The Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration, in cooperation with AIBI and SGU is holding the International Business Forum on Developing Co-Incubation in the Asia Pacific Region.

The goals of the forum are the following:

• To increase the awareness and capacity of business incubator managers in the Asia Pacific on co-incubation program.
• To strengthen the Asia Pacific business incubator network in facilitating the co-incubation program.
• To create business matching among incubatees and interested party as partners and or customers.
• To understand Indoneisan market and environment.



• Date: June 11 to 13, 2013
• Time: 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM
• Location: Hotel Banana Inn, Bandung, Indonesia
• Registration Link: http://www.apco-incubation2013.com/register.html

The post [Indonesia] International Business Forum appeared first on e27.

Lately, we have been talking quite a bit about the online fashion industry. There was that keynote session with Zalora, TheOutNet and Planet Retail at Asia Fashion Summit 2013. And then we spoke to Infinit Closet and Fashfix about the up and coming trend of swapping clothes among consumers.

And then now, there’s Styleprofile, which aims to bridge the gap between social and commerce. They are a web-based solution that allows users — predominantly female — to come up with scrapbook-esque fashion guides on the site itself. Furthermore, all items available on the catalogues can be bought off respective merchant sites. They have made sure that only products available for purchase and shipping will be shown.

The Styleprofile co-founding team consists of Liling Ong, Roland Felber and Manuel Gruber. Interestingly, they all came from different walks of life with a combination of legal, consulting and technical backgrounds. Liling shared that it was their common network that brought them together — their interest in the fashion industry. Singapore-based, their co-founding team is also strongly supported by Alps Ventures, with Markus Pichler being the lead partner on this project.

Social and commerce have to mix

Search #ootd on Instagram and you will see nearly five million photos generated by real users. It stands for “outfit of the day”, a phrase used by many to show off their fashion styles.

While women love communicating with their friends about their style and purchases, there was a lack of resources in the online fashion arena for them to utilize, especially in Asia. Quite quickly, after much research of course, the Styleprofile team realized that they had to build a product with a strong social element to it.

Just a few days ago, on May 15, Styleprofile launched with their classy black-and-white design. They aim to reach 50,000 registered users in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia by the end of August 2013. They are targeting Asian ladies from the 16 to 35 age group to, in some way, democratize the way people look at fashion and provide a platform where users feel comfortable experimenting and discovering what they truly love.

Read also: Ministry of Retail: Be willing to learn, differentiate yourself

Via their outfit builder, Liling shared that users will be able create looks online, save these products and outfits and even remix someone else’s outfit, should they think they have a better way of styling the products. Each user’s style profile will then showcase their favorite products and outfits, just like an online style journal. She said, The beauty of the platform is its interactive nature that provides the perfect foundation for users to discuss fashion, collaborate and build their ideal style profile.”

Though it is generally rather difficult to encourage people to use and associate themselves with a website and brand that is new and unfamiliar to them, Styleprofile is overcoming that challenge with support and partner programs with international online stores like ASOS, Resolve Clothing, Forever 21 and local bloggers.

Liling also thanked her advisor, Kai Herzberger, who has been in the fashion and lifestyle e-commerce industry for the last decade. This allowed them to have access to the latest marketing knowledge and marketing methods that are being used in fashion, like paid marketing channels, optimizing display banners, creating viral loops or recommendation cycles to cohort models to specifically track which users were acquired through which channel and how their live cycle on the platform is.

Besides user acquisition, user engagement proves to be another challenge. Styleprofile said that they will be integrating new features that are already in development. They are also strong in collecting and encouraging new user feedback to allow improvements. “Having that personal touch and forming a good relationship with members is crucial to our success. Feedback collected is highly valued and influences our product development process. This requires incredible flexibility and response time.”

In a couple of weeks, they will be releasing their mobile app. With this, they wish to build a strong user base in said target markets and countries. Styleprofile is part of Startup Marketplace at Echelon. We have extended our early bird tickets until May 26th.Grab your tickets now to be part of Asia Pacific’s biggest startup conference coming this June 4th to 5th in Singapore.

