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CASE President Visits Eight Design, Highlights the Importance of CaseTrust Accreditation Scheme in Counteracting Renovation Scams

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 11 November 2021 – Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE) President Melvin Yong paid Eight Design a visit in their West Tradehub Showroom. Eight Design was mentioned specifically by Yong in a post he made on Facebook, reiterating the value and significance of local renovation contractors being able to secure a CaseTrust accreditation, a step that is beneficial to both the client and the service-provider to counteract the renovation scams occurring in the industry. Consumers have been complaining about contractors who underdeliver or leave completely during a project. It was even recorded that the renovation sector has received 621 complaints in the first half of 2021 alone, almost double than last year’s numbers. Because of the mishaps caused by COVID-19, businesses in the industry were greatly affected. Yong’s intention in his visit was to understand better the measures being done by renovation companies in providing assurance to their clients.

 

According to Melvin Yong, in today’s time, consumers are likely to spend more in the renovation of their new homes—with most even paying larger sums of deposits upfront to the contracting party they are engaging with. As compared to how consumers behaved 10 years ago, this recent practice in the industry is becoming a cause for concern. He stresses that when people pay huge deposit amounts ahead of time, it will be challenging to seek for recourse in case there are difficulties that arise during the entirety of the project. To avoid this, Singapore Renovation Contractors and Material Suppliers Association (RCMA) joined forces with CASE to create a CaseTrust-RCMA Joint Accreditation Scheme through a Memorandum of Understanding.

 

CaseTrust is the accreditation arm of CASE; it is also Singapore’s de facto standard that reliable companies refer to and follow when offering and executing services that are only truthful and ethical. Melvin Yong expressed his high spirits in Eight Design. The company has been CaseTrust accredited since 2016 and they find the policies and practices helpful in guiding the company’s internal operations and processes, benefiting the company and the customers, as well as in setting the expectations of home renovation projects to minimize disputes.

 

Accredited businesses like Eight Design – Top Residential & Commercial IDs help consumers find legitimate contractors that provide fair trading and transparency. Only those that are listed in RCMA are eligible to obtain the joint accreditation. Through this course of action, the consumers’ deposit payments are protected by a deposit performance bond—effectively safeguarding it from closure, potential liquidation, and other unfavorable incidents.

 

The CASE president himself highlighted the benefits that consumers will get from engaging with an accredited business:

1.  The contractor will be carrying out consumer friendly-policies and good business practices.

2.  The consumers’ deposits will be protected through the aforementioned deposit performance bond.

3.  The contractor will be committed in resolving and minimizing disputes through a peaceful and professional mediation.

4.  A CaseTrust Standard Renovation Contract will be adopted by the accredited contractor to ensure cost transparency and accountability for every listed deliverables in the renovation project.

 

According to The Straits Times, home renovation costs have increased by 10 to 20% industry-wide. With this inevitable upsurge, the demands of the modern consumers are also increasing. To bridge this gap, businesses should ensure fair trading while consumers do their due diligence. To check for a renovation company like Eight Design’s accreditation, one can easily navigate through CaseTrust’s web listing or view the CaseTrust-RCMA’s logo that businesses display in their shop fronts and marketing materials as an outward sign of commitment.

About Eight Design Pte Ltd

Eight Design has been offering exceptional services as an interior and renovation contractor in Singapore for more than 15 years, and has a wealth of knowledge to provide comprehensive solutions in a variety of contexts. From design and decoration to carpentry and renovation, we can deliver the best possible result for your commercial or domestic project. Our passionate team of creative designers will always put your needs first and will take care of you from start to finish including all planning, management and construction processes. We hold ourselves to the highest standards across the board and maintain these expectations of ourselves through thorough methods of quality control and our very own team of skilful carpenters. To speak with the best renovation contractor available, visit eightdesign.com.sg and find out what we can help you achieve.


