Anubhav Nayyar

"Doesn't the GTM team do that?" Was the incredulous response of my friend at Google, when I told him we're helping a young Indian startup founder get early product and market feedback from leaders in her target market in Malaysia. Founders will know the feeling of going to market with a hypothesis. Before you have a mature offering, there’s infinite combinations of countries, product features, value props, price points, ICPs, segments, angles you could prioritise. Startups/SMBs don’t have the luxury of infinite time, money, talent, market intel. Outcomes matter, but, quickness to outcomes also matters. There is a big opportunity cost to every initiative you take up (so no 10 step innovation stage-gate process then) Quickly validating (or junking) your business hypothesis can save money, time, resources and a whole lot of frustration. Evolving the hypothesis to quick wins, is of course the ultimate validation. Unfortunately, this validation is not something that you're going to get from desktop research or a management consulting deck, it needs hard and smart yard on the ground. NOBS Asia is helping clients do just that, let's have a chat if you're looking for quick (and only somewhat dirty) answers to your expansion questions.

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📣 UPDATES: Stellar list of Corporations and Startups Joining Event 📣 What do Deeptech Startups need most? Engagement with corporate partners to rollout innovative solutions. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽 𝗣𝗶𝘁𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀 Curated several startups will pitch leading edge technologies for supply chain applications. Hear from: Dushyant Verma from SmartViz Pte Ltd - Visual, AI inspection to detect manufacturing defect Isaac Tan from Factorem - Access to industrial parts manufacturers Michelle Loke from FootprintIQ - Dashboard & report for corporate carbon emissions Shawar J. from Mile Solutions - Multimodal delivery management Tim Hill from Fleetyr - Empowering Fleet through united data MileSolutions Shuch Das from velOzity - Micro-delivery network 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 Meet fellow innovators from the following corporations who are seeking technologies that bring impactful benefits to their businesses Singapore Airlines NTUC FairPrice SATS Ltd. NVIDIA YCH Group PTTEP Nitto Denko Corporation Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Center Singapore (HMGICS) DB Schenker ENGIE Impact NAMIC Singapore (National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Cluster) Deloitte 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗦𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗸 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺  TradeSpark, a EnterpriseSG-sponsored POC program for startups to collaborate with corporations in supply chain innovation.  𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗔𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱? Corporate leaders, innovation team and supply chain professionals will benefit from the engagement with startup and like-minded corporate innovators. 𝗙𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 This event is a preview of the TradeSpark program for startups and corporations to have early engagements before the final selection of startups for the TradeSpark program. 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗷𝗼𝗶𝗻? Comment here, DM us or visit https://lnkd.in/gS-VMwvB #supplychain #innovation

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In the ninth edition of the Southeast Asia e-Conomy report with Temasek and Bain & Company, we see how key players in the region’s digital economy are increasingly focused on profitability and moving towards more sustainable growth. At over 100 pages long, the #eConomySEA report is a dense read. If you too enjoy consuming podcasts, listen to the discussion of the report produced by Illuminate linked below. Illuminate is a Google AI tool that turns content into an audio conversation in seconds — and while it’s very much experimental, I think you’ll agree it does a pretty good job, including conveying great excitement around key trends driving growth such as video commerce and the region’s rise as a global mobile gaming powerhouse. It also gives you a quick snapshot of the key differences across the six markets covered in the report. If you're still keen to read the full report, you'll find it here: https://lnkd.in/ghiBFZg

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"AI will take over almost everything" Someone said this to me the other day, convinced that the main jobs we know today will be taken over by AI not too long from now. While another told me that AI will help scale the efforts of those already doing a good job on their own. So where does AI fit in marketing, and how do AI-driven ecosystems shift the way we create, communicate, deliver, and exchange offerings that have value for our customers and partners? Thank you SP Jain School of Global Management - Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore & Sydney for inviting me to deliver a keynote on the power of AI-driven ecosystems for marketing. I will be sharing my observations on how some startups have quickly leverage Generative AI capabilities in this ecosystem, what has worked, where are the areas of friction that impede rapid adoption and what possibilities we can look forward to. I invite my friends to join me and the esteem panelists in this Business Conclave on 6th December (next friday). Check out the registration link below before seats run out. I look forward to seeing you and having a vibrant discussion! #AI #AIformarketing #strategy #marketing

