What comes to mind when you think of video collaboration tools?

For mainstream consumers (i.e., you and me), Skype (and to a smaller extent, Google hangout), is no stranger to us. As for businesses and enterprises, video conferencing systems like Polycom and WebEx are the bigger players in the market.

These video conferencing tools serve the same purpose of eliminating distance as an impediment to real-time visual and audio communication. How then, does video-collaboration softeware, VSee differ from the rest? On top of offering a rich video and audio experience, VSee takes video conferencing up a notch with simplicity in performing collaborative work and high security of information transmission.

To find out more about the product and the company, I VSee-interviewed CEO of VSee, Milton Chen.

Interviewing Milton through VSee.

Simplicity as the main difference between VSee and other video collaboration tools.

The biggest difference lies in VSee’s simplicity of work collaboration while video conferencing. With just a click, users can share screens and any application. Another of VSee’s easy-to-use features is the drag-and-drop file transfer. I have to admit that the name itself doesn’t sound too big a deal. But when Milton demonstrated it during the interview, I was sold for the product.

On his end, he simply drags and drop a file into the video window (yes, the entire video window is a folder). To retrieve it, all I had to do to get the file is to drag it out to my desktop. Milton also showed me how simple and easy it was to perform screen sharing with just a click. In my opinion, these are winning features that enables efficient video work collaboration.

As Milton puts it,

“VSee allows for video calls, but, so what? It is important to connect to someone, share a report or an image easily with a single click or drag and drop. VSee believes that video is important in while having a conversation. What makes us different is the rich video experience through file sharing etc.”

Big push this year is to make vsee mobile. background- research on video streaming efficiently over 3g and 4g network.

VSee offers security in information transmission using end-to-end encryption.

Milton demonstrates the VSee for the U.S. House of Congress. Photo: Darren Pillen, VSee

The U.S. congress has recently approved VSee to run behind the congressional firewall. Other video collaboration tools such as  Google,  Skype or even big companies like Cisco, Polycom and WebEx, are not approved to run behind the congressional firewall. This, together with VSee’s many other high profile government clients like NASA, serve as testament to VSee’s secure information transmission technology.

The technology behind: VSee does this by using end-to-end encryption. That is to say, a two-way video session on VSee is being encrypted such that only the parties involved have access. No one else, not even VSee, has access. With such high security, it is easy and more assuring to have a conversation without having to worry that a third-party might tap in.

Prominent users and their main uses for VSee

Big clients of VSee include the U.S. Congress, U.S. Navy SEALS, NASA and big companies like IBM and Primerica. These organisations uses VSee for mainly two key reasons:

1. Internal team work. The challenge that companies face is the problem of being able to work efficiently with the team, given that most of the co-workers are located at different offices. VSee aims to solve this by providing a social and friendly rich working experience to the team.

2. B2B communication/ Talking to customers. One of the company’s bigger clients, IBM, uses VSee as a communication tool for customers to communicate easily with IBM sales representative solution specialist to solve their problems.

Milton emphasized that the key to VSee solutions lies in its simplicity of use. Traditionally, video collaboration is viewed as being complicated with too many steps involved. Vsee breaks this perception by making the video communication experience simple and easy through rich video, screen sharing, file transfer, etc. with just a click on a webpage.

Traditional video conferencing requires expensive gadgets and setups. Photo: Video conferencing equipment blog

VSee’s software-only solution vs. traditional hardware video collaboration tools.

Milton commented that if the interview setup that we were having, was done a couple of years ago, there is a heavy stress on the need for video quality. Of which, can only be achieved through purchasing delicate hardware that don’t come cheap. To further inconvenience users, the hardware must be placed in a dedicated room, say a fixed ‘video conference room’ where all have to be physically present to hold a meeting.

Today, all video conferencing can be solved with a purely software-only solution. I must say, the level of quality achieved with VSee is pretty high.

Why spend US$20,ooo on a piece of hardware that comes with all the complexity to schedule a meeting, and physically being in a conference room before the actual video collaboration meeting.

“The line has crossed for the level of quality you can achieve from hardware and software. This again, is why we think that the multi-billion dollar hardware-based companies will die in the next 5 to 10 years. There is no reason for their existence.”

The future for video collaboration

“The VSee team is really excited about the future of video collaboration,” exclaimed Milton. He gave a very good picture of how the future of video collaboration will be like by relating to the ongoing video experience that we were having.

“It is near midnight here in California and I’m working from home while you are in Singapore. VSee enables one to have a rich dialogue with someone from across the world. It is easy to show something or share a file. We see VSee as a social network technology that brings people together, erase distances and simply get work done, no matter where the other person happens to be.”

Milton adds on that he believes, in the future, people will do more and more of such video activities. Today, it is used by mostly big enterprises for mainly tech conference calls. Prior to the call, one party might have to send a powerpoint presentation over before the conference begins. There is simply too much work to prepare before and during the video conference for traditional video communication methods as compared to a solution like VSee that allows all work collaboration to be done during the call.

Milton envisions that in five to ten years’ time, everybody will be doing video collaboration online, all the time. And, people will just take for granted. His prediction is that traditional hardware-based, multi-billion dollar video conferencing companies like Telepresence,  Polycom and Tandberg will be in serious trouble.  With the level of video quality that can be achieved now with software technologies like VSee, there is no need to invest in $20,000 on a piece of hardware that entails complexity with it.

Milton adds on, “With the rise of technology like VSee, we will kill the billion dollar companies like Tandberg and Polycom.”

The VSee team at their annual winter ski trip. Photo: VSee

The VSee team as a proven testimony that remote team work can be efficient.

