check for alternatives - Seamless.ai, Telescope App etc. Secondly, never forget to create target lists of companies and ICP profiles, this could help not only you, but other team members to identify which companies are crucial for you to get to and they will help you acquiring leads from them. Thirdly, for cold lead generation you should post a lot and use influence marketing. Think of tools like Ivee, Lempod, chatGPT and others that might help you launch your B2B influence marketing and generate leads as well. Building a B2B Empathetic AI Business 🪄 Building a B2B Empathetic AI Business Currently, I'm building a B2B empathetic artificial intelligence business at Ex-human that would fundamentally change how humans interact with machines. Our goal is to create naturally human-like, empathetic, multimodal conversations long before any tool can be built, such as ChatGPT or DALL-E. This is what we are doing now: This is what we are doing now: Next-gen GTM Strategies: Launching new technologies in competitive markets needs a savvy go-to-market strategy. Leading with this approach, we fuse both inbound and outbound lead generation with digital performance marketing to pave the road to success. Cross-Industry Applications: Our AI technology is versatile, as shall be the applications in a broad range: in-game NPCs to dating sites, smart gadgets, and AR/VR environments. Next-gen GTM Strategies: Launching new technologies in competitive markets needs a savvy go-to-market strategy. Leading with this approach, we fuse both inbound and outbound lead generation with digital performance marketing to pave the road to success. Next-gen GTM Strategies : Launching new technologies in competitive markets needs a savvy go-to-market strategy. Leading with this approach, we fuse both inbound and outbound lead generation with digital performance marketing to pave the road to success. Next-gen GTM Strategies Cross-Industry Applications: Our AI technology is versatile, as shall be the applications in a broad range: in-game NPCs to dating sites, smart gadgets, and AR/VR environments. Cross-Industry Applications : Our AI technology is versatile, as shall be the applications in a broad range: in-game NPCs to dating sites, smart gadgets, and AR/VR environments. Cross-Industry Applications I am quite excited to share more with you as we continue to build and refine our strategies. To Close To Close I hope these insights shared valuable strategies and perspectives that you can replicate in your own ventures. I for sure have had my own journey full of lessons learned across industries and markets; I am always open to sharing more. Do not hesitate to contact me in case of any questions or thoughts. Let's grow and learn together!

Scaling Digital Tech Businesses & AI Solutions: Lessons Learned Across Continents

Build Your Own RAG App: A Step-by-Step Guide to Setup LLM locally using Ollama, Python, and ChromaDB

আপনার নিজস্ব RAG অ্যাপ তৈরি করুন: Ollama, Python, এবং ChromaDB ব্যবহার করে স্থানীয়ভাবে LLM সেটআপ করার জন্য একটি ধাপে ধাপে নির্দেশিকা

Erstellen Sie Ihre eigene RAG-App: Eine Schritt-für-Schritt-Anleitung zum lokalen Einrichten von LLM mit Ollama, Python und ChromaDB

Cree su propia aplicación RAG: una guía paso a paso para configurar LLM localmente usando Ollama, Python y ChromaDB

Créez votre propre application RAG : un guide étape par étape pour configurer LLM localement à l'aide d'Ollama, Python et ChromaDB

अपना खुद का RAG ऐप बनाएं: ओलमा, पायथन और क्रोमाडीबी का उपयोग करके स्थानीय रूप से LLM सेटअप करने के लिए चरण-दर-चरण मार्गदर्शिका

独自の RAG アプリを構築する: Ollama、Python、ChromaDB を使用して LLM をローカルでセットアップするためのステップバイステップ ガイド

나만의 RAG 앱 구축: Ollama, Python 및 ChromaDB를 사용하여 로컬에서 LLM을 설정하는 단계별 가이드

Crie seu próprio aplicativo RAG: um guia passo a passo para configurar o LLM localmente usando Ollama, Python e ChromaDB

Создайте свое собственное приложение RAG: пошаговое руководство по локальной настройке LLM с использованием Ollama, Python и ChromaDB

Kendi RAG Uygulamanızı Oluşturun: Ollama, Python ve ChromaDB'yi kullanarak LLM'yi yerel olarak kurmak için Adım Adım Kılavuz

Xây dựng ứng dụng RAG của riêng bạn: Hướng dẫn từng bước để thiết lập LLM cục bộ bằng Ollama, Python và ChromaDB

