In today's increasingly remote work landscape, establishing a strong company culture is more critical than ever. e27, originally established as a blog and a platform for events, underwent a significant transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mohan Belani, CEO and co-founder of e27 began the venture as a student initiative at the National University of Singapore (NUS) to support early-stage incubation efforts. Over time, it evolved into a platform that democratizes access to capital, information, talent, and customers for founders across Southeast Asia.
In this episode of Scaling Today, Mohan describes how e27 changed its focus during the pandemic from being event-centric to having a diverse business strategy, which allowed for growth and resilience in unpredictable times.
The turning point was when we had a cash flow situation that almost caused the company to collapse. And when I had to take over the finance aspect of the company, I really had a deeper understanding of how everything worked.
Here is the transcript of our conversation:
Yuying Deng:
Okay, welcome to Scaling Today, the podcast where we explore how companies scale and also the future of work. So I'm your host, Yuying Deng, and today with me, I have our guest Mohan Belani. He is the CEO and co-founder of e27 and also a partner at Orvel Ventures as well. Full disclosure, Orvel Ventures is actually an investor in my company, Esevel. Right.
I've known Mohan for a few years now, and I've always admired his very deep understanding and extensive network within the startup ecosystem here, and the practical approach that he brings to everything he does, whether it's building e27 or leading Orvel ventures. A bit about e27: e27 is a leading startup and tech ecosystem platform here in Southeast Asia. I feel that Mohan is really someone who knows how to navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship while also keeping things very grounded and results-oriented as well. I’m really excited to have him here today.
He has grown e27 into a very well-known, respected platform that is not just self-sustaining but also growing rapidly. I believe that there’s a lot we can learn from his journey. Welcome to the show, Mohan. Would you like to say a few words to our audience?
Mohan Belani:
Thank you, Yu Ying. Firstly, it’s very nice to be on the show. And secondly, it’s a real privilege to be able to back you, support you, and work with a founder like yourself. I’ve learned a lot from your experience as well, building the company and your previous experiences, so really it’s a privilege for us to work with you.
I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to be part of the tech ecosystem in Southeast Asia for well over a decade now. As I travel around the region and as we’ve scaled the company, it’s been very interesting to see how the different regional ecosystems have evolved, how founders tackle problems in unique ways depending on the market they’re in. That has, of course, led to really interesting regional insights that have helped me grow e27 today.
Yuying Deng:
That’s actually interesting to dig into a bit further, right? All the different regional startup ecosystems that there are. So, I think maybe for our listeners to understand a bit more about e27, what sparked the idea for e27? I understand you may not have been there at the very inception, but you came in a bit later, right? And how did your vision for e27 evolve over the years?
Mohan Belani:
So, e27 originally started as a student community within the NUS environment to work with NUS and support the early incubation activities they were working on. I had a few stints in different companies, one of them being Little Lives, which is an edu-tech platform.
Yuying Deng:
Oh, I use that actually for my kids.
Mohan Belani:
I’m using it now as well. And I love it, right? Another company I worked with was Mig33, which is now a defined mobile social network. It was really popular among feature phone users in the early days. Then, in late 2011 or early 2012, I sat down with my now co-founder, and we figured that Southeast Asia is riddled with problems—a.k.a. opportunities for founders. So, we asked ourselves, can we build a platform that helps democratize access to capital, information, talent, and customers?
Not every founder has a fair or equivalent chance to be successful, especially if they didn’t go to the right Ivy League school or were not in the right market. Could we democratize access and build a regional platform to help founders be more successful and reduce the risk of failure, ultimately supporting the growth of sustainable tech companies in the region?
Yuying Deng:
So, just to reiterate, was e27 meant to be a regional platform from the start, or was it meant to be Singapore-specific?
