Thoughts from "Emerging Tech and Venture Investment Trends in Asia"
On 3 March 2010 I attended a talk made possible by NUS Entrepreneurship Centre, titled Emerging Tech and Venture Investment Trends in Asia. I thought it was a good talk and I had fun networking and listening to the panel. I apologize for the lack of photos, but the panelists are:
- Rebecca Fannin - Journalist whose writings appear in Forbes and The Huffington Post, among others. She has a book titled Silicon Dragon which I haven't read, but will. Her expertise is on entrepreneurship and venture capital in emerging markets.
- Michel Birnbaum (Genral Partner of iGlobe Partners) and Jeffrey Chi (Managing Director, Vickers Venture Partners) - Both are venture capitalists who have extensive experience in Asia.
- Neo Kok Beng - Co-Founder and CEO of AWAK Technologies. He shared his experience developing the wearable dialysis device as an entrepreneur in Singapore (AWAK stands for Automated Wearable Artificial Kidney). He brought the device to the event and it was impressively small.
- Saeed Amidi, CEO of Plug and Play Technology Center incubator based in Silicon Valley. Plug and Play has been approved to setup an incubator in Singapore and they are also opening another satellite in Kuala Lumpur. Rather than bringing in a foreign business to be implemented in a country, Saeed believes it is more effective to have local entrepreneurs working on local solutions.
- There are a few areas where the venture capitalists are excited about: clean tech, mobile, geolocation, social gaming, and biotech.
- Views on mobile technology are very bullish, particularly with smart devices like the iPhone -- they will change our lives forever.
- Digital content was talked about, especially from the angle of distribution. How content, e.g. a video show, can be distributed to different devices (TV, mobile phone, computer, streamed, downloaded, etc.).
- Singapore is a great location to start a business as the government is very supportive to entrepreneurs. This situation is different from, say, India and China, where the government doesn't proactively take actions to grow the startup industry.
- In China, the telco operators have very strong clout. They take actions to ensure their revenue stream. For example, they can order phone manufacturers to have wi-fi disabled, even though the phone has wi-fi capability outside of China.
- Rebecca Fannin just came back from a tour of India. She thinks the tech startup industry in India is a step behind that of China.
As an Indonesian in the tech industry, however, I wish there were more attention towards Indonesia. From the event, I gathered that Indonesia was still under the radar at this point. Not a lot of investors realize the potential and the size of the market, even though user involvement in Facebook and Twitter has shown how big it is and how receptive the market is towards new technology. I know RIM is already a believer, but Indonesia right now is like America Ferrera in Ugly Betty -- once you're past the braces and glasses you can go from this to this.
It's easy to see why Singapore is the technology hub of the region. Besides a supportive government which brings in knowledgeable investors and incubators from overseas, Singapore also has a good climate, good infrastructure and efficient visa processing for foreigners. As for Indonesia, I honestly don't think the government can be relied on much, so it's up to the Indonesian players to really step up their game and make foreign investors take notice.
Why foreign investors? Because let's face it, there is little expertise domestically and little interest from local investors. There is lack of forums bringing investors and entrepreneurs together. This article (in Indonesian) shows the difficulties in finding funding for Tokopedia.com (a popular Indonesian ecommerce site) due to lack of knowledge and interest from local investors. An incubator like Plug And Play in Indonesia can help so much in passing the know-how and connecting entrepreneurs with various funding sources. The more money that flows in, the more entrepreneurs jumping in and the more innovations coming through. And the cycle becomes larger and larger.
So, let's get to work!
