Taking failure as a norm would be a major cultural shift in India, where high-achieving children are expected to take steady jobs at recognised job
India learns to 'fail fast' with startups
Families that expect children to have respectable jobs may be beginning to accept failure as the tech industry starts to come of age.
After ping pong tables, motivational posters and casual dress codes, India’s tech startups are following Silicon Valley’s lead and embracing the “fail fast” culture credited with fuelling creativity and success in the United States.
Taking failure as a norm is a major cultural shift in India, where high-achieving children are typically expected to take steady jobs at recognised firms. A failed venture hurts family status and even marriage prospects.
But that nascent acceptance, fuelled by returning engineers and billions of dollars in venture fund investment, is for many observers a sign that India’s US$150bil tech industry is coming of age, moving from a back-office powerhouse to a creative force.
“There is obviously increased acceptance,” said Raghunandan G, co-founder of TaxiForSure, which was sold to rival Ola this year. He is now investing in other early stage ventures.
“My co-founder Aprameya (Radhakrishna) used to have lines of prospective brides to meet ... the moment we started our own company, all those prospective alliances disappeared. No one wanted their daughters to marry a startup guy.”
Srikanth Chunduri returned to India after studying at Duke University in the US, and is now working on his second venture. “I think what’s encouraging is that acceptance of failure is increasing despite the very deep-rooted Asian culture where failure is a big no,” he said.
IT’S OK TO FAIL
The shift has come about, executives say, as engineers began returning from Silicon Valley to cash in on India’s own boom, as hundreds of millions of Indians go online.
“Investors too want to find the next Flipkart, and most of them come from Silicon Valley backgrounds, so they bring that culture,” said Stewart Noakes, co-founder of TechHub, a global community and workspace for tech entrepreneurs. “That’s changing the Indian norms. It’s becoming ok to fail and try again.”
Big names like Flipkart can also mean the prospect of a lucrative exit for investors, covering a multitude of failures. To be sure, the pace of change is slow in altering a culture that has produced top software engineers for decades, but – as yet – no Google, Apple or Twitter.
Cheap engineering talent keeps startups afloat far longer than in Silicon Valley, where companies last less than two years on average. And the freedom to fail remains restricted to a small portion of India’s corporate fabric, booming tech cities like Bengaluru or Gurgaon outside New Delhi.
There is also still no revolving door with big corporates, whom one senior Bengaluru headhunter described as beating down salaries of executives who dared to risk – but then came back.
ROLE MODELS
India learns to 'fail fast' as tech startup culture takes root
But big homegrown successes like e-tailers Flipkart and Snapdeal or mobile advertising firm InMobi, as well as the multi-billion dollar firms set up by former executives from the likes of Amazon.com, Microsoft and Google, have created role models, encouraging graduates to take risks.
“With success stories, people accept it as a legitimate exercise,” said Ryan Valles, former CEO of coupon site DealsandYou and a former executive at Accel Partners, now working on a new project.
Meanwhile, billions in investor funding have fed the sector. External cash – as opposed to more traditional bank loans tied to individuals, or family savings – makes a difference. Failing there can involve walking away Silicon Valley-style, not years of court proceedings in a country with no formal bankruptcy law.
There has also been, to date, no major collapse.
“What’s happening is healthy: people recognising that some things will fail, that it’s largely a failure-based industry, in the same way that movies, music or pharmaceuticals are,” said Shikhar Ghosh, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School.
An estimated 70-90% of start-ups fail.
But the biggest test may be the first bust after the boom.
“That will be the test: whether people come back into the market and how they treat the people who lost their money,” said Ghosh. – Reuters
Most
Valuable. The success of the messaging services has helped boost
Tencent's market value to about $161 billion, making it the most
valuable Internet company in Asia. Alibaba will compete for that title
after it goes public.
Liew and his son Tian Xiong (left) at the interview. The biggest shareholder of Eco World Development Group is Tian Xiong, who at 22 in 2013 became the major shareholder of the company.
Entrepreneur who drives the smaller Eco World group is still a much talked-about figure in corporate world
AT 57 years of age, Tan Sri Liew Kee Sin can easily count himself to be one of the most talked about personality in Malaysia’s corporate circle – by the Government, the private sector and property investors.
Amidst the unravelling of events over the past four years, including his exit from SP Setia Bhd, Liew continues to be among the corporate figures today that enjoy the adulation of some and the wrath of others.
Since leaving SP Setia a year ago, Liew has been furiously on the ball, trying to “regain” what he has lost. He has kept a fast and furious pace, though buffeted on every front by unabating current.
Although he has previously overcome challenges thrown at him, the pressure this time is different, in severity and magnitude. It’s a pressure cooker in Eco World Development Group Bhd (EWB), he admits.
“The momentum is on-going. It forces me to be the face of Eco World,” he says.
The positive side to all these is that he has about 300 out of a staff count of 800 who joined him from his previous company. This round of rebuilding includes his son, Tian Xiong, 24. That may also account for him being more driven than before.
While he has made a success of the 4,000 acres in S P Setia’s flagship development in Shah Alam years ago, today’s climate of high house prices and stagnant wages mean his team would have to work doubly hard. So far, however, most of his projects in the Klang Valley and Johor seem to enjoy take-up rates of 80% and above.
His latest launch in Batu Kawan, Penang, has prices hovering in the RM700,000-RM800,000 bracket.
