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Pakistan’s entrepreneurs are building worthy products but the deplorable scarcity of capital is starting to bite. Most of the major consumer verticals – transportation, food delivery, and ecommerce – are dominated by foreign startups such as Uber, Careem, and Rocket Internet.

These players have seen beyond the mixed perception of the country and understand that it’s a rapidly-growing consumer market that’s adding over 1 million mobile broadband connections every month.

If this dynamic continues, the threat of a crowding-out effect is very real – as more foreign players enter Pakistan, local founders will be left fending for scraps. And the potential to scale is very much there – Uber says Pakistan is one of its top markets, while Rocket Internet recently centralized operations for several ecommerce markets in the southern port city of Karachi.

A few angel investors and some large conglomerates have set up dedicated tech funds, but that’s only leading to a faint trickle of investments at valuations that are heavily skewed in investors’ favor.

Hoping to address some of these issues is Sarmayacar, a recently launched seed fund syndicate. It comprises mainly expatriate Pakistanis working in the financial sectors of Singapore, London, and New York, as well as some of their friends and associates – a total of 14 people.

The brains behind this venture is Rabeel Warraich, who’s a vice president at private equity firm GIC Investment Management and based in London. Rabeel and the 13 other partners in the fund have pooled together their personal capital to help get it up and running. He’s reluctant to give a hard figure about how much cash Sarmayacar has at its disposal – but says it’s between “US$3 and 4 million.”

Sarmayacar’s team. Photo credit: Publicity.

Off the ground

Sarmayacar made its first investment last month. It poured US$200,000 into music streaming app Patari, a Pakistani alternative to Spotify. Rabeel says the team’s actively looking for other startups to invest in and estimates they’ll make anywhere between six to ten investments in the year ahead.

At the same time he claims the size of the fund is likely to go up because there’s a lot of interest from other investors to join the crew. However, it will probably be capped at around 25 to 30 individuals and expected to close by the end of 2017.

A few of the investors are already based in Pakistan, says Rabeel, so they’ll be closely working with Sarmayacar’s portfolio companies – helping in strategy, networking, and opening doors. The CEO himself travels to the country every couple of months in an effort to keep meeting new entrepreneurs and building relationships with startup accelerators.

“We try not to be overly fixated on specific verticals as most verticals offer opportunities in Pakistan. We try to focus more on what problem is being addressed, what the fundamentals of the target market are and whether the business model of the startup will enable effective monetization of the opportunity,” outlines Rabeel when quizzed about his firm’s investment strategy.

“We are open to considering anywhere between US$50,000 and US$300,000 per investment, but our sweet spot is around US$200,000.”

Looking ahead

The eventual goal is to assist in funding requirements across all stages of the funding lifecycle. Right now the fund is sniffing out interesting opportunities, but as companies grow it’ll also aim to participate in series A rounds.

Rabeel’s confident that the profile of the fund’s founding team will help attract larger, institutional investors to Pakistan. However, when that happens, it’s likely to be under a different structure and with different limited partners on board.

“We are in this for the long run. Typical of investments of this nature, we expect at least a five-to-seven-year hold period for each investment,” he says.

The math whizz agrees there’s a severe dearth of existing capital but hastens to add that lots of foreign VCs are already making inquiries. Deal flow will help entice them even further and that’s something Sarmayacar will aim to support.

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Photo credit: John Y. Can

If you ask investors what types of startups will likely rise this year, they’ll probably mention fintech, some specialized forms of ecommerce, media, and perhaps software-as-a-service.

Here’s a list of startups in those categories I think we’ll hear more from this year.

Fintech

1. Investree

Hailing from the portfolio of Mountain Kejora Ventures, Investree is an exciting new player in financial services.

Its core feature is invoice financing. Small business sometimes have to wait weeks or months to be paid by clients for services or products already shipped. Through Investree, they can get the amount that’s owed to them in advance, which allows them to plan better. Once the client’s payment comes through, the lender gets the money back – with interest, of course.