构建自己的 RAG 应用程序：使用 Ollama、Python 和 ChromaDB 在本地设置 LLM 的分步指南

In 2021, the number of mobile app downloads reached 230 billion. The very thing is – it’ll keep growing. Can you wrap your mind around that for a second? Along with that, what is it you see right before going to sleep and first thing in the morning? My guess is a mobile screen: notifications, alerts, messages, anything. Right, we do the same. As an integral part of the tech junkie community, we’re always on the lookout for apps that make a difference. This time, we’ll tell you about some of the 10 most promising start-ups that are about to roll out their mobile apps in 2022. Get ready. 1. Weavit’ Weavit’s co-founder Emmanuel Lefort thought up a way to make note-making even more special. The basically mimics how the human brain entertains ideas and gives them structure. new app by Weavit It works like this: users dictate or type in their thoughts and ideas, and Weavit’s NLP-powered database links those notions to certain events, locations, people, and topics that are out there in the online universe. Here’s an example. You may think of introducing your idea to some individuals at an upcoming event. You’d type something along the lines of “say this and this at the ABC event, and make sure Chris T. and Hannah K. hear it.” Now, Weavit’s app identifies both the event and people’s names and offers you other event-related content. It can even display the mentioned persons’ companies or past meetings. And at this point, you don’t have to lift a finger – the system is automatic. Weavit founders made sure that all the data involved is encrypted. They call the app a “Shazam for your thoughts.” That’s a fact – you only need to let those thoughts free, and the app will do the organization. 2. Niantic Founded by John Hanke, Niantic delivers innovative software solutions and is most known for building such augmented reality apps as Ingress and Pokemon Go (recall the hype?). But that’s not what we’re here for. The company has recently received to create a real-world metaverse. $300 million in funding from a worldwide technology investor Coatue What are we dealing with? While many tech companies focus on metaverses, Niantic decided to go a step further. The startup revealed their plans to launch a universe that belongs in the real world – that is, with AR-powered technology, people can go out in the open and explore their surroundings using Niantic’s tools. These same tools activate actual objects, allowing people to enjoy an enriched reality while still connecting with their peers. The most value here lies in the fact that Niantic strives to bring people together instead of locking them inside and tying them to devices. , “At Niantic, we believe humans are the happiest when their virtual world leads them to a physical one.” Hanke himself stated Meet you out there. 3. nate The founder & CEO of nate, Albert Saniger, solved the struggle for many shoppers. Nate's well-funded – we’re talking – new app combines social media interactions and shopping in one. $38 million Here’s the catch: ate’s app saves user data needed for purchasing, such as payment and shipping details. So, when a user intends to buy anything from a supported online platform, they just need to redirect their purchase to the nate app. It handles the rest – and there’s no need to go through a lengthy checkout process every time. Nate’s users can buy products from , which make up 60% of the country’s e-commerce market. 2.1 million online US stores 4. Papaya Patrick Kann launched Papaya keeping in mind that payments can get as easy as ever. Same goes for anything else that comes with it, like scheduling and tracking – with Papaya, users can spend more time on what’s important and let the app do the work. The start-up raised a whopping from Sequoia Capital – a well-known capital group that recently invested in Airbnb, Stripe, and Apple. That’s impressive for a fresh company. $50 million in funding The mechanics: app users take a photo of a bill that needs to be paid (whether it’s healthcare services, rent or mortgage, parking, anything), select their payment method, and Papaya finishes the process for you. It also saves your billing history just to make sure nothing gets missed out. Such an untraditional way of paying bills is loved by many: it reduces stress, saves time, and is universal for different bill types. More benefits include Papaya’s as well as its speed of bill processing. All that’s needed from you is a mobile device and payment details. bank-level security backed by HIPAA and PCI compliance 5. Dream Games Soyner Aydemir managed to create a leading mobile gaming business – Dream Games – that has recently from Index Ventures, Makers Fund, IVP, and other major venture capitals. The start-up doubled its value in only 6 months. Let’s see why. gained $255 million in funding Dream Games’ most popular feature, Royal Match, ended up in the top 20 mobile games in the US, UK, and Germany. The latest funding is expected to develop the game even further. that “Dream Games approaches gaming in a way Pixar approaches filmmaking.” Aydemir stated The key points here are engagement and immersion. Users keep coming back for a rich experience regardless of the competition in the gaming world. As of now, Dream Games has gained around from investors. With more money allocated to mobile games, developers get a chance to push the limit further – and create gaming worlds no one would’ve expected to witness. $468 million 6. Honor Honor, a senior care startup founded by Seth Sternberg, in Series E funding and debt financing. The concept behind Honor was born as Sternberg quit his job at Google to provide care for his elderly mother. As of now, the unicorn startup’s value is over . And, Honor’s family app helps thousands. received $370 million $1.25 billion What does it do? With the Honor Family app, users can choose a date, location, and time to set up care visits. They receive an extensive care note including the completed tasks from the chosen carer, who also oversees other people visiting your loved one. Care professionals track any wellness indicators you’re worried about. An app like this makes a difference in the COVID-affected world. It enables caring for your loved ones from a distance and making sure they’re in good spirits. Regardless of your location, Honor brings family a bit closer. 7. Instacart Apoorva Mehta’s creation, Instacart, has been familiar to the masses for a while. Yet, it’s expected to augment after from investors Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company, and T. Rowe Price Associates. securing $265 million in funding The point? Instacart simplifies grocery shopping by letting customers place orders online and get them delivered right to the door. These days, the app is markedly in demand. Instacart went further than decreasing social traffic in grocery stores. It now delivers prescription drugs, sports equipment, home decor, and practically anything else that helps people handle the pandemic with more convenience. Instacart currently works with . Now that social distancing and delivery services have become a new norm, start-ups like this one keep highlighting the importance of safety without sacrificing comfort. over 600 merchants across 45,000 US and Canadian stores 8. BillEase BillEase in a Series B funding round guided by the growth capital arm of Hubert Burda Media, BurdaPrincipal Investments. Founded by Ritche Weekun and his colleagues, the platform offers buy-now-pay-later services (BNPL) to Filipino residents. received $11 million In detail: app users can purchase goods and pay later with a digital wallet, direct debit, bank transfer, over-the-counter payment at smaller physical stores, or by linking their bank account to the app. BillEase works with 500 sellers and like GCash, PayMaya, Coins.ph, GrabPay and Shopee Pay. offers extra payments for digital wallets BillEase has a few features that make it stand out. It enables clients to create formal credit records and improves its functioning to make credit scores effortless. BillEase also owns its , with which over 90% of BNPL loans can be approved. With the investments aimed at further app development, the Philippines is on its way towards a better credit system. credit, fraud, and payment software stack 9. Masters In a funding round by Sweet Capital, Mucker Capital, Goodwater Capital, and Luxor Capital, Greg Drach’s app Masters . The app gives users an opportunity to work out along with the most known global athletes and get their guidance on training. gathered $2.7 million worth of investment According to , the company has signed up X Games athletes, three-time Olympic snowboarding champion Shaun White; World and nine-time U.S. champion in 3,000-meter steeplechase, Emma Coburn; surfing world champion, Kai Lenny; soccer superstar and Golden Ball winner, Ada Hegerberg; and two-time Wimbledon tennis champion, Petra Kvitova. And the list goes on. Techcrunch All the courses come in a format of high-quality videos, and every course merges thousands of active individuals. Each of them can easily connect to global sports legends with a functional device, and the entire community comes together to become healthier and stronger. Imagine the impact this has! 10. Pluang Pluang, an investment app created by Claudia Kolonas, Richard Chua, and Aditya Cha, closed off a Series B round led by Accel India with in funding. It also received investments from founders of Axie Infinity, Alexa von Tobel (ex-CEO of Learnvest), Sujata Bhatia (Monzo COO), Raghu Yarlagadda (FalconX CEO), The Chainsmokers, BRI Ventures, Gold House, and previous investors – Square Peg, Go-Ventures, UOB Venture Management, and Openspace Ventures. The start-up focuses on giving Indonesians opportunities to grow their wealth through investing. Pluang plans to expand and operate in other regions of South Asia. $55 million gained The point is: Pluang first started with gold and since then expanded the assets list to include indexes, mutual funds, and crypto assets, with plans to invest in US stocks. Every transaction is secured with an appropriate protocol. What’s more, the start-up partners with Indonesian tech companies to broaden their reach and sell more investment products. Pluang has also such as Gojek, DANA, Tokopedia and Bukalapak. become part of Indonesian super apps From January 2020 to November 2021, Pluang witnessed 22x growth in monthly transacting users and 28.5x growth in users with an active balance. As of now, there are over 4 million active users in Indonesia. And it doesn’t seem to stop moving forward. We’ve only covered a tiny fraction of all the promising tech start-ups the world is about to see skyrocket this year. One day, yours might end up on our next list.

