Today’s highly connected and digitised world has transformed the way businesses are started and managed. As Southeast Asia’s tech sector continues to face rapid growth, more start-ups founders are starting to capitalise on these opportunities.
“We chose Singapore as our global headquarters as our mission is to empower companies to achieve their business objectives while ensuring data privacy and customer trust,” says Prithvi Rai, Founder and CEO at borneo. “Initiatives like Smart Nation will drive Singapore’s reputation as a technology hub and the “data trust capital” of the world, which was a key consideration for Prithvi and his team to choose Singapore as their global headquarters for borneo.”
Forrest Li, Chairman and Group CEO of Sea Ltd, believes that businesses like Sea play an important role to foster the overall tech ecosystem. “We are especially committed to partnering with the government to ensure that our community is wholly well-positioned to take full advantage of the opportunities ahead,” he says.
An Emerging Destination for Tech Growth
Southeast Asia was already rapidly embracing digitalisation, but the pandemic has dramatically accelerated this shift, says Forrest. The latest Singapore Youth Report published by Sea Insights found that entrepreneurs in Singapore have shifted to e-commerce platforms to tap into new sources of demand and income streams, with close to 80 per cent of respondents saying that this increased usage would last beyond the pandemic. “People are fundamentally changing how they live, work and entertain themselves,” Forrest says. This change will unlock significant growth opportunities over the long run, and that enterprises that embrace this trend will be more resilient and better positioned to capture these opportunities in the long term.
Forrest shares that the most successful businesses in this region over the last few years are those who have been able to ride the wave of digitalisation in the region and develop products and services that are localised to the needs and preferences of users in this region. These were critical factors to Sea’s success, and Forrest shares that their digital entertainment business has experienced significant growth beyond Southeast Asia as a result.
The Rise of a New Threat: Why Cybersecurity Is Key Today
As more businesses embrace digital transformation and tech adoption, we see an explosion in the volume and value of data, requiring greater expertise and more powerful data protection and privacy management tools. Prithvi anticipated this shift based on his experience working for global tech giants like Facebook, Uber, Yahoo! over the last two decades. At that time, they had to solve problems related to data security, jurisdiction, and regulatory compliance at global scale, which are all table stakes today.
The Founder and CEO of borneo emphasises that businesses today will have to act fast to ensure they have the right data security and privacy controls in place, which is critical to maintaining user trust. This, coupled with the fact that many start-ups lack in-house security expertise and resources, was what prompted Prithvi to start borneo, a privacy data management platform that uses advanced machine learning to give customers real-time visibility over their data to understand, identify and promptly remediate data privacy risks.
Ensuring security and privacy of data is key in today’s hyper-connected world. Under Forrest’s lead, Sea has been focused on building its technology capabilities to identify and mitigate risks and protect users. “Vigilance is key today. It’s essential for our community to stay aware of fast-evolving risks and keep our guard up,” Forrest says. He shares that it was especially encouraging that the Singapore government has also introduced cybersecurity initiatives, such as the establishment of the Cyber Security Agency (CSA) in 2015 and the Cybersecurity Act in 2018, to strengthen the national protection of cybersecurity.
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