This article was written for B2B. Click here for the original story

S’pore ISP raising funds for new marts 

By Jennee Grace U Rubrico

Singaporean broadband provider MyRepublic is raising funds in a bid to consolidate its operations and later tap into new markets, an official of the company said.

Lawrence Chan, company vice president, told B2B in an interview that MyRepublic is looking to enter 50 fibre optic-ready markets around the world, including Brunei, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, China and the Middle East after it consolidates its operations in the four markets it is currently in.

MyRepublic provides internet services through leased fibre-optic networks under countries’ national broadband network programmes and promises to give subscribers 10 times more speed than the ones offered by mainstream telecommunications companies for the same price. It started operations in Singapore, where it rides on the fibre-optic infrastructure laid out by the government to provide faster internet service to constituents, in 2011.

The company, which targets gamers and streamers – the biggest consumers of data – also has operations in Indonesia, New Zealand and Australia.

“Once we consolidate the four countries [that we operate in] and [raise funds], then we go into a new country,” Chan said.

The company is currently in a fundraising exercise and is in talks with investors, he said. It is also looking to conduct an initial public offering in two years’ time, he added.

“There’s so much opportunity in the world, so many countries needing good, fast broadband. We just don’t have the funding to be able to get into that. We have enough for four countries, we just want to go into more. That’s where the IPO and the current round of funding comes in,” Chan said.

He declined to say how much the company aimed to raise from the fundraising exercises. The venue for the planned IPO has yet to be decided, he said.

Chan admitted that raising funds for MyRepublic has not been easy, as its model can be difficult to grasp.

“A lot of people don’t understand our business. If you talk to the guy on the street, he doesn’t understand the telco business, when you talk to a telco guy, he doesn’t understand that the business could be done so cheaply because he is so used to spending so much more in capital investments. They don’t believe it can be done cheaply and effectively,” he says.

“That leads to problems on fundraising. Because our idea is not easily understandable, but is great for the country, we had to convince people on an individual basis,” he adds.

Chan said that this was what pushed the company to be innovative. “When you don’t have the big cheque book behind you, you’re forced to make money. You can’t afford to go too far and try to do too many things. You do things that make money from day one,” he said, claiming that the company is EBITDA-positive, so it posted profits before the deduction of income tax, depreciation and amortisation.

Unlike mainstream telecommunications companies, MyRepublic is not capital intensive because it does not take it upon itself to build the fibre-optic infrastructure it uses to deliver content, Chan explained.

The company also uses in-house software that is easy to migrate and deploy in new markets, allowing it to provide internet service in a new country in as little as two months, he added.

“We wanted to specialise on managing the content coming in and making sure that you get it very fast.”

MyRepublic has no plans of dominating the markets it is in – it only targets a five per cent share of the market of each country it operates in, Chan said.

“We can survive in any place with five per cent of the market because we’re so lean. We sell the same products, we have little manpower, our marketing is the same. We only have two or three products that we sell. We keep it very simple,” he said.

MyRepublic reportedly entered a bid to be Singapore’s fourth telecommunications company last year, after frontrunners SingTel, Starhub and M1, but lost the spectrum auction to TPG Telecom Ltd.

In May, it was reported that the internet provider was seeking a private-equity partner to bid for M1, after the publicly listed telco’s shareholders appointed Morgan Stanley to conduct a strategic review of their stakes in the company.

This article was written for B2B. Click here for the original story. 

EasyParcel open to Brunei expansion 

By Jennee Grace U Rubrico

Malaysia-based online courier services company EasyParcel is open to expanding its services to Brunei, Clarence Leong, the company’s chief executive said.

Leong said that given the number of online shoppers in the sultanate, it would make sense for EasyParcel to operate in Brunei.

The company currently operates in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore.

“Everyone’s buying online, so the market is at least there. It doesn’t mean that the size is small. But this is a normal practice, so there’s a potential,” Leong told B2B in an interview.