10 Promising Mobile Apps by Startups to Watch Out for in 2022

#HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background. I am Prashant, a product manager by heart, and I have been doing it for the last 7 years. I feel lucky to have started my career as a PM, while most people I know have transitioned to product management from engineering, business, or other fields. As a PM, I have worked in countries worldwide, including India, Indonesia, USA, and have been a product consultant for a Japanese company. During my journey, I got the chance to build products and product teams from scratch. Not only that, but I was also able to help companies I worked for in acquiring more than 200 million users and over 100 million dollars in revenue through my products. Some of the products that I've worked on, like the Paytm QR code and Tokopedia, were covered as case studies at and . Harvard Google Frankly, I feel quite satisfied with my product journey, but I couldn't help but notice the gaps and inefficiencies in product management, such as lack of visibility on the product, data fragmentation, and the operation-heavy nature of the job. So, I started to solve these challenges for product managers across the world. Zeda.io What's your company called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do? Our company is called . It is a SaaS platform to make product management simpler and smarter. Product managers often spend most of their time in meetings, replying to email/slack, or managing documents, and still, no one has a complete picture of the products they're building. Zeda.io is the only platform a product manager would need to build with everyone by keeping stakeholders aligned, involving customers, and giving a complete picture of the product without fragmenting it. Zeda.io By bringing everything together with everything in one place, PMs can now focus more on strategic work and spend less time on operational work. Also, this allows us to build machine learning models that can help optimize the product and give contextual suggestions on your product management. #What is the origin story? After working as a product manager for different companies around the world, I realized that the way products are built inefficiently. To build the products of tomorrow, we need a better solution that's designed with product managers at heart. I brainstormed my idea for Zeda.io with PMs working in startups to big companies, associate product managers to top product leaders worldwide. No one was happy with the way product management was being done, be it in India, Japan, the USA, or Europe. We thought, why not improve it using community and machine learning. Over the last 25 years, people have moved from physical documents to Microsoft docs to Google docs and now Notion. But then again, these are all 2-dimensional documents that are tough to maintain, and no one gets the big picture by reading them. Not to mention, it's an outdated way of managing products. It's so bad that most product managers are doing project management in the name of product management. The tools which are available in the industry cater only to the project management side of things, but project management is only a small subset of product management. And this is not the right approach to building products. With Zeda.io, we are completely focused on product management. We want to centralize product data and help people ship better products faster by bringing centralizing the product in one place, making this one place integrated with the entire company stack, and building machine learning models on top of it. #What do you love about your team? It's tough to find people who will join your company for the vision and not just because they need a job. And I feel lucky to have a team that's in it for the vision. People who understand the problem, believe in it, and want to build an awesome product for people who build products. The best part is that we are all helping each other to achieve this vision. #If you weren’t working at your company, what would you be doing? If I wasn't building a company, I am sure I would still be a product manager, building products. So probably eating Sushi in a Japanese café because I had an offer from a Japanese company which I was almost going to accept. But happy with the way things have panned out. #At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics? I believe the value defines success for us we are creating for our end-users. How easily they're able to get on board and their overall satisfaction with the product. So, net promoter score and customer satisfaction score are top of our success metrics list. Along with these, employee engagement and our growth are also critical. If we are hitting these metrics, that means we're succeeding. #What’s most exciting about your company traction to date? In just 8 months, we have been able to grow from a team of just 2 to 20. Moreover, with that, we've also been able to get 5000 people on the waitlist and a readership of 3500 for our weekly . I think these are incredible numbers considering all of this growth was organic, and not a single penny was spent in paid marketing. newsletter #What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why? The technologies that I'm most excited about are blockchain and machine learning at the moment. Blockchain is here to decentralize the internet and empower creators. Machine learning will help us improve processes so that humanity can focus on the bigger problems instead of spending time on operational and redundant tasks. And the technology that I'm worried about is probably the use of AI and robots for warfare. While these are good technologies, they have the potential for misuse if fallen into the wrong hands. Another such tech is Deepfake. #What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform? I've been reading HackerNoon for over 7 years now. I love the quality of people here and that I get to read the latest news in technology from thought leaders and people who are on a similar journey as I am. We decided to get published on HackerNoon to open up possibilities for us to understand our customers better with more feedback and expand our user base. #What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself? Buy Bitcoin and hold. I did buy Bitcoin but sold it before it went to the moon. But that aside, I would tell my younger self to start financial management and investment early on. I only started proper financial management last year, and I feel I should have started earlier. #What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing? One thing which I realized is that most people are scared to start a startup. They feel that it's a scary and bad world out there. But during my short journey, I realized that there is more good than bad in this world, and people will actually go out of their way to help you out. I would say to anyone in a similar journey as me to take the leap of faith and seek help as you progress.

