 Good morning everybody, welcome to the session, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Yasuda Oda with Nikkei, a Nikkei newspaper of Japanese media. And today we're going to talk about startups in the digital field. I am pleased to introduce my friend Paul Berger from the U.S. Silicon Valley. But best in Singapore, right? No, I mean I spend a lot of time there. I pretty much jump between Silicon Valley, Southeast Asia, and I actually spend a lot of time in Africa as well. The hairstyle is still like a Silicon Valley style, right? Yes, I try to keep it that way, yeah. And Mark's Valentini has an Italian name, but you are German and you're executive in these events. We'll get it in Bangkok, right? Correct, that is absolutely correct. And Tang Huoling is the co-founder of Grav. And also we have Mr. Rilujo Patrick, the most advisor in Asia. Okay, in the preparatory talk in advance of the session, I asked all of the panelists to prepare one or two keywords. What is the most important element or key factors to boost startups in the digital field? Just give me one or two words at the beginning, to kick off. Huoling? Yeah, so I usually share this answer whenever anybody asks me about advice on whether they should start a startup and whether they're doing a startup for the right reasons. The first thing I always say is make sure you're solving a real problem. Because there are many startups out there right now who are failing, not because the people are not good, but because the problem that they're trying to solve is too small. And it's not a real consumer problem. And thus, when they actually launch a solution, the consumers and the demand doesn't naturally come. So what I would love to urge people to do is, first, they identify a real problem and make sure they identify problems that they're really passionate about. And secondly, once you actually have that problem and you have that burning desire to solve it, make sure you think about the most innovative ways to go about it. In RCA right now, we're very, very fortunate to be in a position to leapfrog. For example, with Grab, we leapfrog from street hailing. We leapfrog from radio calls to mobile technology. It's the same thing as if anybody who are here right now, how many of us actually have landlines for our home phone number anymore? And how do they always use to ask, what's your full name? What's your house address? What's your phone number? Nobody puts in landline numbers anymore. I don't even know why. Exactly. That's because we've all leapfrogged. We've gone straight to mobile because that's the best solution possible. So if I were to kickstart, that's the two I would share. Let's see. Okay. What about you, Patrick? So as an investor. Yes, so we have been a big investor in this space. Obviously our focus has been Indonesia. But just to put into context, last night I called all the Indonesian delegates to brainstorm and ask for a few data points. There are now seven unicorns out of Southeast Asia, three in Singapore, three in Indonesia, and one in Vietnam. But if you look at the characteristics of these unicorns, those three in Singapore are not started by Singaporeans. And their business is not primarily in Singapore. The one in Vietnam is started by Vietnamese. All the three in Indonesia are started by Indonesians. And they are still run by Indonesians. From the Indonesian context, I also had the startup unit of our Chamber of Commerce. And I have been quite blown away by the startup activities in our home country in Indonesia. What willing is saying I cannot agree more about finding the business model, finding to solve big problems where there's demand. But for me as an investor, what have taken me by surprise is the quality of the entrepreneurs. Quality. The quality of the entrepreneurs that I see. Because if you look at the regulatory framework, the ecosystem, what not, there's no question that Singapore today is leading. There's a lot of money, there are a lot of incentives, there's a lot of government support. But those that are successful in Indonesia, there's a natural selection of how they can get where they are today. Trafaloka, Tokopedia, founders with us in this forum, and Gojek in which we've been supporting since the very beginning. If you look at these three companies, the founders are exceptional. Obviously, all successful startups got exceptional people behind them. Indonesia is a big market and these people are not protected. It's a free fight. There's no special favor that the government is giving yet to these companies and yet they have become leaders in where they are. So I'll just pause there. But I would say that in the context of the fourth industrial revolution, this is really, if there are such things as industrial revolution one, two, and three, and four, this is really the first time that Southeast Asian companies have a chance to compete with global players. They are not afraid of all multinational companies. These startups are very successful. So I think we continue to be excited and we hope the governments are also paying a lot more attention in this space. Thank you. We should talk about the role of the government later and also about the leapfrog. And as a person who comes from a big nation like Japan, it's so intensive regulatory framework and a lot of legacy. It's kind of difficult for Japanese startups to make a leapfrog because they have to drag all the legacies behind them. So let's talk about it later. How about you? You are from Silicon Valley. I'm based in Silicon Valley, but I do a lot of investments. We've done over 40 investments in the region. And so for me, it gets me excited. There's a lot of quality entrepreneurs here. People have been learning at a very fast pace. Even the difference between when I first came and started investing here six years ago to now, the quality of entrepreneurs has increased. I think it's because there's been a lot of sharing of knowledge coming together. Actually, what they've been doing now, and I think this is really important, not only here but all around the world, entrepreneurs actually need to help each other out. Historically, you would start a company, you're kind of huddled up, you're kind of you against the world. But what I'm seeing, and it's worked really well in the valley, now it's working really well in Southeast Asia, is