 A very good afternoon to all the attendees who are joining us here today for the Capital Insider series as we talk to Bang Aung from Morgs Hill Ventures. He's joining us from Singapore today and he's going to really talk to us over the next 45 to 50 minutes about what he sees happening in the venture capital world and what kind of startups is he looking to be betting upon as we go in the further months and of course We're not we're not in the best of the economic climate right now. Things are very uncertain Global business as we knew of it has of course been shaken up and we don't know when it is going to regain its former status or at all be able to regain its former status and So given the fact that you know economies are becoming more internalized Every country is thinking more about its own population and how they're going to be able to increase the consumption over there So things are changing a lot more in from an economic standpoint than what they used to be earlier So thank you for joining us bank. You know, we we're looking forward to this wonderful talk here with you today Let me kick it off by Introducing bank to you now bank is actually an engineer and he's also We see now with Morgs Hill Ventures They are now at the second fund and they are more of an early stage. We see where in the look and Invest in companies pretty early some of the most recent investments. They have made in R&R recruitment tool, which is conglance and of course a very Very popular productivity tool that we are all using in India as well as a nation different parts of the world Which is padlet and is also growing Of course, you know, Peng is gonna tell us which sectors does he thinks are going to be going forward going to do great and FinTech of course continues to be a One sector that bank has always looked at very closely on a personal front Peng is a big reader from what I've come to know is that he owns a collection of about Over a thousand books in his house and we love to know about more what you read bank But let me start off the first question by asking you this that today, you know I mean, I understand that economies today are very different and you know businesses are looking very different from when we started the year 2020 but what do you think has changed in consumer behavior in terms of what is it that societies today are looking forward to buy What is it that the consumer today who was looking to buy something else? In 2020 when it started is thinking today. So what how do you think consumer behavior has changed overall? How do you think societies are sort of rigid overall and babe? I mean, how do you think it's gonna pan out to be once 2020 maybe is close to ending so what do you think? You unmute please unmute bank, please unmute Yeah, typical problem with zoom We did prepare some slides, thanks, we did prepare some slides my hard-working team actually Munched away at a whole bunch of stuff. So as I speak I will switch over the slides with their help And so guys if you could put on slide three So That there are our view is In some ways This COVID driven downturn is very different from all the other recessions you've seen Right all the other recessions you've seen things just get scaled down almost proportionately across the GDP What we're seeing is Very different consumption behaviors. For example zoom is doing something like a hundred million plus ma use right now And it's just when publics a small company no longer a small company because of COVID That that's sort of an extreme example, but you can look through all kinds of of Economic activities and you see it is very very different In recessions what's similar is in recessions people want cheaper better stuff better value for money and Then you get all kinds of activities that move away from offline for sorry from online, sorry from offline and You know what one of my friends made the Comment he follows the US markets a lot. He made the comment that you know We've been talking about the end of retail for the longest time But COVID-19 Basically was the last nail For we US retail, you know, it's very very clearly the winner is Amazon and If you have a retail shop, it's not gonna do well So, you know in the US that's completely changed in terms of consumption In our portfolio ourselves, we also see this kind of trending for example Despite the fact that the whole of Philippine shut down the during the first few months of COVID the ninja van, which is our last mile logistics company it grew its business year on year in some Almost doubling it right in some very tremendous numbers simply because people are just buying things online a lot more now So so that's the more visible stuff and that's the less visible stuff Less directly like ninja vans business could have been supplying to restaurants for example And that would be a problem, but it was so logistics could go either way So I think it's not just a Time of challenges, but there's also a time of opportunities Sure, but I mean from an opportunities, of course, you're right online shopping in India We've seen a huge surge of hyperlocal e-commerce that became extremely important In this time that in fact a complete new kind of or I would say subshoots of E-commerce are now coming up with that it's social commerce or whether it's hyperlocal e-commerce So do you think e-commerce as you mentioned? I see in this slide that online shopping will be the new new norm But do you feel that there will be different offshoots of E-commerce that will be seen in the daily going ahead? No, I think I think the rest of the world emerging markets, especially will evolve differently from From the US which is basically one dominant e-commerce player and a few number two number three But made mainly one big one Amazon is far bigger than any of its competitors I think you see something like that too But infused in the