ScandAsia Singapore - December 2016

DEC 2016

Spotify:

Swedish music streaming service conquers Asia

BUSINESS

PEOPLE

COMMUNITY

START-UPS

Swedish FinTech delegation

Ambasssador Dorte Bech Vizard

Nordic Christmas bazaars

PlayLab games company

21/2/2016 – 20/2/2020

An informal night about Danish expats in South East Asia

16 DEC 20

Past Events

: Spotify

music Swedisghservice streamninquers Asia co

UNITY COMM ESS BUSIN

FinTech Swedish n delegatio

PEOPLE

dor Ambasssa Vizard Dor te Bech

Nordic as bazaars Christm

PS START-Ues gam PlayLab company

Your FREE ScandAsia Magazine in Singapore ScandAsia is the only magazine that covers all the Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish residents in Singapore.

We also publish a ScandAsia magazine in China, Thailand, and the rest of South East Asia.

Get your own FREE copy: scandasia.com Publisher : ScandAsia Publishing Co., Ltd. 211 Soi Prasert Manukitch 29 Prasert Manukitch Road Chorakae Bua, Lad Prao Bangkok 10230, Thailand Tel. +66 2 943 7166-8, Fax: +66 2 943 7169

By Johannes Kjems

O

n Monday 7 November people were gathered in the Danish Seamen’s Church in Singapore.

The theme of there gathering were Danish expats abroad, specifically in Asia.

Pastor Kirsten Eistrup welcomed the guest, and soon after the Danish ambassador to Singapore, Dorte Bech Vizard, said a few words about the importance of Denmark maintaining its relationship with its citizens living in foreign countries.

The main presentation of the night was given

by Anne Marie Dalgaard, Secretar y General of Danes Worldwide. Danes Worldwide was founded in 1919 and is a non-profit organisation.

They provide guidance for Danes living abroad and advocate for their civil rights in Denmark.

In cooperation with Copenhagen Goodwill, Danes Worldwide has carried out a survey among Danish expats to analyse strengths and weaknesses in the way Danish expats are treated by the Danish government after a long absence from the country.

The information gathered has been put into a report that was presented at the event.

The report also brings a dull realisation to the table.

78 percent of expat Danes contributing to the survey, disagrees that Denmark is doing enough to retain Danish expatriate’s attachment to Denmark – or as Dane living in Australia told Danes Worldwide: “I have seen nothing on the part of Denmark that even resembled an effort to hang on to us. We don’t exist anymore.”

The repor ts covers Danish expats in the entire world, but the debate especially sparked the interest of Danes with Singaporean spouses and the other way around. It would seem like there is a lot of confusion regarding Denmark’s citizenship policies. With both the ambassador and another representative of the Danish government present, people could let out their frustration regarding said confusion. Jan Lund from DABS did a good job controlling the debate and the impression was that a number of people left with their questions answered.

Editor-in-Chief : Gregers A.W. Møller gregers@scandmedia.com Managing Editor: Joakim Persson Joakim@scandmedia.com Advertising : Frank Leong frank@scandasia.com Finn Balslev finn@scandmedia.com Graphic Designer : Peerapol Meesuwan Peerapol@scandmedia.com Distribution : Wanvisa Rattanaburi wanvisa@scandmedia.com Printing : Inthanon Interprint Co., Ltd.

December 2016

ScandAsia Community

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3 6

7

Danish Worldwide event Danish Seamen’s Church Christmas Bazaar Norwegian, Swedish Christmas Bazaar

Mr. Per Bolund

Sweden’s Minister for Financial Markets leads FinTech delegation

6 Santa Claus

3

ScandAsia Business

11

12 Spotify

Swedish music streaming provider conquers Asia

Mrs. Dorte Bech Vizard

Denmark’s new Ambassador in Singapore

18 Building and Construction Authorities

6

Business delegation visited Denmark

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Mr. Jakob Lykkegaard Pedersen

PlayLab builds up Southeast Asia mobile games market

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4 ScandAsia.Singapore • December 2016

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Community

Danish Church Christmas Bazaar

T

he Danish Seamen’s Church in Singapore held their annual Christmas Bazar on Saturday 19 November and Sunday 20 November.

During the weekend thousands of people stopped by to shop for traditional Danish food, decorations, christmas trees and much more. The children got to enjoy delicious Danish christmas treats and make their own decorations using paper, glue and imagination.

Photos: Johannes Kjems

6 ScandAsia.Singapore • December 2016

Community

Christmas Bazaar Sjømannskirken

O

n 12-13 Norwegian Seamen’s Mission (Sjømannskirken) and Swedish Church (Svenska Kyrkan) celebrated the Julebazar (Christmas Bazaar) Almost 500 people visited during the weekend, with great cafe worship and lots of confirmation students attending.

“Thanks to the Bazaar group, kitchen crew, all the 40 volunteers and visitors the church has during the weekend received SGD 22 000. This makes the Seamen’s Church in Singapore strong and vibrant - Hurrah!”