people are helping each other out. Events, they're coming together, they're talking and discussing. And this is how you move faster. You can't go by yourself and you can, but it's really hard, right? But if you go out there and you're starting different companies, kind of sharing information, you can kind of learn from each other and you can avoid a lot of mistakes. So when we invest, not only are we putting money in, we're also trying to kind of gather knowledge between all of our startups so they avoid all those mistakes that they made before. And so I think it's also part of the leapfrog effect. It's like, hey, help each other out and you can just start skipping all those stupid, dumb mistakes you make in the beginning. But yeah, in general, I think there should be more cooperation. There's been a lot, and I think continued cooperation actually make the region go way faster and start helping each other, kind of lift each other together for just trying to pose each other and fight. You're talking about networking of the people. Well, I mean, this is a people business, right? Tech is what enables everything, but I mean, when you start a company, there's two or three or four awesome people come together and they're the ones that make the magic happen. Then they hire the amazing employees. They're the ones who are actually implementing it. So yeah, it's all about the people. And then the technology, what you're doing is secondary. But if you have a shit team, then you're going to have crappy results, right? So you'd have really good people to come together. On the other hand, you are from the major player. It's a giant in the industry. How about you? And what's your opinion to boost startups? You are not startups as yourself, but... We are not startups ourselves, but also in Siemens on a global basis, we have also created startups and we even have now created a new company besides Siemens for startups to create it, to be creative, to go, I would say, leaner processes to give more creativity and to come up with new ideas. Besides that, what we are doing here in Southeast Asia, of course, we are at the beginning, we have to say. And when you look at the ASEAN countries, Singapore is definitely one of the front runners. When it comes to innovation, educational topics, funding, support on new innovations on the way to the digitalization. For the remaining countries, I think there is still a longer way to go. There are some, I would say, infrastructure preconditions to be met. It's an educational topic. It's a language and English proficiency topic because when it comes to digitalization, when it comes, I would say, to the new world, innovative world, where you have to have the connectivity, where you have to talk, you have to do this across borders. And when you go across the borders, you have to talk or speak in one language. This you see in many of the countries, there is a limitation these days and therefore the government has to give there, I would say, more emphasis on the educational curriculum on the language itself, but also to have in every part of the curriculum the new innovation and the digitalization considered. It has to be in their mindset, which is not so far in all the countries given. Nevertheless, I think you see trends. You see that the governments have their vision going towards digitalization industry 4.0, but still the entrepreneurship, the support, the grants to universities, and then the transfer of innovations back to the industry is not yet established. Also, what you can see is the change in openness in processes, processes and new businesses, how to implement it into the market, restrictions covered by security topics, so not every Internet is free. You cannot enroll in every country your own platforms based on certain regulations and limitations. That definitely needs to further developed in the countries and also one important topic from an industrial point of view is definitely also that standards need to be aligned. Standards between the ASEAN countries and standards of course on a global basis that you can always say exchange information and you work on the same philosophy. I see. Okay. I think Paul brought an idea that networking. So the question is how to develop network. You and I have based in Singapore and I feel somewhat really comfortable to be in Singapore rather than Tokyo because maybe Tokyo is 10 times bigger than Singapore but the physical proximity with people is everybody is within the reach, investors, consultant, manufacturers. So it's an urbanization trend. It seems to be here as one of the good elements to foster the startups. I think is there something in common between the Silicon Valley and Singapore and Singapore as he said is only exception in ASEAN? Having compact density of people together is really important. So Silicon Valley, what I love about it, why I moved there 15 years ago, is I walked down the street and I'll bump into three or four friends of mine and be like, hey, what's going on? I have these very serendipitous random interactions. The more you encourage that, the better. In Singapore, it's a hub in some way so a lot of people pass through. So while you might be sitting there, you have great people always coming through. So whenever you have that kind of density of people passing through in any big city, that makes it really important. I'd say Tokyo also, for instance, is picking up there. So I was at a conference last month, I've been there a couple of times this year and people are passing through more and more. So you want to be in places where people pass through. If you're remotely in the middle of nowhere, it's harder for you to be connected. So it's your job then to kind of plug into the hub versus being one of the random nodes. Julian, you talked about how to identify the real demand in the market. So that means you have to be very close to the consumers, what they really need, what technologies they need, something like that. So how would you think of the relationship between the consumer and technology supplied as you? Great question. And I'm actually going to tie a couple of points to this later. Firstly, if I were to use our example and our experience at Grab, the reason why we started Grab was because we were all consumers. For a bit of context, Grab started as a company who was trying to solve safety