rest of the world as we're developing the e-commerce world But it's infused with all kinds of different Selling right that the social social e-commerce as you mentioned is a big thing out here in Southeast Asia And thinking I'm thinking it'll be a big thing in in throughout Throughout Asia the emerging market here and and it's because The the The curation piece of buying needs to be done by someone And I think we're more trust trusting of our influences than our big brands, right? Amazon is a huge curator for that for the developed countries, right? and we trust When things are in Amazon and there's a rating we trust that rating, right? I think that would translate to some of its Emerging market successes, but I think not not all Right, so some of the other spaces be occupied by influences and other different selling platforms the eBay equivalent, but much more modern like Sharpie and And other kind of social selling platforms Sure, I mean So, you know as you said in this chart also shows that the new normal and therefore the business models look very different from Currently so what opportunities? I mean if you were to bucket them together What opportunities would you see that ones that will really go out and flourish and then there's some opportunities? Which will be I would say you form and then there's some opportunities which will totally Go out of the window. They existed in a pre-covid world But would absolutely find hard to keep going in a post-covid world So how do you see these opportunities panning out as a VC? Um, so I've got a couple of slides from there. We can go to slide. I guess five, you know, slide five and I'll talk through some of this stuff Monxhill is a VC that works. We think based on first principles, right? Every time we look at a deal we look at the entrepreneur and then we look at what they're trying to do and does that make sense, right? So if you look at the world today Just into cobit You know, there's a huge difference that has just happened, right? There there you can see there's a bunch of companies that benefiting clearly from the cobit situation Everywhere we mentioned some of them, but others include online education healthcare systems Digital entertainment content is going crazy right now, right? so a Lot of my friends with content businesses are seeing upticks of like 10% a month 20% a month in revenues And then you've got a whole bunch of businesses that are very clearly in trouble, right? If you're in a travel business in your hotel business Anything that's live Restaurants all around that you're in trouble, right? People have not gone out there alone Flying for other country from country to country. So you notice that But by the way, the next slide is going to make you think a little bit about I think what what challenges How unpredictable the world is going to be given the situation right now? The flying from country to country even just thinking about what's going to happen about that around that over the next six months 12 months 18 months We don't even know right So so if you're in the travel business, you know, if you're in the hotel business, for example You got to think seriously about you know, one major thing runway, right? How are you gonna survive through this thing, right? Because you're you're not getting any revenues right now and any way you pivot your revenues is going to be minimal Some some of the companies some of the travel companies are pivoting to domestic travel because you know, you can still do domestic travel But domestic travel is only a fraction of of international travel So it almost whatever you do is hard, right? The hotels here might be housing cobit quarantines so you know Those pivots are not very interesting and then that's what we call bucket B right in the middle, which is the bulk of companies You know, if you need some random company, it's probably in bucket B And bucket B is companies that supply to either the buckets a's of a bucket C's and We call the B minuses the the ones applying to bucket C and the B pluses like one supply to bucket a quite a huge difference Between your outlook if you if you're one of these right B B or B minus or B plus and then there's a whole bunch like a recruiting company We have that is bucket B neutral. They are both B A customers and C customers so This way of looking at things really helps you figure out what you need to do if you're one of these companies or If your customers is one of these companies, obviously if your bucket B neutral You're going to focus on the bucket a companies, right? The bucket C companies are not going to be consuming your services So how do you how does that affect your lead gen your approach to value proposition to selling etc? So, you know, I think and then there's a whole bunch of questions you can ask if you're a bucket a company in terms of What happens when people have figured out to survive COVID economy starts getting back to the new norm Can you start new habits that will keep your revenues high? Post COVID right? Those are the straight strategic question. Can you pick up great hires great teams along the way as you? build great teams along the way as you build out take advantage of your of your good luck basically You know, I talk about this which bucket you you're in Based on luck, right? You you go to battle you're standing there and if you're in the wrong bucket you get shot So so that's sort of the the way we've been looking at how to triage even the deals that come into us, right? How to think about them? and If you go to the previous slide I Just wanted to throw out this slide to get the audience thinking about About how the previous slide is like for How to get the audience thinking about how to Think through what's going to happen in the next six months 12 months 18 months my this is the first time in the world I think where We actually don't