SEA of Startups

This week we are joined by Alvin Yuan of HealthMetrics, which has designed a unified health benefits platform to manage, measure, and improve the employee benefits strategy. This was a great conversation where discuss the initial MVP and go to market strategy and how they navigated regulations.  We discuss how some network effects in the market aided their growth.  We wrap things up with some forw...

This week we are joined by Arif Tukiman of RunCloud, which is a leading cloud control panel that is simplifying cloud, doing away with the difficulties of cloud management, and bringing simplicity, to return focus on business performance. This was a great conversation as we go from the early days of experiencing the problem firsthand when he ran a web development agency.  Then building that produc...

This week we are joined by Derek Toh of Hiredly, which is a a leading online to offline recruitment platform for junior to mid-management talent, including both a job portal and headhunter recruiter solution. This was a great conversation where we go from Derek’s time as a headhunter to his realization of the importance of information beyond the job description and beyond the CV.  We talk about sc...

This week we are joined by Chris Fong of FeFiFo, which is a technology-first co-farming company that focuses on empowering the new generation of progressive farmers in ASEAN. This was a great conversation where we learn the origins and ambition to tackle a key issue for smallholder farmers.  We discuss extensively different areas of standardization and taking a process-oriented view.  We even disc...

This week we are joined by Wai Hong Fong of StoreHub, which started as an POS system but has evolved into an all-in-one platform for retailers and restaurants to automate and grow their businesses.  They currently have over 15,000 businesses across Southeast Asia. This was a great conversation that trace the hustle of building a product and scaling internationally.  We touch on aspects of fundrais...

This week we are joined by Jes Min Lua of Recommend Group, which is southeast Asia's #1 Home and Local Services platform, operating under Sejasa.com in Indonesia and Recommend.my in Malaysia. This was a great conversation about building a marketplace model and the hurdles they have overcome.  We cover the aspects of building trust through to tactics to drive recurrence and keep transactions on the...

This week we are joined by Mark Koh of Supa, which provides a self-service data annotation platform to enable machine learning models. This was a great conversation as we go straight into the last mile problem of data analysis in AI/ML models, data annotation.  We hear how he has built a customer base and uses thought leadership as lead generation.  We wrap up on how a data company incorporates da...

This week we are joined by Brian Tan of FutureLab, which is a mentorship platform connecting Mentors to Mentees to guide career paths, gain skills, and develop professionally from university through to Enterprise. This was a great conversation about an impactful business aiming to enable access to mentorship for university students and recent graduates to guide them along their career paths.  Incr...

This week we are joined by Wong Whei Meng of Speedhome, which is tackling the home rental market with zero deposit for tenants by combining insurance protection and tech innovation. This was a great conversation about the challenges and paint points in the home rental market.  Leveraging an insurance product to eliminate the need for high upfront deposits which can be restrictive for segments of t...

This week we are joined by Sina Meraji of Learning Loop, which is a data company specializing in learning distribution and discovery. This was a great conversation as we discussed Sina’s own personal life experiences that developed the motivation and passion to launch Learning Loop.  We uncover a number of insights in the learning experiences, the filters of knowledge and understanding users.  The...

This week we are joined by Yien Yee Soh of Avana, which is a social commerce enabler platform, providing an integrated D2C & reseller selling solution for social media channels. This was a great conversation as we went from the days of creating an aggregator for a community of blogs operating as shops through to launching an enabler platform that has since scaled.  We discuss the direction of...

This week we are joined by Ramachandran Muniandy of Asia Mobiliti, a mobility as a service company (MaaS). Through this conversation we navigate the origins and the motivation to building something to better the nation.  We discuss the evolution of public transportation and demand responsive transit (DRT) that scraps the timetables.  A number of great points made that are highly applicable to ever...

This week we are joined by Effon Khoo of Kakitangan.com , which is an online HR Software for Malaysian businesses that helps handle payroll, claims, benefits, leave and more. During the conversation we move from the 10 years’ experience in Microsoft through to raising multiple rounds of capital (crowdfunding, CVC, and VC).  We discuss details around scaling a highly localized product and how they...

This week we are joined by Julie Ng of Vase.ai, which is a consumer insights company breaking the long-cycle times of market research to deliver agile research in 24 hours. This was a great conversation as went from the origins of the co-founders meeting at a hackathon through to a critical pivot which meant turning away from 70% of revenue at the time.  It is an insightful conversation about the...

This week we are joined by Francesca Chia of GoGet, which is a technology platform connecting businesses to on demand workforce of verified workers, called GoGetters. This was a great conversation as we navigated the origin story which involved a couple of pivots.  Through the conversation there are great pieces of advice on building a business, including the bottom-up/top-down way to prioritize g...

This week we are joined by Joe Khoo of iStore iSend, which is a holistic end-to-end e-fulfilment company providing Warehousing-as-a-Service (WaaS) solutions, serving more than 1,000 businesses across 6 different countries, as of this recording. This was a great conversation as we touched on some great milestones in the Founder journey, including a pivot which meant turning away 90% of revenue.  Th...

As the initial launch of the SEA of Startups podcast, we are highlighting clips from the upcoming episodes that we are bringing to you. In this episode you will hear from - Effon Khoo from Kakitangan.com - Yienyee Soh from Avana - Francesca Chia from GoGet - Joe Khoo from iStore iSend - Julie Ng from Vase.ai - Ramachandran Muniandy from Asia Mobiliti - Whei Meng Wong from Speedhome You will find t...