and consumer acceptance Power providers slash prices as live auctions emerge

INFOGRAPHIC WHERE SINGAPOREAN CONSUMERS STAND IN ASIA’S RETAIL TRENDS

Power providers slash prices as live auctions emerge

The operator of Singapore’s wholesale electricity market, Energy Market Company (EMC), wanted to cut the time it took companies to find their electricity retailer, which was then up to two months. Since launching its procurement portal PowerSelect in 2018, that time has been slashed to just 15 minutes.

Since the launch of PowerSelect, EMC has successfully conducted over 50 live auctions for businesses in the manufacturing, transportation and storage, accommodation, and food services industries, shared Liang Ching Tan, senior vice president for business development at EMC.

“On average, these businesses enjoyed savings of about 30% off the regulated electricity tariff (based on prevailing tariff rates at time of auction) when they procured electricity through PowerSelect. Compared against the businesses’ reserve prices (or starting bids for the auctions), the amount of additional savings ranged between 3% and 15%,” he said in an exclusive interview.

PowerSelect allows businesses to shortlist retailers based on their packages as well as their track record of performance. After the round of shortlisting, the retailer that offers the most competitive price in PowerSelect’s 15-minute auction ultimately wins the contract. He recalled a customer in the F&B sector which conducted a live auction for a Discount Off Tariff plan. The live auction allowed the customer to secure a final discount of 28% off the regulated tariff, which was higher than the 25% rate it had with its incumbent retailer.

“Most businesses prefer fixed price plans as there is certainty in their electricity spending which is helpful for budgeting purposes. They usually compare 12- and 24-month contracts, and decide based on the prevailing fixed rates. In the current market situation, 24-month fixed rates are lower for

EMC has conducted over 50 live auctions.

businesses,” Tan said.

Most of the time, the electricity procurement process is still very manual and time-consuming—businesses contact electricity retailers individually for quotes and then try to make sense of the various electricity packages which often come with detailed and complex terms and conditions. PowerSelect condenses the procurement processes in its platform by housing data from the wholesale and futures electricity markets, with an in-house team that assists businesses in understanding and navigating the contract terms and conditions of the different electricity retailers and advises them in areas like the reserve price (or starting bid) for the auctions as well as the contract durations.

In the future, EMC is looking to expand the PowerSelect platform as it has observed that businesses are increasingly looking for other energy-related products and services. “Whilst there were plans to roll out additional, value-added services on PowerSelect at later stages, we intend to bring forward our plans to better support our customers. We are in the process of evaluating our options for PowerSelect,” Tan said.

With the consolidation of Singapore’s retail market, EMC is expecting more differentiated packages from the remaining retailers, such as green electricity packages. This will increase as consumers’ awareness levels and expectations also rise over time.

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Spacetech firm Aliena strengthens satellites

George-Cristian Potrivitu Bocanet and Mark Lim. ˘ ˛

Banking on the broadening spacetech industry worldwide, spacetech startup Aliena is manufacturing cost-effective technologies that enable satellites to manoeuvre smoothly in space whilst bearing in mind the various constraints, including limited power for the satellites and the real-estate set aside for propulsion systems.

“Aliena’s product line therefore includes engines that are small in form-factor, easily integrable onboard satellites, operate at unprecedented low powers, and are extremely fuel-efficient,” said Mark Lim, CEO and co-founder of Aliena.

Aliena is also taking advantage of the growing accessibility of satellites to companies, where one of the main interests is in deployment of smaller commercial satellites in space at lower altitudes.

The startup’s systems give satellites longer lifetimes, compared to conventional thrusters that are prone to failure after extended periods of operation. Lim explained that satellites are usually short-lived as the effects of the atmospheric drag are not compensated for.

“The business was started in August 2018 when the founders assessed that there was a real market need for advanced propulsion systems that could allow for the company to address operational requirements that would empower and enable businesses to thrive,” Lim said.

In November 2019, Aliena raised $1.5m in seed funding, led by Cap Vista, the strategic investment arm of Singapore’s Defence Science and Technology Agency. It was also attended by 500 Startups and Australian VC Paspalis.

“In general, it’s difficult to raise funds as a ‘space startup’—because the runway before revenue generation kicks in may be long, and the high capital investment required for space qualification facilities also adds to the risk that investment entities have to take during early-stage investment,” Lim said.