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𝐃𝟐𝐂 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐝. 𝐋𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬! The D2C space will grow at ~40% and has received ~$1-2 bn annually in funding for the last few years. Some flag-bearers are also listed and profitable, and others are on the path too. Of course, there are dozens of digital-first brands which have wound up, scaled down or stagnated through the funding winter over the last couple of years, but overall D2C seems to be thriving and far from dying. What I am suggesting here is that D2C brands have evolved to a stage where they can drop the “D2C” from their description, and build their future as just brands. The “Direct” was always dubious, with only a very small share of revenue from their own website/apps, as most relied on marketplaces for discovery and scaling over the last decade or so. “Digital-first” or “Differentiated” seemed more appropriate for most of this genre, as they focused on channels & niches which traditional brands had not discovered or exploited for various reasons. To my mind, digital-first brands, which have started up in the last 4-5 years, and which are doing so now, will have to do things very differently from the cohort which started up earlier in the last decade. There are several reasons for this: -Marketplaces are now much more cluttered (and expensive), and do not offer similar opportunity for discovery for new brands, that they did until a few years ago. -Hence, these brands have to go offline earlier than many of the earlier cohort did, and thus have to develop new capabilities -Going offline through trade or own stores, may require them to grow out of their niches as the long tail approach may not work offline -Tighter funding, along with higher costs of building brands, will restrict their options. Even as the funding environment improves, funding for new D2C brands may not recover quickly These will impact almost everything that a D2C brand does- product development, sourcing, distribution, supply chain & marketing – and increasingly take these brands closer to how traditional brands operate. Of course, as most of these brands target younger customers who may live by #notmyparentsbrands, they will continue to be different in their appeal & positioning - as even ‘traditional’ brands targeting youth always have been! So, traditional brands which are building digital capabilities, will converge with the digital-first brands as they go offline, and both will have to be omnichannel. Already many ‘traditional’ business houses have launched D2C brands, acquired them, or are investing in omnichannel, and soon these may be undistinguishable from the current D2C brands, and both will be …well, just brands! ******** 𝐆𝐨𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐨 𝐀𝐝𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 assists brands with their D2C & omnichannel strategy & capability, by understanding customer journeys, creating robust processes, and utilising technology & data to engage customers. Let's connect!  #d2c #omnichannel #o2o #ecommerce #d2cindia #brands

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Future Founders BLR - Thursday, Aug 22, 6pm @ Indiranagar WHAT IS FF: Future Founders is our IRL event focused on non-frills Q&A around the (-1 to 0) and (0 to 1) stages of building based on our experience in intimately observing this across 100+ companies - lots of do's and dont's that we believe are needle moving for every early team. WHAT WE WILL DO: I'll be there with a few of our portco founders to primarily focus on answering questions with real examples, and frameworks we use at Better Captial. WHY FF: Just yesterday I spent 2 hours with one of our founders who spent 18 months to finally arrive at the version of our vision that is finally seeing "pull" -- and the one thing he had to say was "I'm sure we could have saved at least 9 months if not more and looking back it is so clear what we shouldn't have done and what we should have" -- and this is a founder with a successful exit under his belt. WHO IS IT FOR: All early builders from the ideation stage to early MVP irrespective of segment or category. REGISTRATION & MORE: Registration link in the first comment -- we have 25 spots and we are keeping these small so the conversation can be richer and focused. The registration will be open until we hit the registration limit with a buffer. Thanks to Surbhi and Pallav for helping make this happen. We are nothing without our community of founders :) See you there!