#EightDesign

Niantic Opens Lightship Platform Globally, Empowering Developers to Build Their Visions for the Real-World Metaverse

Niantic, developer of the world’s first and only scaled AR platform, releases Lightship, the vault of technology that powers Pokémon GO; Niantic Ventures will also invest $20 million in companies building the future of AR

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 11 November 2021 – AR technology company Niantic, Inc.(HQ: San Francisco, CA USA; CEO: John Hanke), the developer of the world’s first and only scaled AR platform, has announced the release of the Niantic Lightship Augmented Reality Developer Kit (Lightship ARDK) to all AR developers around the world. Available at Lightship.dev, the company has also shared a glimpse of the possibilities this technology affords through its launch brand partners like Coachella, Historic Royal Palaces, Lifull, the PGA of America, Science Museum Group, Shueisha, Softbank, the artist JR and Superblue, TRIPP, Universal Pictures and Warner Music Group. 

 

The Lightship Platform is the foundation for Niantic’s products, built on years of experience developing and running titles ranging from Ingress to Pokémon GO and Pikmin Bloom. As part of the Lightship Platform, the ARDK is a cross-platform software development kit that runs seamlessly on billions of Android and iOS devices around the world. It brings together the tools and technologies that power the top three AR features — Real-Time Mapping, Understanding and Sharing — so developers can create unique AR experiences that seamlessly utilize some or all of the ARDK tools. 

 

Niantic is also announcing the formation of Niantic Ventures to invest in and partner with companies building the future of AR. With an initial $20 million fund, Niantic Ventures will invest in companies building applications that share Niantic’s vision for the Real-World Metaverse and contribute to the global ecosystem that they are building. To learn more about Niantic Ventures, go to Lightship.dev.

 

“Transforming humanity’s relationship with technology by merging the physical and virtual worlds will require the ideas and perspectives of as many people as possible,” said John Hanke, Founder and CEO of Niantic. “That’s why we’re so excited to open the vault of technology that powers our own games, so developers, creators and brands globally can build inclusive experiences that push the boundaries of what’s possible in AR.”

 

More information on the launch can be found in Niantic’s Blog post, John Hanke’s announcement and Lightship AR video channel.

#Niantic

Zwipe appoints APAC Head to strengthen its regional presence

OSLO, NORWAY and SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 11 November 2021 – Zwipe, a leading biometrics payment company, announced that it had appointed Claus Hansen as Vice President of Sales and Business Development, Asia Pacific (APAC) region. Mr Hansen will lead Zwipe’s engagements with card manufacturers, issuers and technology partners to drive the adoption of biometric payment solutions in APAC.

Mr Claus Hansen

 

With this appointment, Zwipe aims to strengthen its foothold in the APAC region. Mr Hansen will be accompanied with two existing colleagues at the newly-established Zwipe subsidiary in Singapore (Zwipe Singapore Pte. Ltd.) The new regional office strongly reinforces Zwipe’s long-term vision to support its partners and customers in the area.

 

Commenting on this latest Zwipe development in the APAC Region, André Løvestam, CEO of Zwipe said, “Claus’s appointment demonstrates our commitment to one of the world’s largest and most rapidly growing regions within payments. We have significant customer relationships in the APAC region and are excited by the strong interest that our Zwipe Pay ONE platform has received. Claus’s deep smart card industry knowledge and proven track record in successfully launching new payment solutions in APAC will help us accelerate the full potential of our platform.”

 

Claus Hansen, Vice President of Sales and Business Development, APAC, said, “The Zwipe Pay ONE platform with a Single Silicon Biometric System on Card is a game-changer for the payments industry. I am very excited to join this visionary team of passionate people. Convenience, security and safety are important for consumers’ choice of payment option. Zwipe is perfectly positioned to provide innovative card-based solutions allowing our clients to respond to market needs, as well as become the strategic technology partner of choice”.

 

Mr Hansen brings over 25 years of payment technology, cybersecurity, fintech and smart card experience to the role. He has held senior executive management positions across multiple countries in Asia in Entrust, NXP Semiconductors, Gemalto, dz card and Kona I.

 

#Zwipe

CUHK Business School Research Finds Rural Migrants in China Are Likely to Establish Bigger Companies

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 11 November 2021 – Big cities are where dreams thrive. Their cosmopolitan allure, together with the sweet smell of financial opportunity, have driven waves of migration to population centres throughout human history. In the modern era, one such narrative is continuing to rapidly unfold in China, where there were an estimated 286 million rural migrant workers in 2020, accounting for more than one-third of the entire working population in the country, and coinciding with a rapid rise in entrepreneurial activity. This coming together of two dramatic shifts has afforded a group of researchers an opportunity to look at how urban migration has helped to drive entrepreneurship in China, especially through the prism of the role of universities in churning out a steady supply of well-educated and innovative talent.