December 2016 • ScandAsia.Singapore 7

Busniess

Business delegation:

Singapore and Sweden sharing the same FinTech path 8 ScandAsia.Singapore • December 2016

By Joakim Persson

F

inTech, or financial technology, was in focus for a minister-led Swedish delegation to Singapore in connection to the inaugural FinTech Festival 2016.

The delegation that included 12 Swedish FinTech companies and Stockholm School of Economics representatives came to Singapore to hold meetings with industry(including Venture Capital firms and Investors) and government representatives, with the aim to provide the Swedish companies with knowledge of the market and the oppor tunity to build networks to promote future expansion.

The basis for this delegation is great interest in Sweden’s experience within digital payment systems, as at the country is at the forefront of development, and a leader in digitalization.

On the Singapore side it is still more early days and the organiser of the festival, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), has several new initiatives to drive FinTech.

Looking a bit into the background to this key sector, the circumstance around FinTech is that this is transforming financial ser vices, in a way not seen before in the form of: 1) Unprecedented mobility: the smar tphone is becoming our bank. People can consume financial services on the go. 2) Unprecedented connectivity. The Internet has compressed time and space. Interaction is real-time and unconstrained by physical boundaries. 3) Unprecedented computing power, thanks to our hand devices packing more data and more processing power than super computers just a couple of decades ago.

Digital payments are becoming more widespread, propelled by advances in near-field communications, identity authentication, digital IDs, and biometrics. Blockchains, or distributed ledgers, are being tested for a wide variety of financial operations, to make them faster, more robust and more efficient.

Furthermore there is the so called Big Data, which is about aggregating and analyse large data sets to gain richer insights into customer behaviour and needs, detect fraud or anomalies in financial transactions etc.

Be it countries, businesses, or people, those who are alert to technology trends, understand their implications, and harness their potential will gain a competitive edge, states the MAS. Singapore, like Sweden, wants to belong to the countries that will benefit from FinTech.

MAS has laid out a vision for a Smart Financial Centre, where it has been working closely with the financial industry, FinTech start-ups, the institutes of higher learning and other stakeholders towards this shared vision.

As part of the Singapore Fintech Festival the RegTech Forum took place on 18 November with Sweden’s Minister for Financial Markets and Consumer Affairs, Mr Per Bolund as the day’s first keynote speaker. The minister shared insights from the Swedish FinTech experience, highlighting three principles of particular importance to reach this vision of a new efficient financial system. He also touched upon opportunities and challenges that we face in the near future for fintech and regtech.

He began by pointing out that Stockholm is becoming the leading city in the Europe when it comes to FinTech development, and that he had already noted that Singapore shares many similarities with Sweden.

“Sweden’s economy is reliant on highly competitive manufacturing and service sectors and I can see that Singapore is following the same path. Singapore is indeed, on to a thriving ecosystem and is also a great gateway to Asia. Given these similarities between the two countries, I believe there is great value to share and exchange ideas and practices,” said Per Bolund.

“FinTech spreads across different sectors of the financial markets and is present in for example payments, credit provision, financial advice and insurance. This is in my view, and the Swedish experience, a very positive development.”

“Personally, I believe FinTech may help us to achieve fundamental changes in the way that we do finance in the future and the way the financial market works.”

This is achieved by creating new financing

possibilities, for example as sustainable financial market that is and informational environment; and new, efficient payments systems which ensures electronic payments are safe, easy and immediate.

“I think we will have a safer financial market, due to increased information and transparency enabled not least by technological innovations and better systems for monitoring and tracking transactions, also not least, new and efficient payments that are safe and are easy to use and are convenient for us.”

The minister went on to highlight Sweden’s attractiveness for investment, with the thriving FinTech community as a perfect example (a bit over 120 companies in Stockholm alone).

Personally, I believe FinTech may help us to achieve fundamental changes in the way that we do finance in the future and the way the financial market works.

“In Stockholm, we have a thriving FinTech community, ver y much working together in sharing information and new technologies with others.This is also attracting interest from all over the world and not least from investors trying to find suitable companies to invest in.”

Sweden is seeing rapid development when it comes to new payment systems, where the minister mentioned for instance peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding.

“We are ver y strong when it comes to technological solutions but also from small new firms. The latest development moves very rapidly also when it comes to the larger actors, the big banks, who are very active in FinTech development and are investing very heavily.”

“The question is how do we do we realize this fundamental change of the financial markets and make the most out of the development. In this highly competitive world I believe there are three principles of particular importance to reach

this vision of a new efficient financial system; Openness, Policy and Cooperation.”

Openness, the minister said is about embracing new cultures and new ideas, and fundamental for Sweden.

“And in my view all truly innovative places share the fact that they are hubs of different cultures, values and ideas. This creates an environment where new ideas and inventions are born.”