Mohan Belani:
Yeah, it was always regional. Starting from Singapore, you know, we are always taught to have a regional mindset, right? You can’t just build a business based on the Singapore home base. I think being Singaporean forced us to think regionally from the start. But the way we regionalized and worked with partners evolved and scaled over time. It wasn’t entirely driven by us but largely by the community we work with. We were fortunate that much of our regional expansion was community and partner-driven, not solely e27-driven.
Yuying Deng:
I see. And were some of those communities government-focused as well? Or were they purely academic or startup-driven?
Mohan Belani:
In most cases, they started off being startup-driven, and then naturally, the government would get involved because they wanted to provide support and be part of those activities. For example, when we had our Echelon events in Singapore in the early days, we had friends in Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia asking, “Why can’t you hold an Echelon in our home countries?”
Yuying Deng:
I see.
Mohan Belani:
And for us, it was really a function of resources. We’d say, "Look, we can’t do it ourselves, but if you help us and do smaller versions of what we’re doing, we could collaborate with you. If you bring resources together, we’d be very happy to do it." That’s essentially how we organically scaled in the region. Our first Echelon event outside of Singapore was in Thailand, and we worked with two local partners. They either attended our events or heard of us and would host us, and that’s how relationships were built over time.
Yuying Deng:
Yeah, I’ve seen some of that myself. We had a booth at Echelon, and there were many people from the region, not just from Singapore. e27’s branding must be strong in the region.
Mohan Belani:
Plus, we make a concerted effort to work with partners around the region. For next year’s event, which is happening on June 18, we’ve already launched around 50 regional partners to help support the event.
Yuying Deng:
Fifty? 5-0?
Mohan Belani:
Yes, 5-0. We announced this a few weeks ago. We’ve launched our regional partner network. We are strong believers that we cannot be that Singapore company that goes into a foreign market and pretends like we know how everything is. We always feel that we have to work with local counterparts. We have to learn with them and support their own ecosystems as well. For example, our Echelon Philippines event that we did a few weeks ago was done in partnership with BrainSparks, an organization we’ve worked with for many years. It’s always a joint effort with local partners.
Yuying Deng:
Got it. And Mohan, I understand that e27 initially focused heavily on events, but it seems like there’s been an evolution over the years, especially due to COVID. What is e27’s current suite of products and services? What’s your current business model?
Mohan Belani:
e27 started as a blog, producing content, and the natural next step to meet the community that was reading our content online was to host events. Events in the early days—and still now—were a great way to generate revenue and profits, helping to sustain the business.
From 2013 to 2018 or 2019, there was a massive scale of events, both locally and regionally, organized by us and by governments. There was a lot of pressure to keep growing the size of our events. But the downside was that this focus on events distracted us from our core mission: to empower entrepreneurs with the tools to build and grow. Events are great for a two-day period, but the moment the event is over, the impact and value we give our community drop off.
Yuying Deng:
It’s like a deflationary impact post-event.
Mohan Belani:
Exactly. The energy and value spike high during the event, but they decline quickly afterward. As an organization, we knew we needed to address that, but culturally, we struggled to shift our focus because events were so ingrained in us. Every time one event was done, we’d focus on preparing for the next one. Then COVID hit, and in a strange way, it was a blessing in disguise for us. We had no choice but to pivot away from events. I remember telling my co-founder that this was the perfect time to do everything we wanted to do on the product and platform side, away from events, and to see if it would work. So that’s exactly what we did.
We looked at our Echelon floor plan and realized that the most impactful part of the event was the business matching—startups meeting investors, startups meeting corporates, and so on. So we ended up building a suite of features on the site to help with business matching, improving our startup database, and offering business matching services for corporates, governments, and growth-stage companies. After COVID, we had some of the best years in the company's history, both in terms of revenue and profits.
Yuying Deng:
Revenue-wise, you mean?
Mohan Belani:
Yes, both revenue and profits.
Yuying Deng:
Could you give us a numerical comparison? How many events were you running per year before COVID versus now, with your new revenue streams?