Credited with making something out of 4,000 acres in Shah Alam, Liew is trying to do the same in Semenyih, Selangor, and Batu Kawan, Penang, on a smaller scale. Liew says his objective is to set a new benchmark in terms of concepts, ideas and designs for branding purposes.
Next month, he will be launching 1,130 units in London City Island with a gross development value (GDV) of £617mil, at a time when house prices are frothy, with wages stagnant. The May 7 elections is another dampener. The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) has just sold a building at a profit and may be selling another.
The weakening ringgit works for and against him. For local investors, a property abroad is a good hedge against exposure to any possible future weakening of the ringgit. The downside is that the pool of buyers shrink with the weaker ringgit.
However, the target market for the London City Island project goes to Hong Kong, Singapore and London.
Even as he is keeping his finger on sales, other challenges faces Liew and the Eco World group.
Eye on SPAC
In October last year, Liew and his team proposed to list Eco World International Bhd (EWI) as a SPAC (special-purpose acquisition company). But the Securities Commission has yet to approve the application.
While awaiting the SC’s nod for the the proposed SPAC, in January, he and his right hand man Datuk Voon Tin Yow in their personal capacity, via a private vehicle, entered into a joint venture with UK-based Ballymore on a 75:25 basis to develop three projects in London – with the first slated to kick off next month.
The plan was to inject the three properties into EWI, which will be the vehicle for the proposed SPAC. Shareholders of EWB would not be left out as they would be offered up to a 30% stake in EWI.
It was a neat plan – at least on paper.
But the snag is that a SPAC is a blank cheque listing. It is supposed to list without pre-identified and ready assets, which is an issue when it comes to EWI. This is despite Liew’s plan to inject the private purchases “at cost plus holding costs” – meaning Liew and Voon do not profit from the asset injection.
“But this goes against the spirit of SPAC guidelines as set by the SC. A SPAC is a blank cheque listing ... a cash box looking for assets,” says a merchant banker.
“To go global, we must react quickly to market conditions, better design concepts and learn. We have the skill set,” he says. He learned a lot managing and marketing Battersea. No matter how challenging a project, “you gotta break it down to smaller bits”.
Nevertheless, Liew hopes to see some development with respect to the SPAC application within the next month or so.
Keeping EWB and EWI on separate lanes will help him to manage the gearing of both companies and reduce dilution for shareholders of EWB that includes his son, who is the major shareholder.
Liew says he also does not want to park the London assets under EWB because they are too big for its balance sheet.
Although his stake has diluted from 35.05% in 2013 to 13.52% on March 27, 2015, he is still the major shareholder.
Visionary though he may be, time was on his side when Liew built his previous “priced possession”, which is S P Setia. He built S P Setia over the years at a more even pace while the momentum and task he faces today with regards to the Eco World Group has been nothing short but blistering.
Within two years, the company has accumulated 5,396 acres with a GDV of about RM55bil. Debts was up at RM1.15bil as at Jan 31, 2015, from RM215mil in September 30, 2014. (Sept 2013: RM52mil). EWB completed a rights issue raising RM800mil and will undertake a placement. At the end of the corporate exercise, EWB’s gearing will be less than 0.6 times and it will be sitting on a pile of cash that will be used for working capital to develop the massive land bank here.
Liew says he received a lot of offers to work with landowners.
“People ask, why so aggressive? It’s because of the brand. We want to charge ahead in Malaysia. We are using up about 800 acres a year.”
Dealt a good hand
Although Liew has been dealt a good hand in his working life, he may be losing another priced project, all within two years.
As he goes about tying up loose ends on the Battersea chairmanship, a legacy from S P Setia days, and finishing the restructuring in EWB by the end of this month, questions about conflicts of interest have surfaced.
The Battersea Power Station is a 40:40:20 project with S P Setia and Sime Darby holding equal share and EPF remaining 20%.
“When I resigned from S P Setia in April 2014, the Battersea board suggested I wait till September 2015. At that time, there was no Eco World Ballymore (Holding Co Ltd, a developer of the three projects) yet.”
The private vehicle belonging to Liew and Voon – Eco World Investment – has a 75% stake in EcoWorld-Ballymore while UK-based Ballymore Group owning the rest.
At about June of last year, he declared to the board of Battersea of his interest to go into property development in Britain. He was told to wait.
Six months later in January this year, Liew and Voon went public with their 75% stake in the UK-Malaysia joint venture. At that point, he felt “obligated to resign” but was told to wait.
“We have three projects which may seem to be competing with Battersea Power Station although in terms of price point, they are priced differently.”
The latest Battersea Phase 3A units are priced at £1,700 per sq ft while the EcoWorld-Ballymore units are being sold at about £1,000 per sq ft. About 90% of the EcoWorld Ballymore units will be less than £1mil.
Ironically, a vexing issue confronting Liew these days is his chairmanship of Battersea. The roots of the situation he is caught in today can be traced to his entrepreneurship that created Malaysia’s biggest property company that he lost control to Permodalan Nasional Bhd – after a protracted corporate exercise which started in 2011.
Liew, however, is still capable and motivated to use his set of skills to further create value for himself and those around him. But the dichotomy is between duty and interest.
“I do not want to offend anyone anymore. But I (also) feel duty bound,” says Liew.
The Battersea project, which is Liew’s brainchild when he was in S P Setia, has several key milestones in the next one year.
