The theme of social impact is taking on the centre stage within the Southeast Asian (SEA) tech startup ecosystem this 12 months, with social enterprises being within the highlight, however challenges stay for corporations which are working within the sector.

Whereas a few of the challenges that they’re dealing with are related to startups in any vertical, there are some particular issues that they face that require a tailor-made strategy.

To uncover the problem and its attainable options, e27 reaches out to a few of the startups which have participated within the first cohort of Sustainable Impression Accelerator, a programme collectively organised by the Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise (raiSE) and enterprise capital agency Quest Ventures.

These three startups –SoundEye, The Posture Lab, and ACKTEC Applied sciences– reveal the challenges that they’re going by and the way collaborating within the programme may also help them sort out them.

The 2 most urgent points

When requested by e27, the three corporations agree that balancing social affect and producing income stays the highest challenges they face as social affect startups.

Additionally Learn: How are NFTs contributing in creating a social impact?

SoundEye –a social enterprise that gives a spread of modern and sensible security options that search to guard, safe, and monitor– stresses that it’s particularly exhausting throughout the pandemic when the corporate should discover methods to outlive.

To handle this, SoundEye finds methods to cut back the price of items bought. The simplest means is to innovate and use reasonably priced elements – and we aren’t referring to utilizing an inferior product. For instance, we use a single microprocessor to carry out sound recognition and imaginative and prescient analytics as an alternative of two. Doing so reduces the {hardware} value and higher organises how our back-end system works. We additionally eliminated the necessity for gateways, servers, costly networks, and cloud computing that results in value discount for our clients,” says Dr Tan Yeow Kee, Founding father of SoundEye.

“By doing all these, we can keep our solution affordable and generate social impact without burning a big hole in our customers’ wallets. SoundEye is always finding ways how we can achieve more with less,” Dr Tan stresses.

An identical strategy was achieved by ACKTEC Applied sciences, an edutech firm targeted on creating an immersive studying surroundings that’s reasonably priced and accessible to low-income college students in Southeast Asia.

“Balancing impact creation while at the same time ensuring a profit is one of the greatest challenges. We believe in making quality education affordable and accessible to all, which is a key differentiating factor between our competitors and us,” says Rayvan Ho, Founder and CEO of ACKTEC Applied sciences.

“Hence, even though there are short-term costs involved in impact creation (i.e. keeping the product affordable to students from low-income backgrounds), we are here for the long term. As such, we are strategic in our spending decisions and social impact creation to create more value in the long run.”

Additionally Learn: A better way to make impact: Why we decided to start a social impact network

For Posture Lab, which runs an in-studio and posture coaching for numerous customers, together with individuals with incapacity, income and affect are one thing that’s inseparable.

“Oftentimes, others place their focus on revenue and impact separately. However, in our case we want to create impact seamlessly together with revenue generation. Though it may sound impossible, technology makes it more accessible and easier to work with demographics that may not have access to these services,” explains Emile Dumont, Founder-CEO of Posture Lab.

“In today’s economic situation, we focus strongly on a B2B model and run initiatives where customers will be part of the impact loop. Apart from ensuring that our training and app offers are inclusive for people with diverse needs, we are also planning to provide subsidised services for persons from low-income backgrounds when we launch our app.”

What buyers can do

Quest Ventures shares its insights on the most important challenges confronted by startups within the social affect sector.

“Startups will face the challenge of balancing impact creation and business growth, aligning expectations of stakeholders and business partners, and getting their investors to better understand how impact can translate into enterprise value,” says James Tan, Managing Companion at Quest Ventures.

“With sustainability coming into focus in these few years, the challenge may be slowly mitigating, but investors should put teeth in their commitment to sustainability and impact by actually investing in and supporting the growth of impact-driven startups … Together with our local and international partners in the startup investment ecosystems and social sectors, we are able to support the startups in expanding beyond the local market and pulling together resources to replicate and scale.”

Additionally Learn: Startups should work with corporates to achieve balance between social impact, sustainability: Arcadis

Its collaboration with raiSE is an instance of the initiative that it set as much as help startups within the social affect sector.

Based in 2015, raiSE goals to develop the social enterprise sector in Singapore by offering financing choices, capability constructing, and mentorship to startups within the related sector.

Since 2022, it has partnered with Quest Ventures to launch the Sustainable Impression Accelerator which is described as Asia’s first enterprise capital-backed accelerator programme for social enterprises.

Alfie Othman, CEO of Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise, raiSE, explains the challenges that social affect corporations are dealing with: “According to a study on The State of Social Enterprise in Singapore that raiSE conducted in partnership with the British Council in 2021, the top three challenges faced by social enterprises are customer acquisition and market development, access to financial support, and building internal capabilities.”

The accelerator goals to assist social affect corporations by offering startups with funding of as much as S$50,000, entry to mentors from world-class companions and buyers, and invaluable insights on enterprise and social subjects from trade specialists.

The ten-week programme has just lately opened functions for the second cohort of its programme.

“We continue to partner with Quest Ventures to provide promising, socially impactful startups with the support they need to improve their competencies and access regional and global markets for the second cohort of the accelerator this year. The Sustainable Impact Accelerator’s first cohort has proven successful – with companies pitching to over 2,000 investors, corporates, and government organisations within the programme’s first three months. We are always heartened to see participants benefit from the programme, whether it be scaling their business, growing their impact, or gaining footholds in new markets,” says Othman.

Additionally Learn: Startups should work with corporates to achieve balance between social impact, sustainability: Arcadis

“Together with our partners and the Quest ecosystem, we look to identify and support regional champions with purpose and profit as their core engines of growth. We invite international social impact startups looking to pilot in Singapore and leverage it as a launchpad to Southeast Asia to join us in their next phase of growth,” Tan closes.

—

Fundraising or making ready your startup for fundraising? Construct your investor community, search from 400+ SEA buyers on e27, and get related or get insights relating to fundraising. Try e27 Pro for free today.

Picture Credit score: Quest Ventures

 

The submit Balancing revenue, impact remains the top challenges faced by social impact startups appeared first on e27.

#asiannews #asian_news