Page 44 - Forbes - Asia (July - August 2018)

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
supplier to a technology company in Thong Siek: Creating a New
concrete and logistics,” said May Ng, Recipe With Innovation
Pan-United’s Chief Executive Offi- Traditional fish ball maker Thong Siek is
cer. “We’re nuts about concrete,” working to leverage advance manufactur-
she quipped. ing technologies to optimize its opera-
Pan-United’s investment in R&D and tions and scale its business. To kick-start
innovation has been supported by its its digitalization journey, the company
partnerships with government agen- tapped the Singapore Smart Industry
cies. In addition, it has also received Readiness Index, a tool which was devel-
support for its internationalization oped by TÜV SÜD and Singapore Eco-
activities from Enterprise Singapore, nomic Development Board (EDB) to help
through the government agency’s companies implement next-generation, or
Global Company Partnership. Industry 4.0, manufacturing solutions.
“We intend to further transform “Thong Siek has always been inter-
our business model, to find new rev- ested in the newest technologies and
enue streams that are of scale and we thought the index would be a good
reshape our industry. We will con- opportunity for us to learn more about
tinue to invest and build our capa- Seedly Co-founders, Tee-Ming Chew (L) Industry 4.0 and smart factories,” said
bilities as a technology company,” and Kenneth Lou (R) Fayy Lim, Deputy Chief Operating Officer
Ng said. (product development) at Thong Siek.
“Both our teams believe in helping “We believe that as a company, we can-
Seedly: Balancing the Books our users make smarter decisions in con- not always do things the same way. We
Fintech company Seedly’s budgeting app sumer spending and per-
is helping more than 50,000 users make sonal finance for digital
smarter financial decisions. Users can use consumers in the South-
the app to sync their bank accounts and east Asia market. By join-
credit cards, as well as get reports about ing forces, Seedly will gain
their spending habits to better manage access to international
their cash flow. markets and resources to
Last year, Seedly introduced a new com- grow. Meanwhile, Shop-
munity feature that allows users to crowd- Back gains Seedly’s exper-
source knowledge from peers before tise in developing the per-
making a financial decision. “Our app sonal finance vertical,”
helps our users better understand their explained Tee-Ming Chew,
lifestyle expenditure,” said Kenneth Lou, Seedly’s Chief Technology
a co-founder at Singapore-based Seedly. Officer and Co-founder.
Seedly is looking to fast-track its expan- By being based in Sin-
sion after being acquired earlier this year gapore, Seedly is able to
by ShopBack, another Singapore-based leverage the country’s
start-up that offers an online product com- robust innovation ecosys-
parison and rewards platform. tem to access the latest Worker operating bowl cutter with programmable
trends in the recipe-management system.
region through
online and offline communi- have to always think of ways to do things
ties, meetups and events. better, cheaper and faster in order to
The company also benefits remain competitive,” she added.
from the pool of regional tal- Thong Siek completed the assess-
ent that is attracted to Singa- ment process for the readiness index in
pore’s position as a gateway April and is currently selecting vendors
to the region. to implement its projects. The company
T h e c o m p a n y i s n o w tapped government assistance schemes
focused on cementing its to support its innovation and productivity
position n the personal improvement plans.
i
finance market in Singapore, Looking ahead, the firm aims to digitize
before expanding to neigh- its production floor, logistics and other
boring countries. “Another enterprise processes to improve produc-
big boost will come with our tivity and enjoy cost savings, said Lim.
parent company’s support “With better process control and vis-
and know-how to reach into ibility of our processes, we will be able
Sync up to 7 bank accounts and cards on Seedly the markets it operates in,” to manage our costs better and keep our
to manage your finances in one place. Lou said. price competitive in the market,” she said.

5 Singapore