It is also about increased access to financial services for every citizen.

“Policy is about the responsibility of a government to embrace new ideas and new technologies and to create an environment where these can develop into new and successful companies in the future. Policy is also about being a in front and nurturing behaviour of the best interests of the citizens, the companies, but also for the environment.”

Finally, the minister believes that cooperation is crucial for success, and where he said that there are great opportunities that for instance Singapore and Sweden could cooperate.

“Digitalisation knows no border s and therefore our success is dependent on countries to deal with both on a national but also, and not least, on a global level.”

“Sweden is a small expor ting nation and being a small nation means we can never take anything for granted in this world and there is continued need to embrace and test new ideas. Often it has been fundamental not least to the success of the FinTech development in Sweden,” he continued when illustrating the developments in Sweden in connection to the three principles.

“Today, most interactions between companies or citizens of Sweden and the government is digital and most of the transactions are done electronically over the internet.”

Turning to policy, the government, he said must do “the right things”. From a Swedish perspective this means using policies to support technological developments.”

“Regarding financial technology it takes long and hard work and I would say the groundwork was laid already in the late 1990’s. In 1998 it became possible for employees to purchase a personal computer and with a tax subsidy. And as new technology required more bandwidth the Swedish government decided to support the building of a nationwide fibre network.”

Another key to the success of FinTech and other sectors that rely heavily on IT is the state’s ability to adapt and offer new ways for the citizens’ ability to communicate with the government. Secure and easy-to-use electronic identification systems have been critical to achieve this.

“The electronic identification tools are also enabling new services, such as mobile payments and remittances with a global reach.”

Digital bank transfers for wages that was introduced several decades ago paved the wave for today’s nearly cashless Swedish society. In a recent survey 15 percent answered that they had made their most recent payment in cash. In 2010 this figure was almost 40 percent.

“Some argue that Sweden will become a cashless society within a couple of years. The December 2016 • ScandAsia.Singapore 9

Business

policy issue here is rather access to cash. A majority of bank branches do in fact no longer keep cash on hand or take cash deposits.”

In this scenario Sweden is focusing its policy on how to get access to cash also onwards.

“The Swedish government tries to maintain a policy that you should have a choice yourself whether you would like to use cash or electronic payments. But no question, over time electronic payments will take over the markets in Sweden.”

Within cooperation, with new companies still emerging, Per Bolund brought up another trend: “Both nationally and internationally banks are also starting to cooperate with start-ups, not least within the Fintech sector, in order not to lose momentum. And we know that some of the solutions and technologies in this sector is quite revolutionising.”

In order to facilitate the continued FinTech development in Sweden its government has recently taken steps to improve its public venture capital system.

To improve success for early stage growth companies a new public fund-of-funds investment company has recently been founded, which will only invest in private venture capital funds. That means no direct investments in companies as we believe it is up to the market to decide which investments are profitable and which are not.The goal is to secure financing not only for start-ups but also for scale-ups in phases of development and segments of the market where the lack of private funds are most challenging.”

The minister also mentioned sever al European Union initiatives, including a new regulation on payment services, aiming to help 10 ScandAsia.Singapore • December 2016

Both nationally and internationally banks are also starting to cooperate with start-ups, not least within the Fintech sector, in order not to lose momentum. And we know that some of the solutions

develop an EU-wide market for electronic payments and create better conditions for secure and efficient payments. This forces current payment infrastructures to open up for competition and access which enables more companies to join in the current payment infrastructure.

The EU is also developing a comprehensive European strategy on green finance.

Looking ahead the Swedish minister said that there is work to be done for participants to comply with regulations and for policymakers to make sure businesses can thrive notwithstanding the large amount of regulation being implemented in Europe and globally.

“Here I truly see a potential for FinTech or Regtech companies helping financial institutions to comply with regulations; Regtech development can absolutely provide compliance and make it less burdensome.“ G ove r n m e n t s s h o u l d s u p p o r t t h i s development.

“However development is proceeding at a rapid pace; technical innovation goes faster than we as legislators can adjust the legal framework to fit a new era while at the same time making sure new risks are properly addressed.”

“Opportunities also come with challenges.

Cyber risks as well as money laundering and terrorism financing are key risks that we need to work with. A major challenge for any country, striving to be a leading FinTech nation is to fight money laundering and terrorism financing in an effective way, without stopping the development of a digital financial infrastructure that we see can be of such benefit to all citizens of the world. Here I believe that Regtech is truly a very important part of that development.”

The balance between access and regulation for customers and companies and the risks threatening the same is a difficult but important task that all legislators are facing.

“With a large degree of openness, with the right set of policies and proper cooperation I think we are and will be well equipped to also face future challenges.”