There Is More Good Than Bad in the Startup World: Prashant Mahajan, Zeda.io

👋 I’m , a product builder. I’ve built multiple apps using the method: , , , , , , +more Zoe Chew rapid MVP sneaker app personal FAQ meal kit app virtual event app SaaS tracker food delivery content app At , I’m on a quest to understand the . I analyze profitable industries & biggest players, and how you can compete and monetize—at the intersection of Internet platforms & consumer tech. Venturescale future of the Internet Today’s post is about . Read here if you’re interested in the , , , or e-commerce acquisition platforms Web3 creators economy future of social networks FinTech & wellness tech B2C online marketplaces . The Rise of e-commerce Roll-ups In the past, roll-ups were mainly proceeded by private equity firms, large conglomerates, and institutional buyers, whereby companies in the same market and merging them under a single entity to scale. acquire businesses Today, there are new companies that consolidate independent private label brands with decent revenue. They are the . Unlike marketplaces that connect buyers and sellers to acquire or sell off their brands (e.g., and by Shopify), roll-up platforms are operational and resourceful. They: aggregators of e-commerce brands Flippa Exchange Marketplace Have a thesis around e-commerce product categories they want to acquire Search across marketplaces like Amazon and Shopify Find winners and merge these companies Operate like a private equity firm, may fund and invest in buyout businesses Platform-agnostic or vertical-focused Grow them collectively using built-in technology, infrastructure, data analytics, operational expertise, capital, and economies of scale 3 more specific strategies on how aggregators operate and scale (📥 Full version) Key Players Around the World (made in profits, acquired more than 100+ brands), , , and Amazon-focused aggregators: Thrasio $100 million Heyday Perch Branded Shopify aggregator: OpenStore Home living & consumer electronics roll-up: Berlin Brands Group (raised ) targets acquisition on Tokopedia, Lazada, Shopee, and Rakuten using a approach by focusing on Shopify, Magento, or WooCommerce. Asia-Pacific focused consolidator: Una Brands US$40 million platform-agnostic 1 more company that focuses on the Amazon platform (📥 Full version) 5 more companies from emerging market (📥 Full version) What Problems Do They Solve? Roll-up platforms help successful e-commerce merchants or direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands to exit their businesses lucratively. Not being able to find ideal buyers ➝ help sellers get acquired. 3 more valid problems they are solving that actually make these platforms super profitable. You’ll also learn: (📥 Full version) How do roll-up platforms create values for their clients? What are the user pain points in getting a business acquired? How do they tackle complexities in selling off businesses? Business Models Roll-up companies are running the business using a private-equity model. They act like collaborators, operators, and venture capitalists (VC) at the same time. For example: acquires third-party sellers on Amazon, focusing on everyday consumer brands, scale the business, and offer exit options for the sellers. In 2020, Thrasio recorded a profit of on $500 million in revenues. Thrasio $100 million provides tech stack, capital, advice, and insights to help consumer product brands accelerate the next level of growth. Heyday 2 more specific ways to monetize as e-commerce aggregators. You’ll also learn: (📥 Full version) different ways to partner with potential acquisition targets different ways to expand your roll-up portfolio Why Now? As e-commerce entrepreneurship is exploding, there will be more successful independent merchants who will need to find a way to exit their brands. Here is the market potential snapshot: In 2020, more than of Amazon’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) was coming from third-party, independent sellers. Growing numbers of independent sellers. 50% 3 more market evidence in detail to help you answer the “why now” questions for your investors or partners. You’ll also learn: (📥 Full version) insight from Amazon financial statement impact of D2C brands insight from the emerging e-commerce markets and why there are untapped opportunities to monetize Business Opportunities 4 specific product ideas and business opportunities that are solving problems. You’ll unlock: (📥 Full version) one specific product idea in SaaS one vertical-focused roll-up platform idea a solution to help aggregators find the next acquisition winner specific business idea to participate in a roll-up partnership Want more? Consider the members-only  version: 🔺 3 more on how aggregators operate and scale specific strategies 📝 6 more new market players 🧐 3 more they are solving that actually make these platforms super- profitable valid problems 🖍 3 more in detail to help you answer the “why now” questions (most important slide in a pitch deck!) for your investors market evidence 🚀 4 and business opportunities that are solving problems specific product ideas [1] Find me on Personal Site / Twitter / LinkedIn 🔥 [2] Weekly market insights in your inbox — Click here to join my newsletter 💌 👉 Get the full report here This article is part of my ↗️ where I share insights on building things in tech. Join me :)‍ Note: resource newsletters Also Published At: https://whizzoe.substack.com/p/e-commerce-roll-ups-and-the-rise

