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Chris Leong, Director of Strategy at Soft Space was invited to be a panelist at Tech In Asia\u2019s Meetup Kuala Lumpur. Alongside Marcus Tan, co-founder of Carausell and Joon Chan, managing director of Easy Taxi, the event was moderated by Hazel Hassan.<\/strong><\/p>\nChris Leong, Director of Strategy at Soft Space was invited to be a panelist at Tech In Asia\u2019s Meetup Kuala Lumpur. Alongside Marcus Tan, co-founder of Carausell and Joon Chan, managing director of Easy Taxi, the event was moderated by Hazel Hassan.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The panel of Tech In Asia\u2019s Meetup Kuala Lumpur<\/p>\n
A couple of weeks back, Tech in Asia played host to over 120 people for the first Meetup in Kuala Lumpur. Moderated by Hazel Hassan, VP of marketing and strategic partnership from Cradle, the discussion involved Marcus Tan, co-founder of Carousell; Chris Leong, co-founder and director of strategy at Soft Space; and Joon Chan, managing director of Easy Taxi Southeast Asia. Each brought their respective expansion stories and experiences to the table.<\/p>\n
What made the discussion especially insightful was the fact that, given the respective industries they are in, each of these entrepreneurs had a different take on the subject at hand, which happily produced interesting moments of friendly debate and banter. To catch all these moments, though, you will have to watch the video below in its entirety. Here are the highlights:<\/p>\n
\n- Sometimes pitching to local industry players is all but impossible. Leong found this out the hard way when Soft Space was repeatedly rejected by local Malaysian banks, as they were considered \u201ctoo nascent\u201d. So they went to Thailand instead, and nabbed their first client there: Kasikornbank.<\/li>\n
- Localization is incredibly important for any startup looking to reach beyond its borders. Tan tried to dive into Indonesia\u2019s market with their current English platform, and one of the team\u2019s strategies was to reach out to local Instagram sellers and grab market share. As expected, they were faced with very poor adoption rates, and decided to take up Bahasa instead.<\/li>\n
- When going to a new country, Chan believes finding good local \u2018co-founders\u2019 is essential. These people are necessary in quickly trying out what is currently in the market, testing the ground, and when the time comes, rapidly launching and iterating your product or service.<\/li>\n
- Expanding to new markets is great, but how quickly should one do it? Tan\u2019s take: keep a lookout for your startup\u2019s culture. If communication starts to break down within the team, you are overgrowing. Chan takes a completely opposite tack when he says that there is never a right time to start growing \u2013 he advises startups to just go for it, even when it appears to be messy.<\/li>\n
- One of the major tasks an expanding startup has to face is convincing locals that their \u2018foreign\u2019 product is better than local alternatives. Chan says that, if you have the money, overpay to provide a superior service than the rest \u2013 simple as that. For startups that have to watch the bottom line more closely, Tan suggests \u201cout-caring\u201d the other players by engineering for locals, and providing localized touchpoints.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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