He also said that the decision to enter Brunei would depend on the market’s reception. “If someone wants us to be here [Brunei], we’ll be here.”

Leong said that EasyParcel will also have to find people in the country who believe in the company’s business model.

“A lot of times, people ask the question, ‘why EasyParcel, and why we don’t go direct [to logistics companies]?’  Why do we need to go to the middleman and then we get the benefits? So we need a team that actually believes in what we do and only then can we actually think further,” he said.

“Talent is the thing that built [the business] to where we are today. These people actually believe in what we do.”

EasyParcel’s business model is to connect small-scale merchants like Facebook and Instagram vendors with logistics companies to give the sellers access to cheap shipping rates.

Through its website, the company pools the courier demands of small vendors and generates enough volume to get cheaper shipping rates for them from its logistics partners.

“If you’re a [seller], you might not just be sticking with company A. You might want an option of A,B, C, and D. How are you going on board with A,B,C, or D with the best price?  Because you definitely have to commit to a certain volume to reach that. With a normal business I don’t think you can do that,” Leong explained.

Leong said EasyParcel does not think of logistics companies as competitors, but as partners.

“We consider them our partners… We are always the platform where you can choose multiple [courier services]… [but] they are all our partners because they are the ones who would actually be doing the work. We are just linking customers to them. In the end, it’s still their job,” he said.

Leong also said that EasyParcel at the moment enjoys monopoly in the region for its business model, adding that this is the time for the company to expand rapidly.

He also said that there had been initial plans to expand to more markets in Southeast Asia, but that at the moment, the company’s focus has shifted to growing the business deeper in the markets that it is already in.

“We actually receive a lot of enquiries coming from other countries, like the Philippines, even Vietnam, Cambodia, but I think for now, we want to focus on four [existing markets] because it’s not easy to manage different language. That’s the most difficult part,” he said.

This article was written for B2B. Click here for original story.

iflix to allow users to comment on shows 

By Jennee Grace U Rubrico

Video streaming company iflix is looking to incorporate a feature on its website that would make the user viewing experience more interactive.

In a presentation during the first Brunei CEO Summit held last May, iflix chief executive Azran Osman-Rani said a feature that enables users to comment on the shows they watch is now under consideration.

The idea, he said, was inspired by applications like Twitch, a livestreaming video platform and community for gamers that focuses on video gaming and playthroughs, and is aimed at the younger market.

“For [the younger audience that plays video games], it’s not just that ‘this is me and the video game’, but that ‘I’m part of a community’. That creates a more social and interactive experience. So taking inspiration from applications like Twitch is the ability for people to comment and engage others while watching TV shows,” Azran said.

The feature will not post comments in real time, Azran said, noting that iflix shows are not live.

“What we do is we time the comments,” he said, explaining that after a user comments on a particular scene, the comment would subsequently come out on the same scene when other viewers hit the exact point in the video that the comment was made.

iflix has also started talking to Hollywood studios to get actors and directors to also comment on their own shows, he said.

“It’s the 21^st century, so let’s move on to 21^st century television.”

Azran said that the feature could drive traffic away from pirated services towards iflix.

“This provides a unique feature you would not get using pirated services or cable and satellite services,” he said.
He also said the the move is in line with iflix’s focus on “the next generation”. He notes that 80 per cent of iflix users are under 30 years old who primarily use a mobile phone as their mobile phones as their entertainment device.

“They want to be able to engage with people,” he said.

He did not give a timeframe for the deployment of the feature.

Azran said the feature is the latest of several that the company constantly comes up with to keep up with the “giants” in the video streaming and entertainment industry.

“We always have to recognise that we are small and we’re competing with giants… The only way to stay alive as a small player is to move along faster. Moving fast, constantly trying new things,” he noted.

He added that that while not all of iflix’s ideas worked, iflix continues to try new things to stay ahead of competition.