Aliena plans to use the funds to commission a private jet propulsion test facility and satellite integration/ assembly centre in Changi. The company will also launch a 3U nanosatellite platform in space for the first in-orbit demonstration, in partnership with Singapore-based space tech firm NuSpace.

“Aliena is already hard at work with setting up their jet propulsion test facility. This will in turn set them up nicely for a successful in-orbit demonstration. Thereafter, with proven space heritage, they would make a compelling case for all commercial small satellites to re-think propulsion, and be ready to take the space propulsion sector by storm,” said Daniel Tan, head of investment at Cap Vista.

New telco startup offers eSIMs

Southeast Asian travellers often complain about long queues on

SIM cards stall at airports and know that it can’t always be reliable, particent markets. These still need to be bought outside or shipped, and pocket Wi-Fi devices do not always provide a stable alternative connection.

In response to these issues, Airalo has partnered with a number of telcos to provide ‘embedded SIMs’ (eSIMs). Instead of inserting a SIM chip for every telco provider, they can embed a rewritable chip inside a mobile device.

Buyers can freely choose a data plan and download the telco’s information into the eSIM chip, and the platform allows 15 eSIMs to be stored on an eSIMenabled iOS phone. Bahadir Ozdemir

“This enables a massive advantage for the traveller as they can keep updating the SIM to connect to local networks using the networks’ own connectivity plans. As we are partnering up with local telcos globally, the eSIMs we sell on our site will hold the same price as what you would pay from the operator’s website or from the stalls in airports,” explained Bahadir Ozdemir, CEO and co-founder of Airalo.

He also noted that eSIMs have less impact on the environment. A physical SIM card has a CO2 footprint of 21 grams, which includes the energy and water consumed in production. Meanwhile, the envelope and paper insert that accompanies each card adds another 10-15 grams of CO2.

Another opportunity up-for-grabs for Airalo is the fact that providers are also looking to include eSIMs in their product roster, Ozdemir added. Airalo obtained 146 eSIMs across the globe to its roster within the first six months of operation.

Airalo secured $2.31m (US$1.65m) in a seed funding round led by Venture Capital firm Sequoia last October.

Buying film/TV content rights can be a long and painful process for producers and distributors, involving a lot of time and money, with face-to-face meetings and intense contract negotiations. It poses a higher risk of losing money as some distributors do not pay what they owe to content creators.

To solve this pain point, Riaz Mehta, the co-founder and CEO of AllRites, created a platform that can condense the month-long process into a single day. A content creator or distributor can list their film/TV shows on the platform by uploading a poster, trailer, or an episode along with synopsis and rights availability information.

Buyers search for content by genre, language, or other filters. They can check out trailers, screeners and rights availability information. The deal can be negotiated with the seller through the platform and a contract is electronically signed. AllRites will then take

AllRites expedites the film rights acquisition

a commission of up to 10% of the deal from the seller.

Compared to the traditional means, a film or TV series distributor approaches a potential buyer though an office meeting or at a trade fair. The distributor usually brings a physical catalogue of 100 film and TV shows and picks a few of them for pitching. Once the buyer expresses interest, the distributor provides more materials via email and may discuss the availability of the desired rights and determine the price. Then a contract is issued, which goes back and forth between the parties until it is finally signed. Once all of that is done, the distributor will then send materials through a third-party service. All of this takes a minimum of four weeks to as long as six to 12 months.

In January 2020, AllRites secured $1.54m (US$1.1m) from a seed round led by Australian VC Artesian. for them as there were not a lot of VCs who were familiar with the media industry.

“The content industry is on the cusp of major disruption,” said Artesian’s managing partner Tim Heasley and director Melody Zhang. “AllRites is targeting the disruption of long-standing inefficiencies and a lack of transparency in the large and growing industry of video content production.” Riaz Mehta

StaffAny streamlines HR and admin tasks

StaffAny team A dministrators and human resources managers often do timesheet consolidation manually, which can cause a lot of errors and headaches for them at the end of every month. To solve this pain point, software-as-a-service StaffAny offers a platform that automates all of these tasks.

StaffAny claims to help such managers reduce work dedicated to scheduling and time tracking, and reduce the cost of operations by minimising time theft and overtime spend. In addition, it also automates end-of-month timesheet consolidations.