The Rise of E-commerce Roll-ups & New Business Opportunities

This is going to be a low-level article, but I guess you already knew that since you landed here, right? I wanted to talk about this mysterious term Mach-O… What is it? How does it work? Really, what is it!? To answer all of that, we’ll have to dig deep and get our hands dirty… When we build an application in Xcode, a lot of things happen at the same time. One of them is converting all the source code into an executable. This executable contains the byte code that will run on the CPU, the ARM processor on an iOS device, or the intel processor on Mac. This executable is called Mach-O. Well, this was easy and fun, Goodbye! Unless you want to stick around to know about the internals 😈 Mach-O format Mach-O is a binary stream of bytes grouped into meaningful chunks of data. These chunks contain information about the meta like byte order, CPU type, size of the chunk and so on. There are various Mach-O types, most typically you’d have seen these Main app binary, like Executable — Example.app/Example Dynamic library, like Dylib — libSwiftCore.dylib Yeah, I know right, lurking right under our nose! So, Mach-O files are divided into several segments and it looks something like this but before diving into the segments let’s look into something else Mach-O Header Every Mach-O file begins with a header structure that defines the structure of the file. It also contains information about file type and target architecture ( , , , etc). armv7 armv7s i386 Just below the header structure are a bunch of load commands which help in the layout and linking of the file. Also, load commands can specify The initial layout of the file in the virtual memory (we’ll come back to this) Section names and addresses dylibs to be loaded “main” function address Code Signature And, this is how the complete header looks like! As you can see, Mach-O header consists of a bunch of load commands which are defining the addresses of the sections, main function, and the dependent binaries to be loaded. The addresses mentioned above are actually offset from the memory address where your Mach-O is loaded. This is done because the starting memory address is randomised every time your app launches using a nifty technique called or as we lovingly call it Automatic Space Layout Randomisation ASLR. What this means is when your app process starts, you do not know from which address will it start beforehand. Let’s imagine its implications, assume you have a global variable which occupies some memory address in your RAM, but since you don’t know where your process started from, you cannot possibly determine the memory address of this global variable! As you might have guessed, this is done for security purposes, otherwise, it would become very easy to hack the binary if everything has the same address on every launch! Segments Let’s look at the individual segments of the Mach-O file __PAGEZERO This is the first segment of an executable file and it has no data inside so it takes up no space in the file. This segment is full of zeroes to catch NULL pointer dereferences. You might have faced a crash, that is precisely because something in your code tried to access data from here, which is not allowed. EXC_BAD_ACCESS As an aside, this segment can be a good place to hide malicious code 😉 __TEXT This segment contains executable code and read-only data. It is made read-only to allow the sharing of the segment when it is mapped into the memory. This is primarily used with frameworks, bundles and shared libraries. And, since the segment is read-only, there are no changes that need to be saved back to the disk. If the kernel needs to free up memory, it will simply remove the page and re-read them when needed. __TEXT __TEXT This is the reason how iOS and OSX cache their dynamic libraries so aggressively. __DATA This segment contains writable data (e.g. globals, static variables, etc), and because it is writable, the segment of a framework or other shared library is logically copied for each process linking with the library. __DATA If you have any experience with Swift, you must be familiar with , this essentially means do not create a copy until the thing being referenced is edited. Similarly, when the segment is copied, it isn’t really until some process modifies it, that process then receives its own private copy of the page. copy-on-write __DATA __OBJC This is an optional segment and contains data used by the Objective-C language runtime support library. __IMPORT This is also an optional segment and contains symbol stubs and non-lazy pointers to symbols not defined in the executable. This segment is generated only for executables targeted for the IA-32 architecture. __LINKEDIT This segment contains raw data for the linker ( dito ) like symbols and string tables, compressed dynamic linking info, code signing info, and the indirect symbol table — all of which occupy regions as specified by the load commands. link e r So, now that we have an understanding of the individual segments, let’s try to look at the bigger picture and see how it all fits together. The Big Picture — DYLD Till now we know How a Mach-O file is generated and its load commands used to link dependencies in various ways. Load Commands are used to map the segments in the memory commands. Execution of the file begins from LC_MAIN Well, this is only information and this information requires a brain to process it. And this brain is called Dyld! 🤫 Let me tell you a secret! Well, it’s not really a secret When you launch your app by tapping the app icon, instead of launching your app the kernel launches ! dyld I know right! This guy is a big deal around here. The kernel will actually load at some random address space and it will itself has its own segment, segment… well, you get the idea. dyld __TEXT __DATA It's the job of dyld to basically load and setup all the dependent dylibs for us. Load dylibs This is where the dyld reads Mach-O header to find out about the dependent . It then finds that library file on the file system and parses them. dylibs This process is done recursively because a A can be dependent on B which can be dependent on C, so it has to resolve this whole graph of dependencies and finally memory map all of these segments to the original Mach-O header. dylib dylib dylib dylib’s And, this whole transaction might look something like this. Now, remember we talked about and how you cannot know which address will be assigned to all the variables in your app. This is something that has to fix using the below techniques. ASLR dyld Rebasing section contains locations of all the pointers that need to be shifted. Dyld will go through all these pointers and shift them based on your application’s start address. __LINKEDIT Notice that to do this, we have to read and write to the data pages, causing those pages to become dirty, and would need a copy on write. This is why Rebasing is expensive in IO. Binding References to other dylib functions are fixed using binding, like NSLog, malloc, etc. Once dyld loads the dependent libraries, it needs to search the symbol tables and find the implementation of these symbols. So, there’s actually a string named inside your binary that is unresolved and what dyld will do is look up the symbol table and fill it up with the addresses of these functions from the dependent libraries. _NSLog This is computationally complex and is expensive Objc Runtime All Objc class definitions need to be registered, why? because you can construct an Objc class from a string calling method. NSClassFromString(_:) So, dyld has to build this table before the app can launch. Adding categories to method lists — what this means is, if you have created a category over UIView and added a bunch of new functions, those new functions will be added to the method list of UIView. It also ensures selectors are unique. Run Initialisers Objc methods are called at this pointC++ static initialisers +load This happens in a bottom-up fashion so basically the dependent libraries will be initialised first. Whew!! After all of this is done, finally, your will execute. main() And, this is the story behind the elusive Mach-O file. Summary Binaries use Mach-O format with , and segments. __TEXT __DATA __LINKEDIT Dyld needs to parse and load all dynamic library dependencies. Dyld needs to fix all pointers both internal and external (rebase, bind, setup runtime). Run static initialisers and methods. +load AND THEN main() Where to go from here? To the dark side — https://lowlevelbits.org/parsing-mach-o-files/ If you want to dive even deeper and extract some code from dylibs, check out this from objc.io article Even Moar documentation!! Previously published at https://medium.com/tokopedia-engineering/a-curious-case-of-mach-o-executable-26d5ecadd995