know what's going to happen. There's so many things that Will affect the economy and how the economy evolves over the next I'll say 12 to 24 months that there is no easy way to predict You know Even as I mentioned earlier a simple problem like flying when can I fly to Jakarta again? Right on the normal commercial flight. What would be the pricing on flying even? The pricing on flying is going to go up very significantly because the rods are going to be so Restricted right and the and the number of people traveling is going to be restricted So you won't be able to get these $500 deals to London anymore, right? So how will that evolve right how how will the lockdown and the ease of the lockdown change? Change how countries behave, you know infection rates Vaccination all those things come in play as to how our economy unfold so From from the first principles thinking you're in trouble right because you cannot Reason your way through this because there's no no predictability in what's going to happen, you know So the the way we look at Companies we we used to focus a lot for example, how do you build a sales engine to predictably generate revenues? Right, this is the first time in my whole career that I've said well, that's not so important now How much money are you making can you make some more? You know, I'm getting really practical in terms of the kind of questions that we ask our companies now Yeah That's true, I think yeah, you're right predictability right now is going to it's suddenly gone down the hill in terms of understanding what could probably be the next Next achievable target to put forward to yourself and to your teams and startups that you're working with So well said, you know, I remember we met last year in Singapore Around the same time and there was something that you'd said which still struck with me and I was wondering now post COVID or amidst COVID how does how is it gonna pan out? Which is what you said was that you see a real opportunity in service vacation of technology So what trends and opportunities do you see fitting into it right now? I mean, we've got a question also around that from one of our attendees which we come to later But any deep domain service expertise trends that you are now sort of looking at which will pan out in the times to come Let me start off with a simple definition of Technification of the service industry right the service industry for a lot of emerging markets that are around you know 34,000 GDP Is about half the GDP so in Southeast Asia we have about 3 trillion of GDP and about 1.5 of that is in Services right services include everything from retail to Hit hunting to real estate agencies etc. It's not manufacturing or agriculture so Technification of services the productivity of services is tight around how How effectively you can deliver that service right and as a result is a lot of that is information based And so you can actually use technology to drastically improve the productivity of that particular business for example our Recruiting company glens it's not just shuffling resumes back and forth It has about somewhere between half a million to a million resumes in its database So if someone in Kangarang in Jakarta wants to JavaScript Programmers with certain salary ranges etc What does the hit hunter show them? right and If you imagine this being a human process versus being an AI and automation process You the results can be day and night different Right and so you can build a much more effective Recruiting company if a lot of what you have is technology base You still need the humans there to work with the clients to work with the candidates etc But they can be super super productive because of that So that's what we mean by Technification right and the opportunities to me is really in Southeast Asia or in emerging markets in general To to basically not just augment The vertical champions with technology, but actually become those vertical companies themselves, right? So the largest Logistics company for example in China is a tech company the largest retail the top three are all you know tech companies Yeah, and you can go on banking the finance all tech companies in China now Technification is over in China. Well, not over but has run its course in China and All the huge you know China China has about 5.5 trillion in GDP in services All the top ones or large number of top ones are all tech companies So that's going to happen in India. That's going to happen in Southeast Asia. It's going to happen in South America And I think Covid hasn't changed that I think Covid in fact because of the crunch in The economy is going to get that to happen faster, right? For example Well, I'll go back to logistics as an example that could be useful ninja van today delivers about About more around a million parcels a day. I don't have the latest numbers, but it's around thereabouts and They do so with about the cost of one dollar per parcel, right? It's about as efficient as you can get given the geographies in our region, right? You cannot do that with human beings running around trying to figure out how to move a million parcels you have to automate it and as a result of the e-commerce demands the the pricing pressure of The environment if you charge a lot more than that or even a bit more than that It's tough, right? You it's hard for you to do a business and the only way for you to be competitive is your technical to you You have to fight your business so I think Covid will cause the consumers to compress the Technification cycles so that we get more technology into our service verticals over the next few years and You know, you asked for some deep expertise. I think what's going to happen is The service vertical champions you see over the next I'd say two or three years They'll come out. You're going to see unicorns across all these different places