Phase one of the project will be handed over to buyers next year. Work on Malaysian Square – the pride and joy of Malaysia – has just started. Work on London’s underground Northern Line extension, which connects to Battersea, begins this year. These milestones will help the investment to appreciate.
The British authorities are concerned about the reconstruction of the four white chimneys and the restoration of the power station brickwork. So Battersea has quite a bit of important obligations to meet in the next one year and it cannot afford any slip-ups.
“I am under a lot of pressure ... Morally, I should resign. But when I buy (my land in London), I also declare (to the board). I am duty bound to declare on the grounds of good governance. At the same time, I am also duty-bound as chairman because this year is crucial for the Battersea.
“I am trying to get out of this (situation) because I want to reduce the areas of conflict between myself, the Government and everybody else. I have lost S P Setia and I should gentlemanly give up (Battersea),” says Liew.
Time will only provide an answer.
With London mayor Boris Johnson ending his term in 2016 – and considering Liew has a good working relationship with him – there are are more than several reasons for shareholders of Battersea to continue to retain him for another year as chairman. Before works such as the construction of the underground station and reconstruction of white chimneys take off, there is a lot of interaction with the London authorities, something that is not easy to cultivate.
Interest versus duty
Whatever the outcome of his Battersea chairmanship, there are at least two broad contentious issues here. His fiduciary responsibility and duty of care is one. Liew has taken that duty seriously and returned value for that which was entrusted to him. The second issue is his skill set. Life has obviously given Liew a good card, despite his losses.
Now, the question that arises is if he should wait if opportunities come, complete all ties with Battersea and S P Setia before embarking on new ventures that may not come knocking every day?
Every day, directors are offered various opportunities which conflict with their fiduciary duty. Often times, the fiduciary duty of directors, parallel to trustees, can be onerous. But the law is the law.
Yet, in many ways, Liew’s situation is parallel to a 1978 case of Queesland Mines Ltd v Hudson. The company Queensland Mines was an iron ore mining company that established as a joint venture between A Ltd and F Ltd. Hudson was the managing director of A Ltd and had negotiated with the Tasmanian government for mining licences.
Just before the licences were issued, Hudson’s joint-venture partner ran into financial difficulties and was unable to proceed with the venture.
Hudson resigned, taking the licences with him, and formed his own company. At considerable risk and expense, Hudson exploited the licences and earned profits. Queensland later filed a suit against Hudson for what it claimed was abusing his position to divert opportunties for himself.
However, the courts ruled that although the opportunity to make profits came to Hudson through his position at Queensland Mines and was something that the board was made aware of, Hudson was not in a position of conflict.
The position Hudson was prior to 1978 is the predicament Liew faces today. In both these cases, the contention boils down to timing and turn of events.
If one were to consider the big picture and balance out the events surrounding Liew in the last four years, should he not be allowed to exploit the resources due to him because of his skills and expertise? Or should he be shackled by time and ties, despite having added value to those he has been entrusted with? That would be unfair to Liew.
The legacy issue – passing the baton to the right person
AT the spanking new Eco World International Centre in the Gardens office block in Kuala Lumpur recently, a photo session was in progress. There was a light-hearted camaraderie in the air.
Tan Sri Liew Kee Sin and his top management were present, all of them in their white Nehru-collared shirt with green trimmings.
The photo session was as much symbolic as telling. It was as if to say: “These are the people I will need to grow Eco World Development Group Bhd (EWB).”
With a staff strength of about 800, about 300 of them were from Liew’s previous company S P Setia Bhd. Despite the market conditions working against the property sector and crushing issues confronting him, Liew was his usual warm, confident self.
A lot of this has to do with the people around him. Liew was named chairman in March and his right-hand man Datuk Voon Tin Yow, previously from S P Setia, joined the group officially as executive director.
A notable addition was newbie Liew Tian Xiong, 24, bright-eyed and smiling. He first surfaced in 2013 and has been seen as a proxy of his father. The presence of that young man has changed the landscape for Liew.
Passing the baton
It is a legacy issue. As one considers the property sector, a number of the country’s developers have in one way or another paved their sons and daughters to join Dad.
There is Datuk N.K. Tong, 47, group managing director of Bukit Kiara Properties Sdn Bhd who joined Datuk Alan Tong, who is known as Condo King for his work in Sunrise Bhd’s Mont’Kiara.
It was the elder Tong who saw the potential of the area, then Segambut and bought 100 acres there. Over the years, Mont’Kiara has progressed to become a thriving suburb and is currently considered as “an aspirational location” among the young.
Ken Holdings Bhd group managing director Sam Tan, 35, joined his father Datuk Kenny Tan. That was 2004, and he was 24.
Over at the Sunway group, Sarena Cheah, 40, the daughter of Sunway Bhd founder Tan Sri Dr Jeffrey Cheah and anointed successor, will assume full control of the group’s key property unit effective May 1. She may well have been the youngest to join Dad, when she was just 20, in 1995. She started out in the corporate finance and group internal audit divisions.
Passing the baton cannot be done overnight. There is a lot of planning to do. There is also the task of moulding and nurturing the right person for the job and looking over the shoulder of the young person to ensure they are constantly on the straight and narrow. If there are more than one, then there is the selection process of who will take up the position of annointed successor.
