How do You Tap on a Crowdfunding Platform for Your Entry into Southeast Asia?

• CEREC Asia, had soft launched their crowdfunding platform Tooth Faerie during their annual conference on November.
• Our Co-founders, Paddy Tan and Jeslin Bay, were cordially invited to their office where both of them shared about crowdfunding.
• The attendees were mainly manufacturers, distributors and medical device experts.

December 11, 2019: Taiwan has always been exciting for BlackStorm Consulting since the very first day of venturing. Many talks, workshops and sessions were conducted during the trips made by our team members. As such, BlackStorm Consulting had established many relationships with the associations, accelerators and agencies to bring companies out to different parts of Southeast Asia (SEA), especially Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. One of the good examples will be CEREC Asia, which has the consideration to launch Tooth Faerie out of Taiwan.

Tooth Faerie is an up and coming B2B (business to business) crowdfunding platform initiated by CEREC Asia that aims to integrate into the dental ecosystem, providing comprehensive services for and bridging gaps between patients, dentists and dental vendors. The platform is currently reward-based, where manufacturers and vendors solicit funds from other interested businesses in return for a product or service.

Such initiative is novel as the B2B crowdfunding platform is very uncommon in the market and pertinent to dental will be considered the first in the Asia-Pacific. We are honoured to be a part of it by sharing the knowledge and concepts on crowdfunding.

History of crowdfunding can be traced back to the 1700s where it started off with loans to the poor. As such, it gradually evolved to the creation of credit union to the Modern-Day crowdfunding. One notable example is British rock band Marillon being funded by the fans for their reunion tour in USA on 1997. Then Indiegogo and Kickstarter were launched in 2007 and 2009 respectively, revolutionalise crowdfunding as one of the major funding sources. Since then, many other platforms had risen to provide more innovative funding alternatives.

Correlated with the past, crowdfunding has been gaining traction in the recent years. The number of transactions and the value raised have been consistently increasing.  It is a positive sign as more and more people are aware of crowdfunding and start recognising it as another funding source. Crowdfunding is no longer for poor startups. It is also catered to large multinational corporations such as Bose, P&G and Sony for innovation validation. With the trend on the roll, the launch of Tooth Faerie is timely and presents many opportunities for the platform and its stakeholders.

Although crowdfunding is straightforward as it requires no special qualification to launch a campaign, there are some risks and challenges that the project owners will have to undertake such as competition (low entry barrier), leakage of valuable information (prototype may be copied by others) and campaign failure.

Project owners should also look beyond fundraising as the launched campaigns can be of other purposes such as community building, partnerships, marketing and validation. All these can help to gather feedback and increase the investor confidence.

Case studies are also shared, allowing the audience to have better understanding on how a campaign works and what things to look out for. As of now, there are generally no laws set to regulate donation- and reward-based crowdfunding. However, should a platform be providing debt- and/or equity-based crowdfunding services, one will be scrutinised under the Securities Act, be it in Taiwan, Singapore or USA.

The seminar ends with educating the attendees on the differences between the funding alternatives – crowdfunding, initial coin offering (ICO) and security token offering (STO). With further explanations from the speakers, the mass knows better between these three fundraising methods. The attendees had an insightful session and left the room with many great takeaways.

It was a pleasure working with CEREC Asia. The session would not be a success without their support. We look forward to their actual launch of Tooth Faerie.

Last but not least, BlackStorm Consulting will be venturing out of Taipei to Tainan in the coming months. More events will be installed for us so stay tuned!

About CEREC Asia

Founded in 2016, CEREC Asia (https://www.cerecsasia.com/) provides dentists and dental technicians the largest hands-on training facility in Asia and courses covering intraoral scanner, software, training phantom, milling machine, 3D printer and treatment centre.

About BlackStorm Consulting

BlackStorm Consulting (http://blackstormco.asia/) is a boutique growth consultancy firm that specialises in corporate strategy, profit management and investment management. We mainly serve clients in four sectors: FinTech, Gaming, Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT), and manufacturing.

Our clients and connections are internationally present and range from small and medium sized businesses, MNCs, to government agencies.