The startup, which has dished out roughly US$4.5 million in loans so far, is a peer-to-peer lending marketplace where third-party lenders provide the cash and get interest in return.

Investree is also looking into employee loans, where lenders can help employees of Investree’s partner companies to finance special expenses like medical treatment, house renovation, or buying a motorcycle.

Co-founders Aida Sutanto, Adrian Gunadi, Andi Andries, and Dickie Widjaja are an experienced team and bring years of experience in the banking and finance sector with them.

Investree’s last announced funding was its series A from Mountain Kejora in June 2016

2. UangTeman

Aidil Zulkifli and Darmawan Zaini of UangTeman.

UangTeman is also a loans startup, but different from Investree in that it does not invite third-party lenders onto the platform. Instead, it gives out its own money to borrowers – very small loans intended to help people through a particularly tight stretch, for example toward the end of the month.

This type of lending is also known as a payday loan.

UangTeman has been criticized for taking high interest rates and late fees. Co-founder and CEO Aidil Zulkifli argues that what customers want most is transparency as well as speedy and simple access to a loan.

The startup, which has handed out around US$2.4 million in loans, claims that its default rate is very low, under 3 percent, and that the vast majority of borrowers can repay their debt on time without getting hit by penalties.

UangTeman raised a pre-series A round in equity financing in addition to US$735,000 in debt in September last year. It could be a candidate for a new round this year. Alpha JWC is among its investors.

3. CekAja

CekAja, established in 2013, is a dinosaur among Indonesia’s mostly very young fintech startups.

Its model could be described as financial ecommerce. It brings people in with information on all kinds of financial products like credit cards, or insurances. Readers can browse and compare offerings from a broad range of providers and then purchase the offering right through CekAja.

This is different to other comparison sites, co-founder J.P. Ellis says, which typically send their customers to their partners as leads, without selling to them directly.

CekAja raised a series B round led by Telstra Ventures, an arm of the Australian telco, in September last year – the first company to do so in Southeast Asia. It also operates in the Philippines under the name eCompareMo.

Mountain Kejora Ventures and Monk’s Hill Ventures are among its investors.

Ecommerce

General ecommerce is tough to break into now, as big companies have already put down their claims. But for niche shopping areas with a sophisticated audience there’s still potential, investors believe.

4. Sociolla

Cosmetics are a prime example. Buyers are quite particular about the brands they like and are willing to spend a significant amount. Sociolla in Indonesia is a candidate that’s been doing well in the field.

A similar startup from Singapore, Luxola, was acquired by luxury goods giant LVMH in 2015.

Luxola never got a strong foothold in Indonesia. So with a recent series B fundraise from a big Japanese firm, Sociolla is in a good position to conquer its home country.

5. Fabelio

Fabelio’s been around since 2015 and holds a unique spot in Indonesia’s ecommerce landscape. It’s a furniture store that designs and produces its own line of simple but elegant sofas, tables, chairs, and so on, and sells them through its own site. It targets upper middle class households and also works with corporate clients, like hotels and restaurants.

It has polished the designs and production process in the past couple of years, and now aims to establish itself in cities beyond the Jakarta metropolitan area.

It’s a business with strong economics, says Stefan Jung of Venturra Capital, which led Fabelio’s series A in January last year. IMJ Investment Partners, 500 Startups, and KK Fund are also investors.

Media

Curious kids. Joan Simon.

6. Kumparan

A hybrid news site with social media elements, Kumparan is a new entrant in Indonesia’s digital media landscape.

It’s a little bit like Medium in the sense that it houses curated, editorial content, but also allows the community to create its own posts and interact with each other.

Kumparan went online a few months ago. Its traffic, while not massive, has been growing steadily. The reason it’s included in this list is that it’s backed by a high-profile team of co-founders: a group of seasoned journalists, famous for establishing news portal Detik back in 1998.

