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Abyss Gazing

Abyss Gazing

Written by: Alvin Leong
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 A podcast about how entrepreneurs outside of Silicon Valley and the US are building their businesses and navigating these turbulent times. Check out www.abyssgazing.com for full show notes and transcripts.© 2023 Alvin Leong Economics Leadership Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Replacing toothbrushes and recycling food waste, he helps sustainable products go to market

    Replacing toothbrushes and recycling food waste, he helps sustainable products go to market
    Jun 22 2020
    Brice started his career helping football (soccer) clubs find sponsorships in Asia, then got into sustainability. He's running BizSu, where he helps sustainable products go-to-market and helps companies find sustainable solutions.https://bizsu.co/Learn:- how he managed to get leading hotels to give him B2B deals on sustainable bottles- how he plans to transition to B2C distribution with COVID-19BooksSubtle art of not giving a fuckAlvin:  [00:00:00] Hey guys, welcome to Abyss Gazing where I interview entrepreneurs on how they are building their companies in a post COVID world. If you like the topic, but you can't stand the length, check out the website, abyssgazing.com that's a, B, Y, S, S, G, a, Z, I N, g.com where I post show notes and full transcripts of all the episodes.welcome to Abyss Gazing the podcast where we interview entrepreneurs about how they're navigating the current turbulent times. Joining me today is Brice Degeyter  of BizSU where he helps companies be more sustainable and do good for the environment while developing business opportunities.Brice, are you ready to begin? Brice: Hi. thank you, having me before. thank you for having me here. I'm all good. Thank you. Yeah, Alvin: no problem. Yeah, thanks for joining us today, Brice: my, [00:01:00] yeah. Alvin: So can you tell, I saw that you started off your career in sports in a few different roles, and then you went on to this company called central group in Thailand where there was more sustainable to you later.Can you tell us a bit about how you made this transition from like sports to a sustainability related business?Brice: yeah. I actually, I didn't, study, sustainability myself. I studied math, thanks to refinance. so it wasn't really, my, my, my, my field originally and, and I started a business when I was in Thailand five years ago. And so we were helping, basically football clubs to find sponsorship in Asia.And. Well after, [00:02:00] after, more than a year, almost two years, the company found, we suddenly like really, in a motto of, of ours. we just lost our appliance and. Or, and all suppliers, because the King in Thailand guide died, at the time. And, so basically we, we, we lost the bid everything in the end.Basically. What I realized at this moment, is that what I was doing was working in football. It was, it was good. I do this for, we, we had the feeling to helping a lot of people enjoying football more. however, I wanted to do something better for the community. I wanted to do something which is.More important than this, which is more valuable. And so at that time, I, I, sorry. That's okay. [00:03:00] At that time, I, I, I then started to, to think about having my own business in sustainability. so I started with, No. With cameras. I started, to have a roll our window miner when it position with the minor room in sustainability.and, so at the time I was, you got on the big sports store. And so it was still related to sports and somehow, and we were the first, the first of in Thailand to stop plastic bags. so that was a pretty, pretty good achievement. And, and then I wanted to do more than this. so then I moved to central group and I go to a major room.In sustainability. and we stopped the plastic bags in, 10% of our stores. so knowing that the group, it's huge in Thailand, I was, there was actually [00:04:00] a pretty big thing for the country. and just a matter of days, all the competitors, did similar things. And a few weeks later, the government.Fast alone to stop completely, plastic bags in, installs in time. And, so I was, it was pretty, pretty interesting to do, to do this. It was amazing actually. Alvin: wait, before you carry on, like I think w what you said early on about the football sponsorship thing is very interesting. Like that was your first try at entrepreneurship.And it didn't go well. But, like now thinking back, can you think of like the reasons why it didn't go so well and like how you do it differently now? Is it because you said the King, the King died then, it had an impact and they don't how, how, how did the King Steph affect the business directly?[00:05:00] Brice: Well for one year, pretty much the business was down in, in Thailand at that time. It was really big thing. It was a really big thing. however, a lot of businesses, still. Still went down after the, during and after, after this period, after this morning. So, what it means is that we were not resilient enough at that time, because we just couldn't figure out how to, how to survive at this moment.so it was also our mistake in a, in a certain way. we were now really easy to resilient enough. And basically, I think at this, at this moment myself, I wasn't, much prepared, you know, from many people. I would say most entrepreneurs, the first experience is never perfect. maybe for  [00:06:00] maybe with it was perfect, but, most of them it's now.and for me it was the case. I wasn't prepared at all. I, yeah, a lot of things that I ...
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    45 mins
  • How Biotech Startups Are Creating COVID-19 Vaccines