As a company, VSee has two offices worldwide- Silicon Valley and Singapore. Half of its staff is spread out all over the world in India, Spain and in the United States, they are scattered in different states. Even though the team is separated by distance, the company’s efficiency level remains high.

The VSee team is a proven testimony that remote team work can also be efficient and effective as the product itself allow for efficient work flow and collaboration. In the beginning, when VSee was first created, the main motivation behind was to create a good tool to facilitate the work collaboration amongst the widely geographically-distributed team.

One of the trends that Milton has  pointed out is the difficulty that that companies face in hiring good engineers. There are few tech companies fighting for resources in there. Unlike these companies, VSee does not face such a problem. With an efficient remote teamwork tool, they can hire the best talents around the world, no matter where they are located.

Big companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, are traditional and afraid to hire people remotely. They have the mindset that as soon as they have people working remotely, productivity suffers. Trust and social bonding between team members also suffer. That is why  most prefer not to hire someone else located far from the home office as there are no tools  that will ensure effective team work.

Milton’s hunch is that by being able to show that VSee is able to work well across distance, this will give VSee and any other company that follows the VSee work culture an unfair advantage over other companies. He believes that in five to ten years’ time, companies will switch to the VSee style of working.

Although the interview was done at 3pm, Singapore time (11pm, California time), there wasn’t a hint of time or distance difference throughout the entire VSee interview session. I’d have to say the voice and image quality was brilliant.

VSee is available free for download for both Windows and Mac. The iOS and Android versions will be coming out soon.

Hotel and Flights? Tripadvisor.

Food? hungrygowhere (Singapore)

And what about EVERYTHING? Here’s one that we all know– Yelp.

Taiwan startup, Citydomo is creating a Yelp-like site for users to read and write reviews on everything from food, hotels, night clubs to even plastic surgery! In exchange for writing reviews, users gain Domo dollars and stand a chance to win prizes.

e27 caught up with Co-founder, Kevin Lin to find out more about Citydomo.

What is the idea behind Citydomo?

Citydomo wants to build a company that can send local businesses themselves viral.

Citydomo has two inspirations. We would like to provide the education, support, and nurturing necessary for companies to craft and manage the entire sales life cycle online, from exposure and sales, to post-sale branding. Secondly, we would like to make it fun to promote the businesses that you love by offering prizes to users who spreads the word through Facebook, Twitter, write reviews, upload business photos, attend events, make purchases…etc from Citydomo’s business partners. With good content, good tracking, and incentives to spread the message, we plan to send our business partners viral.

Your team is mostly made up of the friends you made while at Duke. How has the overseas experience contributed to your entrepreneurship endeavor?

At Duke MBA, we had a chance to learn from a vast array of business people around the world. From spice market vendors in Dubai to the CEO of the second largest mining company in the world, the most important lessons we learned from these people was to listen to our customers. We found out that we ourselves don’t have to have all the answers. If we listen to our end users and craft our product around their wants, needs, desires and ambitions, we will fill the gap that exist in the market.

From a logistics points of view, Joe and Kevin learned to collaborate remotely as a team from anywhere in the world. This has played out well as Joseph is currently stationed in Austria while Kevin is on the ground in Taiwan. Even with thousands of miles between them, they are able to create synergies that even in-person teams would envy.

The Citydomo team. Photo: Citydomo

How is the traction like for Citydomo and what are some of the feedback you have received from users so far?

From a user’s perspective, Citydomo is growing on track with our models. Our gamification system, as we predicted, has accelerated our growth about three fold as users sign on and begin earning domo $ and promoting businesses with the goal of winning great prizes they love. We have already outgrown our first hosting solution and just this past weekend we moved into the Amazon Cloud hosted in Singapore.

Citydomo's office. Photo: Citydomo

From a business partner’s perspective, we are moving along the learning curve. We knew going into this that working with small and medium sized businesses in Taiwan required a customized plan. We could not simple take a business idea from North America and drop it down in Taiwan – like Google/Yahoo tried – because it would fail. We see our progression down this learning curve as a competitive advantage. Once we have tailored our business partner education, sales, sales support and logistics programs we will have a year to a year and a half of operational protection from other competitors.

The main thing our business partners are telling us is that they want to see proof that their campaigns are working and that they did not feel a fixed monthly rate was justifiable. Citydomo responded to these observations by launching a pay-per-performance scheme based on the amount of domo $ generated around a business and by expanding our reporting, tracking, and branding features of the website and corresponding concierge services. (Concierge is what Citydomo calls its business development staff because they aren’t just selling the site to our clients, they are helping to educate the businesses on our tools and mold the businesses image online)

What are some of Citydomo’s plans ahead?

Citydomo is pushing hard to continue partnering with businesses around the Taipei area. To date we have 60 business partners and we would like to expand that to 350 by the end of the year.

Our next big push of features will be to support the businesses’ needs. These include the ability to interact with leads, detailed reporting capabilities, and additional tools to manage and sculpt their brand on Citydomo.com. Our other big initiative will be to begin releasing the mobile versions of Citydomo that will allow users to write reviews, learn about businesses and their events and specials, and earn domo $ while on the go.

Citydomo's Co-founders, Kevin and Joe. Photo: Citydomo

What would you mainly be looking for at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace?

We are mainly looking for exposure through the Echelon 2012 market place. This is our first big coming out to the world and we would like everyone to know about the great work our staff is doing on the ground in Taipei, building up the Citydomo brand and product.

While we are opening lines of communication with potential investors in Taiwan, we are looking forward to meet some other international investors in the event who are interested in our product and believe in Citydomo’s business model.

Citydomo will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched their product at the Taiwan Satellite in April.

Photo: Mashable

From getting updated with the latest news, watching viral videos, to getting connected with online friends through popular social networks, Joanna Yeo talks about her personal experience with one of the world’s most famous social networking site.