Dorte Bech Vizard

Business

Denmark’s new ambassador in Singapore

By Johannes Kjems

D

orte Bech Vizard graduated from the University of Aarhus in 1998 with a Masters degree in law. Since then, Dorte has worked with a variety of jobs including Head of Depar tment in Denmark’s Ministr y of Social Affairs and Integration, Counsellor at the Royal Danish Embassy in New Delhi and Head of Section at Denmark’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Now she is Denmark’s ambassador to Singapore.

ScandAsia had a talk with the new ambassador about her key issues, goals and ambitions as a representative of the Danish government.

Globalisation “It’s important to look at the factors that made Singapore the society it is today. Singapore has, like Denmark, an open trade economy with the entire world. When I come here as an ambassador the first thing I have to ask myself is: ‘What can I do to contribute to the development of this society?’

I want to be able to bring something home as proof of the benefits globalisation brings to a country like Singapore. This is the reason why globalisation has become such an important issue for me, and also the reason why I brought it up in my speech at DABS’ welcome reception for me.

I want the Danes here in Singapore to help me tell a story about the humanitarian and economic advantages of opening your country up to the whole world,” says Dorte Bech Vizard.

Denmark and Singapore - exchanging expertise “Denmark and Singapore are both what we call small advanced economies, which means that both countries are without any significant natural recourses and therefore have to rely on the people to create a strong economy.

Singapore has done a lot of great things in a very small amount of times. They have created a world-class educational system that constantly produces citizens with an enormous amount of competence in a vast variety of skill sets,” the ambassador comments on things the two countries have in common.

“They have high ambitions for their companies and a ver y strong teamwork between the government and the business owners. Something I was very inspired by was the way that Singapore handled a tremendous decline in their water industry. People were simply not interested in work with water, but after huge investments and talent training program the water industry gained 10,000 employees. Singapore’s water industry is now standing very strong with expertise from foreign experts like the Danish environment and water consultant firm, DHI. When they decide to make progress in a specific sector, they will carry out those plans and make it work.”

“If you turn the tables, Singapore does not have the answer to eternal welfare for everyone.

The growth Singapore has experienced so far is not going to continue forever. Now they have to look for new ways to improve, not economically, but also in many other ways to ensure that people would still want to live here in years to come.

One of the things Singapore has looked at is the welfare of senior citizens. In Singapore, the rate of the elderly part of the population is growing rapidly. Denmark’ senior population is marginally bigger than Singapore’s, with about 25 percent of the Danish population being seniors versus Singapore’s 18 percent, but with the way things are in Singapore right now, that number will have risen to 40 percent by 2050. Singapore looks to Denmark for inspiration on how to create an inclusive work force for all ages.They want to hear about Denmark’s ‘flexicurity’ model, sustainable pension laws, welfare technology and they’re especially curious about how Denmark keeps up the welfare despite a very small economic growth.”

“Denmar k could learn from the way Singapore’s government work together with the companies to create strong sectors, like the

example with the water industry mentioned earlier. Denmark lets the companies decide to work whichever industry is the most profitable for them and help create the framework conditions for a sustainable environment to do business in.

It is obviously working since The World Bank once again named Denmark the best european country to do business in. This is great, but we could learn from Singapore and focus a bit more on training new talents in the sectors that need a boost,” thinks Dorte Bech Vizard.

My time as an ambassador “I have worked a lot of difference places by now and it is the same thing that motivates every time: Curiosity. As an ambassador in Singapore, I am a representative of Danish businesses and the Denmark’s government. My job is to meet as many people as possible out here, so that I always know what is going on here. I want to make a difference here and do my best to strengthen the relationship between Singapore and Denmark so we can help each other grow.”

December 2016 • ScandAsia.Singapore 11

Business

Leading digital music streaming provider Spotify conquers Asia

By Joakim Persson

S

potify, the digital music ser vice that is conquering the world, is growing fast especially since its launch on the Asian market in 2013, along with rapid expansion of Internet streaming. Just as it has contributed to revolutionising the music industry the Swedish tech star t-up’s vision of building a universal jukebox is gradually coming true (present in 60 countries as of December 2016).

It has been around long enough (established in Sweden in 2006), basically since the presmartphone era – which is in itself telling for how fast-paced the digitalisation of the world is today.

Founder Daniel Ek back in 2008 (quoted in a IDG News Service story) talked of - Spotify being 12 ScandAsia.Singapore • December 2016

able for Windows XP, Vista and Mac OS X - how “support for mobile is also in the planning stages, it would be interesting to see what would happen if Spotify tried to offer support for the iPhone, but I think I already know the answer.”

And in late 2008 Spotify’s innovation was threatened by competition from Apple, Nokia and Sony Ericsson, with its PlayNow.

World of music already changed Fast forward to 2016 and the relatively long journey has really taken off, having, along with strongly increasing music streaming, reached 100 million users worldwide by September.

Meanwhile, there is also serious competition on this market today from Amazon Music Unlimited,

Apple Music etc. and music streaming mobile apps such as 8tracks, Shazam and Joox.