 

The study found that entrepreneurs who migrated from rural China to big cities such as Shanghai were more risk-taking.

One of their key findings is that, in China, people who migrated from rural areas and attended university in big cities are more likely to set up businesses that are bigger in size.

 

In modern China, the great urban migration kicked off in the 1980s as a result of economic reforms instituted at the time. Millions of rural migrants flocked to cities, such as Shenzhen and Dongguan, to take up jobs in factories. Entrepreneurship was considered relatively less common among rural migrants. Nonetheless, some of the most famous Chinese entrepreneurs had rural roots. For instance, Liu Qiangdong – the founder of JD.com was born in a small village in Jiangsu province and later went to study at a university in Beijing. Another example is Ma Huateng, also known as Pony Ma, who founded one of Asia’s most valuable conglomerates, Tencent. Mr. Ma was born in a small town in Guangdong province and went to school in Shenzhen, where he founded the multinational conglomerate.

 

“Migrating from the countryside to the city can be a challenging task for individuals not only because of the physical distance, but also the large cultural gap they would likely experience upon relocating,” says Willow Wu You, Assistant Professor in the Department of Management at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School. “But in a sense, it’s something that has helped to drive the rise of private entrepreneurial activity in China and allowed the country to maintain the growth it has experienced in recent years.”

 

Migration and Risk-taking

While most existing migration research studies focus on the variety that crosses international borders, Prof. Wu and her research partner Prof. Charles Eesley at Stanford University looked at the effect of urban migration within a country on entrepreneurship in their study Regional Migration, Entrepreneurship and University Alumni. The two scholars conducted a survey among university alumni from Tsinghua University and analysed the entrepreneurial experience of 283 business founders among those alumni. They found that entrepreneurs who migrated from rural China to big cities in the country were more risk-taking, and with the access to better entrepreneurial opportunities and resources that comes with relocating to an urban environment, they are likely to establish bigger companies.

 

In the study, the researchers examined whether the rural migrants were indeed more risk-taking by directly asking their opinions on the concerns of starting a company in the survey. They discovered that the rural migrants were less risk averse than urban dwellers, among both entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs. Among non-entrepreneurs, only 36.1 percent of rural migrants considered entrepreneurship too risky, whereas 45.8 percent of urban dwellers expressed similar concerns. Among entrepreneurs, the percentage is 7.4 percent for rural migrations and 19.0 percent for urban dwellers. In addition, the study results show that urban migration is positively and significantly associated with the likelihood of founding larger companies.

 

The Role of Universities

The researchers sought to explain this phenomenon through the role of universities, noting that they are universally well-regarded for their important role in supplying talent that are needed to drive business and innovative performance. They posit that if entrepreneurship is the force and process of continuous change that drives innovation, as famously stated by the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, then universities are a crucial channel through which this force can be directed to produce the most benefit for an economy. “If entrepreneurship represents the winds of creative destruction as suggested by Schumpeter, universities may play a role in directing those winds via their influence on regional migration,” Prof. Wu says.

 

According to Prof. Wu, apart from providing social support for rural migrants, the universities that these migrant students attended allow them to become anonymous and reinvent themselves by creating new connections in the urban areas where they settle. By doing this, migrant entrepreneurs become more willing to take risks because they have fewer worries over stigma from failure, which may happen if they were starting businesses in their hometowns.

 

According to researchers, the universities that migrant students attend allow them to become anonymous and reinvent themselves by creating new connections in the urban areas where they settle.

Overall, the study finds that rural migrant entrepreneurs tend to build larger companies because of their risk-seeking attitudes and the access to better entrepreneurial resources in cities. Contrary to earlier management research that suggest entrepreneurs tend to create their companies close to home, the study shows that the likelihood of building a bigger firm is higher among university graduates who migrated from rural areas compared to non-migrant university graduates. Specifically, entrepreneurs who chose to start tech startups in science parks were likely to form companies with the largest number of employees (i.e. within the top 25 percent). Entrepreneurs who chose to start their firms in special economic zones hire the second largest number of staff (i.e. between the top 50 percent and the top 25 percent).