After the painful lesson of having lost S P Setia, Liew would clearly circumspect legacy and stewardship issues.
Which takes this story to next level.
Who is working for who?
The years of passing the baton may be painful, for both parties. This explains why the years of preparation are so crucial before the final moment of actually handing over the reins. In each of the three cases – N.K., Sam and Sarena – the children joined Dad and allowed themselves to be moulded.
Which takes us to the next question.
Is Tian Xiong working for Dad, or is Dad working for Tian Xiong?
Every parent wants the best for their children and Liew is no exception.
By joining the company now, Tian Xiong will have “the history” of the company. But will he be able to take on turbulent times?
He ponders: “It’s a pressure cooker here.”
If the staff do not accept him, he will never be the “real boss”, says Liew.
Of late, Liew has been keeping the young man closely by his side.
The rationale, says Liew is that, whatever Tian Xiong had learned in EWB in the last two years, he would take years to learn outside. So he better learn fast and learn now.
Stewardship
It is not just passing the baton. It is stewardship.
Says Tian Xiong after Liew steps out of the room: “Every night, from 9 to 10pm, he would nag me about how I dress, my tie, what time I get into office, how long I took for lunch and what I did after lunch. And other larger office and market issues.
“He also told me that I have to earn it, that it is not going to drop on me, that I have other siblings,” says Tian Xiong.
On whether he was pressured into returning to Malaysia from Melbourne where he graduated in 2012 with a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne, Australia, he says he returned on his own free will.
The young man first surfaced in 2013 as a buyer for a little known company Focal Aims Holdings Bhd. His emergence “caused a tsunami” because during that period, there was many questions as to Liew’s move.
Tian Xiong started out in corporate finance department for the first two years and is currently in corporate marketing.
S
P Setia's head honcho Liew resigns, looking forward to mentoring in Eco
World. Ten months after S P Setia Bhd unveiled its succession plan,
head honcho Tan Sri Liew Kee Sin has announced his intention to resign
as president and chief executive officer. Also quitting the ... Liew
would leave the property giant on April 30 while Teow would stay on
until July 31. Liew and Teow would continue to be involved in the
Battersea Power Station project in London until ..
Tan
Sri Liew Kee Sin, President Executive officer of SP Setia Berhad, with
the Malaysian Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2011 award
yesterday at the J W Marriot Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. Liew stands out for
his ...
SY Lau has made the country proud through talent, perseverance and hard work
Known globally as the WeChat Company, Tencent is the largest Internet service provider in Asia, with a market capitalisation (as of April 16, 2015) of US$193bil. It delivers value-added Internet, mobile/ telecom services and online advertising, in order to fulfil the strategic goal of providing users with “one-stop online lifestyle services”.
In 2006, when SY Lau (pic) joined Tencent as one of the senior management team, he focused on driving corporate growth with the specific mission of overseeing Tencent’s Online Media Group (OMG).
Today, OMG is one of the largest media companies in the world, with a portfolio that includes a matrix of online information and entertainment products.
We sit down to talk to the Star Speaker of this year’s Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) Conference.
Early days
I came from an average family and was raised by parents who believed strongly in traditional Chinese parenting. I am the eldest in the family with two younger sisters. My dad worked in the Nanyang Press for more than 25 years before he passed away at an early age due to illness. My mom was an excellent tailor, but I guess my sisters and I would remember her most as a disciplinarian who instilled the spirit of inquisitiveness and competitiveness within us during our formative years.
I studied in St John’s Institution before graduating with a major in Mass Communication from one of the local universities. Subsequently, after working for 10 years or so, I obtained my MBA from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and graduated from Harvard Business School upon completing their pinnacle AMP programme.
My first job was with McCann Erickson as a trainee account executive. How did I get the job? When I was in the final year of my undergraduate studies, I decided to conduct a field research on the Malaysian Advertising Industry using collections of communication theories. The research effort opened up doors for me to conduct field work with more than 10 leading advertising agencies in Malaysia.
A month before my graduation, I received six job offers from the top 4As agencies, and Noel Derby offered to pay RM1,000 to have my work translated into English for use by his company.
I chose McCann because of two reasons. I strongly believed in the motto of the company, Truth Well Told, and, more importantly, Ong Thiam Hong impressed me as a sincere business leader.
Did you go to China by accident or was that part of your plan for a long time? How did it all begin?
Well, it was both by accident and somewhat part of the plan. I was fluent in both English and Mandarin and I thought that if I had an opportunity to venture overseas, China would certainly be my first choice.
I remember when the opportunity came, I was already working with Leo Burnet. One day during lunch, I met Ong Thiam Hong and he told me McCann Hong Kong was in trouble.
One of their biggest international clients, Nestlé, had a new managing director for Greater China, and she was about to fire McCann. The new MD was Leong Ming Chee, a highly respected Nestlé veteran from Malaysia, with a remarkable track record in one of the most significant markets in Asia.
So, the McCann regional management team was frantically looking for a lead person to solve this problem. Apparently Ong had given my name to the regional team based on the fact I used to be one of the well-respected account leaders on the Nestlé account in Malaysia.
I spent the next three years stabilising and building the Nestlé business for McCann, by nurturing and building a professional local team from scratch.
We ended up winning more than a dozen new business accounts for both China and Hong Kong markets.
During this time I won the prestigious Milo Account for China and the media Agency of Record (AOR) , which was a first in Asia.
