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William Bao Bin, General Partner and Executive Director at SOSV , is no stranger to the startup ecosystem. He was previously with SingTel Innov8 Ventures, where he was the managing director of China Investments. Here, he led investments in companies such as Yodo1, GMobi, DemystData, Lekan and Massive Impact.
Prior to this, William was a partner at SoftBank China & India Holdings, a venture capital firm backed by SoftBank and Cisco, where he led investments in China and Southeast Asia.
Currently, he is on the board of companies such as Robin8, Neonan, iTalki, Silk Road Telecom, Yodo1, DYAD, KineticOne and others such as AAMA Shanghai, US China Strong Foundation, Angelvest, Angelcrunch and others.
After more than 11 years as an equity research analyst, Williams was most recently with Deutsche Bank, where he was head of Internet and Telecom equipment in Asia and China Technology, Media and Telecom. He covered digital media at Banc of America Securities in San Francisco and PC/enterprise hardware at Bear Stearns in New York. William was an active angel investor, making 39 investments between 2004 and 2014.
Last year, the SOVS program focused on Orbit Startups in the MENA and GCC region. In a conversation with Gulf Edition of your storyWilliam talks about Orbit Startups and the fund’s plans for the region.
Edited quotes from the interview:
Your Story Gulf Edition (YS Gulf): Tell us about Orbital Launcher and what it does.
William Bao Bin (WBB): We are focused on bringing the best global technology to emerging and frontier markets. We are looking at markets where people’s first and only internet experience is on their mobile phone. They are the markets where the technology-driven revolution is taking place. There are three things we need: cheap mobile data, cheap working smartphones and payments that work properly. It can even be cash on delivery.
When you get these three, you have the ability to change the lives of the middle-class and low-income groups. We’re looking at where technology is changing the mass market, not just the top 10%.
We are looking at what we have learned from China and South Korea, and we are bringing it to the rest of the world.
China is the largest market in mobile alone, and in the past 20 years, technology has transformed the economy and people’s lives. Technology has leapfrogged and accelerated growth in these markets, and taken these lessons to the rest of the world.
We invest in Orbit through our fund, SOVS. We started in Southeast Asia where we saw these trends and then we have more than 50 investments in South Asia in India. We are now seeing these trends in MENA.
YS Gulf: How do you see the MENA market?
WBB: We recently completed a demo day in Dubai, where we saw startups from different parts of the world – India, Pakistan, Africa, Southeast Asia and the GCC. Dubai is one of the places where investors want to invest in these regions.
Dubai has a clutch of investors eyeing the MENA and South Asian markets. We have had a great experience of showcasing some of the best tech-enabled startups in these markets.
The GCC is a great bridge between Africa and South Asia, and it makes for great cross-border investors by comparing and contrasting.
We also see them not only raising funds in the ME region but also helping to transform the Middle East markets themselves. There are companies here that serve large enterprise customers (enterprise B2B), and we spend time investing in these companies. Even governments in these regions are becoming more effective.
Another big opportunity we see here is the consumer internet. The GCC region has many similar yet diverse markets. There is a large consumer base, especially in regions like Saudi Arabia. These markets often share similar opportunities and challenges. There is huge scope for digitizing fragmented businesses like car maintenance, etc.
Orbit is really about partnerships between tech startups, corporations and small businesses to connect with consumers. We are doing B2B2C in India, Egypt, LatAm and Southeast Asia, and now we are looking at digitizing traditional business in the GCC.
We see companies that solve a problem in one market and have the opportunity to cross borders and solve the same problem in multiple markets in the GCC.
S Gulf: Tell us a little more about startups in the GCC region, and their similarities and differences from other markets?
WBB: One of the main differences about the GCC region is that there are few people, but the spending power is very high. We’re looking at other markets that we’re moving into, but we see that a lot of people don’t have that much money.
Similarities? Technology adoption has not followed the money and the level of digitization is still very low. You can have a cheap car repair app in South Asia and you have a BMW in Dubai car repair app and they all use the same technology. We’re looking at how we can take technology and make these markets more efficient, and deliver better value to consumers and to market partners like Michelin, etc.
The S Gulf: What are the pros and cons of starting up in the GCC region?
WBB: One challenge is that it is an expensive market. We have a term called ramen profitability which means as a founder you are neither making nor losing money but living on the basics. It is very difficult to make a profit on ramen in the GCC because the markets are extremely expensive.
But this is where government support and foundations come in, where they help bring down the cost, so that the founders have the ability to feed themselves even if they build something that makes money.
We spent a lot of time in government sponsored funds and workplaces and getting to know people. It is very important to be cost effective in entering this market because you don’t want to lose money before you start working.
YS Gulf: How do you work with startups in the region?
WBB: Since we are not from the market, we do not tell the companies what to do. What works in China and the US may not work locally.
We help the companies we work with make informed decisions. We encourage experiments to help gather important information, which will inform your next steps.
Based on our expertise, we help companies design experiments based on what may or may not work across geographies. We have an educated guess of what might work, and the data helps companies know what they can actually do.
I see that the challenges startups are solving are global. For example, transportation around the world—people worry about how to get to work. Basic challenges remain – food, shelter, clothing and transportation. Besides the shelter we are in most of these basics.
The low-income and middle-income groups here are generally not from the region and come from other markets. We are looking at MENA from our position in South Asia, North Africa and Southeast Asia. The population is the same, they live in another country, but they have the same problem.
We are looking at anything analog to the digital world (that works with pen and paper and can be a phone call or an email). One of our first investments from Analogue is in Loriz, which is solving the trucking problem. There is a technology opportunity everywhere. The price points are different, but the challenges are the same.
YS Gulf: What advice would you give to entrepreneurs?
WBB: It is important to understand that each market is different, even within countries. Dubai is not Abu Dhabi and vice versa. Just because something works one way in one place doesn’t mean it works the same way in another. That’s why this advice is repeated: question your assumptions. It is especially important to continue testing in new markets. Don’t let your biases and assumptions get you down.