Detik turned into one of Indonesia’s most valuable online properties, sold to Para Group in 2011 for a reported US$60 million, a huge exit at that time. Whatever Kumparan evolves into this year will be interesting to watch.

Software-as-a-service

The number of startups with software-as-a-service (Saas) business models is proliferating in Indonesia.

Many of them target the country’s millions of small and medium-sized businesses, for example with online tools for accounting or human resources management.

7. Jurnal

Jurnal falls into the category of accounting software, with features like invoicing, reporting, and asset management.

After a series A round last February led by East Ventures, it plans to expand to cities like Bandung, Medan, and Surabaya this year.

8. Sleekr

After acquiring another startup which specialized in accounting software late last year, Sleekr now offers both human resources management and accounting tools.

The company has so far only disclosed an initial investment of US$35,000 in 2014, with money provided out of the three co-founders own pockets.

Traffic to its site is steadily increasing and the company has nine open job postings, so it looks like it’s set for a strong year.

This post 8 startups to watch in Indonesia in 2017 appeared first on Tech in Asia.

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Singapore crowdinvesting startup CoAssets has poured cash into Chinese crowdfunding startup Da Xian Bing, the company announced yesterday, buying a 10 percent stake for US$146,000.

The deal gives CoAssets access to Da Xian Bing’s over 300,000 users who are well versed in crowdfunding.

CoAssets CEO Getty Goh tells Tech in Asia the company selected Da Xian Bing because of the latter’s strong presence in Southeastern China and ties to major sponsors. “We have done our due diligence and assessed that their user base is very similar [to ours]. Hence, they can easily cross over and become investors on CoAssets’ China platform,” he says.

It’s one way for CoAssets to gain a larger foothold in China.

A significant difference is that CoAssets is a platform for users to invest into real estate and small businesses. Da Xian Bing, on the other hand, is much more product-focused, like western websites Kickstarter and Indiegogo. It also offers a personal finance product.

Even so, Getty is confident CoAssets can entice users to its own service. Whether it’s through user experience (enabling dual signups for people who visit both platforms) or through a marketing push (letting users know about CoAssets and how it ties up with Da Xian Bing through newsletters and blog posts) the company wants to make it as easy as possible for people to check it out.

CoAsset’s EPIC series of conferences – the acronym stands for Expo for Property Investing and Crowdfunding – also plays a major part. The November 2016 conference in Fuzhou, China, featured the local startup in a big way, highlighting the warmer relationship between the two companies.

From February 2017, the two services will start sharing technology as well.

The deal is one way for CoAssets to gain a larger foothold in China. The company also entered into a joint venture with Chinese real estate development company Fujian Yaosheng Zichan in November 2015. CoAssets owns a 40 percent stake in the joint venture, which lets the Chinese firm put CoAssets’ platform to use for its property developments in Fujian and neighboring provinces.

“Our strategy for China is constantly evolving due to the huge market size and dynamic landscape,” Getty says.

Screenshots of Da Xian Bing’s website.

Opportunity knocks

Crowdfunding is considered a young space in China, although the market opportunity is huge. The World Bank reported in 2013 that funds raised in the country would reach US$50 billion by 2025.

Some of China’s largest players dabble in crowdfunding, like Alibaba’s Yulebao (part of the Taobao marketplace) and Coufenzi by arch-rival JD. Other crowdfunding sites include veteran Demohour and a multitude of crowdinvesting services.

In such a competitive market, CoAssets will have to work hard to build traction. Getty believes this starts with trust – especially after a spate of scandals in the country.

Last year a US$7.6 billion online loans startup turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, rocking China’s crowdinvesting market and resulting in the government cracking down on fintech startups in which people are asked to invest their cash.

“By positioning ourselves as a regional player that is listed in Australia, the trust in our platform is significantly higher,” Getty opines.

The company’s reliance on analytics to match users to potentially interesting deals is also one way he feels CoAssets can stand out.