Mohan Belani:
Pre-COVID, we had one big event in Singapore, Echelon, and then we would do regional Top 100 events—up to 13 in a year—across places like Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Australia. It was intense, all happening in a two-month period, from January to June. After June, we might do one or two larger events outside Singapore, in places like Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, or Malaysia.
During COVID, when we pivoted to online webinars, we’d have up to three online events per month, sometimes more. These were smaller and more niche, often targeting specific industry sectors.
Yuying Deng:
So they were more focused?
Mohan Belani:
Yes, more focused and regular. Some webinars had 20 participants, while others had hundreds. The cadence became more consistent, with smaller, more intimate events.
Yuying Deng:
So, as a percentage of your revenue, have events now reduced, and are the rest of your revenue streams coming from these business matching services?
Mohan Belani:
Yes, we now have four primary revenue streams. The first is media, which includes content marketing and advertising. The second is our own events, like Echelon in Singapore and the Philippines. The third is our Innovate team, which runs bespoke activities for clients. And the fourth is our Pro subscription-based services.
Pre-COVID, media was the largest chunk of our revenue because everyone was online. Now, it’s more balanced between media, events, and bespoke activities. Some clients want to sponsor Echelon, others prefer bespoke branded activities, and media revenue has tapered off a bit as more people seek physical, face-to-face experiences.
Yuying Deng:
Yes, I’m seeing that trend too. It seems like people are moving towards smaller, more intimate, face-to-face events rather than large webinars or virtual events.
Mohan Belani:
Exactly. Last week, we concluded the Meta AI APAC Accelerator Program with around 150 attendees. We ran a fully remote version of this program during COVID, but the in-person experience was worlds apart. The physical interaction is hard to replicate online.
Yuying Deng:
Yeah, there’s still a lot that you can’t replicate virtually. So, Mohan, one of the questions I really want to ask you is how did you scale e27 without heavily relying on fundraising? Especially since some of your competitors might have been raising funds or burning cash, but you still managed to grow the company. How did you balance that?
Mohan Belani:
From the start, I never saw us as a venture-backed company.
Yuying Deng:
Really? Even from the very beginning?
Mohan Belani:
Yes, even from the beginning. When we raised our seed round, led by Japanese investors, my first reaction was, "What is there to invest in?" It was ironic because we didn’t pitch to any investors— they approached us. I couldn’t quite understand why anyone would want to invest in us, but I also realized the value of having local investors supporting what we were doing.
Our seed round had investors from Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore. Beyond the capital, they provided access to local markets, governments, and opportunities. That was the real value of fundraising for us. The money was helpful in taking bigger bets, like moving to larger exhibition venues for events, but it was really the relationships and market access that made a difference.
Yuying Deng:
So, it was more about the networks and relationships than the capital?
Mohan Belani:
Exactly. The capital helped us scale, but it wasn’t the main driver. By 2016, we had a cash flow situation that almost caused the company to collapse. That’s when I took over the financial side of the company and really understood how everything worked. I started focusing on getting us to break even, and by 2018 or 2019, we reached profitability.
Yuying Deng:
That’s amazing. And since 2016, have you felt the need to raise more capital, or do you prefer organic growth?
Mohan Belani:
I’ve always felt that organic growth is the better option. In hindsight, for an organization like ours, debt financing or project-based financing would have been better than equity financing.
Yuying Deng:
Equity is always the most expensive way.
Mohan Belani:
Exactly, and for a company like ours, the time spent raising half a million dollars could have been better spent generating revenue. But back then, we struggled with cash flow, and now with more experience, I realize that short-term business loans or cash flow financing could have solved a lot of those problems.
Yuying Deng:
That’s great advice for founders, especially that VC financing isn’t the only way to grow.
Mohan Belani:
Absolutely. I now advise founders to look into invoice financing or bridging loans. Founders today are more open to it than they were in the past, and financing solutions have evolved—many no longer require personal guarantees.
Yuying Deng:
Yes, and there are more sophisticated financing options available now. We had Percy from Choco Up on the podcast, and his business has grown as more founders realize there are alternative financing options.