A big chunk of the growth is already taking place in Asia, where most recently Spotify Indonesia was launched in March 2016, followed

by Japan in late September.

“We have seen quicker growth in the last six months than before. When we announced our 40 million subscribers we looked back on when we launched, and it took us six years to get to our first ten million subscribers, then a year to get the next ten and the last ten came on board in the last six months. So the acceleration of music streaming adoption is here, it’s not the future, it’s the now!” says Sunita Kaur, Managing Director Spotify Asia.

Also, that Apple Music launched in June 2015, raising the bar for all players, just enhances Sunita’s statement.

“The world of music is not changing – it has already changed.”

The fact that highly reputable Apple gets involved in music streaming she thinks speaks volumes that you know you’re doing something amazing.

The future for music streaming seems bright as the numbers are pointing in the right direction.

For the global music market 2015 digital overtook physical with 45%, Streaming revenues increased 45.2%, while download revenues declined 10.5%.

As for the music industry Spotify has up to now returned USD 5 billion.

“In the first six years, 3 billion dollars, in the last two years an additional two billion dollars.The more people use Spotify it’s just going to keep on growing. This is money that would have been lost to piracy,” says Sunita.

Digital disruption Sunita herself, having worked in Asia for the past 21 years, was intrigued by the digital disruption, long before it became the buzzword it is in 2016.

“Back in 2005 it dawned on me that if I did not move myself into the digital sphere I would most certainly become obsolete within ten years.”

She had up to then worked for Time Warner and SPH’s magazine division. Ready to take on the digital world, she found herself an online position with Forbes.com to build up their Asia Pacific and Middle Eastern operations.

“I also fell in love with start-ups, which saw me move from Microsoft at end of 2009 to help Facebook build their AP operations. I was one of the early people at Facebook here. And when Spotify started to build their operation in 2013, it was the perfect move to start to work with another amazing start-up again.”

Sunita has been with Spotify since April 2013 and has seen how the product has evolved.

“And I’ve seen how music streaming has evolved, which is probably the most exciting thing to actually work on and grow with. We arrived quite early when music streaming was in its infancy stage. So, there has been a lot of focus on the whole education around music streaming and anti-piracy, especially in a place like Asia.”

Bring back the heydays Spotify’s “benchmar king” from the ver y beginning was internet piracy, the epidemic illegal downloading of music which had practically killed the CD sales market by 2005.

“It was our mission from day one and it’s still our biggest competitor. It needs to be, we always say we want to bring back the music heydays of the CD, prior to piracy,” comments the Spotify MD. The other dimension is that today there are a number of streaming oppor tunities on the market.

“The fact that there are more music streaming companies or choices in the world now than ever before is a fantastic thing, because it goes back to education, to piracy: the more players in the

In the first six years, 3 billion dollars, in the last two years an additional two billion dollars. The more people use Spotify it’s just going to keep on growing. This is money that would have been lost to piracy.

December 2016 • ScandAsia.Singapore 13

Business

Music has no borders, and we haven’t needed to change the product too much because no matter where you live in the world people use the same product the same way. Localisation came in with language, music catalogues and payment options as we started rolling out across diverse Asian markets.

market, the more education goes out. So, if you dial the whole industry back 50 years you have cassettes, vinyl, and then music star ted to get digitised with CDs, which gave birth to piracy.”

Before Spotify enters a new country they always look at the percentage of piracy and in both the Philippines and Indonesia over 90 per cent of the music being consumed in those countries were being listened to illegally. It is then that a number of streaming providers can make a difference.

“When you’ve got more and more companies going into places like Indonesia, offering music streaming people start wondering: ‘O.K. what’s this new option about?’ The beauty of Spotify is it’s really easy to tell someone not to pirate music, but it’s much easier when you give them an option. So our narrative, in Indonesia and all over the world: Don’t sit and download one song at a time when you have here in your phone, one click away, 30 million songs. It’s safe, legal, and quick. And you have a choice of enjoying it for free or you can become a subscriber. That is a very powerful message and that’s the power of Spotify – the choice.”

Waktunya Indonesia In a new market, fans generally keep asking ‘When are you coming?’ explains Sunita.

14 ScandAsia.Singapore • December 2016

“That’s a great indication, the thirst for Spotify in a country like Indonesia.The fact we started off building up in Asia in 2013, having already launched in Singapore, Hong Kong,Taiwan, Malaysia, and the Philippines – the rest of SEA and Asia will keep asking for Spotify.”

“In Indonesia their theme was ‘Waktunya Indonesia’, which means: ‘Finally you have arrived to Indonesia’. It was exciting, going into a market where there was already brand love with people waiting.”

One thing that Sunita is especially proud of in running the Asia division is how they have found the right balance in mixing the global direction and product alongside localisation.

“Music has no borders, and we haven’t needed to change the product too much because no matter where you live in the world people use the same product the same way. Localisation came in with language, music catalogues and payment options as we started rolling out across diverse Asian markets.”