problems with taxis in Kuala Lumpur. For those of you who have been to Malaysia, our taxis were unfortunately known to be the world's worst at some point in time. Google it, it's still there, right? The index is on Google. The first page is all about Kuala Lumpur and what has happened with taxis, robberies, rapes, not very nice things, and things that Malaysians had gotten used to. It's been around, it had been around for many generations, and we had started to take it for granted until my co-founder and I said, hey, we have this crazy idea. With the new innovation of mobile technology, leapfrogging what was previously available, and our desire to go solve something that our friends and family were facing, and myself as well. I had to take taxis all the time because I was a consultant, and it was not fun. We were the consumers. We understood the pain, and then we went to reach out to the drivers. We spoke to them, we chased them down at their favorite hangout spots, coffee shops, we bought them like coffee, roti chanai, whatever you needed, right? We went to airports, fuel stations, just to understand what they needed as consumers themselves, because ultimately in the right hailing industry, it's a dual-sided marketplace with multiple stakeholders, multiple consumers. And what we really need to do every time we think, whether it's a start or not, any business needs to be based on creating value. And in order to create value, the simplest way for me is to identify what the inefficiencies are. What are the current friction points? Be a consumer yourself, and if you're not in that natural position, go talk to as many consumers as possible. So framing that in the context of ASEAN and how we at Grab have been able to very quickly grow from one product, one city, one country. We're now in seven countries in ASEAN. We're in every single country other than, unfortunately, Cambodia, Laos and Brunei. We intentionally started the company to be ASEAN. Every single day, and especially in the BEF, I'm getting pinged by people, hey, do you want to bring your technology to this country, this city, and whatnot? It'll be great. It's not that we can't do it, it's because we don't want to do it, because we know we are extremely passionate about ASEAN's problems. Our entire leadership is from Southeast Asia, right? Or they have very close passions to Southeast Asia. We hire local teams in each country in the Philippines, our entire team is Filipino, locally in Indonesia, in the Indonesian team, Singapore, Malaysia, wherever you go. We have people who are very, very passionate about the problems here. And we know that ASEAN to date has a lot of similarities, yet the similarities. And what we have wanted to do and continue to want to do is to leverage the best of those strengths. And it's not easy. Every single day we're learning, right? So how do we do that? How do we bring people together? How do we create that network? We do it both as a company, within the company, and then we try to reach out to others as well, because we are in a fortunate position where we can start to give back. Exactly. For context, like, technology is not what ASEAN has been known to have a lot of. We've never had detect giants like, let's say, Ali Baidu, not even like Google, Facebook. We have a lot of great young talent but they have never had the exposure or the opportunity to go develop large-scale solutions before. So what we are doing is we're bringing global talent to help guide and coach and build our fellow-grabbers. What I mean by this is we actually opened offices in Seattle, Beijing, Bangalore. These are R&D technology centres to bring the best global talent who are passionate about a lot of problems to supplement this with the local talent that we have in Southeast Asia, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, so that we can bring the best of the world to solve Southeast Asia's problems. I see. So you're talking about the advantage of being in ASEAN is we have the big chunk of the consumer. It's growing. The middle-income cluster is now expanding so rapidly. That is maybe the biggest advantage of ASEAN, not technology itself. You can get a technology available anyway in the world. The question is how to find them and get them into the market. Okay, Patrick, when it comes to the judging, the potential of the startups as investors, do you look at the relations of the consumer and supplier and the technological advantages? What is your judgment? So first of all, let me address a point about that working. For us as investors, what we are trying to do is or we've been trying to do is actually building alliances with like-minded investors across the globe. And having been trained in the U.S., of course initially our tendency was more U.S. and U.S. centric, whether it's Silicon Valley to some extent Japan. But what we had found that is actually outdated. What we find to be a lot more relevant is building alliances with the Chinese players. What have been happening there is totally fascinating and they are a lot more relevant to our region. We are also building alliances with the Indian players. And interestingly, we have also found ourselves to be doing a lot of business with the Vietnamese because we have one healthcare company doing telemedicine and to a healing point there's a shortage of talents not only from technical perspective but from experience who have scaled the business to the level that's adequate. And this company of ours actually opened Development Center in Vietnam so it's really borderless, it's transient and I think the role for an investor like us is to really help these young entrepreneurs to get connected to be in the flow of information and know how and so forth. And that also helps us when we evaluate a business model to actually map the idea with what's happening in other places and see whether it's been done elsewhere. It's a lot easier for us to make a judgment of the likelihood of success if there's already a model that works elsewhere. Like it or not, we look at Uber, we look at Airbnb, what not, and see what are the similar companies that are doing that in Southeast Asia. Of course there are some really local models but generally it's a lot easier if we can map that against global success stories. The other thing is that there are different type of products. I think if you are