Being a fairly  heavy consumer of online content, I have to admit that I wouldn’t have been as well connected to the world if not for the internet. And if you are like me, you might have probably noticed the recent surge of internet companies adopting the use of Facebook Apps and Facebook Timeline Apps.

Facebook Open Graph

I was at F8 Singapore Developer Conference last October, 2011 when Facebook introduced the Facebook Open Graph to the entrepreneur and developer community here in Singapore.  The Facebook Open Graph was a move to increase engagement between third party web sites, pages and in particular, apps (Facebook apps and Timeline Apps) to the already well established community on the most popular social network. It was fascinating to see how companies can leverage on this to increase user activity on their sites and third-party apps with a range of verbs beyond ‘Like’, ‘Share’ and comment through the integration with Facebook. Since the announcement of the new Facebook Open Graph, many companies have created Facebook Apps that can be added to user’s timeline. This means that every activity of that the user does on the app or the company’s site will be updated in real-time on the app activity feed on the user’s Facebook timeline, news feed and ticker.

Facebook apps and Timeline

It was all good in the beginning when early adopters such as news sites  (Yahoo news, Huffington Post, the Guardian and Washington Post Social Reader) created third-party apps. People could see what their friends were reading and if interesting enough, they will be prompted to click and read the article.

Initially, I found the feature very useful in providing latest news updates through the newsfeed updates of what my friends have read. But, personal experiences proved to be short of enjoyable. News app vendors would update my passive activities on my timeline, newsfeed and ticker. I use ‘passive’ here as reading an article isn’t so much of an active activity as compared to clicking on a ‘Like’ button or commenting on a post.  But as more and more companies jump onto the Facebook App bandwagon, the Facebook integration move appears to have to backfired.

Privacy of Internet Activity Compromised

It is in the recent months that the effects of Facebook Open Graph is finally manifesting. In addition to news apps, other third-party websites like Spotify, Social cam, Dailymotion and even Quora have jumped onto the Facebook app bandwagon. I am pretty sure more companies will be inclined to creating app versions of their sites with Facebook’s push of  the new App Center.

My Facebook experience has been very enjoyable thus far. But, this experience has recently been compromised by the invasion of privacy brought about by Facebook apps. Timeline apps, to be more specific. Here’s why:

1. Ridiculous information retrieval required

The app vendor, be it  for Facebook app, game app or timeline app, can set the information access required and types of activities that the can be posted on the user’s behalf. Before agreeing to use an app, these information are available to the user for a permission to access.

Game apps are good examples of Facebook apps that intrude into user’s privacy in terms of: 1. Information access and 2. manipulating user’s Facebook account. Take The Sims Social for example, the following is what the app requires:

“This app may post on your behalf, including your high scores, achievements your earned and more.”

Opt for ‘Only Me’ when Facebook app gives the option of letting you choose who can see posts that the app makes for you.

2. Passive activity outside of Facebook are updated on Timeline

Before the introduction of the latest Facebook Open Graph, only active activity such as a ‘Like’, Share or a comment on third-party sites outside of Facebook will be reflected on the newsfeed and wall. But now, passive activities such as watching a video on Dailymotion or reading an article on the The Independent are also being updated onto my timeline activity in real-time.

App vendors should understand the difference between consuming and contributing to an internet content. When one views, listens or reads an internet content, the person is not doing it for anyone’s benefit. However, when a user performs an active action, say ‘Like’ or comment, he is giving the content contributor affirmation and is completely aware that the activity performed is linked to Facebook and thus, will be reflected on the newsfeed and timeline.

Lately, I have also tried avoiding being tracked of what I read on the Facebook news app by googling the title of the article in the internet. This method has worked pretty well until recently – See the next point.

Dailymotion, Yelp and The Independent. These are just some of the many sites that auto-logs users in with Facebook connect.

Auto-login to The Independent with Facebook

Once logged into Facebook, user activity on the site would be documented onto timeline and newsfeed (this is based on the type of timeline verbs that the app vendor has incorporated) without the user’s prior consent.

These underhand methods of not informing users about their integration with Facebook really creeps me out. It’s like having our every action watched by the web.  (maybe I’m exaggerating a little here). But, more often than not, there is an increasing self-awareness of what I am doing online and whether I am logged into to the third-party website with Facebook.

Looks like opting for manual sign up on a site instead of logging into Facebook will not be much of a solution to avoid having online privacy compromised.

Privacy issues re-looked

I am guessing these third party apps are getting the hint that their users do not welcome the idea of having their internet activity being tracked and publicized. For instance, Yelp makes it transparent to users that they are logged in through Facebook Connect. Yelp also teaches users how to opt-out of Facebook Connect and instant personalization.

So, here’s the deal. I have developed a love-hate relationship. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying I hate Facebook. Facebook has served me well in connecting and reconnecting me to the people I have come in contact with over the years as well as keeping me updated with current affairs. App vendors, however, should be more transparent about their Facebook integration and also choice of timeline verbs to avoid having people undergo that off-putting experience i went through.

Hugh Mason (Co-founder of JFDI Asia) Speaker at Echelon 2012

A successful entrepreneur, mentor and investor, Hugh Mason co-founded The Joyful Frog Digital Incubator (JFDI.Asia). It is an incubator that connects people, communities and cash to form innovative digital companies. JFDI’s customers are early stage investors and its focus is on mobile applications made in Asia, for Asia. He will joining the panel on Incubation at Echelon 2012 alongside Danny Wirianto, Antti Ylimutka, Vincent Lauria, etc.

Following a degree in Physics, Hugh became a science TV producer on the BBC’s live primetime science show, Tomorrow’s World, that commands eight million viewers daily.

