The smell of burning is back in Singapore

UPDATE: Aug. 26, 2016, 11:43 a.m. SGT 

Updated PSI reading

SINGAPORE — Many in Singapore woke up on Friday to a burning smell.

Social media posts started flooding in with people complaining about the smell and smoggy views over the typically clear city.

View image on Twitter

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Liang @LimWuiLiang

Guess who's back. #haze #sghaze #singapore

7:16 AM - 26 Aug 2016

 
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Amita Natverlal @amitanatverlal

#sghaze you know the haze is back when you wake up and a burnt smell hits your nose..

5:20 AM - 26 Aug 2016

 
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According to the National Environment Agency's PM2.5 readings, the air pollution levels started climbing quickly at around 9 a.m., reaching a high of 181 in the western part of the island by 11 a.m.

The NEA regards readings of between 51-100 as "moderate", while 101-200 crosses into the "unhealthy" range.

The PM2.5 measures particles in the air 2.5 micrometres in diameter or smaller, which can be dangerous because they lodge deep inside the lungs.

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Dee Kosh 

✔@TheDeeKosh

Ahhh Singapore. Where you can wake up and smell the fresh haze

5:27 AM - 26 Aug 2016

 
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white ferrari @shashashafique

limited time offer: free vsco filter for all photos taken today in singapore, while forests last #sghaze

7:21 AM - 26 Aug 2016

 
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The smog has for years been a result of deliberate forest burning in Indonesia, although it's not clear yet if we can pin Friday's sudden spike in air pollution on the neighbouring country.

On Thursday, the Indonesian police released data to show it's stepped up arrests made in connection with forest fires, in an effort to demonstrate bigger efforts to stop the burning.

Illegal slash-and-burning has been a perennial problem in Indonesia, where farmers there set their crops ablaze to quickly clear them for new planting. The resulting smog that floats over is also a pain to neighbouring countries like Singapore and Malaysia, which typically complain of thick pollution during this time of year.

Last year, Indonesia tried revving up efforts to clamp down on the burning. It suspended four corporations connected to pulp and paper plantations that were burning crops, and arrested another 70 farmers who owned those plantations.

Indonesia's fires produced so much carbon dioxide in those months that it pushed the country up to fourth in the world of global carbon emitters in 2015. The fires single-handedly tripled the country's annual emissions last year.

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Our SG 

✔@our_sg

Looks like the haze is back, consider limiting your outdoor Pokéhunting!

5:48 AM - 26 Aug 2016

 
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Indonesia will be Asia’s next biggest e-commerce market

Indonesia presents much opportunity for e-commerce among other emerging Asian economies, with current projections putting this archipelago nation’s e-market at $130 billion by 2020 (coming third behind China and India). With an estimated annual growth rate of 50 percent and strong mobile-first initiatives, retailers have a unique opportunity in Indonesia to focus on developing truly mobile platforms to help facilitate e-market growth, particularly in the consumer packaged goods (CPGs) sector.

Indonesia’s current e-commerce market is similar to China’s online marketplace beginnings, with a large pool of entrepreneurial sellers providing goods purchased based largely on social media recommendations. Similarly, e-commerce in Indonesia also mimics the early U.S. e-market, which was flooded with customers wary to trust online payments and retailers. Indonesia is truly unique in that it has the potential to create a hybrid of the widest opportunities from America and China’s e-commerce economies, propelling the Indonesian online marketplace onto the global stage.

Mobile-first Indonesia

Indonesia has established itself as one of Asia’s foremost mobile-first nations, with aStatCounter report estimating that in 2015, more than 70 percent of Indonesia’s internet traffic originated from mobile devices.

Further evidence that Indonesians have embraced mobile-first initiatives comes from social media, with Indonesians having the highest mobile Facebook usage rate worldwide, with 63 million users in 2015. Further projections put Indonesians’ future Facebook access via mobile being almost 99 percent by 2018, showing a true dominance over desktop platforms. The mobile-first path that Indonesia has taken also allows retailers to focus on creating truly mobile functionality, presenting unique opportunities to dominate in the retail space.

Indonesian e-commerce startups and funding

E-commerce startups founded in Indonesia or targeting it as an untapped market are growing exponentially, something reflected in increased interest in startup fundraising within the archipelago nation.

aCommerce, an end-to-end e-commerce service provider, closed a Series A venture capital round of $10.7 million, while raising another $10 million in funding ahead of a planned Series B raise later in 2016; this action is being led by MDI Ventures, a VC-initiative launched by Indonesian telecom giant Telkom Indonesia.