Image Credit: Styleprofile

Featured Image Credit: Ann Ng

The post Styleprofile lets Asian ladies discover their fashion styles appeared first on e27.

Other than the amazing speakers lineup and startups, here are some of the other cool things we have prepared for you at Echelon 2013.

1. Uber – Powering your ride to Echelon 2013

To make it easier for you to attend Echelon at Max Atria, we have partnered with Uber, an on-demand private driver app that will chauffeur you to our event. All you have to do is sign up for an account on your iOS or Android device and select Max Atria as your end venue, to which the promotion is pegged. Each attendee will receive a free S$50 (about US$40) usage which they can either spend use on a single trip or split it into two trips with each having a S$25 value (about US$20).

2. Geek out with Geeks on a Plane

At Silicon Valley, one of the biggest tech celebrities is none other than Dave McClure, the founding partner of 500 Startups. Dave McClure also runs Geeks on a Plane, an invite-only tour for startups, investors, and executives to learn about burgeoning technology markets worldwide. e27 and Echelon are excited to host GOAP for their Singapore stop, and you get to meet with the GOAP VIPs at Echelon 2013. They are kind of a big deal.

3. Redbull Girls Invasion

To balance out the ying and yang of the event, we have also partnered with Redbull, who will be sending out Redbull female customer representatives to our event. If you are not much of a coffee or tea person, you can also enjoy Redbull at Echelon.

4. Tech Alley – Echelon’s networking and exhibition space

Bigger and awesomer than last year, Echelon 2013 will feature 100 companies: 50 from the startup marketplace, and another 50 at our whole new tech alley. Companies at tech alley will make up of our past Echelon alumni as well as companies in their growth stage. Some of these companies include Elance, Piktochart, Mergepay, Netizen Testing, NEO, Deloitte and many more. Not only can you mingle with new startups at our startup marketplace, companies in our tech alley might also present partnership and collaboration opportunities to your company. You can check out the full company listing here.

5. Congregation of major telcos

We have seen how major telcos are playing active roles in shaping the startup ecosystem around the world. While we always read about their activity and they might seem far out of reach, we want to help change that mentality. We are bringing the major telcos around the region to you at Echelon 2013 where you can interact with them. Connect with SingTel Innov8 (Singapore), Optus Innov8 (Australia), telkomsel (Indonesia), Kickstart Ventures (Phillipines, and supported by Globe) as well as AIS the Startup (Thailand). You can gain access to key decision makers and any potential collaborations with these players means that you will have access to millions of subscribers around the region.

6. New career opportunities with Infocomm Investment’s portfolio and supported companies

For attendees exploring new job opportunities, Infocomm Investment is setting up a pavilion for their portfolio and supported companies. There will be more than 10 companies with interesting job openings which you can explore and find out more. Who knows, you might just find your next big jump in your career at Echelon 2013.

7. Great lineup of speakers and startups

Echelon has always been known for our content and startups. This year, we have more than 50 speakers, including the outspoken Dave McClure of 500 Startups, Sahil Lavingia, early employee of Pinterest and founder of Gumroad, Ernest Kim of 37Signals, and many more. We have also travelled extensively around the region on the hunt for the best Asia startups, and we believed we have found them. Our top 10 pitching startups at Echelon is our most regional lineup yet.

8. Doob Bean Bags Chill Out Corner

Similar to last year, Doob Beanbags will also be providing us with really fun beanbags where you can hang out and catch up with your friends during Echelon. Beanbags used at the event will be going at up to 60 percent off at Echelon (cash payment only).

9. Taiwan, Thailand and Korea Country Delegation Meet and Greet

Another piece of news we are really excited to be sharing with you is that our partners from Taiwan, Thailand and Korea will be flying in to attend the event in groups. The country delegations will feature key industry players, venture capitalists, as well as cutting edge startups who are all looking to explore opportunities in Southeast Asia. They are looking to connect and collaborate with various industry leaders in the region. If you do not want to miss out on connecting with them and possibly forge partnerships with them, you do not want to miss Echelon 2013. We will be releasing more information on this so do check back with us regularly.