Shortly after, Hugh founded a successful independent TV production business, Invincible Films. His company won awards, including a British Academy Award nomination, that was making over 150 documentaries about science and technology for Discovery Channel, National Geographic and many other international broadcasters.

In 2001, Hugh co-founded Pembridge Partners in London to provide finance and advice to marketing, media and technology businesses. Pembridge raised or directly invested USD50 million. Hugh also mentored over 300 innovative ideas people and companies.

He relocated to Singapore  with his young family in January 2009 where he co-founded JFDI.Asia, a seed accelerator that takes groups of new digital entrepreneurs from startup to seed investment in 100 days.

Hugh’s first book, Brainfruit: Turning Creativity into Cash from East to West, was written with Mark Chong and published by McGraw Hill in November 2011.

Hugh is passionate about generating and executing ideas, translating strategy into economic growth using Transactional Analysis.  He adds most value around the strategic- and people-issues that often seem to hold back teams from achieving the success they deserve.

Hugh Mason (Co-founder of JFDI Asia) Speaker at Echelon 2012

Hugh Mason (Co-founder of JFDI Asia) is one of the awesome speakers at Echelon 2012. This tech conference is a two-day, double-track event on 11 and 12 June 2012 with over 1,100 delegates, a demo pit of up to 50 regional startups per day and various workshops. Get your tickets now!

Photo:Campaignsingapore.sg

Y&R’s ‘Spark Plug’ initiative gives office space and opportunity to collaborate to four digital startups.

Gamification startup GameMaki, DJ Nomsta, talent management company Riot Records and social media loyalty startup Squiryl are the four digital startups that will get to work alongside Y&R Singapore for the next six months.

Y&R’s global chief of staff, JJ Schmuckler, said the programme is a way of tapping into and leveraging the growing start-up market around the world.

“For us, clients are incredibly engaged [with the programme],” Schmuckler said. “Also for them, to be honest, it’s a little bit of free ideas, added value and something that comes on top of the day-to-day of what they are expecting.

“It’s more than just story-boarding or campaign ideas, it’s something on top that’s a really interesting added value.”

The initiative will begin in Singapore this month before being expanded to Indonesia, Thailand, China and India.

Builk at an exhibition event. Photo: Builk Asia

Builk Asia is a Thai startup that targets the construction industry with an interesting business model for their product.

I caught up with Patai to find out more about the company and their plans ahead for Builk Asia.

Can you share with us you and your team’s background?

Builk Asia Co., Ltd. started in 2009 with a team of founders made up of civil engineers with 10 years experiences in construction and running our own construction business. The main team is joined with two computer engineers who have developed construction-specific ERP for large construction businesses for more than five years. Then, it’s the combination of construction and programming

How did the idea for Builk came about?

The Thailand construction industry is quite big, with over US$30 billion spent per year. This figure is continuously growing.There are more than 80,000 registered companies in the construction business category.

We have been in the construction IT business since 2005, and implemented our Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to more than 200 leading construction firms in Thailand. Thousands of SMEs contractors want the management tools for their business but cannot afford the cost that comes with it.

Initially, we want to develop Software as a Service (SaaS) for small contractors using a Freemium model. But, we had change our mind while developing our business plan. We found out that there is a huge marketing budget for construction materials and related services, mostly spending offline. We believe that just like what had happened for the other industries over the past few years, a shift from offline to online can also be applied to the construction industry.

We want to create a professional networking site that gathers construction information, much like how social networking works on our daily lives. But, it is business-to-business (B2B) and industry-specific. We can see construction projects/ products, people using the social network and become the effective online media for the advertisers.

So, we decided to offer an all-free SaaS with an ad-support model. Our passion is to drive construction industry forward, from the bottom of the pyramid. This is done through offering free SaaS and creating a community of construction business, sharing of knowledge and developing SMEs in the construction industry.

Builk's office. Photo: Builk Asia

What is Builk’s user acquisition strategy and how does the service aim to generate revenue from users?

Up till now, we target on innovative SMEs contractors in Thailand. We have also partnered with construction-related organizations, university and sponsors  to hold events, seminars and trainings to acquire a new group of innovators to become our frequent users.

There is no pricing plan for our users, the service is available for free. Most of our revenue are generated from sponsorships, premium sponsors and side banner placement. Some of our revenue portion comes from research, marketing research and survey targeted on construction industry, as we are one of the reliable and active sources of construction information.

Tell us more about the construction sector in Thailand that Builk is targeting ?

Our model is a multi-side platform, traffic and construction-related information from users, that will lead to generating revenue through advertisements. We target 80,000 construction businesses in Thailand from medium segment down to the bottom of the pyramid as our users.

Launched in the middle of 2010, we now have 4,300 users from 1,300 companies that are working on 2,000+ construction projects (we consider them as the innovators). They are working on their projects worth more than US$150 million with purchasing power more nearly US$10 million a month.

Advertising expenditure for construction industry in Thailand is worth around US$50 million per year. The online portion is increasing at more than 10 percent a year. And the choice of online media in construction industry is limited to the industry’s news websites and online construction directories. The potential for Builk lies in our growing repeated traffic and longer usage times, because our users are working online, ordering, invoicing, controlling cost and quality of their construction projects on Builk everyday from 9-5. Our construction information is live from our users.

For revenue target, we will have total number of 10 premium sponsors by the end of this year. With the research programs we have been funded with, our revenue will be around USD100,000 this year.

Now, we are developing the next version of Builk.com that expands our target to construction project owners and non-construction professions who are looking for construction services and products and relationship functions to facilitate their business activities. This is expected to launch in Q4 of 2012.

The Builk team. Photo: Builk Asia

What would you mainly be looking for at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace?