a Southeast Asian company and you want to create a search engine that compete with Google that's probably not realistic. But if you are in consumer based business I think being local is exceptionally important. And if you are in a big market being local has its own advantages because you are closer to the consumers. The problems are your problems. You face the problems every day. You know the marketplace better. So we have a bias towards leading local players. I think these, especially in markets that are large. So that's I don't know whether I answer your question but that's how we look at this. Mark, you are a giant a big company and from my experience I know many major firms like Hitachi, Toshiba or whatever in Japan and they come to Asian market and are struggling to reach the consumers, the market. They have technology in their factory or laboratory. But they don't really know what is really demanded by the consumers. So there's a distance between the inventor and the R&D section. It's getting far and far. And in your case it's a German company like Japanese. What is your view on the relationship with the users and the end users? In principle yes, we are I would say a German company German based, founded but I think we also have a big development in globalization. We are more or less in more than 130 countries in the world. The workforce too of our workforce is working abroad. Only one third or even less than one third is still remaining in Germany. So I think maybe we have adapted a little bit more than some other Japanese firms. What we are doing is definitely we have in each country we have set up teams to become I would say more knowledgeable about the demand of the country, of the culture of the country and how to build up the business. Fortunately, Siemens has not I would say a direct product business anymore for the real tail. Communication has been given up some years ago. So we are going to the industries. We are going to the industries and with our state of the art technologies I have to say we are more or less well known. When it comes to the specific sectors. You don't produce a laundry machine anymore? No. All these home appliances we merged a couple of years ago with Bosch and also we sold that to Siemens. You will still see some brands maybe coffee machine refrigerator with Siemens on it but it's not Siemens. So the brand can still be taken on the products but it's not Siemens business anymore. So we mainly on the way of industries, automation, digitalization of course in mobility sectors we are in power generation distribution in all these kind of industries we are in but this is more I would say it's an industry known brand rather that we have to go out of the business, the product business as you might know from the past. But there definitely I would say we are working in the quantities together with the consultants together with government. We have our own consultancy companies for example and setups we have one just created in Singapore for industry 4.0 digitalization where we also can advise companies how to go how to plan for the future. So this is Patrick was talking about this is the first chance for the agents to to jump in this revolutionary phenomenon for the industrial revolution because this is digital and the agent doesn't have any legacy and you can jump into the head of everybody, right? So digital means something unique when it comes to your judgment in the American investment there is a bunch of venture businesses around in Asia traditional one making manufacturing a small gadget and stuff like that. But digital what is the uniqueness in digital technology? I think we talk about Asia I think there is a separation between East Asia and Southeast Asia. I think historically Japan, South Korea you have the technical and the education systems that allow you to be competitive in manufacturing in inventions of technical stuff. In Southeast Asia we are behind when we talk about manufacturing industries or manufacturing activities is still primarily dominated by multinational companies that are operating in Southeast Asia. And in the context of Indonesia I can say that it will take us a long time to build the ecosystem, the basic industries and also the technical capabilities by which if the world is working in a linear way it will take us a long time to catch up. But this is an opportunity to leapfrog because in digitization the ecosystem that you need is very different from these traditional industries. And the limit is your brain and your imagination and hard work and the hustle and the so I think that's the reason why I think that this is really the first time for Southeast Asian companies to be champion. We are not competing with Japanese companies, German companies with American companies in this area. It's really about finding there's a chance for local companies to be champions. And apart from being an investor I'm also Indonesian and one of my personal passion is to make sure that we help local companies in Indonesia to be champions in our home country and also in the region. So that is what I meant by being able to participate. Any phenomenal example in Indonesia in the digital field local startups around Jakarta I heard there's one application smartphone type of business I think the clearance of finance using the smartphone is the local startups in Indonesia. So as I mentioned to you in Indonesia there are three unicorns Gojek and we have Traveloka Traveloka is the leading travel apps solutions they are by far number one in Indonesia have they become recently number one in Thailand and they are also expanding in other globalization countries I think they are the first really regional player don't steal them away to Singapore the third one is Tokopedia Tokopedia is leading marketplace and in the second years there are many different activities whether it's in fintech and what's interesting is that we start seeing Chinese talents coming down to Indonesia because they recognize that the market is big and then what they do is they try to find a good entrepreneur to back or to partner and get into a more advanced type of tech product whether it's artificial intelligence what not in regard to what you just mentioned there is a pretty robust activities around cryptocurrency in Indonesia we have our Bitcoin exchange there are people doing different