Digital first, or how technology helps SMEs go from idea to product

Tell us about Morpheus. What do you guys do?
Morpheus is headquartered in Singapore, with a technical development team in Vietnam. We provide a “low-code” development platform, which gives our customers without coding experience everything they need to build, test, and launch their own Web3 apps.

Web 3 – what does that mean, exactly?
The web is a more complicated place today than it was 20 years ago. Back then, you’d create a site by writing your own code. Then came WordPress, an open-source content management system that allowed novices to make simple sites using templates.

The next phase, Web 2.0, allowed more interaction and collaboration among Internet users. Mobile became a thing; so did e-commerce.

But again, you had to write your own code, starting from the first line. Then, Shopify was founded to help companies do e-commerce.

Web 3.0 gives us more advanced technologies, like blockchain. There's a multitude of applications and they’re harder to create. The Morpheus SEED platform gives      companies templates that let them fast-track their Web 3.0 development. 

For example?
We give customers a faster, simpler way to develop blockchain applications. For example, we have a low-code workflow that will suggest and generate smart contracts suitable at various development stages.

Or we can generate an NFT, a non-fungible token. That’s a unique digital asset; nothing else like it exists, and it can’t be copied.

Think of the key-card you get when you check into a hotel. Thousands of cards get lost each year, and because they can be copied, each loss is a potential security threat for the hotel and its guests.

Plastic cards can be replaced by NFT access cards. You can unlock your hotel room door with a digital card that is uniquely tagged to your identity on      your smartphone. NFT access cards can’t be copied, and they automatically expire when you check out. 

But in order for a device or any kind of hardware to accept these tokens, the business operator needs to create an application that consists of a front-end dashboard for the user.

Any business that wants to provide smart locks must develop a software platform to issue NFT cards.Morpheus helps them build such a platform by providing a suite of easy-to-use, low-code software development tools.

How’s business?
Good. Could always be better, but good. (Laughs) We are grateful to have doubled from seven to 16 in the last two years. Covid actually helped us by forcing us to be more nimble. Meanwhile, some of our competitors have folded.

Describe your relationship with Huawei.
We first benefited from their Spark Accelerator program, which offers funding, mentorship, and other support to entrepreneurs. We are now their premium reseller of cloud services. At the same time, we are exploring going to market with vertical solutions we are currently co-developing, such as the NFT access card I mentioned earlier. We are excited about this deepening partnership and collaboration.

Any thoughts on how SMEs should use digital technology?
SMEs can benefit from being digital-first. But they need the right tools.

Creating an idea is hard; creating an innovative idea is even harder. Then, once you’ve done the hard work of coming up with an innovative idea, you have to search through a lot of tools to bring the idea to fruition. Doing that requires that you understand how to use the tools. If they’re hard to use, that pulls your focus away from the business. We give you the tools you need to focus on your idea and make it a reality.