and They're going to be really using the combination of technology and operational excellence better than most people you can see on the planet That's the only way to scale up these businesses and the competitive pressures will drive that so we're was even more gung-ho about Trying to find companies that are really good at technification in their verticals I Know I kind of didn't answer that what's the deep area that's useful But I do see it across the services distance so lots of opportunities What what I mean, but I mean, you know, if you were if I were to ask you this that drone delivery while I know it started, but do you think it's going to become like a zoom of delivery? Do you see that opportunity happening now or sometimes the future makes two three years is very simple Drone delivery is a Infrastructural change is a legal system change whenever that's required. It all slows down to a halt Until the legal aspects of it stick and care off, right? Like Singapore have always been very forward to make such changes and to bring new things on So do you feel in Southeast Asia it happening in several markets? I know India could be very complex in terms of relations Even a place like Singapore, we don't have drones flying overhead to How to deliver stuff to us? It's That it's a complex problem because it's about using the commons, right? This part of the commons has not been used, right? The space may be above 30 feet to 100 feet I guess you can convert that to meters but We don't know what the impact of it if we start using that and and what if the drones fail and smash into somebody, you know All these questions how good they are not causing problems. So You know, if you think through that, right? I'm a tech guy and computer scientist So I'm looking forward to that tremendously but every time when technology impinges on existing legal infrastructure and economic infrastructure and That needs to change for the technology to come in it comes to grinding hot or at least slows down tremendously until you know the Infrastructure changes and the legal systems change Sure. So coming down to the fund itself small silventured. I know that the fund has actually raised about a hundred million dollars Very close to the pandemic. Sometimes I think just before the pandemic really became a big hit And you know, it's always said that raising a fund is ten times harder than actually doing a startup I mean, that's what I hear VCs always say Do you feel one of course? How do you feel now when you actually raised this hundred million dollars to invest in startups at that point of time? What what what the kind of startups you're looking at and what kind of startups are you looking at now? Is one thing and secondly, do you think for as a VC for you to raise further rounds of funds? Is it going to be more difficult? Um So It is difficult. I don't know if it's ten times harder. You know, if you have facing the problem, you always think it's hard but Right now what we know is the LPs. We're talking to LPs of the people that invest in VC funds Then they're focused on other things, right? They're focused on rationalizing your portfolio on, you know, recognizing the losses and all that huge problems They're having now so if you go to them and say I'm raising a fund They'll go come back next year or something like that, right? So actually just just practically we were raising our funds in two Two pieces our first piece was closed last year The second piece is going to drag on for a while, right? Because no one's paying attention to this right now, right? You have a product to sell but no one's buying So it's hard to so it's hard in that sense. I think once the people get a hand off Over their current portfolio and the losses and gains, etc. They understand what's going to happen They will start allocating again because I think the Opportunities we have in South Asia is just tremendous, right? and people will recognize that the consumption habits of you know Half of half is it half of half a big chunk of humanity at one point something billion it's going to change in the next five to ten years and I think it's huge opportunities to build very very significant companies. So so they will understand to To Resume the investment right at some point the LPs would so I'm not sure if I answered all your question all parts of your question The second part of it was that I mean, you know when you raised the fund There were some kind of startups you wanted to put money in are you still looking to put your monies into as a fund in Similar kind of startups or is it now we're thinking differently about the startups you want to invest? Let's go to slide eight And I'll talk you through how we thinking about investing again first principles is still first principles But slight slight eight sort of describes roughly how we we we look at companies, right? We do about three to six deals a year. We're not a rapid-fire investor So we will still maintain that and we've still maintained that right The the buckets framework is a very quick way for us to We see about 1200 deals a year So the buckets framework is a very quick way for us to go. Okay, we should look at these guys first Because they are in an economy or the sectors of the economy that will benefit from the the COVID situation right now and very importantly we've had Less so now but we've had companies come up to us and say we need a million or two million to survive and We basically don't fund survival right to extend the runway. We fund growth and If you are in one of the bucket seat If you're one of the bucket seat players is really hard for us to justify Investing so any changes brief COVID to post COVID is around this Around this view of life around the buckets view of life and the Funding for growth kind of view of life Sure Another question that I have for you is that in your