 

The study notes that universities have an important role to play in fostering entrepreneurship by redistributing talent through providing college education opportunities to rural students. In particular, the risk-taking attitude among the alumni and the social network resources provided by universities are crucial to the success of rural migrant entrepreneurs.

 

Regional Policy Implications

To stay in the city or to go back home is a common question faced by many students who moved from small towns to major cities for college education upon graduation. Prof. Wu says their findings raised an important question of whether migrant students should be encouraged to return to their hometowns or to remain in an urban setting to try to be more successful in their careers.

 

Furthermore, she explains that universities in urban areas, together with interconnected businesses and institutions, attract highly talented and risk-taking migrants and import them in the form of students, which then benefit the areas that the universities are located. But, as talented migrants are being attracted to just a few major cities, smaller cities would suffer due to lower growth in entrepreneurship. For policymakers, the research findings provide useful implications in how to promote economic growth by talent mobility.

 

The majority of people who have potential to become entrepreneurs live outside the big innovation hubs like Shenzhen. The current policy direction is either to retain these entrepreneurial spirits in the regions where they hail from or to bring down migration from rural regions to urban areas. Earlier rural migrants supported the economic growth by providing low-cost labour.

 

“But, as our research finding shows, rural migrants can also become very successful entrepreneurs. That’s why policies that can promote some sort of interregional mobility may be more beneficial for local economies,” Prof. Wu says, adding that adapting universities programmes and course content to provide support to rural migrants may help more of them become successful entrepreneurs.

 

Reference:

You (Willow) Wu & Charles E. Eesley (2021) Regional migration, entrepreneurship and university alumni, Regional Studies, DOI: 10.1080/00343404.2021.1934432

 

This article was first published in the China Business Knowledge (CBK) website by CUHK Business School: https://bit.ly/3EXYvdM.

About CUHK Business School

CUHK Business School comprises two schools – Accountancy and Hotel and Tourism Management – and four departments – Decision Sciences and Managerial Economics, Finance, Management and Marketing. Established in Hong Kong in 1963, it is the first business school to offer BBA, MBA and Executive MBA programmes in the region. Today, CUHK Business School offers 9 undergraduate programmes and 19 graduate programmes including MBA, EMBA, Master, MSc, MPhil and Ph.D. The School currently has more than 4,500 undergraduate and postgraduate students from 20+ countries/regions.

In the Financial Times Executive MBA ranking 2021, CUHK EMBA is ranked 19th in the world. In FT‘s 2021 Global MBA Ranking, CUHK MBA is ranked 48th. CUHK Business School has the largest number of business alumni (40,000+) among universities/business schools in Hong Kong – many of whom are key business leaders.

More information is available at http://www.bschool.cuhk.edu.hk or by connecting with CUHK Business School on:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/cuhkbschool

Instagram: www.instagram.com/cuhkbusinessschool

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/school/cuhkbusinessschool

WeChat: CUHKBusinessSchool

#CUHKBusinessSchool

GEODIS wins ‘Best Logistics Service Provider – Project Cargo’ at the 2021 AFLAS Awards

Sustained innovation and high service quality place GEODIS at the very top of the Best Logistics Service Provider category

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 11 November 2021 – The Asian Freight, Logistics and Supply Chain (AFLAS) annual awards celebrate exemplary leadership and relationship management as well as top-notch solutions within the industry. The awards set the benchmark for service provider excellence amongst air and shipping lines, airports, and seaports, as well as third-party logistics and other associated industries.

GEODIS wins ‘Best Logistics Service Provider – Project Cargo’ at the 2021 AFLAS Awards

With bottlenecks at major ports, container pileups, and shipment delays, project logistics providers—handling customers with complex and oversized transport requirements—have been pushed to quickly adapt and uncover new methods to meet the relentless demand of these large-scale projects. Despite this difficult climate, GEODIS has been recognized for tackling the constraints of these challenges with fresh, robust, and targeted solutions. This includes seamlessly navigating the complex technical requirements present in transporting high voltage transformers as well as delivering specialized solutions across surface, barge and ocean transportation.