Jakarta-based grocery delivery appHappyFresh raised an impressive $12 million Series A round in 2015, with investors led by Vertex Ventures andSinar Mas Digital Ventures. HijUp, another Indonesian e-commerce startup, closed a second seven-figure seed funding round from investors, including Fenox Venture Capital and 500 Startups.

However, the behemoth of all Indonesian deals so far comes in the form of Tokopedia, an online marketplace that raised an impressive $100 million round led by Softbank andSequoia Capital. Mid- and later-stage investors should definitely keep an eye on Indonesian startups, which are clearly having very little trouble finding early-stage interest and investment.

Why specifically Indonesia?

Prospering with multiple entrants

Indonesia’s retail market currently consists of CPGs being sold in retail spaces known as “fragmented trade,” which is primarily made up of independent small business owners. E-commerce is currently growing at a rate twice as fast as fragmented trade, forcing many of these independents to turn to the e-commerce model. This in turn creates a sea of individual sellers eager to satisfy e-consumer demand, alongside mass retailers targeting this same demographic.

Unlike other Asian nations, Indonesians currently do not solely rely on mass retailers to guide their purchasing decisions, allowing for these individual sellers to maintain market share. This in turn allows the e-market segment to be open to any competitor determined enough to form a market impact, something uncommon in other mobile-first nations.

Procuring specialized goods to rural areas

Many Indonesian cities are currently woefully underdeveloped, because of a lack of strong government and infrastructure to support retail construction. However, e-commerce’s rise in popularity exploits this challenge by allowing consumers to purchase CPGs previously unavailable in their specific locales.

With lots of potential growth in rural and semi-rural areas, e-commerce specifically allows Indonesian consumers to source hard-to-find goods, as opposed to other nations, where rural areas would not have as high use of internet-capable mobile devices. In fact, popular Indonesian online site BliBli has more than one-third of its 2.5 million customers living in rural areas, providing goods ordered almost exclusively off mobile platforms to a population whose sole form of internet access comes via smartphone. This procurement of specialized CPGs to rural areas makes Indonesia a uniquely perfect place for online marketplace growth.

Providing truly mobile-first platforms

Indonesia’s e-market also allows for retailers and participants in the fragmented trade space to focus on developing truly mobile-first platforms. This specifically targets the mobile user as the captured demographic, instead of simply re-tooling a desktop platform to a mobile one.

This truly mobile-first scenario also allows sellers to use smartphones to their advantage, gathering hyper-personalized data to target individual Indonesian consumers as opposed to just specific demographics or groups among Indonesia’s more than 250 million population.

Mobile-first also allows for the easier entry of participants into the Indonesian e-commerce scene, with startups having the flexibility to choose what CPGs they sell, and even who they want as a consumer, through market penetration via mobile apps.

Profitability through social media

With other mobile-first nations being split between different social media sites (China:Weibo/QZone/Tencent QQ; India: Facebook/Google+/Twitter; Philippines: Instagram/Snapchat/Facebook), Indonesia is unique because of its widespread use of a singular social media platform: Facebook (with more than 92 percent of Indonesians having a Facebook account).

With so much of Indonesians’ current purchasing power being shaped through social media recommendations, focusing on developing integration with Facebook’s platforms offers companies a unique space to potentially profit through direct CPG sales, advertising or even partnerships. Tying Facebook into popular sites such as online forums like Kaskus and Tokobagus, or even online stores like Sukamart, could lead to the inclusion of high-quality videos, product comparisons and optimized images, alongside other mobile-first features, to encourage e-market growth.

Potential with online payments

Indonesian consumers are very wary of online payments, much like Americans were in the U.S.’ early online marketplace days, particularly when compared to other mobile-first populations. Many e-commerce transactions are currently paid through either direct bank transfer or bayar di tampat (cash-on-delivery), which is greatly limiting e-commerce growth through lost transactions.

With Indonesian spend growing nearly 10 percent annually, bayar di tampat will soon be unsustainable. Creating a trusted solution to utilize online payments could lead to huge growth, with retailers both large and small being able to streamline their business flows for optimum efficiency.

Procuring a modernized logistics/delivery platform

Indonesia currently also presents a unique opportunity for e-commerce growth because of the country’s weak infrastructure and poor logistics system. This provides a huge growth area for the e-market, with sellers able to vertically integrate their delivery systems with their ordering ones.

In the age of companies developing in-house solutions instead of relying on outsourcing, the untapped logistics market also gives rise to the growth in Indonesian e-commerce. Companies have the ability to develop proprietary, or even simply more efficient, delivery systems as another form of competition in the online marketplace, with supply strength being a key component in e-commerce.

Conclusion

Often underestimated as a driving economic force among its more well-known Asian brethren, Indonesia presents a variety of unique opportunities in becoming one of the largest e-commerce spaces.