Lessons learned
China is a huge market, and I have seen many business professionals cutting corners here and there in the name of responding to pressure. Irrespective of industry, I think business people today could excel more if they were more conscious of focusing on leadership led by principles.
This reminds me of an advertising campaign that I saw recently on CNBC; I think it is for a bank from Singapore. The story goes... a father was bringing his son to a fun fair. As the father was purchasing tickets to enter the circus, the ticket seller said it would cost a dollar for an adult ticket and half price for children under four. The father then asked for two tickets. The ticket seller appeared to be shocked and asked curiously about the age of the boy, to which the father replied five. The ticket seller then said you could have told me he was four and I would have let you in without knowing. The father replied while holding his son’s hands, “Well, you may not have known, but he would have.”
Today, we live in a world where few people believe principles really do define who we are. It is my wish we have more principle-driven executives in the business world.
Leadership talks
In recent years, I have been honoured to be invited to deliver a number of speeches at some of the world’s leading universities. The main topics of the speeches explored the development of China’s digital economy environment and Tencent’s role in that development.
In 2012 at Stanford, taking into consideration that the number of Chinese web users had increased slowly since June 2008, I predicted that the demographic dividend (the organic growth brought by the growing number of Chinese Internet users) is going to be cashed out.
So, I proposed that targeted advertising placement and personalised content creation would be the key to break the bottleneck.
I believe that mobile media can not only help advertisers with product promotion, brand communication and customer relationship management, but also with the integration and optimisation of business models, which can become a new marketing platform in the long run. Future digital marketing will go Personal: shifting from media buying to user buying; go Richer: developing a technology-driven creative team and raising the proportion of developers; and go Offline: powering the integrated marketing model with O2O, and achieve closed loop marketing from advertising to sales.
At the Said Business School of Oxford University last year, I shared opportunities brought about by the growth of mobile Internet access across China; we see opportunities at three different levels: the consumer level, the industrial level, and then extending to the level of the whole economy.
Mobile Internet meets the pent-up demand of Chinese people for increased and upgraded levels of consumption, facilitates a long called-for industry transformation as well as expediting the liberalisation of the national economy.
In short, the Internet plays the role of an enabler to transform the new thinking of sustainable development into reality under what we call the New Normal.
The second-mover advantage triggered by the Internet industry can be summarised by examining two different perspectives: Industrial and Geographical.
Very simply put, the Internet has changed the lives of people in China in profound and meaningful ways.
It provides not only a new way of thinking and doing, but a feasible methodology for achieving China’s economic goals. The Internet is not just a resource; it is a means to turn dreams into economic reality.
Digital vision
I think Malaysia had the vision a long time ago, but unfortunately this vision was not implemented to the best of its potential. At the end of the day, the Internet today has become a basic infrastructure, and it should be discussed at a national policy level.
When I attended the recent BoAo Economic Forum, I had the privilege to meet and dine with Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
He patiently listened to my story of how the private sector got involved in formulating a national policy for Internet Plus in China.
As you know, one of the most significant characteristics in the development of China’s digital economy exists in its integrating with various industries at high speed.
In China, we call this procedure “Internet Plus” – Internet plus the retail industry, plus the real estate industry, plus the manufacturing industry, and of course, plus the media industry.
China has already revealed that Internet Plus will become a policy for the country alongside another national strategy for the manufacturing industry, that is “Made in China 2025”.
A government fund of 40 billion yuan (US$6.38bil) has already been put in place for investment in China’s emerging industries.
Meanwhile, the “Broadband China Project” is being carried out. It will help to make broadband coverage in China reach over 250 million users, and a newly-gained user number of 4G service hit 200 million by the end of 2015.
All of these provide guarantees for the development of the digital economy.
Tencent’s future
Since Internet companies are always impacted by the combined forces of technology and users, I want to talk about some opportunities that I see as solid and realistic here...
Connecting the last billion
First of all, it took 20 years for the Internet to really take hold in China, turning 47.9% of the total population into Internet users.
For the other half of the population who are not yet using the Internet, a lot of them are elderly, young children, or those who cannot afford the necessary equipment.
To plug those people into the Internet world with easy and inexpensive access will be our major mission in the near term.
I think mobile phones are the most viable option to achieve this goal. Through what Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab calls, “connecting the last billion”, I believe Tencent will be capable of enabling the development of China even more.
Media of the ‘Mega Web’
Actually, I call this idea of a fully inter-connected world “the world of the Mega Web”, in which the role of the media will greatly expand. The media is already connecting users to content, and it will further connect us to many more things; more devices, more context, more people.
Media will expand to touch almost everything, everywhere. When connectivity expands to that level, singularity will be triggered. The information that we have will become “intellectual” as Big Data accumulates, interconnects and becomes available to even more devices. This expanded access to intelligence is the basic information we act upon, machines act upon and entire smart cities act upon.
The future: connect, call out, make the whole community answer
When data itself becomes both interpretive and predictive, a judgment like “Something needs to be done to improve this situation” will more frequently be made by media rather than people, and more insightfully than we can imagine now. Once everyone is inter-connected, we will be able to reach out to every member of the society, in every remote part of the globe, and call for collective actions to solve problems both locally and globally.