“Our Project Logistics services are centered around innovation and designing ways in which we can re-configure our customers’ needs and dilemmas into a seamless, cost-effective and reliable road map,” said Chris Cahill, Managing Director, North Asia Sub Region. “We are honored to have these ongoing efforts recognized and will continue to deliver quality solutions that can carry our customers’ businesses forward.”

“We have always been, and will continue to be, a pioneer in the Project Logistics sector, rising up to new challenges with dynamic and reliable services, incorporating cutting-edge engineering logistics, tailored specifically to meet the unique requirements of every project,” added Frederic de Prat, Regional Director, Asia Pacific. “We aim to keep growing and innovating, especially amidst such uncertain times, in order to stay ahead of the curve.”

GEODIS’ dedicated network of more than 550 specialists located in 30 countries provides expert Project Logistics services across all major industries, including oil & gas, rail, nuclear, mining, power, infrastructure, renewables, as well as petrochemical production and refining. In recent years, the company has also been expanding its services to sectors such as aid and relief, government and military.

GEODIS – www.geodis.com

GEODIS is a global leading transport and logistics services provider recognized for its commitment to helping clients overcome their logistical constraints. GEODIS’ growth-focused offerings (Supply Chain Optimization, Freight Forwarding, Contract Logistics, Distribution & Express, and Road Transport) coupled with the company’s truly global reach thanks to a global network spanning nearly 170 countries, translates in top business rankings, #1 in France and #7 worldwide. In 2020, GEODIS accounted for over 41,000 employees globally and generated €8.4 billion in sales.

#GEODIS

Prime Minister of Laos Orders Vaccinations for Children Aged 12 to 17

PM Phankham orders vaccination of children 12 to 17
A school girl receives HPV vaccine in Vientiane, Lao PDR (Photo: UNICEF)

The Prime Minister of Laos has ordered the rollout of Covid-19 vaccinations for children aged 12 to 17 years with the aim of reopening schools.

Johnson Electric & Cortica Establish New Joint Venture Lean AI to Bring Revolutionary Quality Inspection to Manufacturing

Automating quality assurance in manufacturing through Autonomous AI will drive flawless quality and production while enabling simple and fast setup on the production line

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL / HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 11 November 2021 Johnson Electric Group and Cortica Group have established a joint venture to build an Autonomous Inspection System set to revolutionize the Quality Inspection Market. Lean AI is a game-changing startup that will leverage Johnson Electric’s vast knowledge and experience in manufacturing processes and Cortica’s unique Autonomous AI Technology in order to revolutionize the visual inspection market.

 

Today, supervised Deep Learning-Based Quality Assurance Systems can take weeks, up to months, to deploy. The existing systems are reliant on a data scientist or AI experts and require large manually tagged training sets with thousands of defect image examples. Requiring constant maintenance and re-training for the slightest variations, the system is unable to adapt to defects, new products, and new cameras.

 

Lean AI‘s technology surpasses existing challenges of prevalent supervised Deep Learning-Based Quality Assurance Systems with the power of unsupervised learning to process information within a fraction of a second, utilizes unlabeled data, applies predictive quality assurance, and compiles data that increases the speed of deployment and scaling. As an open platform agnostic to camera, defect type and product, Lean AI can collaborate with any integrators, OEMs, and manufacturers of automation solutions.

 

“With the power of Cortica’s Autonomous AI technology, and JE’s vast knowledge of the market, Lean AI will deliver a product that reduces the cost of human error when it comes to quality inspection in manufacturing and address the vulnerabilities in the current market,” said Karina Odinaev, CEO of Lean AI.

 

“Johnson Electric is very excited to announce this new joint venture with Cortica. We are fully aware of the fundamental challenges accompanying the deployment of AI-based quality assurance software in the production environment, especially in terms of speed of deployment and reliability over time,” said Austin Wang, Senior Vice President of Johnson Electric. “Cortica’s Autonomous AI technology can address a lot of these major headaches and allow for much faster and broader adoption.”