10. InMarket Access Workshop

After travelling around the region and connecting with key players in the region, we will be running a workshop during Echelon Day 2. These workshops are country-based discussions where you get to connect with leaders from around the region. Through the workshops, expect to gain insights on how the regional market works and how you should go about expanding to the region. We will be making more announcement on these workshops on our Echelon agenda page.

11. Investor Sessions [Investors Only]

Another thing which we pride ourselves for is the quality of the startups we attract and bring to Echelon. To help our startups, we match make them to investors who are attending our event. This year, we will be having a private investor sessions where investors can purchase our recently launched Investor Pack, which gives investor access to this private session with our Echelon startups. In these sessions, investors get to meet and really understand and interact with our startups. You can find out more about the private session offered in our Echelon investor pack.

12. Echelon Day 1 After Party

Finally, what’s a conference without an after party? This year, we will be throwing our after party on Day 1 at Club Sonar, Orchard Road. All Echelon attendees will be eligible for a 10% discount on all drinks purchases as long as you show your Echelon badge.

We are still be adding on to this list so that you can have the most exciting and enjoyable experience at Echelon 2013.

We believe that this will be our best Echelon yet.

Have you grabbed your early bird tickets for Asia’s leading technology conference yet?

The post Things to look out for at Echelon 2013, our best Echelon yet appeared first on e27.

Deals sites are growing strong in the Philippines. Is there enough space in this country of 33.6 million Internet users for three major providers of group buying, flash deals and discounts? We get the chance to talk to Ralph Manalo Wunsch, founder of MetroDeal, on his thoughts and insights on the e-commerce industry.

Ralph keynoted at the Echelon 2013 Philippines Satellite this April, where he shared on his journey as a startup founder, bootstrapping MetroDeal from “zero to the no. 1 ecommerce website in the Philippines.” The Filipino Austrian said that he banked on his experience with Google Austria’s deals website DailyDeal in launching MetroDeal locally. However, he had to bootstrap his way to success, with only US$2,000 in his pocket and even launching the MetroDeal site from a fastfood WiFi hotspot because connection was faster there.

MetroDeal is now the 21st most visited website in the Philippines, ahead of news websites, other e-commerce players and job sites, among others. The team is looking toward more engagement in the travel and mobile space, seeing these as areas for growth.

It all started when …

Ralph told e27 that he has always had a penchant for entrepreneurship since youth. “I was always interested in entrepreneurship, I was 14 when I started my own buy and sell business on eBay and learned the 101 of online selling,” he shared. With MetroDeal, the idea was to service both supply and demand sides of the equation. Ralph wanted to provide customers the “best ways to explore their city and to try out new things while spending less and to give businesses a way to promote themselves with immediate results.”

When MetroDeal launched in 2011, deals sites were still trial-and-error, Ralph said, but his experience with DailyDeal in Austria taught him “the ins and outs of deals, how they should be structured and how they bring the best benefits for both businesses and customers.”

There were challenges along the way, though, such as typical ones: “a lot of nay-sayers who would question why one would even take up the challenge, that it would never work.” Ralph advises that he learned not to listen to everyone, but to instead “not listen to every advice and comment but rather to have a straight line and strategy, and execute it with determination.”

“The question that you would have to ask yourself ultimately in the future is “why was I not the one who invented/launched this or that” and I try to do all my projects in a way so that I don’t have to ask myself that question in the future.” – Ralph Wunsch, CEO of MetroDeal

On talent and trust

Part of the startup founder’s journey is meeting people along the way — some of whom you would hire as partners, co-founders or employees. Ralph says that an initial interview would not be enough to determine whether someone is a good fit. “Many people only show their true talent once they get hands on,” he said, adding that a sense for true talent and “a good understanding of people management is a necessary requirement for a successful startup environment.”

Ralph advises to focus on trust. “When I hired my first employees I made sure that a trust level is given – today there are more than 50 employees working at MetroDeal.”

Traveling to the future

As for future plans, Ralph shared that MetroDeal is looking to improve its mobile presence. Twenty percent of its users access MetroDeal from iOS devices, while 10 percent use Android. As such, “definitely there is a need to address this demand,” Ralph adds. It can be noted that the Philippines has surpassed 90 percent mobile penetration rate, with 20 percent of Filipinos accessing the Internet on their mobile phones.

