OF RAVINDRAN SHANMUGAM, LIVSPACE AND A SPORE INC INVESTMENT FUND YOU NEVER HEARD BEFORE

There is a post that is going the rounds in Facebook and Whatsapp about Ravindran, the son of Minister Shan. Ravi is CEO of LivSpace, an interior design platform. Although no specific claims were made, the innuendo is Ravi secured the renovation works for 26 Ridout Road, and possibly other projects from SLA.

This is possibly defamatory in essence and I would caution all to be careful what you share, not just to avoid legal problems, but in fairness to other parties involved. Possibly Ravi had the 26 Ridout Rd part of the renovation funded by Minister Shan. That is clearly a private affair. As to the URA part of the maintenance and restoration works, and the wider SLA projects, it’s pure conjecture.

In view of the rumours swirling round, Kenneth Jeyaratnam, in his latest blog, asked SLA to make a statement as to whether Ravi had been favored with a slew of projects. It is the right thing to do.

JK wrote of “blatant channelling of employment and contracts to spouses, children and relatives has gone on for decades”. This is a form of corruption known as nepotism and JK mentioned several specific examples.

To this I would add Yeo Wen Xian. Younger Singaporeans may not be familiar with this name. She is the daughter of Yeo Cheow Tong, one time Communication Minister. In 2003, before she entered her final year in a US university, she was recruited by JP Morgan for a massive salary of $300,000 (I stand corrected on this sum, but it was definitely an eye-popping payscale). No doubt it was a coincidence that in the same year, JP Morgan received a contract for Singapore's Airport Logistics Park.

Who is Ravindran Shanmugam?

Other than the fact he is the son of the Law Minister, according to his Linkedin profile :

(1) National service 2 years in Army. No mention of vocation or rank. I surmise 2 years means not commissioned. From his job description, he drew the longer straw - cushy service vocation. A couple of lines of accomplishment – (a) Optimized and standardized Brigade operating procedures as part of two-year National Service. (b) Led a team of 4 people to craft a Quality Management System, increasing operating efficiency ~8%. Astounding if you believe our professional army left those jobs to an 18 year old kid out of high school.
Completed NS with citation of performance - ‘Outstanding’.
You see a White Horse when you see one.

As for my NS. Kana very short straw. 3 years Army fulltime, commissioned, combat infantry.
Completion citation ; ‘Excellence’.
The rest of us are Horses With No Names.

(2) Graduated in 2013 from Oxford Uni, honours in Economics, Philosophy and Politics
Not bad. Obviously a scholar, a breed in high demand in Singapore Inc.

(3) Jobs before LivSpace.
Consultant at McKinsey 2 years 7 months
Manager, Strategy & Business Operations at Grab 1 year 6 months
Executive Director at Mediceram Sdn Bhd 1 year 6 months.

If I were a HR man, I’ll say job hopper and helicopter-dropped.

Temasek-linked Grab sure towed the line well as they helicopter-dropped Ravi to manage something he knew nothing about. After dropping off a PAP minister's son in 2016, the helicopter picked up PAP member of parliament Ting Pei Ling in February this year and dropped her into the position of Director, Public Affairs & Policy, something she knew nothing about. 

(4) LivSpace
Brought in as Country Head in Mar 2019. Took over CEO job in Jun 2021.
And there he sits at the moment.

What is LivSpace?

Let me preface this part with a short story. A couple of decades ago, a local carpet wholesaler known as Colour Touch came into prominence out of the blue. I was working in a bank primarily involved in wholesale lending, those syndicated loans, multi-million dollar types. Direct commercial loans of a few hundred thousand or low million dollar types to local businesses were kind of boring to me. Then I noticed Colour Touch suddenly became the darling of a few banks. The company started taking on huge sums of commercial loans. Beyond the dead beat of number crunching a borrower’s financials, a lender needs to have a common sense nose on the ground. What kind of a carpet wholesaler requires that level of funding? Puzzled, I asked someone I knew who was in similar trade. Not surprisingly, he told me it’s all BS. The market is not that big. There is a scheme of transfer pricing leakages and lenders will be left holding a cashless company. Not 2 years after that conversation, Colour Touch collapsed.