Builk is a small company, but we have proven its potential in the Thailand market. I want to expand this model to other ASEAN countries for the upcoming ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) 2015. Construction services and materials can freely flow over to other ASEAN countries. Construction information will become more valuable.

Industry-specific B2B applications, like Builk.com, are different from the booming social or lifestyle applications. I need partnerships for these target markets: Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Philippines to help in localizing the product and create a construction community in their territories and get connected.

For investments, we have a plan to develop the whole construction information chain from pre-construction to post-construction. If we can have an interested investor on board, we can gear up our plan and get ready for regional market faster.

Builk will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched their product at the Vietnam Satellite in April.

Photo: aptito.com

Black Box’s recent study shows some interesting consumer trends among Singaporean mobile users.

With an increasingly vibrant smartphone landscape, Singapore is fast becoming the most mobile-saavy population in the South-east Asia region. The smartphone ecosystem in Singapore has also grown to be incredibly sophisticated, leading to telcos and consumers brands watching the smartphone trend more closely than before.

A recent study condudcted by Black Box between 500 Singaporeans presents comprehensive findings on smartphone penetrations, dominant brands, telcos, 3G usage and customer satisfaction.

Singaporean Smartphone Ownership

Out of the 500 who were surveyed, 88% owned smartphones. Those aged 25-39 years had the highest levels of smartphone ownership at 92%, whereas those aged 55 and above had the second highest levels of percentage at 83%.

Amongst all these smartphone owners, the iPhone is a market giant at 73% share. Despite Samsung’s recent rise as the world’s number 1 handset maker, Andriod handsets still lag behind at 17%. Followed by other type of smartphones (Blackberry, Symbian, Windows Mobile) capturing only 8% of the market.

Demographics of Smartphone Owners

An interesting finding noted that there was a spike in smartphone ownership amongst consumers who possessed $8-$12k monthly household income and those under senior management.

Out of the 73% who used iPhones, 82% of them belonged affluent heartlanders living in HDB 5 room flats and Executive Condominiums. 77% of those using iPhones were also found to be females.

Out of the 17% who use Andriod-based phones, 23% of them belonged to those who lived in HDB 1-3 room flats. 23% of them were also of 55 years old and above.

Telco Smartphone Subscription

With 3G subscriptions taking up 75% of all subscription, Singtel, Starhub and M1 have been fighting to get a significnat share of the lucrative smartphone market. Singtel stands as the dominant player at 42%, while Starhub and M1 have 33% and 25% or market share respectively.

Demographics of Telcos Subscribers

Findings have shown that Singtel successfully captured the youth and higher affluent market with 49% of users possessing $8-$12k monthly household income and 55% of users aged 24 and below.

M1 and Starhub showed more success amongst heartland Singaporeans. 34% of M1 users lived in HDB 1-3 room flats and 35% of them have professional qualifications.

40% of Starhub users lived in HDB 4 room flats and 41% of them only had a secondary education and below.

User Satisfaction

Participants were also asked to rate five features of telco services that there were most unhappy about.  These five features were current pricing plans, customer service, terms and conditions of phone contract, 3G reception and speed, and oversease data roaming charges.

M1 stood with the highest rating for customer service at 40% of customers giving them an excellent rating of 7-10. Starhub scored the worst of its 3G reception, with 37% of customers giving them an unperforming rating of 0-3.

However, 49% of all the smartphone owners surveyed indicated that they were most unhappy about the cost of overseas roaming data.

Wi-fi vs 3G networks Usage

Results of the difference between time allocated on Wi-fi and 3G networks usage were not significant. Most smartphone users spent 55% of their time on 3G usage and 45% on Wi-fi.

It’s no surprise that Wi-Fi usage is so popular. Both iPhone and Android users are widely encouraged to use Wi-Fi over 3G networks for longer battery life and faster connection speeds.

58% of those who spent longer on 3G networks were more likely to rate their 3G connections as less than satisfactory.

For further details about the survey findings, go to http://www.blackbox.com.sg/yka-smartphones-in-singapore/

Simon Newstead (CEO of Frenzoo) Speaker at Echelon 2012

Simon Newstead, CEO of Frenzoo, a startup creating a new class of 3D lifestyle and fashion games for women. Their apps, include the popular Me Girl™ series of mobile games (www.megirl.com), are based on its flexible and innovative avatar technology platform that brings characters to life. Simon is one of the awesome speakers at Echelon 2012.

Before Frenzoo, Simon has worked many late nights living in labs at Telstra to help design 2nd generation broadband infrastructure (DSL network) as a young engineer.

After which, he joined Juniper Networks, the upstart competitor to Cisco where he was leading the Emerging Technologies team for Asia, dealing with customers in Korea and Japan through to emerging countries like India and Vietnam.

Frenzoo is a startup creating a new class of 3D lifestyle and fashion games for women.Their apps, including the popular Me Girl™ series of mobile games (www.megirl.com), are based on their flexible and innovative avatar technology platform that brings characters to life.

Simon Newstead (CEO of Frenzoo) Speaker at Echelon 2012

Last month, Frenzoo received US $1 million in new seed funding from investors based in Asia, Europe and the United States.

Investors include:

• Efficient Corporate, the investment vehicle of Hong Kong-based angel investor Tytus Michalski;
• Siemer Ventures, an early-stage, cross-border venture firm with offices in Los Angeles and Asia;
• K5 Ventures, a pan Europe- and Asia-based group focused on media and commerce;
• Metaverse Services, a China-based leader in game content creation.

With the recent funding round, could you update us on Frenzoo’s plans for the next 6 months?

We plan to go to market with our mobile lifestyle games and scale up our user base and revenues.We’re also looking to expand into local markets in Asia as well as global English speaking markets.