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That's a wrap for me for TOKEN2049 here in #Singapore. As I wait for my flight here at Changi Airport, I've got a few minutes to reflect on some observations. Here's my top 10.... 1. #RWA is poised for some big movements, but we've still got some work to do. 2. DePIN is gathering steam thanks to the efforts from the likes of IoTeX, XNET ⓧ, Helium, and more. Although I admit, the #DePIN AI narrative still needs a lot of work on actual use cases. On the wireless side, I would absolutely LOVE for a DAO to actually purchase licensed spectrum and give the carriers a real run for their money. 3. I was happy to see some really cool projects emerge from sideways summer. 4. #Security is finally being taken seriously. Thanks for all the validation of what we and our peers are doing to keep users safe, informed, and educated. 5. Speaking of which, #web3 security companies are appear more open to collaboration.... but I'll reserve judgement until we grow the TAM, and we still need to do better to cover the full lifecycle of the #digitalasset user journey 😉 6. CEX and DEX launches are happening with greater up front attention paid to regulation. 7. #BTC L2 ecosystem is in a bit of a funky state. There doesn't appear to have been much movement since BTC Nashville. 8. Lot's said about #TON.... Personally I'm bullish as this network has something that no other protocols have. 9. Investors are actually doing some real due diligence before jumping in. As someone who use to do tech due diligence for a fortune 50 company, this makes me happy. 10. While we did see the interest rate cut deliver a 5-7% on average boost, we didn't let that get to our heads... there's still a lot more work to be done.

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Let's talk soon about open innovation and how to expand each culture in global!!

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Apr 23: Headlines are a starting point, not the finish line 🔸 Why have Singapore and Hong Kong banned Everest and MDH spices? Hong Kong and Singaporean authorities have banned several spice mixes from popular Indian brands MDH and Everest due to concerns about a cancer-causing substance. They found ethylene oxide in the products. It is used as a sterilizing agent but can damage DNA and potentially lead to cancers like lymphoma, leukemia, stomach cancer, and breast cancer. The banned MDH spices include Madras Curry Powder, Sambhar Masala, and Curry Powder. Everest's Fish Curry Masala was also removed from shelves. 🔸 India to have its own shoe sizing system soon A nationwide study on the feet sizes of Indians was recently conducted to develop an Indian sizing system for footwear, tentatively named "Bha" (भ), which could potentially replace the existing UK/European and US sizing systems in India. The study revealed that Indians have wider feet than Europeans and Americans. Due to this, they often wear footwear that is a size larger than required, leading to injuries, shoe bites, and compromised foot health. (And I thought I used to walk wrong!) For reasons unknown, developing an Indian system was never undertaken. Now, Bha proposes eight footwear sizes: I – infants (0-1 year), II – babies (1-3 years), III – small children (4-6 years), IV – children (7-11 years), V – girls (12-13 years), VI – boys (12-14 years), VII – women (14 years+) and VIII – men (15 years+). The new sizing system is expected to be implemented in 2025. 🔸 His body makes its own alcohol, and he got caught for drunk-driving (later acquitted) Imagine getting pulled over for DUI, but you haven't touched a drop of alcohol! That's what happened to a guy in Belgium recently. Turns out, he has this super rare condition called auto-brewery syndrome (ABS) where his gut basically turns carbs into booze. The judge totally believed the guy because, well, he wasn't acting drunk. A doctor explained that ABS makes people produce ethanol, the same alcohol that's in drinks. You aren't born with ABS, but you can get it if you already have some other intestine-related problems. Some of the symptoms include slurred speech, dizziness, and difficulty with coordination, basically mimicking alcohol intoxication. 🔹 Bits and bytes: 1) The results of the Lok Sabha elections will be declared on June 4. But one BJP candidate from Surat has already won. This happened after the Congress candidate's nomination was rejected over alleged discrepancies. The eight other candidates from the Surat LS seat also withdrew their nominations. 2) Elon Musk's SpaceX continues to be one the most hazardous space organizations to work at, for the second consecutive year. Its Texas facility saw 5.9 injuries per 100 workers versus the industry average of 0.8 injuries. Ouch! 🗞 We deliver a curated newsletter exclusively for busy professional women every day! 🤝 Join us on WhatsApp: https://lnkd.in/dafpnSgV

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Leveraging Specialized Talent is Key to Successful Business Growth🔑🌐 Amidst the constantly evolving business scenario, corporates have recognized the significant role of business building🏢 in defining their growth strategies and ensuring their continued relevance. At the heart of each successful business-building initiative lies one critical element - specialized Talent🎓. This Talent, however, is not just about possessing the required skills and qualifications. It's more about aligning with the corporate vision and adapting to its culture, encapsulating a founder's mentality. The ability to leverage strategic corporate assets further distinguishes them, thus making this breed of Talent truly unique and invaluable💡. BCG X delves deeper into the core difficulties faced by business leaders as they embark on this quest for the right Talent. With an intensive study📚 backed by our on-ground experiences, we have formulated some actionable recommendations, aimed at addressing these challenges directly🛠️. As corporates continue to navigate their way through the challenging yet rewarding path of business growth and evolution, the importance of sourcing and nurturing the right Talent becomes more evident than ever💼. Embracing the challenges, complexities, and changing hiring landscapes is an integral part of this journey, making it crucial for corporations to acknowledge, adapt, and evolve🔄.