Apart from building its mobile app, MetroDeal is also building a travel portal, which is a natural extension of offering deals. Ralph adds that “anything related to e-commerce is my preferred sector of engagement.”

Ralph Wunsch will be part of the e-commerce panel at Echelon this June 4th to 5th. For more of Ralph’s insights into the e-commerce and startup scene in the region, come join us at Echelon. Early bird registration lasts until May 26th.

The post Ralph Wunsch: What’s the big deal with MetroDeal? appeared first on e27.

One of the biggest problems in countries with a high population density is the transportation system, especially when it comes to finding parking spaces. For those behind the wheel, we are all too familiar with scouring the city for empty lots. Wouldn’t it be nice and convenient if we can all find parking lots which are not utilized? This is where Australia-based Divvy Parking comes in.

Divvy Parking is a peer to peer parking space rental platform. Vacant parking lots in residential areas, hotels, or offices can be listed and be rented out when they are not utilized. Since their launch in 2011, they have processed more than 50,000 booked parking days.

How big is the parking lot rental space in Australia? According to the folks at Divvy Parking, between 2006 and 2011, there were almost a million new commuters driving to work each day. Furthermore, in that period, only less than 12,000 new non-residential car spaces were constructed in major central business district areas. As demand for all-day parking exceeds supply, prices for parking lots skyrocket. Divvy Parking also told us that each month, there are more than 200,000 local Google searches for “car park”, and they are looking to tap into that market.

Read also: Drive.SG raises S$200K to make renting cars more accessible

Divvy’s revenue model is pretty straight forward: they take a small commission on all payments. The team is now exploring a transition to a B2B model to promote rapid growth. When asked about whether any legal issues will arise out of the current model, Nick Austin, CEO of Divvy Parking assured us that they have had lawyers review all aspects of the model.

Funding from Blue Chilli

With the proven business model, Divvy has also received a seed round of investment from Blue Chilli, a venture technology firm based in Sydney.

“We grew at 100% month on month until we reached our current level due to technology constraints. We are now rebuilding the site to allow scalability and have teamed up with an experienced IT firm to achieve this. We expect to launch the new site and mobile app in July 2013. The investment has allowed us to not only build a robust and scalable site and launch our mobile app, but also testing a variety of marketing strategies. This investment also gives us access to Deloitte Private (accounting service and strategic advice) and a variety of consultants from marketing to financial modeling. The Blue Chilli development team have approximately 15 developers and designers. This relationship has also given us exposure to an exciting co-working environment and various investors.” – Nick Austin, CEO of Divvy Parking

Sounds like something you need in your country? Divvy Parking will be exhibiting at our upcoming Echelon happening on 4th of June. Divvy is keen to speak to investors who sees the opportunities Divvy Parking see. Divvy Parking is also looking to connect with strategic partners who could assist in expanding into Southeast Asia and beyond.

“It would be very interesting to meet with property and transport related entities who large client / assets bases. For example entities involved in the management of commercial or residential property portfolios, or firms who represent commuters who drive, or innovative transport companies.” – Nick Austin, CEO of Divvy Parking

For the full list of exhibiting startups, please visit our Echelon page. Early bird tickets are ending this week so grab them before the deadline.

The post Divvy Parking drives P2P marketplace for parking lots in Australia appeared first on e27.

With over 100 media owners already listed in Singapore, Hong Kong, Philippines, Bangladesh, Thailand and now India, the company has been fairly successful with its entrance into the market with big Indian media owners like Bright Outdoor, Graphisads, Roshan, Midas already using the platform. It also boasts a database of over 6,000 listings.

This strategy arose because many media buyers in India, like the rest of the world, have been frustrated at the inefficient and cumbersome discovery and planning process. Unlike other industries, such as property (buy & rent), job search, or supplier sourcing, the outdoor and OOH media industry has yet to be transformed by the use of efficient online sales channels.