Could you share with us your experience on your fundraising and tips on how startups can approach their next funding round?

The key thing is to first build something that people love. Metrics and traction speak for itself, and maks fundraising a much more pleasant experience!  Once you have a great product, make sure you’re presenting it in its best light – practice your pitch and get out and network to find opportunities.

Simon Newstead (CEO of Frenzoo) Speaker at Echelon 2012

How is the startup scene in Hong Kong maturing and what else is needed to spur the growth?

It’s growing a lot, particularly in the last couple of years.  There is a baseline of government support and a number of incubators and accelerators popping up to help startups get off the ground.

Where do you think 3D technology is heading in the next couple of years?

We’ll see it used even more in mobile consumer applications, whether functional (maps/fitting room etc) or entertainment (games/recreations of celebs etc)

Simon Newstead (CEO of Frenzoo) is one of the awesome speakers at Echelon 2012. This tech conference is a two-day, double-track event on 11 and 12 June 2012 with over 1,100 delegates, a demo pit of up to 50 regional startups per day and various workshops. Get your tickets now!

GMIC sees Dou Dou winning G-Startup and leading Internet companies share the importance of mobile platforms in Asia.

The Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) is an annual three-day conference organized by the Great Wall Club of China. GMIC is now in its fourth year and is growing from strength to strength. The conference recorded an attendance of 5100 participants and with almost a quarter of that from international participants.

Having spoken to many participants, the general sense is the conference is one of the most well organized events in the tech sector of China. It is largely unique because of its international representation of participants as well besides the participation of a good mix of Chinese startups and large internet players.

The conference is divided into three trackes, i.e. the Main Stage keynote presentations, the G-startup track and the AppSpace track.  The Main Stage keynotes are largely invited speakers from a mixture of Chinese and international players. Notably some speakers of the Main Stage included Pony Ma, founder & CEO of Tencent, Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, and Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote.

Meanwhile the G-Startup was a startup contest that saw various international and Chinese players pitching to a panel of international judges from various investment and startup background. There was an ongoing track on various topics organized in forum format, mostly on topics related starting up.

For the AppSpace track, there were experience-sharing sessions from successful mobile Internet firms and also presentation of platforms by the  more established platform players and content aggregators.

One of the key observation points from the GMIC conference is that it is obvious that the next frontier for the Chinese Internet players are the mobile Internet and the war has already arrived. Tencent and Sina were both going all out  to show in style and might their ambitious plan to create their own mobile Internet eco-system. Their platform initiatives include publishing roles that they openly court games and content startups to work with. In one of keynote presentation, Taobao, the leading Internet auction player in China, shared that as much as 55 percent of their daily traffic comes from a mobile device now.  The message was overwhelmingly clear and loud … the mobile Internet is now as important as the Web.

On the G-Startup front, Chinese startup DouDou won the first place while Korean startup Between* won the second place. DouDou is a parents and teachers communication app that facilitate interactive communications between the parties with regards to the child’s development in school. Between* is a messaging and photo-sharing app for couples. Between* has recorded more than 750,000 users since launch and is about to test its revenue model soon. Notably both winners have simple concepts, but their products are well designed and well thought of.  The judges must have had a lot of real world experience to realize that it is mostly about execution when it comes to startups that could make it versus those that couldn’t.

In the conference venue, notably some of the international companies that had struck partnership with Chinese companies are also making their presence felt. Halfbrick, the Australia-based maker of the successful Fruit Ninja game has set its eyes on the Chinese market.  Flipboard, the magazine-styled news and social feed app has a ongoing strategy to focus its first international expansion in China. Founder and CEO of Flipboard Mike McCue was the founder and CEO of Tellme Networks, a voice portal that was sold to Microsoft for US$800 million back in 2007. It will be interesting to see where Flipboard intends to go with their simple but intuitive app.

About Kin Wai, Lau

Kin Wai is a serial entrepreneur, investor and corporate advisor.  Juggling among a few roles he actively pursues, he is currently a partner at Fatfish Medialab, a Singapore based mobile app incubator.

Photo: wordsinspace.net

Mastercard’s latest survey on the global mobile payment landscape reveals trends that Asian consumers are open to mobile payments.

Mobile payment is gaining popularity for both consumers and businesses. On the one hand, tech companies are coming up with interesting payment gadgets and technology such as Square, Paypal Here and Near Field Communication (NFC) to facilitate better and ‘safer’ transactions on the mobile gateway. On the other hand, mobile customers are beginning to open up to the new idea of transactions on-the-go.

Mastercard did a recent survey on the global mobile payment landscape and revealed surprising findings on mobile payment readiness in 34 countries. (source: Mastercard)

Using six metrics: consumer readiness, environment, financial services, infrastructure, mobile commerce cluster and regulation, Mastercard has come up a Mobile Payment Readiness Index (MPRI) that measures the level of readiness for mobile payment adoption on a scale of 1 to 100 in each country. The data is also a cumulation of factors based on person to person (P2P), mobile e-commerce (mCommerce), and mobile payments at the point of sale (POS).

Source: Mastercard

Surprisingly, Singapore tops the list for  being the most ready  country in consumer acceptance of mobile payment with an MPRI of 45.6. Following closely behind is Canada and the United States with 42.0 and 41.4 respectively.

Consumer readiness. Kenya tops the other 33 countries in terms of existing consumer readiness towards the adoption of mobile. Due to popularity of P2P services, 89% of Kenyans are familiar with mobile payments and 68% of them make mobile P2P transactions frequently.

Environment. In the environment component, the United States leads the rest with as a result of high household expenditure per capita of around $33,000 as compared to the Index average of approximately $11,000. Other countries that scored well include the United Arab Emirates (UAE), France and Canada.