kind of things but it's still quite nascent the regulatory framework is still a little bit I would say it's still very new our central bank still needs to get really comfortable for this industry flourish but digital payment is happening our company Gojek is spearheading that we have been quite surprised by the traction they are getting in the marketplace there are a lot of different things it's a very very robust ecosystem so Paul we found that the digital give us the ASEAN a great chance to make the leap jump why did you come to ASEAN we were not abandoning the Silicon Valley you see a chance here that's why you are here would you tell us a bit more about it so my overlying theory is that smart people distribute all across the planet historically there has been a problem where a lot of times you are missing access to money and missing access to smart people so Silicon Valley I was lucky I was born in the right place I was at the university where the web browser was created I had all these amazing people when I started a company I would knock on the door could you give me a tip as to how to build a digital business or something in the tech field people would give me that kind of time people would give me their knowledge but when I traveled around the world I didn't see that I was like wait a second there's all these smart kids out there and they're not getting that access so I came out here because I saw this really a lot of brilliant people and we're at a time in point now where as you said you don't need a lot of resources you don't need a billion dollars to start a company two or three people hang out there and you start building stuff and everyone reads the same blogs there's so much open source technology out there there's also a lot of these meetups and things happening so I saw things kind of bubbling so what is missing here okay they're missing access to people who've done it before like for you guys out of Malaysia and Singapore you were a first generation kind of tech entrepreneur here you didn't really have a lot of people you could knock on the door versus me I could so I'm like well why don't I just kind of be one of those people who could bridge it and kind of be a conduit to that information right but now there's a lot of entrepreneurs like you locally and now there's going to be these whole next generations that's actually going to get really exciting so now that there's this base of five, six, seven unicorns in the region and there's a lot of companies that are kind of rising so anybody who's like 21, 22 years old now they're going to go out there and be able to glean off that information then you get this kind of like whole kind of exponential thing so every two people come out there's four, there's eight and there's also 16 and it starts going like that very very quickly so yeah so I just saw a lot of talent here very kind of compact density of people and I was like why should I be here right and it's not only here I'm also in Africa I'm also doing stuff in Europe I just believe in general around the world things are being more and more distributed in startups and technology and you don't have to be in Silicon Valley to start a big company it still helps to pass through occasionally and it's good to kind of glean information you might want to raise some money from there but in general you can do it anywhere nowadays and that's why I'm excited about this type of stuff very interesting okay so the question comes to the point where we should discuss the role of the government what is the regulatory framework to have such an activity and lively in the energy the youth, young people we need the freedom I went to Shenzhen in China a couple of weeks ago and it was the very first time to be in Shenzhen and I found really exciting scene where a lot of foreign people from Europe Japan and the US come to China because there is sort of freedom even though it is within the great world they have a lot of resources of technology and the fund and just enjoying the atmosphere so I wonder oh this is much more energetic than Tokyo so this is what's happening in Asia and but the government has to allow to do that but you are talking about the government of the Indonesia is still kind of too strict I'm not saying that the thing about all these new activities is moving so fast and obviously it's very difficult for the government to catch up the government of Indonesia is very supportive there is a very clear recognition that this sector this digital sector is very important but if you break it into industry by industry we as players we have to work very closely with the government to help them regulate us or to basically persuade them to look things in certain ways but I would also say that it also goes both ways in democratic environment like in Indonesia there's also another aspect that needs to be needs to be that we have to pay attention when our businesses disrupt existing players it's one thing if you do it by innovation by offering a product that is more attractive, more user friendly what not to the consumers but it's another thing if you dump capital subsidize the business over a long time over a period of long over a long time and you kill businesses that way you kill local businesses that way that is something that that is a serious issue it's a social issue and it becomes a political issue if you sell your product below your cost for one year, two years, three years and it kills businesses I always say this we have a tire company we manufacture tires in Indonesia we manufacture tires in the US today below my cost the US government will shut me down WTO anti-dumping but if the government is doing that in digital economy they are accused of not being open to innovation and what not but they are losers and again in democratic society the government has to also pay attention and listen to the voice of this displaced people and I think there is no solution yet to this issue it's something that we are still in dialogue but we just have to keep that in mind looking at the beginning stage of the establishing the Grav's business model I understand you don't have a service in all regions in ASEAN we have service in Singapore and Thailand 7 countries 7 countries out of 10 right what is your experience there must be some regulatory issue you have to tackle so like everybody