Asia Tech Podcast

In this episode of Asia Tech Podcast my trends explorer colleague Yi Jing Fly joins me to share her latest insights. We look at how communication apps Tik Tok and Wesing are dominating a global teen user base and why, despite Zuckerberg’s dismissal, this does not bode well for apps like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Spotify. Tik Tok and Tencent’s Wesing are the first billion user apps out of Asia and they solve the customer problem in a fundamentally different way than Facebook and Google.

I am sharing a new Audiobook called Podcasting for Robots. Podcasting for Robots is about human communication is the era of the machine. As businesses undergo radical change driven by digital transformation and hypergrowth technologies like Artificial Intelligence, they will be similarly forced to find their human voice. The more we push into Automation, the more businesses and customers will year for the human touch - conversational tools like Podcasts. Evolving platforms that do "everything with everybody" will end up offering the same products to the same customers, the only distinguishing barrier to entry left being the human beings who build and advocate the platform.

Enjoy this special celebration for the 500th episode of Asia Tech Podcast. I share the highlights and memorable moments of my podcast journey including the time I ate a scorpion, talked to 2 billionaire entrepreneurs (Rod Drury and Tony Fernandes), and recorded episodes on a bike, in a rice field, at the airport and on the airplane. It’s been a wild adventure, thank you for your support and feedback. Here’s to 500 more episodes.

Wow, what a line up of subjects today on Asia Tech Podcast. I’m joined my colleague Yi Jing Zhou who helps us in our journey into the fascinating world of disruptive innovation in communication technology in Asia. We look at how young Asian women have led the adoption of radical new technologies across generations - from mobile phones to podcasting.

Young Asian Women have spent a long time on the outside of mainstream society looking in. That's why they are the first to break and re-make communications technologies... In the 90s it was mobile messaging. Today it's podcasting.

Howard Yu is the LEGO Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD Business School, and author of LEAP. In this conversation, we share top level insights from Howard’s talk at the Singapore Management Festival. We look at how companies innovate for hypergrowth, not just in the short term, but over generations. Howard shares case studies on innovative companies that may surprise you such as John Deere (an agricultural machinery manufacturer). We also take a look at success and failure in Asia’s hypercompetitive markets, the role of diversity in innovation, and the 3 steps organizational leaders can take to nurture more innovative cultures. It’s a conversation that looks under the hood of business success and failure, companies that include Amazon, AWS, Tencent, DBS, Kodak and GoJek.

I’m spending a couple of days with my client Xero down in Brisbane Australia this week for Xerocon. Xerocon is the manifestation of how a platform competes in this era of digital transformation. At the end of the day, it’s about people. Xero is an $8bn SAAS platform but it’s product isn’t really beautiful accounting software, it’s the whole experience - it’s this event, it’s every interaction with the people in the team and it’s their story. The physical software is just one tool in this bigger product suite. That’s the experience we as customers buy today.

In this special edition of Asia Tech Podcast I share an inside look on what’s happening in the fast moving world of Customer Experience in Asia. Case studies featured include Alibaba Hema, PingAn Financial, Grab, Uber, Emirates and Airasia. The challenge facing brands in Asia is their competition won’t come from the next guy in category, but from a completely different sector. This asynchronous competition - players like Alibaba or Amazon - will be well resourced and able to wipe out incumbents and with them generations of legacy. We look at how Asia is positioned to accommodate Digital Transformation and who is leading in this space.

This week on Asia Tech Podcast, Geoffrey Handley and Chris Grimshaw-Jones from Haitao Capital joins Graham D Brown to talk about the impact China has on the global economy. For the next 50 mins, they discuss the difference between Singles Day & Black Friday Sales and the 9-9-6 formula employed by Chinese companies.

In today’s Asia Tech Podcast I share insights on how brands can use podcasts to acquire and retain talent. While traditionally this may be seen as a recruitment or HR function, increasingly this will become how brands compete against each other into the next decade. By humanizing their brands through podcasting, companies like Grab, GoJek and SAP can create new revenue streams and reduce the cost of talent acquisition. If you’re interested in getting a copy of the report that I discuss in this podcast, email me Graham Brown gb@pitch.sg

Spotify has spent $400m on acquiring a winning strategy in podcasting. Their acquisitions include Gimlet Media, Anchor and Parcast. While the industry has analysed this strategic direction in detail, nobody has broken this down for Asia. In Asia Tech Podcast 493, my colleague Prarthana Sibal joins me to look at the podcast opportunity in Asia. We unpack Asia’s $30 trillion middle class and frontrun the demographic trends that could make Asia a huge greenfield market. We discuss why young girls are avid consumers or true crime podcasts, why Asian brands have a substantial storytelling gap that won’t be filled by legacy or ad agencies, and how the podcast market in Asia could be potentially bigger than the rest of the world.

AirAsia is an interesting case study. On the one hand, it’s an airline. On the other, it sits in the middle of a hypercompetitive cauldron of opportunity. A 5 hour flight from HQ in Malaysia gives you access to 3.5 billion people, half the world’s population. Add to this the rising tide of Asia’s $30 trillion Middle Class. With 40 million people visiting the website every month and 100 million passengers flying, it’s possible to argue their valuations, based on data potential alone, should be seen in the same context as Netflix (135x) and Gojek (200x) rather than General Electric (16x) or General Motors (6x). The residing challenge for any airline is the fact that 99.9% of the time, its customers aren’t in a plane, and that most people still see them as an airline. Digital transformation takes good leadership and a compelling story; a story that reframes their value. How do you build an ecosystem around a platform when 90% of the value is created off payroll? How do you foster lean startup thinking within the walls of a corporation? In this podcast I’ll unpack the challenges and also where I think they are heading.

On this episode of The Asia Tech Podcast, host Graham Brown discusses the benefits of podcasting itself and the opportunities it offers forward-thinking companies. To do so, Graham ventures outside the region to examine the amazing success that the NPR (or National Public Radio) in the US has enjoyed after going into podcasting. He delves into why NPR’s radio listeners have actually increased after launching their podcast and what other businesses can learn from this. You’ll also learn which podcast Graham feels is the Gold Standard that others should seek to emulate, as well as why he feels storytelling is incredibly important and how it helps to create an emotional connection with the audience.

In this week’s episode, host Graham Brown looks at the importance of telling your company’s story. Brands covered include: AirAsia, Meituan, Xero, GoJek, Uber, Grab, Huawei, Tencent, Apple and Alibaba. We look at the growing role of podcasting in telling those brand stories effectively, and its wider role in Asia’s digital transformation. This podcast covers the importance of humanizing your brand and the reason storytelling is such a powerful method of creating and moulding a brand. We also hear how podcast scan communicate with a business’ target audience. He then explores why companies need to change the way they tell their story, moving away from traditional methods, such as advertising and PR.

Join us for Part 1 of our walk through the world of the Echelon Asia Summit 2019 in Singapore. We are joined by 5 people on Asia Tech Podcast today each representing a different voice from the Asian startup ecosystem. Mohan Belani -Co-Founder & CEO of E27. Sheldon - Founder of Renew. Anisa Hassan - Founder of Joompa. David Ward - Bambooloo and Bob Chua - BlinQ. More stories from Echelon coming soon…