A Curious Case of Mach-O Executable

In 2020, apart from falling cryptocurrency prices following the stock price due to being dragged by the coronavirus, we see some news in the blockchain industry that is quite encouraging for us in terms of innovation and economic growth potential. Aside from many Proof of concepts created by many parties (including government) around the world since 2017, Australia and India launched the blockchain technology roadmap, where Australia stated in its roadmap that the blockchain could generate a business value of more than US $ 175 billion in 2025 and more than US $ 3 trillion in 2030. Recently in early March 2020 the US Senate also held a hearing with blockchain practitioners with the title " " in which members of the senate deepened their understanding of the benefits of the blockchain so that they could draw up a budget more beneficial for citizens. Building Blocks of Change: The Benefits of Blockchain Technology for Small Businesses Meanwhile, South Africa, has planned to form a national blockchain alliance in April 2020 to reduce unemployment and also provide tax discounts for companies involved in R&D. Actually, what is blockchain innovation? Why so many people and nations talked about blockchain ? What kind of innovation blockchain is actually ? Lets learn about the type of innovations from the book "Prosperity Paradox" written by Dr.Clay Christensen (author of the classic book “innovator dillema”) through this book he explains why many investments in growing the economy apparently fail to support sustainable prosperity and he offers solutions to create sustainable change. In this book, Dr. Clay divides innovation into several types: 1st type of innovation : Efficiency innovations Efficiency innovations are types of innovations that help companies make products cheaper. This innovation is important for the economy because it maximizes free cash flow. But this efficiency innovation does not produce growth - it even eliminates growth. Because you are trying to make things more efficient so the effect is maximizing free cash flow but minimizing growth and job creation. "Efficiency innovations don't create growth. They eliminate growth. Source : Prosperity Paradox 2nd type of innovation : Sustaining Innovation The second type of innovation is "sustaining innovation". In this type of innovation you try to make a better product. Almost all types of innovations that we see around us are types of sustaining innovation. This type of innovation also does not provide much growth for the corporation and also the economy. For example, if I work for Toyota, if I try to sell you a Prius, of course you won't buy a Camry. So sustaining innovation helps you make better products but does not create growth. “Sustaining innovations allow us to make good products better, but they don’t create any new growth.” 3rd type of innovation : Market-Creating Innovation The third type of innovation is "Market-creating innovation" which creates net growth for corporations and countries. This type of innovation transforms products that are historically complicated, expensive and can only be accessed by the rich or limited and turns it into an affordable and accessible product so that more people can own and use it. In other languages, market creating innovation democratizes products or services that were previously exclusive. Innovation with the type of market creating becomes the foundation for a prosperous country and corporation and in the process lifts millions of people out of poverty. Market-creating innovation will produce economic growth because they must build infrastructure to serve the new market and in the process provide various types of jobs to the community. Market-creating innovation will also usually fund its own innovations going forward. This type of innovation not only creates markets, but jobs, too. This is because as new markets with new consumers are born, companies must hire more people to make, market, distribute, sell, and service the product Then,  which type of innovation blockchain is ? Probably the answer will vary, or maybe blockchain can cover more than one type of innovations, some say that blockchain eliminates middleman, even though, middleman or central authority, in blockchain is not really lost, but is changing shape, from one that is central and has enormous authority, to many parties (called miners, or block producers) but have more limited authority when compared to the middleman in the non-blockchain era, as well as a far more democratic decision making process. Indeed, due to technological innovation, there will definitely be some types of jobs lost, with smart contracts, there is no need for a manual reconciliation process but because of the nature of technological innovation can unlock new markets - market creating innovation - then technology companies will also open up many new jobs to serve that market. Value of the blockchain Before 2005 we could not imagine that with the internet, now we can continue to keep in touch with our school friends from elementary school era. Blockchain will transform record keeping (database) just as the internet transforms the way we communicate. Blockchain is expected to have an impact on the financial industry, such as what the internet does to the media industry. This specific value is directed to Defi / Decentralized Finance. In short, blockchain technology values are record keeping, smart contracts and value transfer. What kind of new market that blockchain unlocked? Why is blockchain technology can be categorized as market-creating innovations? What kind of market does the blockchain create ? The answer can be very long and takes a long time to explain, but here I try to discuss just a few. Investment (from the perspective of investors) or capital fundraising (from the perspective of a businessman) Before there was a blockchain, someone with only 500,000 funds could not participate in high-quality investment in "the next big thing" technology companies such as Gojek, Tokopedia (Indonesia), Facebook. Yes, you can, but wait for them to IPO aka very high valuation. On the other side, SMEs or startups often find it difficult to access loans from banks because they do not have collateral, accessing capital from Venture Capital is also difficult, especially if SMEs whose valuations do not normally go up to 10x. With the blockchain, which revolutionized the recording of share ownership through the concept of tokenized cap tables, investors with small capital can now engage in quality investments and together with many other investors (tens of thousands, no specific restrictions) invest in one company. But when it comes to regulation, there is a limit on the maximum number of shareholders. In this case the blockchain can "level the playing field" in the world of investment and reduce the income gap, starting from the same opportunity to invest. Fractional ownership Property using blockchain Property investment, like investing in startup companies, is also an industry that can only be accessed by the upper middle class only. But with blockchain technology that can revolutionize property ownership records, small investors with hundreds of thousands of funds can participate in investment and property speculation, this concept is called "fractional ownership" in the property world. Meanwhile, in terms of property developers, this concept will drastically increase their financial liquidity because it opens many new markets that previously could not have property. Decentralized finance can democratize the financial world Before there was the internet, the media was dominated by television and newspapers with big capital, but with the internet, everyone began to share information and could become their own media, even Youtube began to overtake the share of television. Decentralized finance built on the blockchain allows anyone to create financial products for the global community, which is currently dominated by only a few big players. Other potential blockchain Blockchain has many other potentials that are not limited to the point I mentioned above. For example, reducing the dependence of SMEs on the giant platforms that dominate the internet today, blockchain can revolutionize capitalism, upgrade the sharing economy that is currently not pro-service providers - because with blockchain, transactions occur peer to peer. What about Indonesia? Many countries have recognized the character of blockchain which has potential as a market-creating innovation and regulators of these countries are studying the benefits and impacts on the economy so that in the future they can arrange their budgets properly, so that regulations can keep pace with the development of the use case of the blockchain. Indonesia, 4th most populous country in the world, is also more or less the same. Although it has not yet reached the hearing stage with congress. which is the only blockchain platform company from Indonesia, where developers can build a decentralized application to transform the economy, create economic growth and help Indonesia to prosper. Vexanium.com ( : ) Disclaimer The writer of this article is the director of education in Vexanium foundation Let the blockchain force be with you. Picture source : Freepik

Could Blockchain Innovation Be The Source of Prosperity for Nation?

