Uzabase Sri Lanka’s deserted office on the 17th-floor of the plush Access Towers II building was not well lit. There was no need to switch on all the lights with less than 10 people out of more than a 50-strong full-time team showing up to work that day, although it was nearly two months since the lockdown lifted.
“Don’t let the empty office fool you,” Mifnaz Jawahar said looking around at the rows of empty workspaces. “We’re busier than ever, expanding the team and adding new services. Even during the lockdown, we were recruiting people,” she said.
Jawahar is the Managing Director at Uzabase Sri Lanka and the Chief Research Officer overseeing research teams based in Colombo, Singapore, and Shanghai. Two Tokyo-based investment bankers and a Systems Consultant founded Uzabase in 2008 to develop a platform as a source for data and information to the global financial industry.
However, they didn’t envision another research firm either. Investors and portfolio managers constantly probe various sources from public information to industry reports, corporate announcements and financials, market data, and the news, and collect a multitudeof information and data, analysed to formulate business strategies. But what if there was a single platform for all this?
“That was what the founders of Uzabase wanted to create, a Google for business intelligence,” Jawahar says. For the startup to successfully challenge Bloomberg’s position in Japan, Uzabase had to provide unrivalled coverage in terms of breadth and depth, at unmatched speed.
“How fast? Wow fast”, reads Uzabase’s value statement. It created a subscription-based platform for business intelligence called Speeda that provides industry and company research but also deep-dives into supply chains.
For instance, while Speeda covers the automotive industry, it also provides reports on critical sectors within that space such as companies manufacturing car seats, brake equipment, tyres, and more.
“If a client wants to invest in a niche sector down the value chain, they can get information from Speeda. They can also reach out to us for information that is not available in a report either because the industry sub-sector or company is too small to be visible, and we will do the research,” says Shari Jayasekara Adaman, Director, Global Content Team.
Uzabase’s clientele comprises global investment banks, venture capital firms, and consultancies including global brands, and the leading Japanese auto manufacturers. Despite the global covid-19 pandemic, the demand for market research is growing and analysts in Colombo are publishing reports documenting the latest trends in artificial intelligence, internet-of-things, healthcare, and education to name a few.
“Covid-19 is on everyone’s minds but the focus on emerging trends and the future of industries is as intense,” Jawahar says. (please see Tomorrow’s World) I n 2016, Forbes named Uzabase one of Japan’s top 10 startups, the same year it got listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and started the Colombo research centre with just seven people.
Then, Uzabase had already opened offices in Shanghai, and Singapore which served Japan and a few other markets in South East Asia. The Sri Lanka offices would be instrumental in expanding global reach. Uzabase has diversified and established several other businesses such as Forcas, a B2B marketing platform that integrates Uzabase’s company information database with each of its clients and uses data analytics to identify business opportunities; NewsPicks, a business news media for the Japanese market that provides users with economic and business news including its own original articles, along with comments from business professionals and experts.
Uzabase has a venture capital business that focuses on early-stage SaaS and media startups. It also has a consultancy in new business development, and fostering nextgen talent. In 2018, the company acquired business news media Quartz from US-based Atlantic Media.
However, Speeda is the breadwinner of the Uzabase group. Net sales in the first quarter of 2020 amounted to $33 million (3.2 billion Japanese yen), up 11% from a year earlier. Revenue from Speeda was up 24% in the quarter to $12 million (1.3 billion Japanese yen), accounting for 40% of Uzabase’s total sales revenue. Speeda is also the most profitable unit. Group EBITDA for the quarter was $400,000 (42 million Japanese yen) in the red due to losses from Quartz, but Speeda was in the black with EBITDA of $5 million (513 million Japanese yen).
Few companies in Sri Lanka and elsewhere can boast about business expansion during an unprecedented global economic crisis caused by the covid-19 pandemic. Uzabase Sri Lanka has been growing its staff strength and focusing on introducing new services to its global clientele because its culture and processes helped it emerge unscathed from the lockdowns and economic downturns in markets it serves.
The two-month lockdown forced many companies to adopt Working from Home (WFH) by establishing processes and infrastructure to prevent any productivity slippages. Most companies still see it as a temporary measure despite the overhead costs and other benefits that can accrue. However, for WFH to be a viable option a company must have a culture that celebrates freedom and drives productivity with limited supervision, qualities that allowed Uzabase Sri Lanka to operate uninterruptedduring the lockdown and now expand.
“There is no obligation to come to the office, nor are there core working hours,” the Uzabase website tells potential recruits. “You can design the style that suits you most, this gives you the ability to work with maximum freedom”.
The company’s super flex policy has empowered women by not making them choose between a rewarding career and taking care of kids. The company even encourages parents to bring their kids to the office. In Uzabase Sri Lanka, while women hold equal power on senior positions, they outnumber males 4:1 in the overall team. These are also the kind of terms that appeal to millennials and zoomers.