“That’s the spirit of constantly innovating: having the mindset to say, six or seven or eight [ideas] didn’t work, and that’s okay because it’s the speed of trying things – that’s the only thing that keeps us ahead of the big global giants of Silicon valley or the big lumbering satellite TV giants that still charging a lot of money when the reality is that the phones that we are carrying today have far more computing power,” he said.

Based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, iflix was established in 2015 as a subscription video-on-demand service that is focused on emerging markets. It allows users to access TV shows and movies through different platforms, including mobile phones. With a focus on localising content, the company prides itself for providing access to regional and local programmes, as well as for providing subtitles for these programmes in the languages of the localities they are accessed in.

iflix is reported to have more than five million subscribers around the world as of May 2017. The service is currently being offered in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Brunei, the Maldives, Pakistan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Lebanon, Egypt and Sudan.

New book

It's finally out! Entrepreneurship Rising: The Brunei Edition compiles stories from 51 Bruneian companies and business personalities. Each article tells the journey of a company or business personality, including their motivation, challenges, and goals.

Featuring:

Brumee-Asli KTM. Enya Bijoux. Make A Book. Mangrove Paradise Resort. Marimin. NaForrer. Sparkly Domestic Divas. Sweet As Sara. Al-Huffaz. DotRoot. FirstBlood. Itsybytes. Nollybook. Snapfeed. SocialDeal.

Wu Chun. HjMorshidi. PgIsman. Lisa Ibrahim. Deno Goh. Dr Kamaruddin. Cahaya Gaharu. Ghanim. Ken&Tan. Madu Maanggaris. Sabli. Sahamada. Wira Bina.

Blue Oceanic. Brunei River Cruise. De Royalle. InfOmars. Regus Brunei. Zyrus. Tum Tum Cycles. Bajoo. Bruvera. Cube City. Cube Junction. Dee Jay. Euro Classic. Interhouse. Thomson Furniture. 

Bintudoh Resort. Daikyo Recycling. Poni Divers. S&R Aquafarm. Sallima Recycling. SolarBrunei.com. SunweiTrading. 

This book serves as is my inaugural book management project. I am credited as editor, and am also a co-writer.

Published by Confex.

Focus: 10 Reasons to go to Belgium (BusinessWorld)

 Originally published in Businesssworld Weekender on August 5, 2016 (click here for original story)

Focus: 10 Reasons to Go to Belgium

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By Jennee Grace U. Rubrico

Belgium, a tiny country in western Europe, is easy to overlook. Nestled among bigger and more popular travel destinations, the de facto capital of the European Union rarely comes out as the first — or second, or even third — option of holidaymakers when they plan a trip to the continent.

Few seem to know what Belgium can offer that its neighbors do not already do better. It has a fashion capital in Antwerp, for instance, but it is Paris that is widely recognized as the City of Style.

Belgium is overshadowed by other European countries in terms of tourism readiness. In the 2015 edition of the World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Rankings, which looks at countries’ tourism environment, infrastructure and cultural resources, Belgium takes the 21^st spot out of 141 countries, lagging behind most of the countries with which it shares borders. France comes in second, Germany, third, and the Netherlands 14^th. The UK, at fifth place, also outpaces Belgium. The only neighbor that Belgium overtakes is Luxembourg (26^th).

The recent terrorist attack on Zaventem airport and the Maelbeek subway station in Brussels have not done the country’s tourism sector any favors.

But if Belgium is eclipsed by the tourist magnets that are its neighbors, it is because the country is judged on standards that play on the strength of others. Enveloped in an irreverence that borders on flippancy, Belgium revels in its role as the eccentric sister in a family of aristocrats that is Europe.

Belgium’s reputation of being cold, apathetic and boring is contradicted by its graffiti-embellished walls, famous comic strip characters, and a beer-making industry that has spawned hundreds of beer varieties. When a country’s national mascot is a little boy urinating, it cannot be completely oblivious to fun or devoid of personality — even if this can be on the unconventional side.