has mentioned everything that we are looking at in the fourth industrial revolution growth requires change change is never easy and what we realize is we want to bring this change together with all our different stakeholders especially our governments especially the people that we serve our customers and the good news is I think the path forward usually has a lot of win-win-wins for everybody but what you need to do is spend the time to actually go speak to them listen and align on what the mutual needs and objectives are and we have done this with every single local government that we have worked with and we are continually continuously in discussions with them this is why we attend events like the WBF as well because it is important that we create that dialogue we don't operate like other startups where we come in and we say hey we know what is best and we are just going to do this and we build those our way through what we care about is working hand in hand with our partners and the only reason why Grab is where it is today is because we have continued to get support from all our different partners public, private, our consumers, our passengers our drivers and we are very fortunate to be on this path and it is a path that we think is the right way forward well then you have to have a dialogue with the government as well all the time so you have to go to the government unless they don't come to you to ask you something and that is the important thing it is knowing that when you go into this mindset of creating change there are certain bits of change that can happen really fast you type some code and immediately you can release a new release of a feature of a product that can happen instantaneously there is other change that requires bringing people along changing mindsets, defining what is the future so what we try and do with our stakeholders is to understand what is the long-term objective that we all want and most of the governments that we work with they all want the same thing they want more efficient transportation platforms and infrastructure they want to make sure that they don't use billions of dollars to traffic jams every single day, month and year they want to make sure that transportation becomes accessible to all and they want to make sure that more and more people can be employed these are the same underlying principles in how Grab has grown so quickly from five years ago as I said, Malaysian started out looking at taxis, now we are in like 50 cities for transportation we have multiple modes of transport we actually have the widest range of transportation options in one mobile app and that is critical because we know one form of transport is not going to serve the needs of every single segment of the population some will need something quicker, more expensive let's say if you're going out for a business meeting you want a more fancy car or some will require something that is more affordable for longer modes of transportation for example we came out with something very innovative in Indonesia it's called Grab Hitch Nibbing which is the concept of social bike pooling because firstly bikes, two modes of transport are the most common in Indonesia, it's what enables you to weave through traffic and it's also one of the cheapest most accessible forms of transportation and a lot of Jakarta folks in the greater Jakarta, Jabodera Bay they travel from outside Jakarta to inside Jakarta using bikes every single day why don't we enable them to have a pillion rider behind them to share that cost every single day and it's an amazingly innovative product that solves real problems and is growing extremely quickly similarly we don't take the same approach for every single country for Singapore, very very different what we've done to work with the local government there is to actually bring taxis and cars into one platform we recently lost Jish Grab, I think you're very familiar with this, a lot of Singaporeans residents have been moving tremendously quickly we were able to just grab 30 days after we launched we actually have 5 million rides because it solves a real localised problem and this problem, the solution we cannot and should not apply to every single city and country for context everybody who's not been to Singapore and used it it enables taxis and cars to be booked from a consumer perspective as a single service so you get the closest car or taxi and imagine what the government of Singapore is saying to us when they say, hey, Grab, we trust you enough to go help figure out what's the right price for taxis which used to be completely meted before and this has done 100% in hand in hand conjunction with the local governments this has kind of changed that we want it's positive, it's for the right reasons and why did they say yes because they know it's good for taxis, taxi drivers now get access to demand from cars as well as taxis passengers get access to the fastest closest ride in price models that they are most comfortable with which is fixed fare up front pricing there are many other examples you could share but I don't want to take it too much actually Grab dropped the bomb into the Singapore market hopefully it's a good bomb but yeah, it's for the sake of the consumer as the price competition is taking place right now and everybody is trying to renew their business model even the government you said earlier that Singapore may be the only exception in ASEAN that can be able to force the startups but Singapore is known for the very strong government very strict regulation system how can you judge that Singapore is a place and it's not applicable to the other cities in ASEAN actually I did say it's the only possible place it's currently the most developed place of ASEAN it's the most developed one when you see from the education from the universities and also how I would say the government is really encouraging new startups new setups where they even give fundings towards these kind of new technologies where you get special tax treatment and so on the remaining country in ASEAN they're starting to do that they're promoting, they have the vision but they're still in an early stage of implementation to make it as successful or as advanced as Singapore is right now already so as I said before potentials are everywhere but you have to identify the potentials and the talents