    How Biotech Startups Are Creating COVID-19 Vaccines
    Jun 22 2020
    Akshaya Bansal finished a PhD studying how to use light to destroy cancer, joined Entrepreneur First to try her hand at entrepreneurship before joining Esco Ventures as an Associate. Learn about Esco Venture's venture programme for biotech experts, the biotech system in Southeast Asia, and about biotech approaches to developing COVID vaccines.https://www.escoventures.com/CompanyCarmine Therapeutics (https://www.carminetherapeutics.com/)BookAge of StagnationToolsAirtable[00:00:00] Alvin: Hey guys, welcome to Abyss Gazing where I interview entrepreneurs on how they are building their companies in a post COVID world. If you like the topic, but you can't stand the length, check out the website, abyssgazing.com that's a, B, Y, S, S, G, a, Z, I N, g.com where I post show notes and full transcripts of all the episodes.   Okay. Three, two, one. Welcome to Abyss Gazing.Joining us today is actually Akshaya Bansal, a venture fellow ESCO ventures, where she does technology scouting and venture building. For biotech startups in Singapore and Southeast Asia. So, uh, actually, can we start off, like, can you tell us a bit about your background and how you got into biotech investments?Akshaya Bansal: Sure. Thanks Alvin. So, um, I did my PhD from NUS in biomedical engineering and nano medicine. And then I did a two, two and a half years of a [00:01:00] postdoc work as well, which is basically research. And then I got into, um, entrepreneur first where I had my first taste of entrepreneurship and it was a completely different world.Now she got me really interested in the venture capital space itself. And then I also realized how different software and biting investing is, which is why I wanted to see for myself how biotech investing works. And that's how I landed up at Esther ventures and their amorphous program. I can tell you more about it later.So. Oh, yeah. That's how I landed up. So it was, I'm a part of the Marcus's program, a venture fellow at Esquire ventures. And we are when you build up and the focus on biotech companies only, um, yeah, and we work with BIS from the very beginning and help them start a company. Alvin: So there's been a lot of attention on biotech recently because a lot of VC's on Twitter and so on, they are saying that.There's going to be a Renaissance in the biotech investment field. You [00:02:00] do like attention from COVID and so on. So it can tell us a bit about the differences between biotech ventures and software ventures, which is a more common form of startups that you see on there. Akshaya Bansal: Sure. So, um, biotech actually has been a very hot space for investment in the last five or six years, I would say, um, more so in the U S where like billions of dollars of funding, um, Go into it every year in Asia, it is catching up.It is inherently very different from how software companies work. Um, in a software company, you would have a minimum viable product, which you can deploy easily. You can do several rounds of testing and you can have a product out there and reading the new in a fairly short period of time. Um, but in biotech, it's very different.Um, product life cycles can be very long. Many many years to develop something. So when you first put in money into an idea, you don't, you might not actually have a product. You might not have bought it for years to come, but you [00:03:00] bet on the science and you bet on the people doing the science and that's where the difference lies.So you identify a problem and then we move to the solution. And if it's good enough, you spend a lot of time and effort and energy into developing that. So essentially the defense would be itself at companies. You could see a product. In a fairly short period of time. But, um, for, by the companies, the investments are, are very long term and you might never get a product.Um, and the two have to be from the science and also the regulatory approvals around biotech products are very different from those in a software company. So for biomedical products, especially drugs are, you have to go to drinking, testing, um, Phase one phase two and phase three, you have Googles to deal with.And that can take a long time and the drug can get killed at any stage of that process. So it is a risky business, but it's very rewarding because in the end you will end up helping millions of people at your product success. Yeah. Well, [00:04:00] Alvin: there's one thing you mentioned, uh, in your description of the differences that they struck out to me.So you said you still start from the problem and then you develop solutions. From like the biotech investment point of view, you still see, like there has to be the problem first before you come in and build solution for that. So let's say your PhD is on a new property of these kinds of enzymes, but it's just something, some interesting discovery.You, uh, what a startup being possible to be possible, make a start of that or the. Like from an investment point of view,...
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    53 mins
  • How Pakistan's Largest Telemedicine Platform did 10x more consultations during COVID-19