It has been a while since I’ve been to a hackathon. I always love that hackathon as an avenue to build something quickly within the 48-hour time constraint, the opportunity to sharpen my design skills, and network with fellow hackers. So when my colleague posted on Slack about , I signed up! JunctionX Singapore 2 of my colleagues and I were lucky to be selected as part of the 120 participants out of over 190 sign-ups. But it was off to a rocky start — one of my colleagues bailed last minute. Dheeraj joined with me but he was not feeling well the next day. We only finalized the problem we’re going to tackle on 7:15 PM the next day, with the pressure to hit the deadline in less than 17 hours… It’s a small world. I bumped into Terry, whom I used to mentor at the in 2018. I remember both of us stayed up late to solve a bug of the valve not closing properly for his Arduino project. He was looking for a team to join, and I am so glad to have him on the team as he is a talented backend engineer working on embed software. Selangor Smart City and Future Commerce Hackathon Brainstorming and Finalizing Ideas On Friday evening, we started brainstorming ideas for and ’s track, ranging from reducing churn with a subscription modal for repeat orders, loyalty program, intelligence dashboard for shopping behavior, to making education/help center more engaging and interactive for both buyers and sellers. Shopee Kaspersky On Saturday, we validated project ideas from the consumer experience, payment, security and transportation that we’ve brainstormed with our Shopee mentors. The fraud and security idea hits home, and mentors gave us the following insights: “Shopee has experienced a lot of fake user accounts coming from competitors in the past and it hurts Shopee’s business. Competitors pretend to be real users who placed a large amount of quantity of orders, then proceed to cancel them.” — Shopee mentors Our mentor also mentioned that transportation is a huge issue for delivery companies. For instance, . So a buyer might input something like “My house is beside this tree.” there are no postcodes available in rural areas in Indonesia It might be ridiculous to think that how could someone uses a tree as a landmark, but those who grew up in the same neighborhood would know what the buyer meant. There is also a lack of safe drop points like 7-Eleven for parcel collection in rural areas as well. So, Dheeraj was exploring another idea to help rural consumers, who technically . estimated that there is a US$10b-12b e-commerce market for rural consumers in the next four years, which is a huge untapped opportunity. have the most to gain as they do not have access to a wide range of products A report from EY As language is the barrier and trust is the key to conversion, Dheeraj was experimenting if rural consumers could “draw” what they want to buy, using ’s API: Google Creative Lab AutoDraw Framing The Problem If you google “Shopee fraud”, fraud incidents that are reported by media are mostly consumer-facing and operational. For example, and the . That’s exactly what we tackled over the weekend. fake sellers in Taiwan rising eCommerce scams in Singapore But what about the fraud that goes “unreported”? Shopee is already winning in 2 markets that it receives the largest amount of orders — Indonesia and Taiwan. reported that in Indonesia, , and . StatCounter more than 70% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices Shopee wins in mobile apps with Tokopedia (#2) and Lazada (#3) following behind Source: https://www.techinasia.com/lazada-vs-sea-whos-top-ecommerce-player-in-southeast-asia In an extremely saturated, aggressive and competitive market like this, dirty business techniques are not uncommon, with , which resulted in the loss of revenue for Lyft. Uber’s unscrupulous “Hell” program spying on Lyft drivers A small percentage would cost a huge loss Considering that Shopee’s , even a small percentage of fraud coming from competitors is $20 million: Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) is over $10 billion in 2018 US$10,000,000,000 ¹ x 0.9% ² x 10% ³ = US$20,000,000 ¹ Shopee’s GMV in 2018 ² Fraud to eCommerce Sales %/year by ³ Estimation based on the total fraud CyberSource The Opportunities: How to Curb Competitors’ Fraud? Shopee already has an existing email and mobile OTP verification embed during the sign-up process. We think that the 1st layer of defense is to reduce fake accounts is to strengthen the current verification process by adding more layers on top of it: Valid credit card, shipping address and social media account. Verifying User Profile One of the traits to identify highly suspicious account is to to “hijack” merchants’ listing so that the stock is sold out during sales, which refrains the real customers out there from buying. Positive Reinforcement for Shopping Behaviour buy a large quantity of the same product and multiple transactions in a short amount of time We think that placing a maximum quota on the stock quantity and total amount for the 1st-time user would reduce fraud. For example, if users promise within the 24-hour period and request a refund, it’s very likely that these are real customers and not fake accounts, and we can provide them for the entire order. Moreover, we can reinforce positive buying behavior: the more users shop, the higher the quota is lifted for placing an order. not to cancel 10% OFF The Solution By factoring in the number of order, item price and maximum quantity of the item ordered, we can analyze if an account is a valid and loyal customer. Thanks to Terry for coming up with the formula and user flow: JS code written for scammer detector: https://codepen.io/terry-pang/pen/wvwbozx If you shop at Shopee before, you might have noticed that under the field, if it says “100 pieces available” and you tried to update to 120, the quantity will be automatically reverted to 100 because that is the maximum allowed. We want to build on top of that existing function to encourage positive shopping behavior — by offering discounts for the entire order if users promise not to cancel within the 24-hour period: Quantity For Shopee’s internal fraud team, we want to empower them by providing them the necessary tools to make an informed decision and do what they do best at, and this starts by providing for Shopee site globally: real-time fraud threat score Shopee’s internal fraud team can also track the number, monitor the trends over time and . audit/review these flagged accounts in real-time An organization might employ a network of fraudsters or even outsource them to third-world countries. Physically they are probably in the same location but could be routed through anonymously using VPNs. But by tracking logged-in data such as device IPs, OS, and browsers, it will be easier to . observe the purchase patterns, spot frauds faster and bust hidden networks of these fraudsters Combining these three powerful tools together, we built a to protect Shopee from competitors’ fraud: global dashboard In the previous example, 100 is the default maximum stock quantity that Shopee can allow the 1st-time users to purchase. What if we could allow some flexibility to the maximum quantity, the total amount allowed, and discounts applicable for the 1st-time buyer? comes in handy here by providing that customization. It could start out as an internal tool at first, but Shopee can roll this out to merchants at Seller Central as well. Fraud Thresholds Tool Potential Future Developments Over the 48 hours, we tackled the fraud scenarios coming from competitors, but more use cases can be included for enhancement. More scenarios and use cases By utilizing tools such as , machine learning can help build a better fraud prediction model to help the fraud team to make better decisions. Machine learning to facilitate Accurate Fraud Predictions TensorFlow Since data has been collected to build comprehensive user profiles to fight fraud, we thought to expand this to other SEA group’s businesses such as Garena and Digital Financial Services. Expand comprehensive user profile for other SEA businesses Final Thoughts When the deadline hits at 12 noon on Sunday, I was still working on the slides. When Dheeraj submitted our entry, I feel so relieved with a sense of accomplishment of what we’ve built. There were moments we almost give up, but what I learned is although our resources and time are strained, . we need to work with what we have During the brainstorming phase, Terry suggested that we can use board games to educate Shopee users. His two favorite board games are and . It doesn’t make sense at first, but when we validate with our mentors, it is actually a great idea to use interactive games to educate buyers and sellers. Catan CASHFLOW by Robert Kiyosaki I learned that brainstorming is the best phase to go wild and crazy instead of killing creativity, and embracing these ideas with an open mind is key. Don’t aspire to be the smartest person in the room, and leave your ego at the door . And yes, I need to to animate my prototype! learn Principle or Flinto Team — Front-end | — Backend | — Design | / / Dheeraj Joshi Twitter Terry Pang LinkedIn Chip Dong Lim Portfolio LinkedIn Twitter Thanks for making it to the end of this story! Are you enjoying reading it? What are other awesome ideas that you might have thought of to solve for an eCommerce platform? Let me know by commenting below ⇣ You can as well. view the 6 final pitches I’ve compiled