and also you have to develop the talents and when you see in many of the ASEAN countries these days more I say the obligation of the company itself to hire the people to train them to develop them rather you get them out of the market Singapore is a little bit different as I said and everybody knows it because they have started much earlier on that and all the other countries step by step in a different level are starting to develop these kind of infrastructure enhancements visions but also as you said it's a very strong government I say very strong government also sometimes advantages that means whenever you have a vision you have a much faster ability to implement if you have a strong government rather than I would say it needs to go to many many constitutional processes to implement to change and digitalization definitely needs a change it needs a change in policy it needs a change on processes it's a fundamental change from the traditional work force to the traditional manufacturing to the agriculture topic it's a new way of manufacturing it's a new way of business which requires changes in all aspects maybe I can share an experience a little bit in Indonesia so there's actually a role for the private sector to help the government in our system the chamber of commerce the Indonesian chamber of commerce is mandated by law to be the conduit between businesses and the government when it comes to policy formulation so our chairman of the chamber of commerce created a startup unit and the mandate of this unit is to basically help startups in different segments to then have a dialogue with the government so last year we with OJK our financial services authority held a fintech festival fintech conference and out of that activity we work on a regulatory framework for the P2P landing segment peer-to-peer landing and for me I have also the advantage of being a more traditional investors we have quite big financial services so we saw that this P2P we don't immediately step in to also help the regulatory framework it may actually backfire the credit model is still so early we don't have a full credit cycle to determine whether the landing model works or not the risk management works or not and often time what happens is that if there's the government doesn't regulate at all people will raise money from other people to lend to these companies or to however the borrowers are and it blows up and when it blows up the government will come in and then they will be really strict and they really strangle the whole industry so our observation is better to go early and try to work with the government to regulate it and FSA, our OJK had issued a regulatory framework for P2P so they are now legal to operate I don't say that it's perfect I think it still works in progress as the nature of this thing it needs to be it needs to be tweaked all the time but what I want to say is that regulations are not always bad we need regulations to protect the industry itself very interesting so we have to learn how to manage the timing and how to manage the dialogue with the government I think we should open the discussion to the floor does anybody have a question to the panelists with their hand and we should please identify yourself before speaking Hello, my name is Mr. Matsuzaki I'm from Tokyo, Japan I listed my company on 2004 I went through the same fundraising with the angels and venture capital all the same process but the biggest difference is we didn't have a company called Unicorn we didn't have venture capitalists like you from overseas so the amount of the money we could raise was very small and also the biggest difference from now in one decade I really feel like I'm an old economy people but the biggest difference is that we were not exposed to the fight Patrick used the word free fight yes so we were not exposed to the fight with the company overseas now you're exposed the world is exposed to the fight for the overseas and how do you conclude this fight is it by the money you have raised or is it by the passion you have for the business maybe Brezza you have the idea I was in the same place as you I started my first company in 1999 and the amount of information out there was completely different if you raised a million dollars it was like holy cow you raised a million dollars now it's like man whatever everything is growing there's more money coming in so you have to compete on a global scale but at the end of the day how do you compete globally out maneuver companies with tons of money so that comes back down to what I said earlier it's about people and who you put around you if you go out there and you execute really well you hire amazing people and you show tons of passion you're able to attract good people you're going to be able to go out there and actually out hustle and beat the bigger giants time and time again why do startups still even exist why doesn't google, facebook start every single company possible because some small young nimble team goes out there with very little budget and some very creative ideas and they go out there and disrupt industries right so yeah I think you compete by just pure brain power and hustle and of course you have some money but it doesn't really matter how much in the end I'm sure to have like a sealed country like China protected environment like China so the way we look at it is that the traditional way of looking at locals versus international businesses is outdated you cannot look at it from where the capital is from right because in the Indonesian context if we define it that way none of the startup can grow if we rely solely on domestic capital unlike the China context so I think the I agree completely that you have to compete on innovations but also disagree that money doesn't matter money matters in certain sectors today there are views that with a large amount of money you can buy the market become a dominant player kill everybody else and I think as I mentioned earlier one thing that we have to pause and think back is what are the fair trading practices that you can allow there are certain sectors again people are just selling their stuff below cost if people are selling their power generation below cost I think Simmons would not be happy and if this goes for a short period of time you can understand it maybe it's a promotion and it's a grabbing market