Mohan Belani:
Exactly. Debt isn’t as scary as it used to be, and now that we have a better understanding of cash flow, we can predict when to pay back loans and what the costs will be. Founders today are in a better position to understand and leverage these financing options.
Yuying Deng:
Shifting gears a bit, another topic we discuss often on the Scaling Today podcast is remote work. I’ve noticed that e27’s team members are mostly remote. Was e27 always designed to be a remote-first company, or did that evolve over time?
Mohan Belani:
From the start, we were somewhat remote. For example, it made sense to hire content creators based in the markets they were covering—like Indonesia or Thailand—because they had the local knowledge.
Yuying Deng:
That makes sense.
Mohan Belani:
Exactly. For some roles, like marketing or media, it made sense to look outside of Singapore for both cost and skills reasons. The Philippines, for example, has great talent in graphic design and copywriting. So, from early on, we hired remotely for roles like that. Our tech team also included people from Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia. So it wasn’t about being remote for the sake of being remote—it was about hiring the right people for the job, wherever they were.
Yuying Deng:
And that was because you knew from the start that e27 was going to be a regional platform, so it made sense to hire people in local markets.
Mohan Belani:
Exactly. Plus, for some activities, it didn’t make sense to fly someone from Singapore into a market they weren’t familiar with.
Yuying Deng:
You wouldn’t even know where to start!
Mohan Belani:
Yes, culturally and logistically, it was just better to have local hires who knew the market. But managing a remote-first team isn’t without its challenges.
Yuying Deng:
What’s been the biggest challenge for you in managing a distributed team?
Mohan Belani:
COVID really forced us to focus on improving how we manage remote teams. Before COVID, one of the biggest challenges was internet infrastructure in certain regions. We had issues with connectivity during meetings. Now, we subsidize or pay for better internet services for employees who need it, or we cover the cost of co-working spaces so they can be more productive.
Yuying Deng:
That makes sense.
Mohan Belani:
The other big challenge was communication. We became heavy users of tools like Asana and other project management tools, and we emphasize proper documentation, status updates, and stricter protocols for managing tasks. We’ve standardized templates, even down to how we manage Excel sheets, to ensure consistency and minimize errors across teams.
Yuying Deng:
Oh, even down to the details of how Excel sheets need to be managed?
Mohan Belani:
Yes, for example, managing speaker names at our events has become a standardized template across the organization. The same information might be used in five different sheets and by multiple teams. You don’t want someone to get a speaker's name wrong in one place, and then have it wrong everywhere. It might seem trivial, but even small mistakes can damage your brand image.
So, we’ve set it up so there’s only one column where you can change information like a speaker’s name, and that change will automatically update in all related sheets. This has saved us a tremendous amount of time and effort.
Yuying Deng:
That’s a really good tip! I’m definitely going to take that back to Esevel.
Mohan Belani:
Yes, we had to get down to that level of detail in project management. It ensures that, for example, when we have 150 speakers at an event, there are no mistakes.
Yuying Deng:
I’ve been to several Echelon events, and they all seemed to run so smoothly. From my perspective, as a speaker or attendee, everything just works.
Mohan Belani:
We try our best to make it seamless because we know how stressful events can be. But even with that level of detail, we’re always looking for ways to improve. With a remote team, consistency in documentation and updates is even more critical because if you don’t have standard templates, the mental burden increases for everyone involved. So, for example, with OKRs, if status updates are templatized week on week, it reduces the cognitive load for both the person giving the update and the person reading it.
Yuying Deng:
Speaking of OKRs, we talked about OKRs earlier, and I’ve found them very helpful for managing remote teams because they give everyone clarity about what they’re working towards and how they’re being measured. Do you use OKRs at e27 as well?
Mohan Belani:
Yes, we’ve been using OKRs since 2016, and I even use them in my personal life!
Yuying Deng:
Between you and your wife?