“Our buzzwords are ‘localised’ and ‘customised’, and we keep them in mind as we are going into a new market, from language to music, to payments, to all the other good stuff that constitutes the power of Spotify. We find around six months after we are allowed in a market that we have enough data for further personalisation.

Then Spotify can introduce Discover Weekly and Release Radar, which are playlists customised just for you.”

“We are so proud of one of our newest markets Indonesia, as it was the one that we localised the quickest and most efficiently from day one. First, the entire app was translated into Bahasa Indonesia, so you had a choice of which language. We also tailored payment options: you can subscribe by credit card but also via bank transfers and we have partnerships where you can subscribe by cash. And last but definitely not least we launched with localised playlists, with very local music genre.”

“Especially in Indonesia and Philippines where the local music scene is so robust, it is incredibly important that we have local music on Spotify there. And we’re thinking the exact same way for all other markets that are not live yet. So there is a lot of due diligence that goes into a market before it goes live. We would rather wait a while and launch the perfect product than to rush into a market. Patience is a fantastic strategy!”

Spotify works with local rights holder to ensure they can get as much local music as possible before going live.

“We could turn on all the markets with just international catalogues but we would rather build a version of Spotify for each local market

that has all of the music that everybody loves.

Each country has amazing indie labels that really represent the local talent – and that’s something we’re very passionate about.”

“Then you’ve got publishing houses, collection societies and aggregators, so there are a lot of players in the music industry. And in every country we go into there’s a conversation with everyone.”

So far Spotify have licensing agreements with over 300 000 rights holders.

Sunita says that they are simultaneously working on all markets Spotify is not available.

“When it comes to going live in a market, our first and very most important start is the music.

And depending on how negotiations go we will decide which will be the next market to go live in and we tend not to talk about a roadmap until the day we go live.”

The localisation also includes pricing models that differ across the world, where a lot of research goes into finding the right price that would appeal to as many people as possible.

Intelligence for discovery The development of this star t-up since its inception is very much based on how the users consume music, where Spotify has bought some, to quote Sunita, “amazing companies” to improve

the product’s music intelligence.

“We always say we are a music company in our hearts but we are a tech and data company in our heads. Spotify is a beautiful combination of all those things,” says Sunita.

A telling example is the way the intelligence helps the user to discover the music that is more in line with one’s taste.

“Every song is tagged, so the more you listen to on Spotify the better the music recommendations will be that we will make to you because we are gradually understanding better and better what kind of music you’re listening to.”

So, every Monday each user gets a completely customised two-hour playlist based on their listening habits and who they are following on Spotify. And that grows together with what they’re listening to.

“The real light bulb that went off across our heads that really impacted our business was how people look for music. This happened a couple of years ago when we started seeing that the way we were all looking for music, and even making playlists were by moments such as: ‘running’, ‘cooking’ or ‘songs I sing to in the shower’… the lists went on and on.”

“This goes back to the tech world we live in today; gone are the days of building products inside the companies and releasing them to the

world. What tech companies do now is to really spend time and look at the trends; how people are using our products, how people are using Spotify. And we take that and make it better and easier.”

Spotify also points out that music is inherently social, that it is meant to be shared. And in the digital world a lot of music that one could not previously get hold of (released in 500 copies on 12” vinyl or simply sold out) is increasingly being re-released digitally. This forms a goldmine for rediscovering all but forgotten music, and for long unavailable music not least within the underground dance scene.

Sunita comments that this is spot on how Spotify fulfils an important role for spreading and sharing music.

“All the music from the 50s and the 60s and the 70s, how is our generation going to keep it alive because we can’t go out and buy their CDs anymore!? And this is something my husband and I do quite a lot; like sharing the sounds of our generation with our nephews and nieces. This is a story that gets told a lot around dinner tables; keeping music alive. I remember growing up with up and falling in love with Elvis Presley because of my mom. She would keep her generation of music alive.”

December 2016 • ScandAsia.Singapore 15

Business

Danish game company grows in Southeast Asia

By Joakim Persson

D

anish-owned PlayLab is a mobile games company based in and focusing on Southeast Asia as future growth market, with a global success landed with their ‘Juice Cubes’. As their third developed game became their break-through they quickly grew from a team of 20 people to over 100 within a short period of time.

CEO and co-founder Jakob Lykkegaard Pedersen held a presentation at the Techsauce start-up summit earlier this year and ScandAsia got a chance to get insights into the gaming industr y and how PlayLab has grown into a success and continues expanding, striving to create the best games for iOS and Android devices along with Facebook.

Along with Danish co-founder Thomas Andreasen Jakob tstar ted Playlab and a third Dane, their CFO Kasper Kragelund has also invested into the company. Legally based in Hong Kong they have games labs in Bangkok and Manila. Anino Games (Manila) that Playlab bought up is their fifth games team that focuses on developing Playlab’s casino slots games further.

