In terms of overseas market expansions, Mr. Atlas Tung, founder and CEO of Wishing-Soft, pointed out that for a startup who wishes to reach customers in a foreign market, on top of single-point advances such as participating in exhibitions and networking, the most important thing is to understand its own value chain and acquire key partners. It is more effective to develop a bigger market by standing on the shoulders of giants. Wishing-Soft is a company dedicated to providing environments, safety, and health (ESH) software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to enterprises,
Facing the global market, Mr. Tung indicated that the competition is intense in the European and American markets for ESH management platforms. Therefore, Wishing-Soft has set very clear goals for its current stage: it wishes to become the most famous ESH management platform in Asia in order to facilitate legal compliance in the Asian supply chain.
Currently, with existing customers expanding overseas, Wishing-Soft has also gradually expanded into the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai markets. By collaborating with reputable international consultancies. Wishing-Soft manages to provide key solutions to enterprises in performing compliance checks and also expand its reach to even more potential international customers.
In recent years, as tackling environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and net-zero emission issues have transformed from a "nice-to-have" to a "must-have," 2022 to 2030 will be a critical period to Wishing-Soft. Mr. Tung believes that to enter the B2B market, startups will need to understand that the greatest value of their products is in understanding their customers and resolving their pain points.
Thus, in the process of searching for corporate clients, Wishing-Soft does not simply divide the market as either "Taiwan" or "overseas". Instead, it pays more attention to companies that already have a certain level of concern for issues such as sustainability, ESH and ESG. Mr. Tung stated that Wishing-Soft has always been committed to how an enterprise creates value and yields profit since day one. Facing the current and future international capital market, Mr. Tung believes that it all comes down to whether a startup can provide values to its clients. A startup should figure out its "customer value chain" before acquiring seed funding. After all, focusing on creating operating revenues is only the most fundamental thing in business management.
Going forward, since European countries and America have all imposed strict regulations related to corporate social responsibility throughout the supply chain, enterprises that fail to comply to ESH and carbon emission regulations may face a penalty up to 2% of their global revenues. This sizable penalty has prompted most, if not all enterprises to look for the relevant solutions.
To satisfy consumer demands and comply with import/export regulations, downstream vendors have begun to request their upstream supply chains to comply with the relevant regulations. Mr. Tung pointed out that Wishing-Soft will be able to enjoy more advantage once the development is prevalent throughout the entire supply chain. Based on its software platform, Wishing-Soft will be able to help the entire supply chain speak the same language and integrate all information. Therefore, Wishing-Soft will not be serving isolated customers in the future, but rather, the entire supply chain and all customers throughout a specific industry.
In regard to the advantage of Taiwanese startups in handling sustainability issues facing supply chains, Mr. Tung is of the opinion that Taiwan has many factories and the density of supply chains is very high. Many foreign business management centers and supply chains of internationally renowned Taiwanese manufacturers are situated here. The industrial clustering effect will significantly reduce the time required to visit customers. It also facilitates enterprises to work together, thereby accelerating the solution to challenges and problems facing an industry, and creating ESG-related value for that industry chain. Moreover, Taiwanese supply chains are widely acclaimed throughout the world. If a company can perform well and succeed in Taiwan, it can also draw on these experiences as it expands worldwide.
Readers can download " 2022 Taiwan Startup Ecosystem Survey" jointly conducted by PwC Taiwan, TIER and DIGITIMES: https://www.pwc.tw/en/publications/taiwan-startup-ecosystem-survey.html