“We work with limited supervision. For instance, we set six-month goals for new hires and the rest is up to them. We even let them schedule annual leave in the very first year, which no other company in Sri Lanka does,” Jawahar said.
There are other amazing benefits Uzabase offers its workers. Employees can have other businesses outside the company. It provides subsidies to pay for professional qualifications and overseas scholarships to promising future leaders. An employee getting married gets special time off and a congratulatory financial contribution from the company.
“Uzabase provides all these benefits because the founders mostly wanted to create a happy organisation on top of a profitable one,” she said.
Remunerations of everyone irrespective of their position within the firm are open knowledge to encourage fairness within the organisation. But none of these will work if employees don’t own the culture or share the mission of Uzabase. Uzabase entered Sri Lanka for its pool of highly talented financial analysts. It’s always been picky about recruitment taking only the cream of the crop.
The company asks all prospective recruits to take on an assignment to test their skills. Skills matter but it’s a basic requirement, what matters most is the right attitude, Jawahar explains. The company would rather hire someone with some challenges around skills. Skills can improve. Hiring a super talented individual without the right attitude, that is rarely a fixable problem. A toxic worker is a destructive influence.
“Trying to find out who will best share our values atthe interview and review stage is a skill we’ve had to perfect,” Jawahar says. For instance, the company has a method for interviewing people designed to let them know as much as possible about a person’s honesty, a fundamental trait for Uzabase.
“We ask questions about failures and successes and we follow up on the success stories with other questions looking for indicators that will let us know if the person sitting in front of us is the right fit,” she explains. I t matters that everyone shares a common vision. Uzabase Sri Lanka is a cost centre and does not generate direct revenue for the group. In terms of output, however, the team in Colombo is impactful.
“We produce more than 2,200 in-depth, original content reports each year. This is over 60% of Speeda’s original content,” explained Thilan Sampath, Director, Uzabase Sri Lanka, who also heads the research team in Colombo.
This level of output is prodigious compared to teams in Tokyo, Singapore and Shanghai turning out a combined 1,200 reports.
“We also provide indepth reports on market trends and outcomes so that investors can make more informed decisions,” Sampath says. From Sri Lanka, Uzabase was able to expand coverage to include the US, Australia, India and the Philippines, apart from markets in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand it already covered. Speeda now covers 19 sectors broken down into 83 sub-sectors and 560 industries.
“We cover everything, and that’s something we are trying to reach in terms of comprehensiveness,” Jawahar said, “I can name a few industries like automobiles, healthcare, banking and insurance, construction and property development, ICT, energy and utilities. Added to this, is an in-depth coverage of 80+ emerging business trends covering topics ranging from Online Food Delivery to Quantum Computing. It will be difficult to name the industries we don’t cover.”
Sri Lanka is so central to Uzabase’s global expansion that it hopes to further expand its team of analysts in 2021.
Tomorrow’s World
ANALYSTS AT UZABASE SRI LANKA ARE UNCOVERING EXCITING TRENDS AND NEW OPPORTUNITIES SHAPING THE FUTURE FOR ITS INVESTORS
– Quick fix: AI and pharma-
Venture capital investments for AI in drug development and clinical trials have surpassed $5 billion, up from $300 million five years ago. AI can dramatically shorten pre-clinical development cycles for pharmaceuticals with one startup generating a new lead in 40 days which would have traditionally taken 2-3 years.
– Affordable, wearable, and better-
Wearable tech and AI are shaping a transition from reactive healthcare to a preventive, predictive, and more personalised healthcare model. Wearable devices tracking physiological and biometric data in real-time have become more affordable. AI algorithms can predict this data to flag patients and healthcare providers of potential health issues.
– Gene editing: rewriting fate-
Gene editing promises permanent cures for chronic and genetic diseases without the need for continuous medication. Technological advancements are showing potential to bring costs down. The gene-editing market to fight lung cancer in the US is $40-60 billion if priced affordably, according to estimates.
– Automations next step: Smart factories-
Smart factories can autonomously run entire production processes through the interconnectivity of equipment, facilities, and processes, using software and technologies such as smart sensors and robotics across the value chain. The global spending on smart factories is forecast at over $420 billion by 2025.
– Last-mile revolution: self-driving cars-
Self-driving delivery vehicles and drones will revolutionise last-mile delivery. Global venture capital investments in this area totalled $10 billion in 2019 and the market size in the US alone could reach as high as $60 billion by 2040, pushed on by social distancing and contactless delivery requirements after covid-19.
– EdTech: learning from home-
The global EdTech industry has been around for a while and has gained momentum over the past decade. Venture capital funding totalled $7 billion globally in 2019, up from $4.2 billion in 2015. There is a surge in demand after covid-19 left 1.5 billion students out of school world over.