Category Archives: Entrepreneurship

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What you missed at HRD Tech Summit 2019 Tech Den

For the 2nd time, I was invited to HRD Tech Summit to participate in their Tech Den segment.

If you don’t know about HRD Tech Summit, they are Singapore’s leading independent HR Tech event.

More than 200 HR professionals and technology innovators prowled the venue at Hilton Hotel, gaining exclusive insights and actively exchanging ideas on HR Tech.

Tech Den is the HR Tech Summit’s flagship program – celebrating excellence in HR startups and entrepreneurship across Asia.

Vying for the ultimate prize, a $20k marketing campaign in HRD Asia publications, hundreds of HR Tech startups was whittled down to just a few finalists.

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Fetcher Raises $5.4MM From Slow Ventures and Accomplice

Hires Top Industry Execs To Scale Their Outbound Recruiting Platform

March 21, 2019 — New York, NY — Fetcher, an outbound recruiting platform that combines AI with human expertise to recruit top talent for high-growth companies, is excited to announce its latest round of funding as well as several key executive hires.

In late 2018, Fetcher raised $5.4MM in an oversubscribed seed round led by Accomplice and Slow Ventures, with full participation by existing investors, Picus and Revel Partners, as well as angel investors which include Paul English (founder of Kayak), Amol Sarva (founder of Knotel) and James Joaquin (co-founder of Obvious Ventures).

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Leading Women in Singapore’s HR Tech Scene

Meet the Captain Marvel & Wonder Women

Recently, we have seen HR tech evolving very quickly and with nimble startups innovating, they have pushed larger enterprises to adopt innovative HR technologies.

Companies have been leveraging on and even acquiring HR tech vendors that are driving positive change in the world of work.

We’ve had the honour of speaking with three leading women in Singapore’s HR tech scene to access their insights and experiences.

 

Chelsea Sim, CEO & Co-Founder, Botbot.AI

How would you describe your business? 

Botbot.AI is an enterprise productivity tool that uses conversational interfaces to automate business processes and workflows.

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Interview with Jay Huang, Founder & CEO at Pulsifi

One of the reasons why HR continues to be viewed as admin jockeys is the lack of meaningful data.

And an anecdote I came across captures this best.

In a board meeting, the Head of Sales come in with the sales projection numbers. Finance would bring in the P&L, BS and Marketing would come in with their latest conversion metrics.

HR would come in with the attendance sheet.

It is not that data isn’t available but for the longest time, capturing those data is a full-time job by itself.

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Interview with Chris Teo, CEO at Mednefits

Administration of medical benefits is akin to generating payslips for employees in SMEs.

It is important, compliance requires it but many administrators just find it laborious and lapses just keep recurring over and over again.

And it isn’t restricted to the HR administrator. The employee needs to capture the receipt, probably fill up a form and go back to primary school art-and-craft to glue the receipts onto an A4 sheet for submission.

There are companies that attempt to solve this with medical cards but most are catering to huge companies with a slow turnaround.

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Interview with Co-Founder & Director at AGHRM

I have known Steve for more than 10 years.

We were both BNI members of Gateway chapter and I clearly recall that was before my 10 year old son.

He surprised me at first when I learned he is a sales person given his quiet demeanour.

But once you know him better, his blend of technical knowledge and sharpened solutioning skills make him the kind of consultative sales people you enjoy speaking with and learn from.

In a highly contested space of payroll, he and his team managed to leapfrog their payroll solutions ahead of many legacy systems before their time.

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Interview with Co-Founder & CEO at ArcLab

Often I hear about how companies view their human resources.

That they are the most important asset in the business and without them, success wouldn’t happen.

But when you dig deeper and look at the amount of investment (re: training) made on their people, the opposite seems true.

And I can understand that through my interactions with the group of HR Directors from hotels in Bangkok a few months ago.

With high attrition rate, they could barely keep up with hiring let alone train them.

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Interview with Forbes 30 under 30, CEO & Co-Founder of GetLinks

With the exponential growth in technology, the demand for tech talents has outstripped supply.

Based on the data from Singapore government, the number of Infocomm Jobs (Employed and Vacancies) has gone up 106% in 2016 compared to 2002.

And this situation isn’t just unique to Singapore.

With that backdrop, the entrance of GetLinks is welcoming. As a platform and ecosystem that connects tech talents with opportunities across Asia, it grew from a Thailand startup to a regional powerhouse with offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam as well.

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CEO Interview with Shankar Krishnamoorthy

Synergita - Award winning Continuous Employee Performance & Engagement Software

Do you know how much it costs to replace a headcount?

It isn’t just the salary alone.

You have to account for the non-wage costs such as the costs of on-boarding, recruiting (headhunting fees), honeymoon period, acclimatisation (for both parties), and the list goes on.

If the headcount you are replacing happens to be a sales person, the damage would be much bigger given that a portion of your clientele might go with him or her.

With that in mind, it is a no-brainer for companies to place huge focus on employee engagement and performance.

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CEO Interview with Wan-Chung LAI

The MasterCoach App

Coaching is one of those highly under-rated things that can have huge impact across an organisation.

It isn’t just prevalent in sports but in companies as well.

Very often, highly successful executives attribute their accomplished careers to having a supportive supervisor or manager in their formative years who coached more than tell.

You can be paid a million dollars with a swanky office but if your reporting officer is a pain, it probably won’t be a long journey.

But across many companies, coaching is often perceived as more of an art form and left to fate to happen.