CoAssets listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in September, raising US$5 million. It reports over 70,000 registered users, of whom over 56,000 are in Singapore, around 12,000 in China, and over 2,000 in Australia. It’s not revealed how many active users the startup has. Getty says the company registered a 16 percent growth in its Australian user base over the last quarter.

Converted from Chinese RMB. US$1 = RMB 6.8

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Logistics has been one of the hottest sectors in India to attract large investments from global VCs last year

Bangalore-based last-mile logistics startup LetsTransport (LT) has secured US$4 million in second round of funding from Neelesh Bhatnagar of NB Ventures, with participation from GMO Venture Partners and existing investor Rebright Partners based in Japan.

The startup plans to use the funds in building technology and team, according to Pushkar Singh, Co-founder of LetsTransport.

Also Read: Despite tight regulations, this startup looks to fly drones over Indian airspace soon

Founded in 2015 by IIT Kharagpur graduates Singh and Sudarshan Ravi, LetsTransport offers intra-city logistics services for both enterprises and SMEs. It provides both on-demand and customised attachment solutions to clients, along with value-added services through its verified drivers, audited vehicles, transparent pricing and point-to-point billing.

LetsTransport is operational in six cities — Bengaluru, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Tiruchirapalli forming clusters in North and South India. It is set to launch in Mumbai as a western cluster, and plans to expand to 11 cities by the end of this calendar year.

The firm has clients in FMCG, logistics, retail, e-commerce and SME sectors, and claims to be growing at 40 per cent monthly.

Currently, enterprises either maintain an idle capacity in their distribution network leading to higher costs or they lose the demand spike. For instance, FMCG loses 15 per cent of sales due to stock-outs. LetsTransport’s delivery engine supported by its aggregated network of trucks enables clients to manage their elastic supply chain, of both planned and variable movements, claims the company.

Also Read: Kalyan Krishnamurthy is now officially calling the shots as Flipkart CEO, but can he turn the company around?

“LetsTransport envisions giving a control on last-mile deliveries via infusing technology and automating decisions and interactions. We have relentlessly tried to add value to the entire ecosystem and we believe that is what has made our startup operationally profitable and sustainable.”

Logistics was one of the hottest sectors to attract large investments in India in 2016. In November, rivigo, a leading technology-enabled logistics company in India, secured US$75 million from global Private Equity firm Warburg Pincus, in one of the largest funding rounds 2016.

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And it claims to be much more affordable than traditional karaoke systems

Pictured: Popsical CEO Faruq Marican with the Popsical device in his hand

Asians are mad about karaoke. Throw a stone into a crowd and you are guaranteed to hit one who can belt out the most popular karaoke songs instinctively.

But modern day karaoke systems are clumsy and expensive. And visiting a karaoke studio on a regular basis might be a tad costly for the aspiring songstress. A broomstick is a nice substitute, but the audience is usually a couple of mice, crickets and stray cats.

Well, the saviour may have just arrived.

Faruq Marican, CEO of  Singapore-based startup named Popsical, has, after two years of development, released a relatively cheaper  – and much more compact – karaoke device for the average enthusiast.

“Current karaoke systems are obsolete, poorly designed and very expensive,” says Marican in an interview with e27.

A quick check on Lazada reveals that most karaoke systems start from around S$900 (US$630).The karaoke machines also run on huge local storage systems and hence it is cumbersome to upload new songs.

“It’s much better to just stream off the cloud, so we looked for streaming systems. The most obvious thing is just to stream it from YouTube. We tried that, but that in itself had user flaws. YouTube itself is not designed for karaoke specifically – you can’t change the pitch or tempo. It is catered more towards people who want to watch a video, so at least half the songs have vocals in it,” says Marican.

Also Read: Streo, a live music streaming app catering to artists and night clubs, raises seed funding

Hence, the raison d’etre for Popsical’s existence. The palm-sized, donut-shaped karaoke device costs only S$199 (US$140). For an additional S$200 (S$140), users can get a set that comes with two wireless microphones and a soundbar.