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I visited Mumbai in December 1998 on a business school graduation trip. I had not been to India for over a decade. On that trip, everything changed for me. Given the opportunity I saw driven by growing consumer demand, I pivoted my professional career and personal ambitions to go all in India. Many may argue that I was 10-15 years too early. Early investments include brands that are market leaders today: Saffronart, India’s leading auction house; Sula Vineyards, India’s lead wine brand; and Cleartrip, one of India’s first OTAs. As I spend more time in ASEAN, I see many similarities in Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh and Manila. The smartest are coming back from the US and Europe to build business across sectors in their home countries. Consumers are becoming more demanding and asking more from the brands they buy. The incumbents, large and slow, are finding it difficult to launch new brands for this new consumer. We at DSG Consumer Partners are committed to spending the next decade seeding the ASEAN insurgent consumer brands of the future. My partner Sameer Mehta recently spoke to DealStreetAsia’s Ngoc Nguyen about the firm’s plans. We have already partnered with Youvit, SATURDAYS, and Rosé All Day in Indonesia, Colourette and PICKUP COFFEE in the Philippines, and Coolmate and Marathon Education (YC W22) in Vietnam. Our other Singapore-based businesses, including SaladStop Group, Moom Health, Blood, and Kind Kones, are active in these markets. I expect that, like India, these companies and economies will take time to mature. The need of the hour is 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠-𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐬, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬. #insurgentbrands #cpg #startups #consumer #brands #india #southeastasia #sea #brickbybrick #wswod

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I am proud to share that our Founder and Chairman, Mr. Himanshu Maradiya, has been featured in an insightful article by Zero Accel! 🚀 He discusses Bitcoin’s potential growth factors, from adoption and ETFs to weakening fiat currencies and mining profitability. 📈 His thoughts were also referenced in a Forbes article on Bitcoin’s future. Exciting times ahead for the crypto community! 💡 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/dJzKkKJE #Bitcoin #BTC #Crypto #Blockchain #CIFDAQ #Growth

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A new chapter for TotallyAwesome and our new acquirer SQREEM Technologies. Looking back at this journey full of ups and downs, it is with excitement and humility that I see our venture grow to the next level. I've had the unique opportunity to work with a world class team and this couldn't have been achieved without every single one of them. I'm deeply grateful to the people that trusted us since Day 1 and that are still here today, but also to all who've joined us over the years as we've grown to a 100+ people strong. As we're closing this chapter to open a new one, I've come out of it humbled after many years of relentless execution as I'm drawing conclusions on this journey. Humility was our strength. If we pretend to know better than the market or our own clients, we fail. Temptation to cut corners because we think we know can be high. The right people on the bus, then the right people in the right seats. Team loyalty and longevity will naturally follow. Building something that clients actually want to pay for, is much better than building something because it's cool. Looks too obvious but temptation is always too high. We've built many 'cool things' no one wanted. Building a business isn't about striking deals, but should be just a simple combination of rigor/discipline, and statistically aligning a series of acceptably decent decisions over time. Building a competitive advantage comes also from making mistakes, because we risk doing things and learn things that others dare not try. We have an edge. Figuring out how to succeed in a complex fragmented market/region is a great competitive advantage (vs. big homogeneous, but competitive markets). Fast forward 8 years, there still isn't any direct serious competitor doing what we do in APAC. Strategy simply revolves around a set of operational decisions that are coherent. Everyone can learn and has the right to be strategic, from senior execs to juniors. Bias in decision-making is our greatest enemy. Communication to our teams is never enough. Repetition has never killed anybody but helps promote alignment across teams. Obsession for the client's needs. Our TOP 1 client's revenue grew 30x to 7-digit figure over 6 years because we cared about spending time with them. The best client loyalty = the lowest marketing dollar amount Desire for visibility creates noise. Noise doesn't move the needle. Keep things simple and the bottom line will speak for itself. Love what you do.

