Leaderonomics Digital raises funds to disrupt its existing business

• Aims to raise US$608,528 on pitchIN to develop its digital solution
• Current solutions are not learner-centric, built by tech companies without HR experience

LEADERONOMICS, the social enterprise with 10 years of experience in leadership development, human resources (HR) and talent coaching, recently formed a digital arm called Leaderonomics Digital.

With its business strategy and product idea in place, the company is set to go live on equity crowdfunding (ECF) platform, pitchIN, at the end of February 2019 to raise US$608,528 (RM2.5 million) in funds.

The head of Leaderonomics Digital, Sashe Kanapathi (pic), said: “We call Leaderonomics our analogue business. So we started off this digital business unit about two years ago in 2016 when we decided to see whats out there in the world that can disrupt our business. Instead of another tech company that comes into the learning space and kills us, we decided to develop this company ourselves.”

As the digital business unit experimented in the market, it soon evolved into Leaderonomics Digital which was incorporated late-2018. “We know digital adoption in human resources is quite slow. There are a lot of limitations and inefficiencies in HR and training programmes that run today. We sometimes have to question the relevancy of traning we get proposed for or consulted on. We know there are a lot of opportunities for tech to disrupt the HR space,” Sashe explains.

Crowdfunding to take on the market

Based on its learnings this past two years, Sashe believes Leaderonomics Digital is now poised to take on the market. “We are at this juncture now where we understand the analogue training and HR space very well. We understand why digital works and doesn’t work and we know what is out there in the world in terms of available products, solutions and services.”

With its decade of experience and access to customers, Leaderonomics Digital is raring to go into the Asia Pacific market but is in need of capital first. “We’ve opted for equity crowdfunding (ECF) because we find there isn’t a lot of risk capital available for seed funding. ECF is good for us – Leaderonomics is well known and has a 10-year track record of execution. So you can trust us to execute and really, we have the market penetration.”

The ECF campaign is currently on at the pre-live stage on pitchIN while the company is in talks with interested investors and offering discounts to come in early.

“There are individual investors who want to be a part of this journey. They are very excited about what Leaderonomics has done, so they want to be part of it.”

While the exact date of the ECF campaign going live is not confirmed yet, those interested are invited to register their interest on the platform by end-February 2019. The company aims to raise US$597,000 (RM2.5 million) for 15% total equity offered or meet its minimum funding target of US$430,000 (RM1.8 million).

What does Leaderonomics Digital have in store?

Sashe talked about some issues surrounding the exisiting HR tech solutions in the market: “These are products built by tech companies with no HR experience. The aim is to build products that sell but nobody is trying to look at the problem statement.

“These tech solutions are often too expensive and they are organisational HR-driven products that are not learner-centric. They take a HR process and digitise it – that’s actually not how it should work,” explains Sashe, adding that the focus should be on helping employees and building learning cultures.

Instead of the unsustainable three-year training needs analysis that companies employ today, Leaderonomics Digital is keen on developing an integrated learning system that knows what employees are doing on the go.

“Business models can change in three months which means a lengthy needs analysis is irrelevant. We’re really looking at learning and development differently – that’s where the excitement is.”

Focusing on this, Leaderonomics aims to build a solution that embeds learning and development into employees’ work. “It should not be a separate thing that employees do by logging into a learning system. Learning happens best when you need to on the job – that’s the most effective time.”

Aiming to create a learning culture that is self-driven and seamless, Leaderonomics Digital aims to deliver learning when needed.

“Artificial intelligence is able to do that. We are venturing down this path. It will be exciting once we develop all this – this is the endgame.”

While creating this embedded B2B learning and development system is Leaderonomic Digital’s ultimate aim, it also has other business plans.

“We’ve partnered with some well-known brands around the world to bring their products to market using our brand presence and market penetration to generate revenue. As we do this, we’re going to keep building up to our endgame.”

Leaderonomics Digital has partnered with learning management systems (LMS) and learning experience platform (LXP) providers to bring these solutions to market.

“The market hasn’t even seen LXP yet. I think it’s going to be exciting when Malaysian businesses start using LXPs, while we continue to build the next generation.”