share but if it goes to 1, 2, 3, 4 years it changes the whole the whole dynamic of the country of there will be social issues so I think I'm also trying to be trying to be balanced looking at it okay I see Hi this is Michelle from Hanco I have a question other than to be a successful startup to able to raise fund what would be the quality of the startup that you really look into the key elements that actually from a big corporation when you want to invest in a startup or now experience being a startup what are the important criteria to make them successful Huli? I'll speak from my perspective on what has enabled us to succeed and please note that this is a sample N equals 1 so what has been extremely critical for us is a lot of what has been discussed firstly the idea is it a good idea does it have a good solution secondly the people are they the right people to solve that problem because they know how to solve it and they have the passion to solve it and the ability to execute like no tomorrow because ideas at this point and stage where information of symmetry is kind of no longer existent are a dime a dozen you need to execute beyond that is that ability to bring people along not just the first two founders but the ability to continuously hide the best global local talent at the same time because once you have those three and I'll leave it to Paul and Patrick to comment about this and Marcus as well once you have those three that's when investors will come that's when you see the opportunity and then you say hey it's no longer about Silicon Valley it's about the rest of the world because that's where most of the valley has not been created most of the opportunity is money is not stupid I hope not and investors want to see that as well so when we think about what we need to continue doing next as well is the ability to constantly reinvent ourselves constantly learn constantly put up our hands and say we made a mistake how do we iterate how do we move if you have some intrinsic that permeates throughout that group of individuals that company, that leadership team that you're looking at, that startup that you care about doesn't matter what happens in the world things will always change the environment, the industry will always either have headwinds or tailwinds you just need to figure out how you're going to react to it what does this mean to you what's the challenge into an opportunity ultimately it boils down to the people the culture, the idea do they have that passion are you going to continue fighting in the ring when it's a roller coaster and do they know how to bring other people whether it's fellow people to start the startup or continue that startup or partners, private public investors you name it I agree 100% with also you mentioned the flexibility the malleability of the team these companies they change you have an idea, you have a dream it always ends up somewhere there and you need to find a team that can roll with the punches to figure things out and they'll kind of get beat up a little bit but they won't give up also with kind of similar light to that there's another thing I look for I call it grit somebody is coming after you, your company is getting punched in the face people are coming at you, you're running out of money whether it's a fund or don't give up you go out there, you're flexible you kind of change your path you go out there, you persevere if you could see that quality in a person either historically or even in the first steps they take as a company, that's a huge sign to me I get excited when I meet somebody who I can see, this person is up for the fight they're not going to give up because running a company is difficult and you're going to have all those ups and downs you said roller coaster when there's worse dips it's a co-founding team as well passion and flexibility that Japan and Germany maybe not good at I disagree I lived in Japan for two years I was telling people that when I was training at Goldman Sachs in 1997 I met this company called Fast Retailing nobody knew what Fast Retailing was we're at it today, Uniqlo and you can see all different types of things all of new new economy activities in Japan I think the but you cannot fight the macro factors in our place, in Southeast Asia it's a growing economy young population and a lot of inefficiencies so the hurdle rate to be successful is a lot lower than in developed places like Japan I beg to differ a little bit I appreciate your comment I myself was enjoying being in Asia in ASEAN would you wrap up Marx as a German person I wouldn't see it so bad as you see it this is really mature and not flexible at all and you see it also in the companies the companies who are globally operating Siemens is one of them you see it, I think it's not the biggest, it's not the fastest who will survive it's the one who has the ability to adapt to the situations, to the changes that is very very important and you have seen it when you're anticipating what business we did in the past, we have here and there I see we go for new innovations we go for new companies we lay off businesses that are less obsolete or not, I would say any more from our perspective that we can handle it in a successful way because also our mission as a stock listed company is definitely to bring great shareholder value we have to give it back to our shareholders that is why we're existing and therefore we have to adapt to the market and that is very very important and that you can only get a new mindset and with connectivity all of the world, you can't operate your company only out of one center point like Germany that is the reason we are spread all over the world we have all over the world, I would say our local setups where we get the market knowledge, the demand of the customers the visions what we try to I would say then convey into a business and a new business model that is how we are acting and that is needed for everybody for having or being successful in the future is to adapt to the new demands, to the new developments on a global basis that's a great wrap up we all have to know we are lucky extremely lucky to be here in RC and at this moment in history and the stage of the development of technology with that, thank you very much for everybody and big hands to all the ladies and gentlemen thank you very much you are welcome