This is especially helpful for businesses

who have workers paid on an hourly basis. “Operational processes like scheduling and timesheet management were painful, prone to errors and it was hard to better the performance of this hourly workforce,” said Eugene Ng, co-founder and head of growth at StaffAny.

Employees may use the platform to clockin, clock-out and submit requests for leave. Workers will receive notifications when there are changes with their schedules, as well as reminders when their shifts are coming up. The platform allows HR managers to track employees on leave, and which part timers are available in real time. It can also manage overtime and hours to stay in compliance with labour law requirements. At the end of every month, StaffAny will be the one to compute the emlpoyees’ salaries based on the number of hours they worked.

In August 2019, the company raised $1m in a seed funding round led by FreakOut Holdings. They also had angel investors such as HRtech Niwa Capital CEO Kenji Niwa and live chat software company Zopim; as well as co-founders Lim Qing Ru, Kwok Yang Bin and Royston Tay.

Ng stated that they will use the proceeds to further strengthen their products.

Bunker operators are often burdened with the frequent changes in the ships’ arrival times, and the complexities of the types and quantities of fuel needed for each vessel. For this, maritime solutions startup Claritecs has created a platform that streamlines data in the bunkering segment.

According to Claritecs’ co-founders, CEO Wong Hong Lee, CMO Marianne Choo, and CPO Russell Gomes, their core service is ‘BunkerMaestro’, a software-as-a-service platform which taps on real-time data sets to monitor movements of ocean-going ships planning to call at their port for fuel or cargo operations. They do this by using experience-based algorithms and predictive analytics, matching predicted

Claritecs automates bunkering

vessel arrival times, bunker tanker availability, fuel type, and other relevant data. The system will also suggest an alternative bunker tanker when ships are faced with scheduling conflicts.

Any changes in the vessel arrival time can be done through the platform, which sends notifications to each of the parties involved. “Our BunkerMaestro solution has been proven to increase work efficiency by up to 75%,” the co-founders said.

In June 2019, Claritecs secured $850,000 in a pre-series A funding round led by INNOPORT, the corporate venture capital unit of the ship owner and ship management company Bernhard Schulte. It was also attended by a private angel investor from the Singapore maritime industry.

“There has been an increase in fuel types and blends to comply with international regulations on sulphur content limits in fuels, increasing the complexities of scheduling a bunker tanker to deliver fuels to meet changing demand,” said Haymon Sinapius, investment manager at INNOPORT. Claritecs’ founders and Innoport

How DEXTF is shaking up the asset management scene

Digital asset management platform DEXTF hopes to revolutionise the industry by reducing the cost of opening a hedge fund, and paving the way for the rise of non-traditional asset classes such as wine, art, and IP rights.

“Today if you are a new asset manager, you need at least $100-200m in assets under management in order to be viable. There are entire asset classes that are just the preserve of either ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWI) or institution investors because they require high nominal investment amounts,” said co-founder and CEO Mario Aquino.

DEXTF’s platform halves the traditional custody, compliance, and back-office costs, and can even reduce expenditure by as much as 20 times. It leverages distributed ledger technology (DLT), which tokenises both traditional and non-traditional assets. In turn, these assets can be made available in smaller amounts rather than the high-cost investments available traditionally.

Using the platform is easy, and akin to simply filling out a Google sheet: a fund manager can easily create a hedge fund and specify the assets which the fund will carry. On the other side, an investor can sign up for a fund with just a few clicks and track where their investments are going. This means that investors using DEXTF’s platform no longer need to transfer ownership of their assets to a third party when entering the hedge fund scene, thus allowing for more accountability and transparency, and making investments safer.

“The asset management industry still largely relies on legacy infrastructure that was built over half a century ago and is highly inefficient, with multiple layers of intermediaries, agents, and in some cases archaic systems that still rely on paper and faxes,” noted Aquino.

In November, the company raised $639,110 (US$460,000) in its seed round, led by LuneX Ventures and SGInnovate. The company plans to use the funding for the development and launch of their alpha product.

“Digital assets remain an area of sustained interest for institutional investors and asset managers, yet many see the current investment infrastructure as inadequate. There’s lot of potential in the development of this proprietary infrastructure and protocol by DEXTF, which could provide a solution to a significant industry problem,” said Pang Heng Soon, SGInnovate’s head of venture building. DEXTF co-founders