How We Tried To Fight  Ecommerce Fraud at JunctionX Singapore Hackathon

Whether it’s the Chinese dragons, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent or Indian juggernauts like Flipkart, Asia is the birthplace of some of the most successful unicorn startups. Asia’s vibrant startup ecosystem simply has no rivals. So, what’s the secret sauce to joining the unicorn startups of Asia? It is, essentially, a recipe for success no startup can do without! #1 It’s Not What You Sell But What People Want to Buy From You When McDonald’s arrived on Indian shores, not many vegetarians were delighted by its chicken burgers, which is why the global fast-food chain changed its menu! burgers made their way into Indian diner’s hearts and grabbed their wallet share. McAloo Tikki Similarly, Paytm was born out of the need to eliminate wallets and cash, and to further improve the convenience of customers. Google made a difference in people’s lives across Asia by offering Google Maps. People would need to ask for directions earlier, which was highly inconvenient especially if it was during odd hours. Now, all they have to do is feed in the address on the map and locate the area. After all, it’s easy to know where to go when you’re moving in the right direction! Amazon started out as a bookstore, but grew as an ecommerce brand. It now meets the needs of different customer segments. From being a niche player to a universal online retailer, Amazon’s done it all. Each of these businesses has one thing in common: they meet consumer needs. The age of “build it and they’ll come” is over. The era of heightened consumerism is here. The focus is on what people are buying, not what your company is selling. Asian unicorn startups are tapping on to this phenomena. China alone has 46 of the 192 total known unicorn startups across the globe. China’s unicorn startups have a combined valuation of $209 billion, as per CBInsights. The Chinese startups are cashing in on ready consumers in a thriving marketplace. Consider the ride-hailing service provider, Didi Chuxing, who with a valuation of $50 billion is just one step behind Uber, or mobile and hardware maker Xiaomi that is pegged at $46 billion. Each of these startups starts out by generating value for customers. For example, Xiaomi aims at client co-creation. It even has its own consumer community — MIUI forum. Consumers can tell Xiaomi what they need in a product. Xiaomi then builds products based on customer feedback! This forum scored 10 million registered users by 2018. That’s not all — it even had more than 100K daily publications! #2 Tapping Technologies in the Internet Age When Google was born, the aim was simple: Providing unstructured data to common people like you and me, who are looking for information online. That has not changed, but Google’s fortunes have. All because of technology, people are being drawn to unicorn startup brands. Apple’s diversified offerings across a single product line or Netflix with its movie-streaming services … these are just some ways in which technology is deemed as the king and queen of the present age. It is also the secret to the success of many unicorn startups. From video gaming startup Garena in Singapore to Traveloka in Indonesia and GrabTaxi, tapping new technologies is the key to success. Millennial digital natives respond incredibly well to this. WEF estimates that by 2020, 64% of the Asian population will be below 40 years of age. These digital natives are disrupting the Asian economies and driving growth. Traveloka CEO Ferry Unardi is 30. Go-Jek a ride-hailing app has its CEO in Nadiem Makarim at 33! Going online may be the best way to mobilize your startup. It also accelerates growth. A research by McKinsey pegs mobile penetration rates in Asia at 110 per cent and growing. This is where startups like Tokopedia and premier online marketplaces like Bukalapak by Achmad Zaky are cashing in. In the startup industry, innovation is clearly the buzzword. Ecommerce is big. Technology is even bigger. #3 Building a Culture of Trust Trust is the currency businesses to deal in now. Unicorn startups are no different. Customers need to feel a sense of trust. The only way to build it is to innovate. Attracting funds is not about the right elevator pitch or the perfect presentation. It is about real results. Your profit margins, revenue, growth stats — all of these need to reflect what an amazing innovator you are. This is how Bullet Messaging, a startup launched in August 2018 garnered an impressive $22 million in funding within 7 days of being founded. Big players like BAT look for game-changing startups to invest in. If you fit the bill, the results can be phenomenal. #4 Start With Innovation But Grow With Repetition Consider how successful ‘India’s Amazon’ Flipkart is or how GrabTaxi has beaten Uber at its own game. It’s not just about having exceptional ideas but also working on how to execute these. The real success comes from processes and systems. Streamlining operations, refining processes — it’s all about building a sense of synergies and letting your team thrive. #5 Creativity Counts Byju’s is a unicorn startup which demonstrates what thinking creatively can do. Within three years of launching its learning app, the startup has 20 million users and 1.26 million annual paid subscribers. Its CEO, Byju Raveendran, started out by going to campuses and schools to teach students. He even lectured in a stadium once! Now, Byju’s has become a billion dollar company with investors like Sequoia Capital and Sofina simply because of an idea that was creative for its time.

Five Lessons to Learn From Successful Unicorn Startups

According to CB Insights’ unicorn tracker, unicorns have raised a combined total of nearly $257 billion. Data by startup and venture capital intelligence firm show a total of 310 private companies around the world valued at more than $1 billion as of January 2019. Last year, 112 new companies joined the global unicorn club, a 58% increase from the 71 new unicorns in 2017. CB Insights The collective worth of all unicorns currently identified by CB Insights — and published in a new infographic under 13 categories — is $1,052 billion. They have raised a combined total of nearly $257 billion. Credits: CB Insights The top 10 unicorns by market value are: Bytedance (valued at $75 billion) ($72 billion) Uber Didi Chuxing ($56 billion) ($47 billion) WeWork Airbnb ($29.3 billion) SpaceX ($21.5 billion) and ($20 billion) Palantir Stripe Juul Labs and Epic Games ($15 billion) Pinterest, Bitmain Technologies, and Samumed ($12 billion) , GrabTaxi, and Global Switch ($11 billion) Lyft In terms of countries represented in the list, most of the unicorns come from: 🇺🇸 United States with 150 unicorns, or 49% of the total — up 2 percentage points since August 2018; 🇨🇳 China (84, including 1 in Hong Kong), or 26% — down from 30% last summer; 🇪🇺 33 in the European Union (🇬🇧 16 in the UK, or 6%; 🇩🇪 9 in Germany; 🇫🇷 2 in France; 1 each in 🇪🇪 Estonia, 🇱🇺 Luxembourg, 🇲🇹 Malta, 🇵🇹 Portugal, 🇪🇸 Spain, 🇸🇪 Sweden); 🇮🇳 14 in India, or 4% The largest unicorns by valuation in each region are: 🇨🇳 Bytedance in China (valued at $75 billion); 🇺🇸 in the US ($72 billion); Uber 🇸🇬 GrabTaxi in Singapore and 🇬🇧 Global Switch in the UK (both valued at $11 billion); 🇮🇳 One97 Communications in India ($10 billion); 🇰🇷 Coupang in South Korea ($9 billion); 🇨🇭 Roivant Sciences in Switzerland and 🇮🇩 in Indonesia (both $7 billion). Tokopedia The 10 oldest unicorns are: VANCL (China), a unicorn since December 2010; (US) since May 2011; Palantir Airbnb (US) since July 2011; (Sweden) since December 2011; Klarna Trendy Group International (China) since February 2012; Pinterest (US) since May 2012; Fanatics (US) since June 2012; (US) and SpaceX (US) since December 2012; Cloudflare Mu Sigma (US) since February 2013; Automattic (US) since May 2013.

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