Currently, our mission is to support the Internet Plus Action Plan of China. We are ready to cooperate with the partners and potential partners coming from different vertical industries on a strategic level, so that together we can provide better O2O commerce, online payment experiences and smart livelihood services for our users. We see opportunity around the world, whether this is for our own apps like WeChat or for partnership and investment in Western businesses.
I think WeChat is possibly the most recognisable brand for those in the US or UK.
Tencent also supports other famous brands around the world in markets like gaming and social. Companies like Epic Games and Riot Games are owned by Tencent, while we have our own gaming IP that is successful in China.
To see SY in action on April 21, visit www.marketingmagazine.com.my/cmo20015
Tencent released its Q1 results earlier this month, including the latest monthly active user figures for its various social platforms.
As the chart above
shows, Tencent’s platforms have attracted a huge share of the world’s
social media users, even if the majority of those users are still based
in China.
Despite this geographic focus, Tencent now accounts for 3 of the
world’s top 5 platforms, driven by the continuing growth of QQ, Qzone
and WeChat:
Qzone alone now accounts for around 40% of the world’s social media users.
Moreover, the impressive growth of WeChat (Weixin), both in terms of
its active user numbers as well as the platform’s functionality,
suggests that Tencent is still far from reaching its peak.
Is it only a matter of time before the rest of the world joins the Tencent family?
Tencent
Holdings Ltd. (700) faces the prospect of losing its position as Asia's
most-valuable Internet company this year after Alibaba Group Holding
Ltd. (BABA) goes public. The Shenzhen-based company isn't going to ...
China's
e-commerce giant Alibaba made its debut successfully on the New York
Stock Exchange Friday, becoming the world's second-largest Internet
company after Google. The complicated structure of Alibaba and the hype
by mainstream media ... Instead, China's local enterprises such as
Tencent and Alibaba will have more opportunities to acquire leadership
in the new round of competition. It is only a matter of time for the
development of the Chinese Internet to ...
IFCA Property Development Management Solution is a fully integrated Business Management Solution designed specifically for the Property industry. With a culmination of more than 20 years experience, IFCA Property Development Software embraces comprehensive functions, features and adopts the latest ICT tools that are poised to help elevate your Business to a paradigm shift. IFCA Software™ provides a complete solution for property developers to best manage their project development from the initial phases until key collection and beyond. It has complete built-in functionalities to ensure proper recording of each sale and its subsequent billing and administration. The software is saliently focused on its scope of capabilities. It supports multi-company, multi-projects and multi property types. It tracks and measures the effectiveness of sales campaigns and sales staff performances. It also supports user-definable payment scheme and loan financing. Headquarters IFCA MSC Bhd Wisma IFCA, No 19, Jalan PJU 1/42A, Dataran Prima, 47301 Petaling Jaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. marketing@ifca.com.my www.ifcasoftware.com
To find the world’s top-performing software company, you have to go somewhere that few would think to look for winning investments in the technology industry -- Malaysia’s capital city of Kuala Lumpur. Better known as the home of state-owned energy giant Petroliam Nasional Bhd., it’s also where shares of IFCA MSC Bhd., a maker of cloud-based software for property companies, have jumped 14-fold over the past 12 months.
IFCA’s earnings are surging just as fast as its stock after the company took an 80 percent market share among Malaysian developers and began expanding into China, where early adopters of its sales tracking and payment processing software include billionaire Wang Jianlin’s Dalian Wanda Group Co. IFCA Chief Executive Officer Ken Yong Keang Cheun (pic above) predicts that the world’s second-largest economy will become the biggest market for his $198 million software firm by 2018.
“The growth in China is incredible,” Yong said in an interview at his office in Petaling Jaya, a suburb near Kuala Lumpur. He plans to double the number of IFCA offices in the country to 16 by the end of this year.
IFCA has about 100 clients in China, where the National Bureau of Statistics estimates there were more than 90,000 real estate companies as of 2013. The country last month announced measures to make buying and selling a home cheaper, giving a boost to developers as authorities seek to cushion a slump in the property market that has weighed on economic growth.
The stock rose as much as 1.5 percent before closing unchanged at 1.35 ringgit in Kuala Lumpur, near its April 9 record.
GST Boost
Wanda uses IFCA’s software for its cost systems, bidding and capital leases, Huang Chunlei, an assistant to the president of Dalian Wanda and deputy general manager of the company’s IT department, said via e-mail.
In Malaysia, 800 of the biggest 1,000 property developers are its customers, Yong said. The company’s software sales in the country surged 76 percent in 2014 as a new goods and services tax prompted companies to upgrade their software to comply with the change. Profit jumped 12-fold last year to 21.1 million ringgit ($5.8 million) and Yong said he’s “confident” earnings will climb to another record in 2015.
“The good thing about the software is that it is niche for property developers,” Chow Yuh Seng, general manager for IT at Mah Sing Group Bhd., Malaysia’s fifth-biggest developer by market value, said in an interview.
Shares of IFCA have surged 1,321 percent over the past 12 months, the most among software companies worldwide with a market value of at least $150 million, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That compares with an average gain of 46 percent for global peers.
Malaysia Tech
“There was a strong theme for IT and software-related development companies last year, and this year is a continuation,” said Danny Wong, chief executive officer of Kuala Lumpur-based Areca Capital Sdn., which owns shares in IFCA. “The shift to Internet and technology is the new way of doing things.”