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#globalbusinesses expanding to #singapore, this episode covers multi faceted strategies on how, when and why you should look at Singapore expansion. A must watch!!!

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Singapore is the Apple 🍎 of countries. A non-replicable torch bearer. Much like Apple, its product is an ecosystem. An ecosystem of talent (local and international), investments, systems (SEZ like) and trade with neighbours. Its brand, a utopian futuristic city and continued reliability. While there’s plenty to learn from Singapore, there’s little other countries can implement. Kishore Mahbubani aptly points to the elements of Singapore’s success - MPH (Meritocracy, Pragmatism and Honesty). These are easy to highlight and are great lessons, but are impossible to ape or act upon - to the rigour and depth that Singapore has. There’s a lot to learn from Singapore, but for most, implementation shall remain a distant dream. My thoughts, based on The Economist, piece below:

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AI x Education. Kudos to Andrej Karpathy (AI Genius and #AI150 cohort member) for taking on the broken education system and building in public !!! Introducing Eureka Labs https://eurekalabs.ai/ By @karpathy July 16, 2024 We are Eureka Labs and we are building a new kind of school that is AI native. How can we approach an ideal experience for learning something new? For example, in the case of physics one could imagine working through very high quality course materials together with Feynman, who is there to guide you every step of the way. Unfortunately, subject matter experts who are deeply passionate, great at teaching, infinitely patient and fluent in all of the world's languages are also very scarce and cannot personally tutor all 8 billion of us on demand. However, with recent progress in generative AI, this learning experience feels tractable. The teacher still designs the course materials, but they are supported, leveraged and scaled with an AI Teaching Assistant who is optimized to help guide the students through them. This Teacher + AI symbiosis could run an entire curriculum of courses on a common platform. If we are successful, it will be easy for anyone to learn anything, expanding education in both reach (a large number of people learning something) and extent (any one person learning a large amount of subjects, beyond what may be possible today unassisted). Our first product will be the world's obviously best AI course, LLM101n. This is an undergraduate-level class that guides the student through training their own AI, very similar to a smaller version of the AI Teaching Assistant itself. The course materials will be available online, but we also plan to run both digital and physical cohorts of people going through it together. Today, we are heads down building LLM101n, but we look forward to a future where AI is a key technology for increasing human potential. What would you like to learn? @EurekaLabsAI is the culmination of my passion in both AI and education over ~2 decades. My interest in education took me from YouTube tutorials on Rubik's cubes to starting CS231n at Stanford, to my more recent Zero-to-Hero AI series. While my work in AI took me from academic research at Stanford to real-world products at Tesla and AGI research at OpenAI. All of my work combining the two so far has only been part-time, as side quests to my "real job", so I am quite excited to dive in and build something great, professionally and full-time. It's still early days but I wanted to announce the company so that I can build publicly instead of keeping a secret that isn't. #AIDecade #AIxEducation #InvestorDecade

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🚀💼 Spotlight on Innovation: Sivabudh Umpudh, Driving Force Behind Codium #Leadership #TechInnovation In the vibrant tech startup scene of Southeast Asia, Sivabudh Umpudh stands out as a visionary leader. As the Founder and CEO of Codium, one of the region's premier software development firms, Sivabudh has successfully navigated the complex landscape of tech innovation to deliver cutting-edge IT solutions that empower businesses. 🌟 About Sivabudh Umpudh: A trailblazer in the tech community, Sivabudh’s entrepreneurial journey is a testament to his strategic foresight and unwavering commitment to excellence. Under his leadership, Codium has become synonymous with quality, reliability, and innovative problem-solving. 📈 Codium’s Impact: Tailored IT Solutions: Codium is renowned for creating custom software solutions that drive efficiency and competitive advantage. Client-Centric Approach: With a focus on client needs, Codium ensures that each project is handled with utmost precision and adaptability. 🔥 Sivabudh’s Contributions to Tech: Sivabudh’s approach combines deep industry knowledge with a keen understanding of global tech trends, making Codium a leader in its field. His efforts have not only propelled Codium’s growth but have also significantly contributed to the tech sector’s dynamism in Southeast Asia. See here - https://lnkd.in/gCawHfMq #TechEntrepreneur #SoftwareDevelopment #InnovativeLeadership #Codium #SivabudhUmpudh

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