 

“Cortica has developed self-learning AI that is fundamentally different from traditional deep learning systems. Autonomous AI Technology operates like a human brain – it’s not a fixed system; instead, it continuously adapts itself to various scenarios and learns online in real-time. Its technology requires far less computing power, can be deployed at a fraction of the cost, and provides far superior performance outcomes,” said Igal Raichelgauz, Founder and Chairman of Cortica. “Our technology is robust and generic and applicable within a multitude of signal domains such as visual, audio, time series and other domains; visual inspection is only the beginning. Autonomous AI technology is quickly becoming the benchmark for the industry.”

 

The global machine vision market is currently valued at US$11 billion and is forecast to increase to US$15.5 billion by 2026. As these numbers continue to grow and AI technology advances, the opportunity for machine vision solutions to positively aid in manufacturers’ earning potential with a reduction in defects gives way for a new system that will fundamentally change the industry’s approach to quality assurance. 

    

Further commenting on the formation of Lean AI, Austin Wang said: “Johnson Electric’s deep experience in a wide range of manufacturing processes offers a unique platform for developing this technology for commercial use. The joint venture is also opening a new avenue for Johnson Electric to develop and market software offerings. It is therefore both a technological as well as business model innovation for us. There are also opportunities to apply the technology in predictive quality and expert systems as well. This is the second investment of Johnson Electric in Israeli technology and we will continue to assess such relevant opportunities.”

 

Read more about what revolutionary technology Lean AI is bringing to the quality inspection space: https://lean-ai-tech.com/

 

About Johnson Electric Group

The Johnson Electric Group is a global leader in electric motors, actuators, motion subsystems and related electro-mechanical components. It serves a broad range of industries including Automotive, Smart Metering, Medical Devices, Business Equipment, Home Automation, Ventilation, White Goods, Power Tools, and Lawn & Garden Equipment. The Group is headquartered in Hong Kong and employs over 35,000 individuals in 22 countries worldwide. Johnson Electric Holdings Limited is listed on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (Stock Code: 179).

About Cortica Group

Cortica Group has developed Autonomous AI that simulates the natural processes of the mammal cortex. Its unsupervised approach to learning mimics the way the brain processes information: enabling machines to learn, collaborate and interact with the world without human input. The technology is backed by more than 250 patents and patent applications and 10 years of cutting-edge research and is revolutionizing visual intelligence for a smarter and safer world.


#JohnsonElectric

Workato Raises $200 Million Series E at a $5.7 Billion Valuation to Accelerate Record Growth and Capitalize on Surging Demand for Enterprise Automation

Funding will be used to further capitalize on rapidly growing automation market; accelerating global expansion and extending product leadership, as well as fuel acquisitions like application connector firm, RailsData

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 11 November 2021 – Workato, the leader in enterprise automation, today announced $200 million in Series E funding led by Battery Ventures, with equal participation from Insight Partners, Altimeter Capital and Tiger Global. Geodesic Capital and Redpoint Ventures also participated in this round of financing. The new funding values Workato at $5.7 billion and comes just nine months after its $110 million Series D. Workato has raised over $420 million in total funding to date.

 

The investment arrives at a time of rapid growth for Workato and the automation market as a whole, as enterprises recognize the urgent need to increase their agility, innovation and efficiency against a backdrop of transformation and change. The pandemic has driven an even greater need for business excellence, and companies have responded by automating core workflows; seeking out low-code tools that empower employees to work quickly and autonomously.

 

“Businesses are still struggling to achieve true transformation because RPA and integration tools cannot scale to address the needs of enterprises today,” said Vijay Tella, Workato CEO and Co-founder. “Workato’s enterprise automation platform, a single platform for automation and integration that can be used by both Business and IT, addresses the challenges companies face when trying to automate at scale, enabling enterprises to achieve the speed and agility necessary for organizational transformation. We’re excited to put this new round of funding to work for our customers as they continue to push the boundaries of innovation.”

 

Historically, companies have been forced to deploy a variety of integration and automation tools to optimize their processes at the data, process, API and UX levels. This model is highly inefficient, and companies have flocked to Workato because it provides all of these capabilities in a single, low-code platform that allows business users and IT departments to collaborate on process automation.