Financial services. Given Japan’s well-developed finance sector, the country leads the financial component. Statistics also reveal that the average Japanese holds 15 payment cards.

Infrastructures. Singapore leads this component with a mobile penetration index that is higher than the average at 100% of the population covered by a mobile network. Following closely behind is China, with the highest number of mobile phones of any country in the index at a total of 859,000,000 mobile phone subscriptions.

Mobile commerce cluster. With great collaboration with banks, mobile networks and the government, Canada is in the lead for this component. Japan follows closely behind.

Regulation. Well known for her efficient regulatory system, Singapore tops the other countries in the Regulation Component. Singapore’s high score rated at 84 out of 100 is a result of the cumulative effects of its well-developed laws relating to ICT.

Federico Folcia (CEO & Co-founder of Roomorama.com) Speaker at Echelon 2012

Federico Folcia is a Italian entrepreneur who loves to travel but sick of hostels and dingy budget hotels and the typical cookie-cutter hotel rooms. Enter the idea of matching travelers for alternatives to hotels for residential accommodations with a local flavour, Roomorama.

Together with his partner, Jia En Teo, Roomorama.com enables anyone to rent out their property to travelers looking for short-term stays. He will be speaking about travel in a panel discussion at Echelon 2012 this June.

“We launched Roomorama out of our own needs when traveling. My partner and I love to travel but we were tired of hostels and dinky budget hotels. However, we didn’t want the typical cookie-cutter chains and we couldn’t always afford the exclusive boutique hotels either. We were always looking for options that were not only value-for-money, but that would also offer a local flavour.

At the same time, we were renting out our own place to travellers while we were away, and making good money doing so. We realised that this was a gap in the market that needed to be filled of matching travellers looking for alternatives to hotels with the owners/providers of such accommodation,” said Jia En Teo, the Co-founder of Roomorama.

There is more to travel with Roomorama

With Roomorama, New Yorkers can rent out their apartments for a few weeks – or even a few days – to visiting tourists, students, or small-business travelers. Hosts can upload photos, manage inquiries and reservations, and collect payment through the site. It is the perfect way to make back some rent money while you are on vacation yourself.

Roomorama is a leader in short-term rentals, with listings in over 500 destinations around the world. With a secure and streamlined transaction process, Roomorama makes it easy for travelers to find and book affordable accommodation from locals.

Roomorama has 35,000 properties worldwide. In an interview with New Straits Time, he said, “We are pioneers in a new market and have given people confidence to rent from or to a stranger. We have enabled travellers to live like locals wherever they go.”

Federico Folcia (CEO & Co-founder of Roomorama.com) Speaker at Echelon 2012

Federico Folcia (CEO & Co-founder of Roomorama.com) is one of the awesome speakers at Echelon 2012. This tech conference is a two-day, double-track event on 11 and 12 June 2012 with over 1,100 delegates, a demo pit of up to 50 regional startups per day and various workshops. Get your tickets now!

The Clozette founding team. Photo: Clozette

Clozette announces their latest round of S$ 2.4 million, led by Walden International, bringing their total investments raised to S$ 3.85 million.

About a year after raising their S$ 1.45 million (about US$ 1.2 million) seed round in April of 2011, Clozette has went on to close their Series A round of S$ 2.4 million (about US $1.9 million). This latest funding round was led by Seed Ventures IV, a S$ 20 million (about US$ 16 million) fund under the Singapore National Research Foundation’s (NRF) Early Stage Venture Funding Scheme managed by Walden International.

What started off as a bootstrapped S$300,000 startup has since seen Clozette becoming a leading fashion social shopping network partnership Glam Media Japan and winning the Red Herring Top 100 Global Award 2011. Targeting the trendy and fashion forward female community in Asia, Clozette released its public portal in January of 2011, and has since evolved into a premium social shopping destination online with over 100,000 fashion and beauty items shared by users from over 100 countries.

According to founder and chief executive of Clozette, Roger Yuen, in the press release, “this funding round is a great vote of confidence in our vision to establish Clozette as Asia’s most vibrant fashion community and social shopping network, and will accelerate our international expansion plans – such as growing our Japanese platform that was launched in Japan early this year in partnership with Glam Media Japan”. Other than accelerating Clozette’s international expansion plans, the new funds will also be used to further the development of a state-of-the-art visual recognition and match engine to power the portal’s social shopping platform.

Clozette also operates GlamAsia.com and is Glam Media’s appointed advertising representative for Southeast Asia. Glam Media is one of the world’s Top 10 fashion media portals with 94 million monthly viewers in the US and more than 250 million worldwide, of which 20 million are in Asia Pacific. Some of the fashions and lifestyle brands that Clozette has worked with includes Burberry, Thomas Sabo and Club 21.

Photo:Venturebeat

The biggest piece of tech related news this weekend was that Eduardo Saverin, Co-Founder of Facebook had renounced his US Citizenship last autumn. In this article, we take a closer look.

This first part about the tax system is pretty dry, if you wish to skip it scroll to the bottom for discussion. Let’s start with a very basic comparison of the relevant points in the taxation system between Singapore and the US.

Singapore’s tax system is on a territorial basis, this means only income earned in Singapore is taxed, with a progressive personal income tax rate of up to a maximum of 20 percent, and no tax on capital gains. Capital gains is defined as “A profit from the sale of property or of an investment”. For more information check out the IRAS website.

Source:IRAS Website

The US on the other hand taxes its citizens on a worldwide basis. This exposes the individual to double taxation, so if you happen to be resident in Singapore but have US citizenship, you will be obligated to pay tax on whatever you earn to both the Singapore and US government. In addition to this, the US has a minimum of 15 percent capital gains tax, along with a higher rate of personal income tax for the higher income brackets.