VIEW OF the canal and buildings in Bruges, about an hour away from Brussels. — FREEPIK.COM

Here are 10 reasons to visit Belgium: 

Terengganu’s understated charms (BusinessWorld)

Originally appeared on the March 27, 2015 issue of BusinessWorld. Posted late because I only just discovered that this story came out last year. Click here for the original article and more photos

By Jennee Grace U. Rubrico

Terengganu’s understated charms

Posted on March 27, 2015

SCULPTING a section of wood that will form part of the hull of a 50-foot boat, the shipwright says that the vessel, when completed, can travel the seas for up to a century.

  

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Terengganu sights: a shipwright builds a boat at Pulau duyong

“It is made of cengal,” the man, whose withered face makes it difficult to ascertain his age, declares through Syed, our tour guide and translator, as he dusts off wood shavings. “Yes, (it will last) up to 100 years.”

The boat maker from Pulau Duyong (Mermaid Island) in Terengganu cannot tell us what makes cengal (pronounced che-nguhl) special. But Syed, a staff member of the local campus of Malaysian university UCSI who used to work for the tourism board, says that the hardwood, endemic to Malaysia’s forests, has been the timber of choice of the state’s shipwrights for generations.

Duyong Boatyard builds yachts and fishing boats, the shipwright says as he takes out pictures of the vessels they completed over the years. It takes a year and a half to build a big vessel, three months for a small one.

Patrons pay a premium for their work. “The price of one fishing boat is 800,000 ringgit,” Syed says, adding that a yacht can go up to 5 million ringgit. The shipwrights build the boats one at a time.

Two relatives join the boat maker at the dry dock. He mentions that the shipwrights of Terengganu build boats from memory and do not use plans. The trade, he says, was learned from their fathers and passed on to their sons.

Nowadays, orders come in trickles. The artisans say that only one other family still makes boats on the island. “They are closed right now, because they don’t have projects.”

In Brunei, Filipinos take part in the month-long Eid celebrations (BusinessWorld)

Originally published in Businessworld (click here)

By Jennee Grace U. Rubrico

In Brunei, Filipinos take part in the month-long Eid celebrations

Posted on July 14, 2016

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei -- On the second day of the Muslim holiday of Eid, Liza, the wife of a Filipino journalist working in Brunei went to the residence of reigning monarch Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah to attend a royal banquet.

Dressed in blouse and jeans on that sunny day, she and her teenage daughter Zaki got off at the gates of the Istana Nurul Iman, the Leandro-Locsin designed royal residence, and boarded a shuttle that took them to an area within the palace grounds that was prepared for the feast.

“We arrived at 9:30 a.m. We only got delayed when we were boarding the bus. There was some pushing, but when we got inside, there was no queue for the food,” said Liza, whose family is experiencing Eid in Brunei for the first time.

After getting their fill of the traditional Malay dishes prepared by the royal caterer, the mother and daughter pair joined the queue to the Palace halls, where guests were to meet the monarch and his wife, Queen Saleha. By tradition, adults were to receive souvenirs, and children, green money packets at the meet-and-greet session.

Just a few meters shy of the entrance, however, Liza and Zaki were asked to leave the queue.

“We were not able to get in, because we were in jeans... Everyone else was in their traditional outfits,” Liza said.

Missing the chance to rub shoulders with Bruneian royalty during her first visit to the Istana, Liza nevertheless has other opportunities to meet them in the future: the session that she and thousands of residents and tourists in Brunei attended that day was the first of six that were organized for the three-day Istana Open House, which the Royal Family hosts annually to celebrate Eid, the Islamic holiday that marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadhan.

Perhaps underscoring the importance of Eid in the sultanate, it is only during these three days that the 200,000-square meter Istana, which holds the Guinness world record for being the largest residence of a state head, opens its doors to the public. Every year, more than 100,000 people visit the Istana over the three-day period to see the Royal Family, take part in the banquet, and receive gifts.