Discover the Four Mobile Startups in TTA
Mobile Technology is the current and future trends. Being at Taiwan Tech Arena, let’s take a look at the four startups using mobile tech to change our future.
What’s unique about your company?
Pichaya (Natbay): We are the only platform that guarantees authenticity and offers localized buying experiences, which goes through our storefronts until the checkout process.
Vikas (Whatscut Pro): WhatsCut Pro has built a community of influences who inspire each other on the platform and even share each other’s content off the platform. We support not just video stories but are the only platform for audio stories.
Pascal (Chekk): Chekk is a leading digital identity and eKYC startup. It provides secure end-to-end Know Your Customer solutions that remove the pain and costs of onboarding, verification, and interactions between financial institutions and their retail and corporate customers.
Tarun (Vidyakul): What makes us unique is that we provide content in multiple languages at an affordable price. We also empower local educators to go online. We handhold them to create courses and make it live.
How do you measure success?
Pichaya (Natbay): We look at the number of visitors, conversion rates, and GMV growth to see how well we are doing on traction, conversion, and how well our products response to customer taste.
Vikas (WhatsCut Pro): We measure success by hitting 950,000 installs and growing at 1500 new installs per day with almost no marketing spend; over 1.5 million audio stories growing at 3000 new audio stories per day; 3.5 million video stories and growing at 8000 new videos stories per day.
Pascal (Chekk): Chekk’s success is aligned to our customers’ success. The more we support cost and time reductions for their onboarding and KYC activities, and enable them to deliver game-changing customer experience, the more we sign-up new Financial Industry and FinTech companies and their customers.
Tarun (Vidyakul): We measure success by the number of teachers partnered with us and their growth in revenue; the number of students signed up with us and the marks they scored as a result of the courses they have purchased and the number of languages we have the courses available for Hindi, English, Gujarati + 5 More .
You will face a lot of challenges. Remember that it is part of the process and don’t give up. — Tarun, CEO of Vidyakul
What are the biggest challenges that have you encounter?
Pichaya (Natbay): The biggest challenge is to get millions of more fashion lovers and social media users in SEA. We still yet to experiment on multiple channels and tools in order to find the best way to scale our platform and take the most advantage of social commerce in SEA.
Vikas (WhatsCut Pro): We have global customers from around the world, the challenge is to communicate with them as they prefer to communicate in their local language.
Pascal (Chekk): We receive a lot of inbound contacts from banks, insurers, FinTech companies and others who are looking for a better solution. It is not easy for us to keep up but we are currently raising additional funding to support our expansion across additional verticals and countries.
Tarun (Vidyakul): Some of the challenges we face are the students in rural areas who don’t have access to the internet. Besides, teachers are not aware of the power of online education, they are comfortable teaching offline and it takes some convincing to create online courses.
What are some recent milestones for your company?
Pichaya (Natbay): We have so far added 220+ brands and maintain 10K+ products displayed on our platforms — all well-curated and in-season collections.
Vikas (WhatsCut Pro): We have built a strong community of 100,000 monthly active social media influencers. We crossed the 100,000 marks recently.
Pascal (Chekk): We have also signed additional customers across Asia and Europe, such as retail banks, FinTech companies or national sovereign funds for their corporate onboarding, and won awards from Microsoft, IBM and Money 20/20.
Tarun (Vidyakul): More than 100 teachers have partnered with us. We crossed 12k+ paying users just in the span of 8 Months. We got the investment from Mox. We have partnered with a school recently.
“It’s about finding the right balance between delivering on this vision and iterating on it to adapt to our customers.” — Pascal Nizri, CEO of Chekk
What’s your advice for future entrepreneurs?
Pichaya (Natbay): Being a startup founder in the tech industry is all about being able to adapt quickly because this industry is changing every day.
Vikas (WhatsCut Pro): We have two pieces of advice for future entrepreneurs: firstly, test your product with the actual customers and understand the market need. Secondly, start building revenue around the product so that you understand whether the customers are willing to pay.
Pascal (Chekk): Knowing your market and the problem you are solving for so that it can guide your vision, strategy, product, teams, etc. After that, it’s about finding the right balance between delivering on this vision and iterating on it to adapt to your customers.
Tarun (Vidyakul): Before you start the venture, do the market research and test if there is a demand and necessity of the product you will be creating. During the initial phases, you will face a lot of challenges. Remember that it is part of the process and don’t give up. Give importance to developing a great product and also on sales.