 

More than 11,000 customers now use Workato’s enterprise automation platform to automate their critical business processes. In the past 12 months, Workato has:

  • More than tripled its Singapore headcount with plans to double the size of the Asia Pacific team in the next year
  • More than tripled new ARR in Asia Pacific, with growth accelerating every quarter
  • Received accreditation by IMDA (Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore) as qualified contenders to government and large enterprise buyers
  • More than doubled its customer base, which includes large enterprises like Grab, Cycle & Carriage and Scoot
  • More than tripled the growth in business processes automated by customers and quadrupled the workload per customer
  • Expanded in EMEA with new GDPR compliant data center and plans to launch Singapore data center in the first half of 2022
  • Nearly doubled the customer base globally with additions like Stitch Fix, Gitlab, NYU, Nokia, Lucid Motors, joining Broadcom, Toast, and many others
  • Acquired RailsData to create an application connector factory; increasing the number of application connectors by over 10x in the next few years
  • More than doubled global employee headcount
  • Been recognized as a leader in Gartner’s Enterprise iPaaS Magic Quadrant for the fourth year in a row – with the largest positive movement of any leader this year
  • Hosted its first user conference, Workato Automate, which attracted more than 12,000 participants
  • Been named to the Forbes Cloud 100, the definitive ranking of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world
  • Been recognized in the Deloitte Fast 500 as one of the top 100 fastest growing companies globally

Workato’s latest funding will be used to further accelerate the company’s product roadmap and leadership in enterprise automation, in addition to continuing to drive the integration-led automation movement. Workato, already a leader in connecting and integrating applications, is launching the “10,000 Connector Initiative” with the acquisition of RailsData, which specializes in the connectivity of applications, databases, and devices using APIs. With thousands of applications used by an enterprise, connectivity is critical to achieving automation at scale.

 

The round will also be used to aid Workato’s further expansion in the U.S., EMEA and APAC. This global expansion includes opening additional data centers in APAC, adding support for regional languages, and accelerating the product roadmap to address the needs of local regions.

 

“Since leading Workato’s Series B in 2018, we’ve been excited to see the steady growth of usage among Workato’s customers—many of them leaders in their respective industries—and Workato’s solidifying position as a leader in the automation market, one of the fastest-growing sectors in technology,” said Neeraj Agrawal, a general partner at Battery Ventures. “We’ve had a front-row seat to watch Workato truly transform many of its customers’ businesses, which is one reason why we and other existing investors in the company are excited to lead this new funding round.”

 

“The events of the past 10 months have made operational excellence more critical than ever, and businesses understand that enterprise automation is a cornerstone to achieving the heightened agility, innovation and performance they need to succeed in any environment,” said Pauline Yang, partner, Altimeter Capital. “The market for automation products will only continue to expand, and we believe that Workato has the best technology, partnerships and leadership team in place to capitalize on this exciting opportunity.”

 

Workato’s customers are supported by a thriving and growing community of 100,000 users who create and share automation “recipes” for common business processes that can then be reused by other customers. As more customers join the platform, they create more recipes which increases the utility of the platform, attracting even more users in a virtuous cycle that continuously drives Workato’s growth.

 

“Automation exists to enable and empower end users, make organizations adaptable, and keep the lights on all the time,” said Andy Nallappan, CTO and Head of Software Business Operations at Broadcom. “Back in the day, automation was a complicated effort that required a lot of technology, infrastructure, processes, and tools. But now, it’s as simple as a recipe thanks to Workato. Everyone can use it. It can become part of the team, the basis of an automation culture. Workato makes automation much more successful and frictionless.”

 

Customers trust Workato as their automation platform of choice and three out four customers automate business processes across three or more business functions.

 

About Workato

The leader in enterprise automation, Workato helps organizations work faster and smarter without compromising security and governance. Built for Business and IT users, Workato is trusted by over 11,000 of the world’s top brands like Broadcom, Intuit, Box, Autodesk, and HubSpot. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., Workato is backed by Altimeter Capital, Battery Ventures, Insight Venture Partners, Tiger Global, and Redpoint Ventures. For more information, visit www.workato.com or connect with us on social media:

#Workato