Popsical connects to the TV using an HDMI cable. It streams and adds new songs via the cloud using a WiFi or ethernet connection (the demo that ran on 4G proved spotty).

As pictured below, the user interface looks like it is modelled after Spotify, so users of both apps should find navigating Popsical a breeze.

Users can create playlists and find songs with a physical remote control. However, smartphone users can also download an app and sync it with Popsical. Multiple users can sync their phones to one device so there is no need to pass the remote around.

Using either the physical remote or app, users can control the master or vocal volume. They can also play, pause or change tracks, and adjust the pitch and tempo of the songs.

Marican says Popsical currently streams over 20,000 songs in five languages including English, Chinese, Malay, Hindi and Tamil. He also claims that it offers a wider range of music genres than most karaoke outfits.

“I am a big fan of indie music, and on Popsical, we have Tame Impala (an Australia-based psychedelic band) on it. This is something you would never find in any KTV place,” he says.

Also Read: Meet the Indonesian startup which aims to give indie musicians a voice

The Popsical app is free to download. However, there is a premium subscription for S$9.99 per month (US$7.00) which blocks advertisements and provides access to all the latest songs.

Cheesy music videos

There is one problem that plagues nearly all karaoke software – one that has been parodied on many occasions – the accompanying music videos often have very little to do with the song’s content.

This is usually due to a lack of an official music video. More often than not, these videos are poorly produced, resulting in a generic and cheesy stock video-esque film.For example, a song about a forlorn love affair in Alabama might feature some Caucasian model staring off a pier in Singapore. No way any self-respecting artist would endorse such a subpar video.

“A lot of people [tell] us that they don’t want to see [those videos]. And some of these videos are not really family-friendly,” says Marican.

To tackle this problem, Marican says Popsical might start producing its own videos, and while no concrete plans have been drawn up yet, he has laid down a few guidelines.

“First is, they have to be in HD (high definition), secondly some music videos use midi versions of the songs, so we want to have the original music in there. We are also looking at concert videos for songs that don’t have official music videos,” he says.

Funding the venture

Marican, who is also the Vice President of the investment bank BANQ and an associate of Tripoint Global Equities, LLC, grew Popsical in MediaCorp’s Mediapreneur incubation programme. Besides MediaCorp, it also has the backing of Quest Ventures and ACE Spring Singapore. The investment amount was not disclosed.

Marican says several small businesses have expressed interest in Popsical, but ultimately, his goal is for Popsical to penetrate large local karaoke chains including Party World KTV or Teo Heng.

Also Read: Will India dance to the beat of this Aussie music streaming service?

That said, the Singapore market for home karaoke systems is small, he admits, but he hopes Popsical affordability will change that sentiment. Marican says he is also aiming to expand regionally quickly to other markets such as Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Will Popsical disrupt the karaoke market? To be fair, its idea is not exactly novel, cloud-based karaoke systems have been in the market for a while.

But since this space is still fairly nascent, there is still ample chance for Popsical to win over its target audience as long it can deliver on its promises and introduce new innovations (singing with people across the world maybe?) in the coming months.

Currently, Popsical is crowdfunding on Kickstarter with a goal of S$36,000 (US$25,400).

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Image Credit: Popsical

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99.co has been operating in the Indonesian market since 2015, but back then their business activities were focussed on research and market analysis

Property listing site 99.co debuts its international expansion by making its official launch in the Indonesian market on Monday.

Founded in Singapore in 2014, the startup has been operating in the Indonesian market since 2015. But by the time the business was in the market penetration stage, and their activities were more focussed on research and market analysis.

“When we first enter the Indonesian market, we were also testing our business model by getting into new property segment (primary property). The result has been satisfactory, as since Q4 2016, we were able to adsorb 400 property units. To mark our official launch in Indonesia, we also launched two new products, a consumer site and a dedicated Android app for property agents,” 99.co CEO Darius Cheung told DailySocial.

