“Our way of developing meaningful digital solutions designed to democratize access to financial services.” Hubert Shio-Hsien Tai CEO & Co-founder Greet the CEO development. Before this, Hubert e-commerce company. He managed was a founding member of LU.com their listing on the NYSE on 8 Hubert Shio-Hsien Tai, CEO where he also served as COO and December 2010 at an IPO valuation & Co-founder CTO between 2011 and 2016. At of USD 2.3 billion. Earlier, at the LU.com he led overall platform start of his highly successful career, Hubert is a seasoned executive development and grew the he held senior technical positions with over 20 years of professional business from a P2P platform to at Accenture, eBay.com, and Oracle experience in scaling internet- become the biggest online wealth in the US, and with Yahoo! in Hong based ventures into successful management platform in China. Kong. He was among the first 100 companies across markets in Asia Under his leadership, the customer- employees at eBay.com. Being part and the US. A true believer in base grew to over 20 million with of the first wave of internet pioneers using internet/mobile technology USD 40 billion in assets under since 1998, he has been passionate and big data to create solutions management. As of the last round about revolutionizing business using that deliver affordable credit to of funding in 2016, LU.com had a cutting-edge technology. Hubert underbanked societies, Hubert valuation of USD 18.5 billion. From has a Bachelor of Science degree co-founded Oriente to bring greater 2006 to 2011, Hubert served as in Electrical Engineering from the financial inclusion to Southeast the CTO of dangdang.com, leading California Institute of Technology Asia’s fastest-growing economies. As the technology and logistics (Caltech) and a Master’s of Science CEO, he leads all teams and efforts operation. Here he was responsible degree in Electrical Engineering focused on business expansion, for transforming the company to from the University of Southern operations, marketing and product become China’s first profitable B2C California. SR JANUARY 2019 51
Silicon Valley-born Start-up “Bangalore’s start-up ecosystem was built up gradually over the past two decades with greater acceleration in the past decade and big venture capital/private equity money flowing in over the last three-to-four years.” – Prasanto Roy, a Tech Policy Consultant Back in the day, Silicon great and will continue to be The Hindu report clarified Valley was well-known great, but I think we’ve probably that in Bengaluru out of for its start-up culture; hit peak Silicon Valley and total 94 percent of start-up it became the focal point of we need to figure out ways to founders have an engineering the tech revolution. With the have a more diverse, inclusive background, which is higher time, the revolution has spread innovation economy,” Mr. Case than any place in the world. to other cities of the world told CNBC in a TV interview. And out of a total of 1,000 such as London, Frankfurt, “So we can’t just be backing companies (involved in Internet Singapore, Melbourne, Manila the entrepreneurs in places like of Things), over 500 are based and Bengaluru. The new wave Silicon Valley, we also need to in and around the city. is proving to be more real back them... in a lot of different world-based– attempting to cities in the United States as well “Bangalore’s start-up ecosystem change the way every industry as obviously many countries was built up gradually over the functions, whether it’s fintech, around the world,” Mr. Case past two decades with greater medtech, adtech and ride- added. acceleration in the past decade hailing. and big venture capital/private Bangalore’s equity money flowing in over the According to a report published Engineering Prowess last three-to-four years,” says by India-based newspaper The Proves Rewarding tech policy consultant Prasanto Hindu, AOL founder Steve Case Roy. terms what’s happenings now The factor that makes the Third Wave of the Internet Bengaluru stand out from According to Mr. Roy, “Delhi/ revolution. Now the question the other start-up destinations NCR toohas a thriving start-up is what were the first two. Of in the worldis it became home culture and ecosystem and many course, the establishment of of many global companies co-working spaces, both possibly the Internet itself was termed in the early days of the tech more than Bangalore.” first and the second one was revolution. In addition, Internet search, apps, social among the other factors Global Start-up media and suchlike. that make the IT city suitable Ecosystem Report for the tech corporations 2018 “We are seeing in this third wave to run their operations of the internet entrepreneurship smoothly is its engineering According to this year’s Global both regionalized and prowess, according to the Start-up Ecosystem (GSE) globalized... So Silicon Valley is GSE report. report, what’s happening
Culture Moves International currently is paving the way for players defined more by their industry focus such as Airbnb in hospitality and Uber in transportation. These start- ups rely on deep techs such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and therefore stay ahead of first and second wave start-ups. The Global Start-up Ecosystem report offers a comprehensive overview of start-up trends. “The American and Chinese big players are clearly pushing for AI dominance. But start-ups’ agility and smart motivations can still spot new niches, and lead to significant advancements in the space. For example in the online eCommerce space, a good portion of the transactions are driven by the small and mid- size players, customers that are too small for the big players to pursue. This still leaves a lot of data (the AI currency) on the table for startups to build and grow on,” Aidin Tavakkol, CEO and Founder of LimeSport (Berkeley, California, United States). SR JANUARY 2019 53
Company & Management 10 Best Startups of the Year 2019 CallHealth Description www.callhealth.com Hari Thalapalli, CEO CallHealth is a technology-powered healthcare company that has built the world’s first integrated virtual-and-mobility platform to bring “Everything about Health” to Wilson Financial Services the doorstep of the customer in and outside India. www.wilsonfinserv.com Anand Singh & Nilesh Choudhary Wilson Financial Services is a boutique, technology driven new-age financial Founders services firm with special focus on credit & capital markets. Zeemart Zeemart is Singapore’s first B2B platform for the Horeca industry, with a single- www.zeemart.asia minded mission to enable businesses to make smarter purchasing decisions. Neeraj Sundarajoo, CEO Holistics provides a simple, secure and effective way to access business records Holistics from your analytics database. It works without the need to store your data, and www.holistics.io does not require any software training to use. Vincent Woon, CEO 2b Limitless provides the support, structure and tools to facilitate sustainable 2b Limitless success on an organizational, professional and personal level through a range of www.2blimitless.com dynamic coaching and training products. Mick Todd, Founder TenX is a Singapore-based blockchain company that makes cryptocurrencies TenX instantly spendable anytime anywhere. The firm gives people an opportunity to www.tenx.tech conveniently use their digital assets in everyday life. Toby Hoenisch Co-founder & CEO A full service Digital agency headquartered in Bangalore, Ittisa strikes the magical balance between business and art, intuition and reason, playfulness and formality. Ittisa www.ittisa.com Mezzofy is a global digital coupon platform for merchant to create, distribute, Sneh, Founder & CEO redeem coupons and measure the effectiveness. Mezzofy (Hong Kong) Limited Active.Ai, a Singapore Head Quartered Fintech startup with innovation lab in www.mezzofy.com Bengaluru, through Artificial Intelligence (AI) that delivers conversational banking Dicky Ying, Co-founder/CEO services to help banks and financial institutions redefine their future digital strategy. ACTIVE.Ai Oriente was established in 2017 by the co-founders of revolutionary internet www.active.ai companies Skype and LU.com who saw an opportunity to build a better, more Ravi Shankar, Co-founder & CEO equitable financial system for underserved consumers in Asia’s fastest-growing economies. Oriente www.oriente.com SR Hubert Shio-Hsien Tai CEO & Co-founder
January 2019 | RNI Reg No. - KARENG/2017/75691
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