As far as anyone knows, Eduardo Saverin has been resident in Singapore for more than 183 days in the last 12 month tax period, which classifies him as a Singapore Tax Resident. According to the reports, Eduardo is a Brazilian Citizen but a Singapore Resident. Because Brazil’s tax system is also on a territorial basis, he would not owe taxes on income to the Brazilian Government.

Now that we have done a bit of research and our sums, lets think about this for a minute.

Pretty much all over the internet, there have been comments criticizing him for trying to escape those taxes even though he “owes” his success to the US. My view is that, yes, that would be true only if you consider the US Government a spectacularly good allocator of funds. If Eduardo was an ordinary citizen with an average income, it is doubtful he would have either the ability or the time to allocate the funds in such a way to make a huge impact on society at large. However, lets keep in mind that firstly, Eduardo is a professional investor, and much like Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs et al who were almost obsessive about minimizing taxes, he probably believes he is a better allocator of funds than the government. I tend to agree with this. The US government is very unlikely to invest in early stage startups that will eventually hire people and generate taxes for example.

My second thought on the issue is global competitiveness. Let’s face it, high net worth individuals are hot property. Every government in their right mind wants them to be a resident because of the impact they could have on the economy. I think Eduardo giving up his US Citizenship is going to be good for the US in the long run due to the publicity involved. There were thousands of high net worth US Citizens who gave up their Citizenship in the same list as Eduardo, but because Facebook is such a big deal, this hits the news hard. Hopefully the publicity will effect some policy changes to make the US more attractive.

Photo: Slashgear

If you were unable to make it to the Blackberry World Conference in Orlando earlier this month, then Research in Motion is bringing a part of the conference to you. The following are the dates for the Asia Pacific region:

July 4- Delhi, India

July 6- Beijing, China

July 9- Singapore

July 10- Jakarta, Indonesia

July 12- Sydney, Australia

The Snapshock Team. Photo:Snapshock

Experience being a reporter or paparazzi with Snapshock, the latest mobile app that allows users to broadcast photos live through their mobile phones.

Other than real time event broadcast, the app offers event check-ins and boasts of a new-patented technology that integrates real-time 2D images to 3D. Snapshock has covered many different events but specializes in covering live wedding events.

Innovators of this dynamic and creative mobile app comprise of a trio, Peter Choi, Data Fok and Kin Tang.

e27 talks to Peter Choi, to find out more about Snapshock and their plans for Echelon 2012 Sartup Marketplace.

How did the idea of Snapshock come about? Were wedding couples the initial target market?

When iPad 2 was launched, the whole world was concerned if Steve Jobs was going to be on stage at that very moment. On top of mere text based tweets, there’s a clear demand of live photos broadcast centralized for a specific event.

Apart from that, our team has also discovered other prominent problems such as having to share photos in the old-fashioned way amongst a group of friends. (I.e. copying via USB drive, DVD etc.) Sometimes we may also want to share large set of photos, but not to facebook given that one may not be personally attached to the photos. Also, we thought that it’d be a great idea if participants or helpers at a wedding banquest could be more engaged and take photos of the guests and show it live on a big projector screen.

There are more than 10 millions weddings happening globally every year. Thus weddings became our initial target market given that it is huge and recurrent. It also helped that the industry was our expertise since I am also running another startup, Hiwave Dry Seafood, specializing in wedding gifts services, with existing partnership and customer base.

In fact Snapshock was test launched in my own wedding banquet in March.

The Snapshock office. Photo: Snapshock

How did you and the two team members meet and work together on this startup?

We were high school classmates and have known each another for over 10 years. The team was formed in 2008 and Snapshock was pivoted three times. The current product is our fourth version.

Photo sharing was our original concept and previous products included photo album hosting, photos aggregation, photo slideshows, etc. The current Snapshock solution has been proven to be the most comprehensive and our team has definitely matured much more in terms of market analysis throughout the process.

How is the traction for Snapshock like and what are some of the feedback you’ve gotten from users so far?

Snapshock has currently more than 10,000 downloads. End users have given us a lot of feature related feedback  that is leading us to our subsequent modification in user experience and program flow. Corporate customers also made certain suggestions from the business perspective. We may make slight adjustments to our pricing and business model in the near future.

Snapshock is only available on iPhone now while the Android application will be coming soon.

Discussions at the Snapshock office. Photo: Snapshock

What are some of Snapshock’s expansion plans? E.g. partnerships, feature developments, market expansion, etc.

Current partners of Snapshock include wedding studios, wedding planners and hotels. In the future, we want to target other event types including PR firms, government departments and other businesses.

In terms of features, Snapshock will start to include video uploading and streaming. We are also researching to integrate 2D to 3D conversion technology to allow normal mobile phones to take 3D photos through our platform.

Snapshock sees Hong Kong as our pilot market and will gradually expand globally.

How has Snapshock strategized these expansion plans since the photo app market is very saturated?

With Instagram and other photo apps are already in place, we crafted our positioning very carefully. Snapshock is more like an events app rather than a photo app. Our customers are event organizers instead of photographers, and people will use Snapshock for on-purpose photography instead of leisure photography.

Upcoming new features for Snapshock will all be related to events. While it is possible Snapshock may cross with social networking arena in the future, our development pace will be carefully calculated to retain customer acceptance and to out run potential competitors.

Who or what would you be looking for at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace? (investments, partnerships, expansion, etc.)

Investments and partnerships will be our primary concerns. Coming from Hong Kong, we are also eager to understand more about the Singapore startup ecosystem. We have learnt something and built some network in Taiwan satellites and we anticipate to leverage on that even more in Singapore.

Snapshock will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace in June.