existing portfolio of startups What is it that you have told them to do things differently? I mean, you know startups We know have been historically been growing through a lot of burn reaching out to customers with a lot of spending Particularly when you look at consumer tech startups I mean the the burn that they have to reach out or to get the customers on board is very large So how are you telling them to rationalize their approach or what is it that you're advising them in terms of you know Being I would say a little more conservative with their monies And you know not go out and spend too much and nevertheless, you know when systems are changing They would have to spend a lot because they need to reach out to their customer in the best possible way So how are you trying to ask asking them to balance it out? To stay afloat. Yeah, it is really hard. I can I can tell judging from Reactions to not not just our portfolio, but to a lot of entrepreneurs I've talked to and the the reason is partly the the Investment communities issue to We've been in the habit of doing what I used to call negative blitz scaling, right? negative Unique economics businesses scaling up with lots of money, right? So it culminated in the we work failure So that's when people started realizing, you know, that might not be the way to build businesses and And slowing down that but COVID just slammed the brakes on it. You could see some activities about you know Cranking up negative cross margins businesses, but that just stopped at COVID, right? So Slight 10 if you could put that up is a very very simple summary of what I tell my entrepreneurs My portfolio companies if you don't have a runway, right? If you have no idea how long you're gonna last You're in trouble so if you don't have visibility to at least 18 months runway Go make your adjustments until you do Right and sometimes that means laying off half your your folks Sometimes that means going get bridged down done if you can mostly it's not about if you get a bridge now Your company is probably doing okay, right? But you still need the runway and So very simple. Can you get 18 to 24 months? If not adjust your plan doesn't work All right, and a lot of businesses that have Positive unit economics my advice is even to tell them assume you're not gonna raise any more money with your three five six Million dollars in the bank today go figure out how to make this a break even business If you can raise money, then you can grow faster, but that's next year, right? So it's a very practical view of Businesses now, you know, it's like businesses the way it used to be You know 20 30 years ago, right where you just go. Can I make money? If not, I don't go as fast So what are you going to sort of look at as a new normal for startups when it comes to their performances? I mean, you know, how I how have you rationally normal for the startups who are already in existence in terms of what we are looking to Achieve this year. So how have you rationalized the targets of achievement? the the the new normal is more The the the change if that's one word and and lack of predictability. So, how do we Judge performance is really based on Assessment of how people are handling it. We started off the year with some financial plan for, you know, the 2020, you know, and and most of our companies are series BC ABC and so on. So they've got pretty well worked through plans, etc For some of these companies, it keeps going Pat let for example, in fact, their biggest problem was trying to make sure the servers don't crash because of the Yeah on the system. So so those companies are doing better. So they're gonna exceed their numbers, right? And if you ask them, how much are you gonna exceed the numbers? They go Don't know Because there's no easy way to predict this. They can do guesstimates and they're gonna so they're gonna do better than they expected They're gonna do But then there's a bunch of companies the bucket B and C companies that in trouble, right? And so how do you judge the performance of those guys, right? and and It's all, you know, if Basically a lot of these guys their bonuses out the door now, right? They're trying to survive and so They're rationalizing the Their current span off the span. They started three months ago. So the span from three months ago to now Even though we've had, you know, our partnership is made off operators, right? We used to run companies It we what we're clear on is this is scenario. We haven't seen before So what you really need to do is back to the basic equation survival and Runway equal survival is as simple as that. How do we judge your performance at some level is are you alive at the end of the year, right? For companies that are doing a bit better We for example, we've got online education So a company called Elsa is online education it's got some offline it's got some Corporate components. So those are not doing so well right now, but the online Consumer version is doing fine, right? So so we're not expecting huge misses in numbers for that one, but The there's a whole bunch of businesses with B2C components that are just Not the B2C components are just not working right now because of various reasons The lending business for example B2C the banks are not the lead gen for the the banks is just not happening the banks are not lending right So, you know if you have your own funds to lend is actually an interesting time because You need to figure out the risk by if you can figure that out. There are lots of people need working capital So a Lot of the performance evaluation at the end of this year is going to be subjective It's going to be how How have you handle as a leader? All the changes that happening, right? Frankly, if there are no changes you almost don't need a leader, right? But given what's going on in the world today, you need a very very thoughtful