IFCA isn’t the only Malaysian software company with booming sales. Grabtaxi Holdings Pte., a mobile application that assigns cabs to nearby commuters, has grown to become Southeast Asia’s largest taxi-booking mobile application, luring investments from Temasek Holdings Pte., Singapore’s state-owned investment company, and SoftBank Corp., the Japanese wireless carrier controlled by billionaire Masayoshi Son.
While Malaysia isn’t known as a hub for technology companies, the government has tried to support the industry since 1996, when it introduced the Multimedia Super Corridor, a special zone to attract technology investments and multinational companies.
Chasing Shares
The success of IFCA’s business may already be reflected in the share price, according to Ang Kok Heng, the chief investment officer of Phillip Capital Management Sdn., which manages $428 million, said by phone in Kuala Lumpur. Shares are valued at 30 times reported earnings, versus 17 times for the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“We normally don’t chase a stock,” Ang said.
IFCA plans to boost recurring income by introducing a software rental service that would make its offerings more affordable for customers via monthly subscriptions, Yong said. The firm also plans to set up a property listing website by year-end.
IFCA’s profit will probably jump at an annual rate of 228 percent over the next three years, according to Nigel Foo, a Kuala Lumpur-based analyst at CIMB Group Holdings Bhd., Malaysia’s second largest bank by assets.
“The property sector is a rich man’s industry with high risks, and it’s capital intensive,” Yong said. “People are willing to pay for solutions.”
Incubator: The Yongsan startup incubator centre in Seoul. The government has poured billions into startups, in line with the president’s push to foster a ‘creative economy’ that would move beyond the traditional manufacturing base. — AFP
SEOUL: As an engineering major at Seoul’s Yonsei University, Yoon Ja-young was perfectly poised to follow the secure, lucrative and socially prized career path long-favoured by South Korea’s elite graduates.
But the idea of corporate life in an industrial giant like Samsung, however well-remunerated, simply didn’t appeal so instead Yoon joined the swelling ranks of young Koreans looking to make their mark in the volatile world of tech startups.
In her final year at college, Yoon, now 26, created a Pinterest-style image-sharing app, StyleShare, for fashion-conscious young women.
“I was always into fashion, and there were so many moments that I wanted to grab someone on the street and ask what is that pretty dress or pair of shoes she’s wearing,” Yoon said.
“All the fashion magazines only talked about expensive brand clothes, which didn’t help ordinary people like me,” she said.
The app became a hit and now has more than one million users.
Yoon said her parents initially panicked when it became clear the app was more than a fun hobby and she wasn’t going to get a “real” job. “But they soon became strong supporters,” she said.
Her father, a loyal LG employee for two decades, even offered some of his retirement savings to help kick-start the business.
For her parents’ generation nothing matched the stability and prestige that came with a job in one of the family-run conglomerates, or “chaebols”, that dominate the national economy.
The likes of Samsung, LG and Hyundai remain magnets for many of the country’s brightest graduates. But with the global economy in low gear and the smartphone era opening new doors, an increasing number like Yoon are forsaking a rigid career structure to try tech entrepreneurship.
The number of new “venture firms” – high-risk, largely tech-related enterprises – stood at 30,053 last month, according to the state-run industry tracker Venturein.
That figure was almost double the 15,401 registered in 2009 – a milestone year when the first iPhone went on sale in South Korea and brought the app-making industry with it.
Under President Park Geun-hye, the South Korean government has poured billions of dollars into startups, in line with her push to foster a “creative economy” that would move beyond the country’s traditional manufacturing base.
“There is an astounding amount of money, from both the private and state sectors, flowing around in the market right now,” said Jang Sun-hyang, investment director at Mashup Angels, a Seoul-based startup incubator.
“The word ‘startup’ didn’t even register in the public consciousness in, say, 2011. Now it’s one of the hottest buzzwords among college kids,” Jang said.
According to government data, the pool of private and public investment available to tech startups stood at 2.5 trillion won (RM8.4bil) in 2014, up 62% from a year ago.
South Korea’s hyper-wired populace also offers a fertile ground for tech businesses – most households have broadband access and 80% of people own smartphones.
More than 60% of smartphone users – the highest ratio in the world – use ultra-fast 4G service that allows users to download a feature-length film in a few minutes.
Google is set to open “Campus Seoul” this year to help train budding startup firms and facilitate their expansion, while Samsung and LG are also boosting investment in startups.
As the number of other incubator centres popping up offering office space, business advice and potential investment opportunities rise, the capital is drawing comparisons with US tech haven Palo Alto in Silicon Valley.
But challenges remain. The relatively small domestic market means successful start-ups have to look overseas if they want to keep growing.
Crossing language and cultural barriers can be daunting, even for established firms like Kakao Talk, the South’s top mobile chat app with 48 million global users which has struggled to expand into Southeast Asia.
And the consequences of failure are high in a society where experience counts for little if there is no successful outcome. — AFP
If
Facebook's move to buy the startup in a cash-and-stock deal valued as
high as US$19 billion (S$24 billion) is any indication, the
California-based WhatsApp may have hit the mark. The firm founded by
former Yahoo ..
ENTREPRENEURS are naturally protective of their ideas. Understandably, they keep their ideas to themselves to avoid having them stolen.
Don't keep it to yourself Tell your idea to as many people as possible and seek their opinions. Talk with people you trust and whose opinion you value.
While it is important to protect proprietary information from being copied, entrepreneurs can also gain valuable insight and perspective from feedback before investing heavily in a product that only looks good conceptually.