LivSpace is basically an omnichannel home interior and renovation platform that connects the 3 parties in interior design projects - consumers, designers, and the service/product vendors.

For consumers, they visit the platform, provide their input of what they want, and LivSpace AI algorithm will match them to an appropriate designer who will then follow up directly. Consumers are able to see design details on the platform.

LivSpace has several advantages for one man operated design shops. A designer signs up as a partner now has a corporate front, various centralised support such as admin, product and services, sourcing, installation liasing, finance and marketing. Designers focus on their core expertise, designing. Thus can accomplish more. Downside is they become commission based and loose certain control of the business.

For service/product vendors, I believe this part of a digitised market place is not yet available.

LivSpace was founded in July 2014 by Anuj Srivastava, formerly of Google, and Ramakant Sharma, formerly of Myntra, a fashion e-commerce company. Based in India, It started off marketing inhouse brand of modular cabinetry. In 2016 interior designing was added on with a community partnership programme. In 2019 they set up shop in Singapore. So far they have gone through several rounds of funding and raised US$432m. It has been proclaimed as a unicorn, ie valued more than US$1b. It’s a familiar story. After 9 years, they generate reasonable revenue, but losses keep piling. They are still burning cash.

Now this idea of community designers is nothing new. Individual designers operating solo but under a common corporate umbrella to share some centralised services. The only difference is LivSpace puts in dazzling digital gadgetry.

In reality, LivSpace has no technology of their own. They simply use Ah Kong’s money to buy apps and assemble them into a connected schema. The main platform of designer community is Canvas, a local start up LivSpace acquired. Currently it is in talks to buy Homelane, a similar designer community platform. Typical acquisition to show growth.

If you have nose on the ground, you can see the reality. I have been there, done that, the interior design business. So pardon the cockiness of my summation. Interior design and renovation is a quintessential brick and mortar business. Designers need to maintain their library of products near them, or their pool of trusted vendors at their beck and call. It is a business of the sense of touch, sight and feeling. See the real colours and hues, feel the textures, the hardness or softness of materials, etc. No amount of digital gadgetry can replace this.

Interior designing and renovation business are high in value, low in volume, long turn-around time and lots of after sales service, often with some retention. Digital bsinesses are low value, high volume, immediate delivery, mostly no after sales, and no retention. In other words, the digital gadgetry is unable to create economies of scale to bring cost down for designing and renovation.

So why are investors rushing in at each funding series? It’s the same as Colour Touch. Step into the boss’ room at Colour Touch and be amazed at how huge it is, at the opulence of gold-plated displays, and be introduced to 7 sales executives all driving company provided BMWs. The company should be doing very well, right?

With LivSpace, be bedazzled by the digital sophistication. Listen to Ravi at interviews and hear a conversation peppered with words of tech giants like scalability, end-to-end connectivity, branding, making connections, customer experience, tech enabled scale, drive scale, etc. Hear them talk of AI algorithm to match customers with designers. For this, all that is needed is certain criteria and boxes to tick off. Can be easily done manually or a simple database with a sort capability. Personally, I wouldn’t put a buy order on LivSpace.

And here comes the kicker.

EDBI is one of the LivSpace investors. I do not know how much they poured in nor when they invested. Most probably in 2019. EDBI booked the investment under the sector “Information and Communication Technology”. You see, it’s a technology stock to them. EDBI is the investment arm of Economics Development Board. EDBI has an investment portfolio of S$79b. (How much of that is national reserves?) Bet this is news to you.

So was Ravi helicopter-dropped into LivSpace in 2019 because of Singapore Inc connection?

For the record, I do not know Ravi. I think he is probably a pretty smart young man.

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