strategic attentive attentive to detail A set of leaders to take companies through this It's almost a cop-out. I know, you know, usually, you know at a Level of performance in terms of revenues and all that you're looking at CEOs and you're going are they making the numbers and all that this year that question Makes some sense, but not not a whole lot of sense because you could be standing in the right place and a ton of money falls on you You know, you could be standing in the wrong place and bullet hits you in the shoulder So that's just pure luck. How you perform is how you handle it when the money comes in or when the bullet hits Right. Sure. Yeah, I agree. So we just got a question from Facebook live From say he says that if you're looking at Asia Pacific for businesses, then is the local language going to Play an important role. So you do you need to go vernacular or is English? Good way to expand. So whatever the startup is it that you're doing. Yeah, so this is a very good question hasn't changed pre post Covid I Think I see a lot of companies coming from outside Southeast Asia trying to go local By having a very international product in English and all that and that gets to maybe like 3% of the population and if that's your target audience, that's fine But if you want mass audience, it has to be local, right? It has to be local language Even in the Philippines where a lot of people speak English You you probably do need some kind of the galop version to get to the locals, right? So Yeah, it's it's it's almost a non-question from our point of view, right? And even in India, I'm guessing right the ones that wants to do mass and I'm not just guessing I do know Some of the entrepreneurs that are doing this right people go down to the local language across, you know I've heard I've asked supporting 2030 languages in India Yeah, they're quite a few but mostly we try to stick between English and Hindi But yeah, if the startup is very large then they try to go over vernacular because in each state would have different Variants of the same language, which is very hard to capture We've got Naina also who's asking a question. Can we have Naina online, please? Naina, can you ask your question, please? Can you unmute and ask your question Naina? Okay, though she's online, but she's not able to ask the questions I'm asking on her behalf. Do you think startups should think of international expansion right now or should they wait? First of all, how are you going to go international? You can't even get a plane to fly somewhere else. So So just very practically just just make sure you've got the solid revenue stream where you are right now Wait until some of this travel stuff unfolds before you think about international, right? How are you going to find a partner To run the business locally, right? You won't have met anyone local. You wouldn't have any sense unless you've been to the target country or city You won't have any sense of how it works there, right? So But even that's true for a digital business? To some extent. To some extent. I've been involved in lots of digital businesses, content businesses that have localized and almost invariably you need a local team, even if it's a small number of people to tell you if what you're doing matches the local culture, transaction requirements, etc. Compliance, right? There's a loss around what you can do and what you cannot do. So I'd say You'll be very brave if you want to go international today. And I also assume you're doing really, really well in your local business, right? So If you're doing really, really well in your local business, why not do even better and make sure you corner that market locally, right? And then worry about going international when you can actually do it. Sure. We had a question earlier, which was from Ayush and he asked that, you know, in state, he's looking to do a health care app for, let's say within India, it was more rural economies. Given the fact that the audience might not be that literate, does it make sense to have an app or should there be another way to go out and address their problems, which are health care problems? I think that that's a very generic question on a on an issue that is very specific. I don't think there's a generic answer to that, even for India. I think certain parts of the economy in India are kind of tech savvy, even not necessarily the high end, but you know the middle class to low middle are reasonably tech savvy and can provide services online. Same here in Jakarta, in Philippines, in Vietnam. And then there are some other region, the GDP per capita could be about the same and they just don't, you know, when it comes to health care, they go to look for their doctors. Again, you can look at this certification. Can you 5x the productivity of that kind of business you're in? If you think you can, then you have a chance. It's tough to do that now for health care specifically because you need to go recruit all these doctors to be part of the system. And that's not clear. You can do it now versus if you had done this a year ago, then you'd be in reasonable shape, right? All the telemedicine companies are doing okay right now. So quick, quick answer is if you can get to your supplies, i.e. the doctors or health care providers, easily at this point, because of your connections, etc, then it might be a reasonable business to try. If not, it's going to be really tough. So are we frozen? So I missed the last two minutes. Okay, sorry about that. So one of the questions is that, you know, businesses that were probably not meant or not there for the digital economy, they don't even update their static websites. Their websites continue to remain static. So, you know, what is your advice to such people, particularly given the pandemic and, you know, how businesses are going to pay about? That's what I'll