The games company has also received a $5 million investment from Monk’s Hill Venture in one of the largest games VC deals in Southeast Asia to date.

PlayLab was basically born out of Jakob’s initial

16 ScandAsia.Singapore • December 2016

intention to move to Asia, first aiming at Japan, but ended up instead in Thailand where there was no teach start-up or anything back then.

“I didn’t really feel like the lifestyle was fully there,” he comments on Japan, and randomly came by Thailand that he could live here and build up his business. “There was no one really to communicate with, but I liked the country and the lifestyle enough.”

His interest in Asia was also based on the business potential.

“I could see that Europe and the US felt were stagnant. I didn’t feel that things were going as fast and I was impressed by the heavy growth that was happening in Asia in general and that was what attracted me.”

Jakob had done a start-up previously, which was a plug-and-play editor for Facebook pages, which was quickly bought up by a US company, and him eventually bought out.

“I then started investing into different startups in Thailand, early on when there was really also no angel investor community. And one of these investments was into a gaming company, so I bought my way into a gaming company.”

Ten the team of fifteen people in Thai team decided to shift focus, moving to mobile and into more social games.

“And I came from a background of doing Facebook applications, so we moved into this

where people can play against each other and leveraging Facebook heavily to build it up.”

The third game became a real hit on the global market, we have over 25 million downloads on it and it has generated more than 18 million dollars, and is still generating revenue. That was the game that also really kick-started the growth of the studio.”

The success with Juice Cubes meant having problems with server issues, mainly due to lack of expertise in Thailand to handle hat big servers, explains Jakob.

“When you scale up games that fast you need cloud servers that can handle it. The game still communicates with our servers to keep the information and keep game saved.”

The remedy was to find internal talent, which the do mainly do in Denmark and the rest of Europe.

“So our Bangkok team is 50 per cent foreigners, many from Denmark and France.”

Succeeding in getting popular with a game very much depends on the game as such, explains Jakob: “in the case of Juice Cubes, for every user that we got in he/she invited three friends that signed up to play. So we could do marketing to get one users and get three friends in per user on average. That is also why you can grow that fast.”

To market this game they spent mostly on Facebook advertising.

“They have a lot more information about the users so we can more specifically target based on interest. So for Juice Cubes we have spent over two million us dollars up to now.”

Google and Apple mainly are the main distributors of the game: “As long as we get approved to the apple store, for instance, they will handle all the credit cards and download. Apple gets a thirty per cent cut of all sales that happen on the iphones but they also help with some of the promotion.”

All mobile games, these days, are free to download while the revenue comes from no more than five per cent of player who spend money.

“Angry Birds was probably the last successful Premium game, it cost you a few dollars to download the game but in today’s markets most games you download are free. Instead you focus on when they are in the game, in app purchases.

If you don’t spend money you might have to wait ten hours for building to get done, but if you pay money it gets done instantly. So you now get users to spend several times.Those that buy spend a lot.

Around 0.1 per cent of them, the super spenders, several of them spent more than 10 000 us dollars in our puzzle game alone!”

You have people who are addicted to it; usually American housewives who have plenty of time and money and are in need of something to do. They haven’t been playing games for many years; it’s a completely new market,” says Jakob and says that they are not against the freemium games [game provided free of charge, but money (premium) being charged for proprietary features] like others who try to complete the game without spending money.

“American housewives are not that way; they

As long as we get approved to the apple store, for instance, they will handle all the credit cards and download. Apple gets a thirty per cent cut of all sales that happen on the iphones but they also help with some of the promotion.

think that this is normal so it is easier for them to adopt the culture of actually spending money on mobile games as entertainment.”

Their games were mainly built for the U.S market as they have the best online payment penetration and while they are still competing on the western market they have decided to go after Southeast Asia.

“There is not really any player in Southeast Asia and that’s the market we want to grab, that has been neglected so long that you cannot even pinpoint any specific market here now.”

“You can see that the growth here is incredible, 50 per cent year-on-year growth of both revenues and downloads.Where Southeast Asia is unique is that they kind of jumped over the PC generation and directly to smart phones.That’s why you have Line so successful, for instance.”

As for finding talented team members it is 50/50 locals and westerners.

“For local talent in Thailand you have great art, animation, and also some good game designers.

But of course you don’t have the experience in Thailand and that’s where we can bring in people from overseas, even our lead art is Danish. And you have in Scandinavian a different style in sense of quality. But he is able to train a local team to get up to that level. So our games are by far globally competitive; on par with global successes in terms of production value.”

Scandinavia is a good source for talent, based on its success in the gaming industry.

“You have really good schools, art schools and development schools, so you can get really good people from Scandinavia at the moment.”

As for the local star t-up scene Jakob comments: “For the last three years it’s been crazy growth within that; we now have events like Techsauce that we would never have seen a few years ago. I didn’t know a single guy in tech in Thailand, but the last three years you started with co-working spaces, got the investors in, even the telecoms feeling that it’s trendy to do start-ups so they started promoting it and that’s where we now have a local Thai scene as well, building start-ups.”