With so many mobile internet users, combined with weak internal infrastructure, companies and individual sellers alike have the potential to grow the e-commerce market to heights unseen. Additionally, a growing middle class with disposable income will only help spread e-commerce growth, alongside a rising influx of both individual sellers and corporations vying to compete in the e-market.

Indonesia’s e-commerce market is on track to be one of the largest in Asia, utilizing mobile-first platforms to provide all Indonesians with convenient access to consumer packaged goods.

Uber focuses on services as it begins to see profits in Southeast Asia

Uber has abandoned its ‘land grab’ approach to Southeast Asia and instead switched its focus to new products and services as it begins to see profitability in key markets in the region.

A source at the U.S. company told TechCrunch that its operations are now profitable in Singapore and the Philippines, two of its largest markets for numbers of rides and revenue, with others close behind. Uber declined to respond to repeated requests for comment.

This is an interesting reveal since Uber said last month that it has reached profitability in all of its Western markets. Little is known about its emerging market presence, particularly in Southeast Asia — where it covers 15 cities across Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.

The company entered the region via Singapore more than three years ago, but its most ‘recent’ new country expansion — Vietnam — was two years ago. Since then, its team has been tasked with scaling the business across the region and now it has been decided that it is time to push on by introducing new services to tighten competition and grow its userbase.

Despite a cumulative population of more than 600 million people, Southeast Asia sits in the shadow of China and India. That’s certainly been true for Uber, which has invested multiple billions into China via its Uber China subsidiary, while last summer it revealed a billion dollar warchest to battle Ola, a $5 billion-valued rival backed by SoftBank, in India.

Southeast Asia, with its population spread across six primary countries with differing currencies, cultures, regulation barriers and languages, was a distant priority, but TechCrunch understands things are changing with Uber keen to increase its rivalry with Grab, the ride-hailing service that claims 19 million app downloads and 350,000 drivers and is affiliated with Ola, China’s Didi and Lyft.

Food, carpooling and bike taxis

UberEats, its food-delivery service, its UberPool ride-sharing service, and UberMoto, its bike taxi service, are the three priorities, we understand. UberRush, its courier service, isn’t currently present in Asia but may also be introduced in selected markets before the year is out.

UberEats recently entered Singapore, which became its first launch market in Asia, and the company hinted that it would also bring the service to Bangkok, Thailand, among other cities.

Singapore was also one of the first ports of call for UberPool, the service that lets passengers ride with others who are headed in the same direction to save costs and ease inner city congestion. It is also in Indonesian capital Jakarta, while a similar service with shuttle buses launched in Manila, Philippines, this year.

Finally, there’s UberMoto, which hasn’t quite been the success story that Uber had for hoped. Initially launched in Bangkok in February, it was banned from the Thai capital in May, while it has also struggled to find legality in India, the second launch market.

Indonesia is the major focus for UberMoto as of now, but Uber has plenty of competition. Go-Jek, a local company backed by Sequoia, pioneered motorbike taxis as a service. With more than 200,000 bike drivers on its platform, it goes beyond helping passengers weave Jakarta’s gridlocked cities to get from A to B faster than four wheels, Go-Jek also offers services and food on-demand options. Establishing a motorbike taxi fleets as a platform for additional services is same playback that Uber is opting for, but it is up against a very strong incumbent.

Rivalries

Uber’s push for new services isn’t without other rivalries and resistance. Plenty of food delivery companies exist in the region, mainly that’s FoodPanda but Deliveroo recently came to town and there are bespoke companies, like Grain, too.

Then there are those that are financially well equipped.

Go-Jek seems to be preparing itself for an arms race. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the startup — which only operates in Indonesia right now — is raising $400 million in fresh capital at a valuation of more than $1 billion. We’ve independently verified that with sources close to negotiations, who told us that the round could be completed within the next couple of weeks.

Go-Jek aside, Grab rivals Uber on motorbike taxis — as well as private cars — and the $1.6 billion-valued company has raised raised over $650 million to date. Its GrabBike service was also barred from Bangkok but it continues to do business there as a delivery service for packages and documents. Grab recently disclosed that Indonesia is its largest market in terms of rides, but it did not provide raw figures for how its business is performing.

Grab has also introduced services. GrabHitch, its take on carpooling, launched in Singapore last year and has since expanded to Malaysia, while GrabFood is present in Indonesia. A Grab representative told us that, as of last month, GrabHitch counted 5,000 drivers in those two countries.

That’s not quite all. Grab last week announced plans to introduce a payments platform this year, initially in Indonesia. A payment system that can be used in shops and stores — Grab partnered with Indonesian retail conglomerate Lippo to kick this off — will take it in a different direction as it too seeks to grow its userbase through services.