    How Pakistan's Largest Telemedicine Platform did 10x more consultations during COVID-19
    Jun 22 2020
    Sara Khurrum is the founder of Sehat Kahani, Pakistan's leading telemedicine platform. She started the company after experiencing first-hand the problem of married female doctors in Pakistan having limited opportunities to leverage their skills in full time jobs. https://sehatkahani.com/Learn:- she started out Sehat Kahani by partnering with rural clinics- how she gets more and more female medical talent on board- how she created the mobile app in a few weeks in partnership with a software studio- her plans for shifting from a free model to a paid model for her mobile appFavourite BookThe Blue SweaterMost important lesson1. Never sign a document before reading it2. Always believe in yourself, impostor syndrome is bullshitAlvin:  [00:00:00] three, two, one. Welcome to Abyss Gazing in today's episode, joining me today is Sarah off. Uh . Am I pronouncing that right?Sara: Yes. Yes, you are. It's called. Alvin: See I Connie. So Sarah actually graduated as a doctor and also proceeded on to get a master's in public health. She's the founder of , which is a telemedicine startup based in Pakistan. So are you ready? Are you ready to begin Sarah? Sara: Yes, I am really excited. Thank you for having me here.Alvin: Thanks for joining us today. So. Like just does start off when you were a medical student where you were, were you already planning to start a business? Sara: No, never. I, uh, I I've been brought up in a very traditional Pakistani family and, uh, and I belong to the mini class [00:01:00] and. From the time I was five years old, I think my parents decided that I had to become a doctor because it's a matter of grief, grief, privilege, and the ability for a female in Pakistan to become a doctor and a lawyer, uh, barons from the middle income background who save up to educate their daughters.One that orders to become doctors at the end of the day. Because it is very prestigious. They're very respected and they get the best hand in marriage. So my parents had the same idea. So all my life, I was just told that you have to become a doctor. You have to have a doctor in front of your knee, and then you have to obviously help patients, but doing the business.I don't think anyone in my family before me has ever done business, uh, let alone move myself. So, no, I never thought that I would drop business. Alvin: So, so what was the initial spark of the idea which led to your current startup? Sara: So I think it just evolved in a series of events. I, um, I got married right after my graduation.I, it was an arranged marriage. [00:02:00] Uh, there's a base. There's a very, um, interesting concept in the sign. It's called dr. Bright. Um, so Pakistan has a total medical workforce of 170,000 doctors and announced 70% of this number is female doctors. Again, because of the same issue. That's very prestigious, very noble for women to become doctors in Pakistan, because then they become the real eligible bachelors.They get the best hand in marriage. Um, so because of this dr. Breast phenomena out of that, 70%, only 23% woman book. Okay. The myths around 80 to 85,000 doctors, female doctors from the ecosystem today. Um, so following the same route, when I got my medical degree, my parents said that now you have to get married because you're getting older.So I was mad at, but in three months, uh, through an arranged marriage to my husband and almost going when I applied for the residency, um, program, uh, both my masters and it was doing all it right until I found out that I was pregnant. Um, I left the program. And, um, just to, you know, [00:03:00] just to kill time, I joined another organization to work as a medical doctor, um, in, um, one of the clinics in a low income community in my city.Um, my husband shifted to another city for his word. So I had to shift right after my baby with him. And I went to a new city with the new baby. Without with very early matters. I was only one year of my marriage and suddenly I fell into severe postpartum depression because I realized I couldn't work anymore.And I had become in fact adopted. Right. Um, so through my conversations with one of my ex partners, I realized that, you know, this happens to a lot of women. In the country, not just me at the same time, the clinic that I used to do prior to my leaving the city, they couldn't find a doctor to replace me. So I started doing on-call consultations for those patients.In that case, the nurse used to call me, we used to talk and she used to consult patients. And then we started doing it on Skype because I have to see the lesions and, and the, and the patient in like through a virtual medium to be knowing what [00:04:00] kind of symptoms they're facing. So I realized that, you know, if I can do it sitting at home.And so I think patients in another city in a low income community who cannot access another doctor right now, how it all female doctors sitting at home and stay consolidations who are not, uh, who do not get the chance to ...
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    46 mins
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