With the Indian advertising market booming, and “being such a large and fragmented country, we had always suspected a need for EatAds.com in India, and over the past months all the India buyers and sellers we have met here have validated this need. We’re excited to be working with Delhi-based partner to grow our user base in India, “says co-founder, Nigel Hembrow.

The  free-to-list, no commission business model will also be able to attract many more Indian media owners to the platform in the coming months.

EatAds.com team is also currently in talks with other players across the region and would be making further announcements soon. The company is growing fast with the in-house technical team looking to rebuild the site for rapid scalability. The current website is live with standard search and will be ready for more innovative buy-side and sell-side features soon.

Based on this success, they are also already in discussions for their next round of funding. Just last December, they were looking at raising US$492,000.

The post Singapore based company, EatAds enters the Indian market appeared first on e27.

Howdy!

As you know, Canada is officially open for business to the world’s startup entrepreneurs. We have been getting amazing responses since the new Startup Visa Program (@startupvisaca) was announced.

Interested and want like to know more about the program? Then join us on May 24th, 9:00-11:00 am PDT.

*LINK TO THE LIVE STREAMING WILL BE POSTED 15 MINUTES BEFORE THE EVENT*

Startup Visa Canada’s, Maura Rodgers (@maurar) and Mike Edwards (@marallo), will answer any questions you may have about the program, access to capital and building your company in Canada.

Maura is co-Founder of Strutta (@strutta) and has been building and advising startups for over 15 years. Mike is a technology entrepreneur and investor, who is presently CEO of LX Ventures and Executive Director of Vancouver’s seed accelerator GrowLab. As an experienced investor, Mike can answer your fundraising questions and share some of the things he looks for before stroking a cheque.

Event details:

• Start: Friday, 24 May, 2013 10:00 p.m.
• End: Saturday, 25 May, 2013 12:00 a.m.
• Venue : Online
• Register here
• Organizer : Startup Visa Canada

The post [Canada] Startup Visa Canada appeared first on e27.

RedDotRubyConf is the annual Ruby conference of Southeast Asia that celebrates the use of Ruby and related technologies. It’s a two day single-track event that brings together renowned international and local speakers, and this year we have a great speaker lineup, including several heavy weights from the international Ruby scene. Names like Aaron Patterson, José Valim, Jim Weirich, Steve Klabnik, Ola Bini, Akira Matsuda, Prem Sichanugrist and many more.

The theme of RDRC 2013 is help Ruby developers around the region “Level Up” and we are hopeful that the conference agenda (http://reddotrubyconf.com/schedule) will make that happen. This year, we also have more speakers from around the region, including Thailand, Philippines, Taiwan, China and Japan, and naturally participants from these region too. This will be a great opportunity to mingle around with other Ruby developers from Asia.

Event Name: RedDotRubyConf
Website: http://reddotrubyconf.com
Start Date/Time: 7 June 2013, 9am
End Date/Time: 8June 2013, 6pm
Location: Matrix, Biopolis
Registration Link: http://reddotrubyconf.com/registrations/new

The post [Singapore] RedDotRubyConf 2013 appeared first on e27.

Shashank Dixit is a successful entrepreneur and currently the CEO of Deskera Open Source. From a humble background to the CEO of a multi-million dollar software company, Shashank’s success reminds us about “from rags to riches” story but this story is written by his sheer hardworkship and the great vision of a person born with entrepreneurial instinct. Shashank went to Indian Institute of Technology in India and during his last year he conceptualized the idea of building an open source software company that would serve millions of SMEs in the world. It took him 8 years to build from that idea to Deskera, a leading enterprise open source company.

An entrepreneur at heart, Shashank loves to help and guide young entrepreneurs. Shashank believes that “it is the entrepreneur, who holds in the palm of his hand the power to change the destiny of this world”.

About Deskera: Deskera is World’s leading Open Source Enterprise Software Company that delivers Enterprise Applications like ERP, CRM, HR and Project Management on the cloud. More than 20,000 SMEs worldwide have chosen Deskera as their Enterprise Solution of choice. From Sales to Support in CRM, from Hire to Retire in HR, from Pay to Procure in ERP and from Plan to Delivery in Projects: Deskera’s Integrated Enterprise platform is Open Source and available in the Cloud.