A startup’s journey is very much akin to running a series of experiments before it finds a path to sustainable growth. A product or an idea should be subjected to validation before it can be tweaked and scaled up to form a viable company.
And what better way to get some form of early validation than to share your ideas with like-minded people for constructive input.
While entrepreneurs are more willing to share and discuss their ideas these days, this culture of sharing is still new in the local scene.
Seasoned entrepreneurs have found bouncing ideas off other people to be more helpful than harmful. Apart from getting feedback on their ideas, they note that more often than not, sharing connects them with other people who can help fill the gaps and turn ideas into reality.
Additionally, sharing ideas and resources could also help accelerate innovation in a field.
For example, American electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors recently announced that it will be making its patents available to other companies that want to use them.
Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk explained that the move would help advance electric vehicle technology.
Elon
Musk, CEO of Tesla, unveils the dual engine chassis of the new Tesla 'D'
model at the Hawthorne Airport October 09, 2014 in Hawthorne,
California.
“Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day,” Musk had said.
By allowing the use of its patents, industry observers note that Tesla will be clearing the way for more collaboration with other electric car makers to develop new technologies and would enable the company to take a leadership role in developing standards for the industry and its value chain.
Entrepreneurs are increasingly being encouraged to share and collaborate to innovate and build better products.
And a beauty about being in the present time is that there are more ways than ever to tap into a support network that can provide startups with a platform to share and build on ideas and resources.
Some of these platforms include spaces such as incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces. Apart from being just a shared working station, incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces have evolved into collaborative work spaces that provide entrepreneurs with the opportunity to meet and collaborate on ideas with a host of other people to innovate better solutions.
Additionally, there are various forums as well as startup events and programmes that provide a conducive environment for entrepreneurs to network, share ideas and work together. There are also a number of agencies that are targeted at guiding entrepreneurs with developing their ideas.
Most entrepreneurs still worry about letting on too much on their ideas. But if they can overcome that fear, entrepreneurs stand to gain much from collaborating with one another.
Take advantage of the entrepreneurial community brought together by such platforms to innovate and rather than develop your ideas in silos.
■ This is the final article in a 10-part tie-up between Metrobiz and the Malaysian Global Innovation & Creative Centre (MaGIC) to explore startup ecosystems.
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again- this time more intelligently.”
— Henry Ford
Startups can learn much when they do not succeed
Success stories have always been a source of great encouragement for struggling entrepreneurs. It seems easy enough to romanticise accomplishments.
After all, there seems to be no shortage of stories on budding entrepreneurs who worked hard to develop great products that were later acquired for hefty price tags.
Perseverance pays: Grove says he learnt the value of persistence when the bursting of the dotcom bubble drastically altered the company’s fortunes in 1999.
In reality, the path of entrepreneurship involves plenty of speed bumps, potholes and dead ends.
Entrepreneurs who have made it often recount how they lacked time for anything other than work, how they had to fumble through everything on their own and how some of their ventures failed before they became successful.
Additionally, entrepreneurs are making a big bet by putting their money into something that has no promise of returns on top of not having a secure income for what can be extended periods.
But serial entrepreneurs persevere through their failures.
Patrick Grove, co-founder and chief executive officer of Catcha Group, understands the importance of picking up the pieces and persisting after a failed attempt.
Grove established Catcha Group, which holds a portfolio of online assets, in 1999 and had plans to list the group on the Singapore Exchange the following year.
But shortly before the exercise, the Nasdaq crashed and brought the end of the dotcom bubble.
Subsequently, Grove and his partners were saddled with debts of US$1.5mil (RM5.2mil).
Teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, he slashed his headcount, diversified the business and persisted.
Grove refers to that period as “the school of hard knocks.”
But in the end, Catcha got its groove back and Grove went on to list four online companies.
“I learnt the value of persistence… because we were humbled early on, we don’t forget that,” Grove said in an interview with an Australian publication, adding that it is alright if entrepreneurs fumble.
MyTeksi technical head Aaron Gill is likewise no stranger to failure. Before joining the Malaysian startup that has grown regionally, Gill had three failed ventures under his belt.
His ventures had started off with ideas good enough to obtain government pre-seed funding from the Multimedia Development Corp and Cradle Fund. But the companies did not survive.
However, Gill says that his failed attempts taught him a lot about running a company and managing a team.
Additionally, he learnt the importance of being focused when running a business and the need for structure in the face of expansion.
Grove and Gill are only two of many more entrepreneurs who have encountered hardships before finding that one successful startup. The road taken by entrepreneurs is often long, winding and certainly stressful.
But fear of failure shouldn’t stop entrepreneurs from taking risks. There are rewards to be reaped from thinking outside the box and pushing boundaries.
The lessons learned from failures can be brutal. But taken the right way, these lessons can bring you one step closer to success.
Entrepreneurs describe themselves as people who hop from one failed business to another until they hit a jackpot. To them, failure is a part of their experiences.
■ This is the ninth article in a 10-part tie-up between Metrobiz and the Malaysian Global Innovation & Creative Centre (MaGIC) to explore startup ecosystems.
Taking failure as a norm would be a major cultural shift in India, where high-achieving children are expected to take steady jobs at recognised job
India learns to 'fail fast' as tech startup culture takes root 
Rightways said...