speak, what I'll do if I speak to one particular friend who's in that category and what I would expect of the bulk of people doing that. So I've been part of different governments specifically Singapore government and sometimes Indonesian governments efforts in getting companies to digitize, etc. And it is really, really hard. You know, people that are used to doing things in a certain way will do it until the point where the business is no longer viable and they'll shut it down, right, instead of trying to pivot, etc. So for the bulk, I think the companies that are doing what they're doing, sort of technically digitally deficient ways of deficient strategies are not going to change that much. For the bulk, right? For any individual person, let's say father, son kind of arrangement, they've got a small family business, you know, if the son or daughter has the experience and exposure to e-commerce and all that. The tools we have today to bring a business online is probably two orders of magnitude better and cheaper than they were five, ten years ago, right? So it's so much cheaper to get your business online now, so much easier to get your business online now. You don't have to. I was walking one of my CTOs past my old office in San Francisco and I'll point to the basement where we had our servers and I told him, this is where we put our servers. He looked back at me and go, why do you need to put the server anywhere? The world has changed, you know, all these servers are virtual, they're all in the cloud. And it's, you know, several orders of magnitude cheaper. So if you get yourself familiar with how to move your business online, it's not easy, but if you figure out how to do that, then you see a different level of business that you can play at. Did I get cut off again? Hi, Bang, this is Punita. I think they do have some connection issues, so I'll take over. Okay. Hi. Go ahead, Punita. So, Bang, I have a question here. Since you raised your second fund, so the target markets for you are going to be the same, or is the second fund that you are looking at will be from a new target markets? Fund two is exactly the same as fund one just larger. We're targeting Southeast Asia cities, companies from Southeast Asia, from Vietnam to Thailand to Indonesia to the Philippines, etc. So it's going to be the same market again? Yeah. Okay. Sure. So another question that we've got, it's a bit technical thing, but it says that, just a second, I'll read it out to you. Say something like, how about cheap satellite servers, big storage memory synthesis that has a tighter orbit? Okay. Basically, so I'm a geek, so these are good questions. The way I'll answer it is first world versus emerging markets investing. So I spent the bulk of my career in the US and Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur and engineer. And then I spent about five years in China and now so far about six, seven years back in Southeast Asia. I'm from Singapore. And that is a very marked difference between investing in developed countries and emerging markets. And that is how we focus on technology. It's a very simple thing. In the valley, we do a lot in terms of thinking about how to build technology and how to sell technology. Right. And that's how we create a lot of value in emerging markets where the GDP is, I don't know, less than 5000 and growing. We focus a lot on how to make the economy a lot more efficient than it is. Right. And China is one of the best examples of that. You know, China probably has the most efficient services sector now because of all the competition and all the investments that went into tech companies the last 10 years. And I think that's going to happen in Southeast Asia. So there is no right and wrong answer, right or wrong answer as to should I go do, you know, satellites and all these high tech stuff, right. And my partner quarry is a PhD in electrical engineering. I have a graduate degree in computer science. So I really appreciate that stuff and how it can change the world. And without that, we won't have the server farms. We don't have the global communication that's it, etc. that enables all the stuff happening on the ground now to make our services more efficient. In the end, if you're an investor, the biggest opportunities in emerging markets is they're not the tech deals, right. The tech deals meaning the tech company selling tech. They are the tech services, the tech companies providing services that can grow to tens of billions in revenues. Try to grow a try to sell technology and grow that to be tens of billions. It's really hard, right. So, I think what you do, but you choose to do depends on where your passions are. There is no right or wrong answer to that. And do we look at satellite deals, we look at pure tech deals, we look at AV deals. Yeah, we do look at all that stuff but in the end we invest in the services deals. So, you know, as we're approaching towards the end of the interview would love to know what reading these days we know that you're reading you read a lot and you have not big collection of books. So what is it that you're sort of focusing on what are you reading about these days. Yeah. Believe it or not, I try not to read too many business books these days. A lot of sci-fi. I'm going back to my roots. I think sci-fi makes you your mind be a little bit more flexible in terms of what's possible. Not just in terms of technology but in terms of how human societies are configured, etc. Right. And Sorry, your connection just dropped. I couldn't understand anything you said there. Is there any particular book that you would like to recommend to our readers? Oh man, there's so many. I just read, but this is pure fun kind of book, Red Rising by Piers Brown. It's a popular sci-fi book if you're in sci-fi, you know it, but it's just like Indiana Jones kind of book. It's just lots of