Mohan Belani:
No, just for myself! My wife isn’t as structured as I am in that way, but she’s brilliant in other ways I can never be. But yes, OKRs are powerful because they keep everyone accountable. I tell my team that the next 13 weeks of their professional life are a collaboration between them and the organization, and it’s our joint responsibility to ensure those 13 weeks are productive and meaningful.
Yuying Deng:
So in your case, does it cascade up as well as down? And do you agree on the OKRs with your team?
Mohan Belani:
Yes, it cascades both ways. At the start of each OKR cycle, we gather input from every team about the key problems they’re facing, the opportunities they’re seeing, and the things they want to try. I balance their input with my own set of ideas. It’s important to listen to the team because they often have insights I don’t, being closer to the ground. If you don’t include their input, they can get demoralized.
Yuying Deng:
There might be things you’re not aware of, right?
Mohan Belani:
Exactly. Leaders need to trust their teams to try things, and if those things work, great! If they don’t, at least the team had the chance to experiment. One of our core values is "If it’s not working, change it." So yes, we allow changes even in the middle of an OKR cycle if it makes sense.
Yuying Deng:
So, teams are allowed to change their OKRs midway if something isn’t working?
Mohan Belani:
Yes, but it has to be done cautiously. We don’t want people to abuse that flexibility. If something isn’t working by week 3 or 4, we discuss it in our L10 meetings. It’s a consensus among the team to either pivot or backburner the objective. That way, we ensure that any change is justified and doesn’t negatively impact other teams or objectives.
Yuying Deng:
That makes sense. It sounds like you’ve really refined your OKR process over the years. We’re still working on ours, so our percentage of mid-cycle changes is probably higher than yours!
Mohan Belani:
It’s taken years of refining! OKRs are a passion project for me, and I love helping companies structure and plan them properly. Tools like Sugar OKR have made it a breeze to manage the whole process.
Yuying Deng:
That sounds like another session we should have—one just on OKRs! I’m sure our listeners would love to learn more about how you manage them so effectively.
Mohan Belani:
I’d be happy to share more about that!
Yuying Deng:
Okay, shifting back to culture, how do you keep company culture strong in a distributed team? How do you keep people connected and aligned when they might only see each other once or twice a year, or maybe not at all?
Mohan Belani:
That’s a great question, and it’s definitely challenging. For me, it starts with vision, mission, and core values. These cannot be fluffy, abstract concepts—they have to be deeply ingrained in everything we do. During our town halls, which we just had yesterday, I spend time re-emphasizing our mission and core values.
Culture is about how we do things, and it’s like rowing a boat—everyone can be rowing hard, but if they’re not rowing in sync, you won’t move forward as efficiently as possible. So, I make it a point to hammer these things home so they’re ingrained in the team.
Yuying Deng:
That’s a very clear analogy.
Mohan Belani:
Yes, and another thing we do is recognize when people demonstrate the core values. We use a tool called PraisePal, which integrates with Slack, allowing team members to give points to each other for demonstrating core values. Those points can be redeemed for vouchers, even in different countries. All the recognition is tied to core values, so it reinforces positive behaviors across the organization.
Yuying Deng:
That’s a scalable way to reinforce culture!
Mohan Belani:
Exactly, and I also make sure to reference the core values often, especially when someone asks me for permission to do something. One of our core values is "Don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness." So, instead of giving them an answer, I just say "core value number two," and they know what to do. It’s about making core values a part of everyday decision-making.
Yuying Deng:
And I imagine this takes time to really embed in the organization.
Mohan Belani:
Yes, it takes time, but once it’s ingrained, it becomes second nature. I also do a one-hour session with every new hire during onboarding to explain our vision, mission, and core values in detail. It’s not just about doing your job well; you have to embrace the company culture 100%. If someone doesn’t align with the culture, it’s not going to work.
Yuying Deng:
It sounds like we need another session on building company culture! There’s so much to unpack here.
Mohan Belani:
I’d be happy to dive deeper into that!
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