This SPH veteran spun off his jobs platform to catch a big wave

Julian Tan is not a new name in the startup ecosystem of Southeast Asia, especially in Singapore.

More than a decade ago, he started and grew several startups under local media organization Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), such as classified ads platform 701Search – parent company of Berniaga in Indonesia and Mudah.my in Malaysia – and automotive portal SgCarMart.

Last year, he decided to spin off startup FastCo from SPH to make the company, which operates blue-collar jobs platform FastJobs, an independent firm. According to Tan, the service has gained good traction and has become one of the top jobs platforms in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. It currently has more than 450,000 monthly active job seekers on the platform.

Recently, the company also launched another app called FastGig that focuses on job seekers who want to operate on a more flexible schedule. For example, job seekers can declare that they only want to work two days per week and only in the morning, and the app will match them with suitable employers.

According to the firm, FastJobs’ revenue has been growing steadily, while its operating losses have narrowed. It hit US$2.4 million in revenue in 2020, a 14% surge compared to the previous year. At the same time, the company’s EBIT losses shrunk by 58% to US$162,000.

In a statement, the company said that in 2021, it succeeded in doubling its 2020 revenue, making its last year revenue roughly around US$4.8 million.

Tan says he decided to spin off the company from SPH because of the huge interest it was getting from investors who wanted to support the business. At the same time, he realized that the jobs space was heating up all around the world, with the emergence of SoftBank-backed Jobandtalent in Europe, Workstream in the US, and even Sampingan and MyRobin in Indonesia.

To accommodate the changing environment, Tan restructured the firm’s shareholders.

“Today, we have myriad of shareholders, from SPH, venture capitalists, angel investors, as well as the management,” Tan tells Tech in Asia. “We hope it can make the company more agile, grow, and compete as a startup in the region.”

His own baby

Tan has run 701Search and has led its expansion across Southeast Asia since 2008. He was also involved when the company’s Indonesian subsidiary, Berniaga, was acquired by online marketplace OLX in 2014. A year later, Tan went back to SPH to run the media company’s digital businesses.

This is when Tan cooked up the idea for FastCo. “I tried to think what else I can do so I’m able to contribute my learning in building a startup in the region,” he recalls.

He was aware that there were already so many job portals in Singapore, such as JobStreet, JobsDB, and even LinkedIn. However, he believed those platforms mostly only catered to the white-collar space.

“There is an underserved market of non-executive blue-collar workers. And based on my experience of building my previous startup in this region, the segment is the majority of the workforce.”

Refuse to be static

Series A funding in the works