action. It also has some philosophical questions about society and how meritocratic you want it to be, etc. So very little to do with startups. Well, maybe that's got something to do with startups. The meritocratic system. But yeah, so I don't know if that's helpful. But I find a lot of the business books like that were out 10, 20 years ago. You read them and you go, well, yeah, that doesn't quite apply now, right? The authors get away with it because 20 years from now, nobody knew what they said. So what you realize is a lot of what people thought of as the last, you know, every 20, 30 years, people will say something about management and that's the way it should be. And then you find out 10 years from now, 20 years from now, the examples are all wrong. So I tend to get more first principles. I do read our articles, obviously, about the latest way people are thinking about virality, about engagement, etc., but not books. Sure. And somebody is asking here that any specific reason why you're not reading business books? Oh, I just explained that because a lot of the big books become obsolete within 20 years or what they're saying was actually wrong. They say these are the key success factors for this company. And then, you know, three, five years later, the company is dead. Yeah. So I think we need to get more rigorous. I do read the books that are more quantitative. That show numbers that drive certain things. But those tend to be in articles as opposed to books. You know, my final question to you is that I have been talking to a lot of startups recently who have got a model model, which is around really building digital avatars, whether they are event companies, or they're essentially social, sort of social companies which want to build a platform where, so I called one of them actually a Roblox of, you know, adults or Roblox for elder people. So, I mean, do you really feel these models, given the fact that we are so, so much online, this could be workable in the coming time? I guess the answer to that question specifically will depend on what the entrepreneurs are doing with the ideas. I see virtual events is one that I have seen. And the second one is more really about socially hanging out with your friends and things like those at least three of them I came across within the last 15 days itself. So, I mean, it's almost looking like a trend. Well, you know, we find trends and we go after them, right? So, given the geopolitical situation is going on in the world, China, US, and even like Brexit and all that stuff, there is I think an opportunity to knit the world together in a different way, right, from the geopolitical situation. So, I do believe, and COVID is sort of driving that a little bit, right? I do believe there are ways for governments outside of those big players to get together to figure out ways for us to be more seamless across borders, right? Can a doctor in Mumbai service me when I'm sitting in Jakarta? And actually the easy answer is yes, but it might not be legal where I am, right? In fact, in Indonesia, if you're not careful practicing medicine, then you could end up in jail if you have a license, right? So, can we build a world that's more glued together virtually as opposed to geopolitical lines, right? And I think the answer is yes. I think we're starting to see it, right? Zoom is an American company owned by a Chinese national, or started by a Chinese national. You've got all kinds of interesting solutions that are created by people from all over the world that sort of knit people together, right? From e-commerce, I don't mean like Amazon, I mean things like Sharpie, there's more local. To a content and social platforms, right? They're knitting together hundreds of millions of people from different walks of life. I have a friend who started SMU about 15 years ago, Sonic Mew, right? It's got a hundred million MAUs of people playing music to each other across the world, right? They're singing karaoke or they're playing a musical instrument. Yeah, I didn't think that was possible 15 years ago when he started the company. But I think the world is going to be knit together in ways we will find hard to imagine today. I was watching a summary on Star Trek. No, it was on Stargate, sci-fi fan. And it was summarizing the nine years of Stargate and it was saying the first episode showed us short time and had an audience of like 1.3, 1.4 million people, which was a huge number. Today we look at 1.4 million and go, okay, that's a rounding error, right? Look at audiences very, very differently now. YouTube videos typically get to more than that, just one YouTube episode, right? On the regular, the top YouTubers. And it's not unusual to have 10 million viewers, etc. So I do believe that the worlds we live in will become virtual in ways we find hard to imagine today. And I hope actually the governments will enable that because I think that's the way to unlock some of the blockages that's happening on the high end, right? And companies having difficulties, we should figure out other channels that we can communicate with beyond the geopolitical ones. So that's my intellectual high level answer to that question. No, I think you're right. And I think one of the biggest takeaways I've had from this talk with you is that, you know, we need to. Well, it's one thing to look at trends, but really it's better to look into more science and see what problems could be or how problems could be faced differently instead of looking at business trends all the time. So I think that's a unique approach to looking and probably for a lot of people who are engineers or have a big interest in science. Thank you very much for talking to us. I really appreciate your giving us this hour and taking in a more physical environment. Till then, please keep safe. Thank you very much for joining us today. Take care. Bye-bye.