The consumer site for the Indonesian market includes features similar to the one in Singapore, such as map-based search engine, product comparison, and live chat with a concierge officer. As for the property agent app, it includes features that enable them to predict their commission and broadcast messages to various platforms.

Also Read: Huge problem indeed, but not with property portals: A response by 99.co

99.co also announced the appointment of Irvan Ariesdhana as new Country Manager for Indonesia, to replace Rizki Indrawan.

Ariesdhana explained that of all the 400 units available on the platform, about 40 per cent of them consists of apartment buildings while the rest is of detached homes. The majority of the consumers are of middle to lower economic class, with more than 80 per cent of buying their properties through non-collateral credit scheme.

This year, apart from aiming to grow its Q4 2016 number by 20 times, 99.co is exploring the possibility to expand to secondary property market.

“We are still studying the [secondary property] market before we jump into it. We are also optimistic about reaching our target, as it does not include what we can possibly achieve from the total size of property market in Indonesia,’ Ariesdhana said.

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In addition to helping SMEs go online, the startup also auto-prompts and optimises content for local search, and integrates with inventory and enables transactions

NowFloats Founding team

NowFloats, a startup that helps small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India to get an online presence, has raised US$10 million in Series B round of funding from mid-stage technology VC fund Iron Pillar and IIFL Seed Ventures Fund.

Existing investors Blume Ventures and impact investor Omidyar Network have also co-invested.

The Hyderabad-headquartered company plans to invest this capital primarily on customer support and engagement. A portion of the capital will go into further improving the new technology stack — a hybrid of automated and human interaction support system. It also plans to enable the larger enterprises to leverage automated SEO on top of their existing websites.

With respect to SMEs, NowFloats aims to go beyond discovery by simplifying online and offline transactions. It will continue to invest in Digital Desh Drive, which has been in instrumental in understanding the market, especially the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in India.

Neeraj Sabharwal, Co-founder, NowFloats said, “At NowFloats, we have always believed that an SME needs to talk about their business regularly (talk about product features, new offers/events, reviews, etc.) to attract more customers online. Our product is geared towards making it as simple as possible for business owners to interact and add updates to their online identity. This is what primarily fuels the automated SEO engine of NowFloats.”

Founded in May 2012 by CEO Jasminder Singh Gulati, COO Nitin Jain, CXO Neeraj Sabharwal and Ronak Kumar Samantray, NowFloats helps offline businesses become relevant online. It does this by bringing the business online, auto prompting and optimising content for local search, and integrates with inventory and enables transactions. All this is done via the NowFloats Boost app or by SMS.

Also Read: With NowFloats you can create a website using your Facebook page

“We at NowFloats want to redefine the market for business websites, where the business owners only have to worry about the content on the website, and the technology takes care of other aspects like design, performance, discovery (SEO), marketing (SEM), enabling transactions (payment gateway) and customer/lead management, etc. We are investing in creating a product that would be one day used by all the SMEs across the globe, and built out of India.”

NowFloats has a presence across 230,000-plus businesses, of which up to 80 per cent are paid. The platform also registers over 11 million unique visitors a month, and has 474,000 SKUs in its credit, it said in a press release.

In February 2015, NowFloats raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding led by Omidyar Network, with participation from Blume Ventures, Mumbai Angels and Hyderabad Angels.

Last July, the company acquired Lookup — a free business chat app founded by Deepak Ravindran and backed by the likes of Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone, Beenos Founder Teruhido Sato and Khosla Impact.

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Entrepreneurs are made, not born

There is always a debate on the quote, “Entrepreneurs are made, not born.” The debate is how you are made and how is the journey towards being a successful entrepreneur, what kind of skills are needed, which are the areas to be groomed, and lots more.

The question on your mind would be: “What makes a prodigious entrepreneur?” and “What are the skills that separate them from the rest?”