December 2016 • ScandAsia.Singapore 17

Business

UN Women Swede speaker at Responsible Business Forum

A

s U n i t e d N a t i o n s D e ve l o p m e n t Programme (UNDP) is working together with Global Initiatives to co-organise the 5th Responsible Business Forum on Sustainable Development, Deputy Regional Director at the UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Anna-Karin Jätfors is among the invited speakers.

The Swede provides programmatic and operational oversight, particularly for the East and South-East Asia project portfolio. She engages in

technical advisory services and capacity-building to facilitate the development, implementation and monitoring of policies and programmes.

This year’s forum, the largest to date, is held in Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, 22 – 24 November 2016, with focus on sustainable development. will help companies better understand the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the oppor tunities in suppor ting governments to achieve them.

The partnership means that the forum will bring together more than 600 leaders from business, government, UN agencies and NGOs, all working towards the goal of realising the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. UNDP is uniquely placed to facilitate an integrated process to accelerate and support the implementation of the SDGs. In an innovative and highly interactive format, delegates will be connected with decision makers from business, government, investors and the development community, to forge new partnerships and scale collaborations around the global goals.

A series of 34 facilitated workshops will provide a deeper look into each of the 17 SDGs. Each SDG workshop will be held twice

so that delegates can design their own RBF 2016 programme around the goals most relevant and critical to their business. Expert facilitators will introduce the goals with companies presenting case studies showing lessons from implementation.

This will be followed by audience discussions around innovation and collaboration with other stakeholders.

In earlier roles Anna-Karin served as the Regional Programme Manager for Ending Violence against Women and the Asia-Pacific Campaign Manager for the Secretary-General’s UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign.

She supported the development, implementation and monitoring of policies and programmes to prevent and respond to violence against women, and coordinated a range of networks, strategic partnerships and research initiatives.

Anna-Kar in has more than 15 year s’ experience working on women’s and children’s r ights, combined with a background in communications and advocacy. She worked for five years with UNICEF – first as a Gender and Development Officer in New York and later as a Child Protection Specialist in Indonesia, where she worked on addressing abuse, violence and exploitation against children.

Singapore building delegation visits Denmark

A

delegation of researcher s, public authority representatives, and business representatives from the Building and Construction Authorities (BCA) in Singapore visited DTU, Technical University of Denmark to learn about the Danes’ approach to sustainable, green construction in Denmark.

The delegation was particularly interested in how to integrate the management of water, waste and energy production into intelligent buildings and infrastructure.

“Denmark is well known as a pioneer in the development of sustainable, green construction. I was surprised that Singapore was looking towards Denmark in this context, because Singapore is highly efficient, well organised and economically strong. Still, they wanted inspiration from Denmark and we were, of course, happy to welcome them,” says Alfred Heller, Associate Professor at DTU Byg and Deputy Centre Manger of the Centre for IT-Intelligent Energy Systems in Cities (CITIES), which conducts research into the development of intelligent buildings and infrastructure that are able to contribute to sustainable development.

The development of smart cities is a growth area in both Denmark and Singapore. With an area of just 719 km2 and a population of roughly 5.7 million, Singapore has a space problem—to put it mildly. By way of comparison, the area of Denmark is 43,561 km2.

Consequently, Danish solutions cannot be directly transferred to Singaporean conditions.

There are also differences in climate. The temperature in Singapore is often 30 degrees

18 ScandAsia.Singapore • December 2016

Celsius or more, and the humidity is very high.

The temperature of the soil and the sea water is over 25 degrees all year round.

Living labs are one approach that can be adapted to the needs of Singapore. These are experimental facilities in which new solutions are developed and demonstrated in a living urban landscape.

To function well, a living lab depends on good collaboration between research, authorities, and business. DTU has good experience of this from several living lab projects, including DTU’s Smart Campus, where students and researchers can work freely, Danish Outdoor Living Lab, EnergyLab Nordhavn, and Smart City in LyngbyTaarbæk Municipality. Niels Axel Nielsen, Senior Vice President at DTU, explains that this method of working will be right for what Singapore plans

to do.

“As par t of the ‘Smar t City World Labs’ consor tium, DTU is wor king closely with Singaporean research institutes, public authorities and the business community to establish living labs in Singapore. The objective of the partnership is to reinforce the potential for both Denmark and Singapore to become leaders in the field of smart city solutions that are able to help create more sustainable cities,” Niels Axel Nielsen explains.

The visit from Singapore was also used to talk about the opportunity to develop an MSc course in Architectural Engineering at DTU that is tailored to the needs and challenges in Singapore.

One of the benefits of such a course would be the opportunity for joint projects between students and researchers from the two countries.

Source: DTU

December 2016 • ScandAsia.Singapore 19

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