Let’s look at those skills of successful entrepreneurs that can be an inspiration to new entrepreneurs:

1. Acceptance of (and learning from) failure

Failure is treated as a part of success, and a successful entrepreneur always learns from failures.  Disappointments are considered as a part of regular activities and they get better by learning from their past mistakes.

Entrepreneurs plan their strategy and work hard to reach the pinnacle of success.  They have a clear vision and they exert effort to make their vision into reality.

2. Delegation

Ideas are executed by people, and one successful entrepreneur cannot run a business alone. He or she needs to know how to motivate others to join him for the journey of success. Delegation of work is considered as one of the vital skills for an entrepreneur as he/she needs to work on the crucial parts and then pass on tasks to others.

To set right goals, it is necessary to make things happen in a way they should be happening. Entrepreneurs sell their vision and thus inspire others to work for their goals.

Also Read: Is your entrepreneurial journey just another rat race? Here are 20 things that say it might just be so

3. Adaptability

If you are not able to adapt to your surroundings, you are not able to survive in this tough market.  There would be obstacles on the path, and competitors would throw in many more complications during your journey.

This is the time where you have to adapt to the situation and work accordingly to survive, instead of looking towards a negative perspective, think upon what can be improved better.

4. Expertise

When it comes to being an expert entrepreneur, Malcom Gladwell stated that 10,000 hours of practice is needed to attain the level of expertise. Now it is not necessary for an entrepreneur to be expert, and on the other hand, he/she must have a wide range of skills. It is important to know what customer wants and how to make it better with the passage of time.

Entrepreneurs need to be aware of the trends that are ongoing in the market along with the changes to be added or modified with the current business model. There is a famous quote for being an entrepreneur:

Learning doesn’t end in school.

5. Investment

To become an unbeaten entrepreneur you need to know the importance of investment and where and when to invest. Successful entrepreneurs invest their time and money into their own people. There is no overnight success; it takes a span of years to get that success. Entrepreneurs always welcome mentorship and guide their peers towards the journey of success. They focus on developing skills of others, as they know it would be an investment now and return later.

As per the surveys carried out among 2,000 Americans by the Kauffman Foundation, approximately 37.8 per cent of respondents who knew an entrepreneur were entrepreneurs themselves. Networking is an integral part of entrepreneurship and thus networking and meeting the right crowd and new people will be useful in your journey as entrepreneurs.

6. Handling decisions

It’s in the nature of an entrepreneur to think quickly and qualitatively that helps them take up decisions in most of the crucial situations. There might be chances or situations wherein the decisions taken by an entrepreneur may not be right. In that case, entrepreneurs learn and analyse the situation in order to avoid the same mistakes in near future.

Also Read: 6 ways entrepreneurs successfully handle sales slumps

7. Leadership

You have to lead on each and every point of your journey. Entrepreneurs are decent leaders, as they can communicate ideas easily and motivate peers to work for the goal. It’s all about inspiring others to get the work done. Leadership skills are not inborn — they are to be developed with the growth and along with the process of learning.

8. Ambition

We all have ambitions, don’t we? But when it comes to entrepreneurs they have to be widely ambitious and have innovative ideas to bring out a change in the market. In order to be a great entrepreneur, ambition is the key factor to it. If there is no ambition, then an entrepreneur won’t be able to see the impact his business can make and growing his business won’t go far, too.

Entrepreneurship does not necessarily involve the process of starting one’s business. Most of the people who don’t work for themselves are also recognised as entrepreneurs within their organisation because of their interpersonal and professional skills.

The takeaway

As business varies, so do the abilities of people. What makes you an ‘entrepreneur’ is your skill. It’s not about how vast your business is or how much turnover your business has — it is about the business approach.

As per the famous quote by Rich Dad:

Skills make you rich, not theories. If you have the skills, polish them, if you don’t have, develop them.

It’s a career decision to become an entrepreneur, do your homework on your skills, your needs, and your desires.

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Photo credit : Uber.

UberEats, the food delivery service from the Silicon Valley ride-hailing giant, is all set to launch in India, the company said in a blog post on Monday. It did not set a date for launch, though.

“I am incredibly excited about bringing UberEATS to India. This is a significant investment, it spans multiple cities and regions, and it has the potential to change the food industry – with the push of a button – in one of the most vibrant food cultures in the world,” Allen Penn, UberEats Asia-Pacific head, said.

Uber’s food delivery service has been making a big push in Asia of late, launching in countries like Singapore and Japan last year. It first rolled out in Los Angeles in 2014. In India, it will compete with the likes of Zomato and Swiggy.

See: UberEats officially launches in Tokyo

Uber’s India rival Ola launched a food service, Ola Cafe, in 2015, but eventually discontinued it. The company said it wanted to focus on its core business, but many industry experts believed it was also because there were few takers for the service. If Uber is able to crack food delivery in India – one of its most important markets – it would allow the company to steal a march on the Indian rival.

“Restaurants can tap into the Uber delivery network to expand their businesses and reach a new network of potential customers. And delivery partners now have access to even more flexible earning opportunities,” the company said in the post.

Uber is currently asking for restaurant recommendations from Indian users.

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This week’s featured startups are split between two companies that have been building steam for the past couple of years and two which are brand new to the scene. Smaller investors aren’t to be found this week though – major names like Nikkei, Draper Nexus, and Daiwa Corporate Investment drove the funding.

Viibar

Viibar CEO, Yuta Kamisaka. Credit: Tech in Asia.

Viibar, a video production startup, has secured a series B round of US$3.5 million. The round was led by Nikkei. Dentsu Digital Holdings and previous investor Globis Capital also joined. The firm’s previous round had been approximately US$6.2 million.

The startup – which we covered in 2014 – has been a mainstay on the Japan venture circuit for several years. The latest funding comes with a partnership that will find Viibar helping Nikkei build content and ad revenue for its Nikkei Style brand and working on corporate content marketing. Viibar reports that its community of 3,000 videographers have produced videos for 600 companies.

Mobingi

Photo credit: Jeferrb.

Mobingi is a delightfully named startup bringing simplicity to working on the cloud. With Mobingi, companies can pare down their developer operations costs – the nuts and bolts of setting up system environments, monitoring applications, etc. – and put more focus on software engineering.

The startup raised US$2.2 million in a series A round. Previous investors Draper Nexus and Archetype Ventures supplied the funds. It claims that automating operations like server management can help companies reduce their spend on tools like Amazon Web Services by 90 percent.

Cansell

Photo credit: Unique Hotels

Cansell is another entry in Japan’s rapidly growing travel startup space. It is newly armed with US$350,000 courtesy of DG Innovation, Kakaku-com, Daiwa Corporate Investment, and Innoventure.

Cansell offers a service where people who need to cancel travel arrangements at the last minute can avoid excessive hotel cancellation fees by selling their reservation on the Cansell platform. The seller never actually submits a cancellation request to the hotel or travel agency. Instead, they rely on Cansell to sell the room at a discounted rate to someone looking for a good deal.

Cansell also takes care of changing the name on the reservation. The seller won’t recoup their initial expense, but Cansell claims its system limits those losses better than standard cancellation agreements.

Orario

Modern take on study session. Photo credit:123RF.

Orario is an app for college students to manage their coursework. It raised US$175,000 from Vector, a noted corporate management firm. Founded by college students at Ritsumeikan in Kyoto, the startup helps students coordinate their schedules.

Since launching last year, Orario says 70 percent of Ritsumeikan’s 24,000 students are registered. It has since expanded to other top schools like Kyoto University and Meiji University. Starting in April – the start of Japan’s school year – the app will have a note sharing function as well.

This post 4 rising startups in Japan appeared first on Tech in Asia.

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