Event details:

• Start: Friday, 31 May, 2013 06:30 p.m.
• End: Friday, 31 May, 2013 08:30 p.m.
• Venue : the Hub Singapore, 113 Somerset Road, Singapore
• Register here
• Organizer : Startup Grind

The post [Singapore] Startup grind Singapore hosts Shashank Dixit appeared first on e27.

30 May 2013

9:30am to 10:30am (India), 11:00am to 12:00pm (Bangkok, Hanoi, Jakarta), 12:00pm to 1:00pm (Beijing, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Perth, Singapore, Taipei), 1:00pm to 2:00pm (Seoul), 2:00pm to 3:00pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time), 4:00pm to 5:00pm (New Zealand Standard Time)

Getting from scale to profitability, the question is: How to run lean and continue to grow revenue? How to get to profitability? This webinar, the last installment of a four-part webinar series for startups, will focus on how to run lean. Attend this webinar to learn more about:

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) on the AWS Cloud versus on-premise infrastructure
Smart ways to lower your costs by leveraging various AWS pricing models
The six best practices for “cost aware architecting”
Who should attend:

Aspiring entrepreneurs who are planning to build a tech start-up
Startups who are interested to learn more about AWS
Startups who already use AWS but want to take it to the next level
CEOs, CTOs, and those focused on Go to Market and user growth
Engineers, developers and designers
Date and Time:

Thursday, 30 May 2013

9:30am to 10:30am (India)
11:00am to 12:00pm (Bangkok, Hanoi, Jakarta)
12:00pm to 1:00pm (Beijing, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Perth, Singapore, Taipei)
1:00pm to 2:00pm (Seoul)
2:00pm to 3:00pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time)
4:00pm to 5:00pm (New Zealand Standard Time)

The post [APAC] APAC Start-Up Webinar Series | Achieving Profitability on AWS appeared first on e27.

Globalization is one of the benefits of an increasingly connected world, although challenges can still arise. One such challenge is the transactional friction that comes with differences in language and culture. While automated applications like Google Translate can help bridge this gap with machine translation, there is no substitute for human intellect when it comes to accurately translating the varied nuances that come with each language and culture.

This is exactly the challenge that Conyac for Business is taking on. Conyac is a crowdsourced translation service that provides a platform for enterprises and end-users to have their content translated, and for multilingual individuals to provide translation services for a fee.

Their differentiator: Conyac promises turnover of translations within minutes (for short pieces). All of the work is checked by experienced and verified translators, so you are assured of quality. Naoki Yamada, founder and CEO of Japanese startup anydooR, told e27 that they have gathered translators around the world, and have matched the needs and demands of translations globally. “Our unique selling point is the price range and the quality control system. We use evaluation system between translators to keep the quality high,” he shared.

Read also: Japan’s Conyac extends social translation service to businesses

“If it is a short request like emails, you are able to get your results in 15 minutes,” assures Yamada, who says that the platform’s most popular translations involve Japanese-English, Japanese-Chinese, Japanese-Korean and English-Indonesian translations.

Scratching the translation itch

Founded in 2009, anydooR has 17 members in its team. Yamada says that the idea for a crowdsourced translation platform came about when the startup’s founders had the need for translation services coming back to Japan after studying abroad. “We noticed translation needs for individuals when we came back to Japan after studying abroad in the States, however we could not find any good solution for individuals. Therefore we started to develop this service.”

With Conyac, users are charged when they make a request for translation. The request is then seeded out to users, who get paid rewards depending on the length. Conyac takes a commission from each transaction. The platform’s main client are currently social gaming companies and e-commerce providers that need to extend their reach to foreign markets. “We are expanding our business globally,” Yamada says.

The service comes with three pricing schemes, which includes a pay-as-you-go plan, which is ideal for freelancers or occasional users who might just need translation services on a one-off basis.

Looking for the next big thing

anydooR has had three funding rounds so far: US$100,000 from Skylight Consulting, US$60,000 from Samurai Incubate and US$285,000 from United. Yamada says it the startup is seeking to raise another round at US$1.5 million to support its expansion goals. “Our goal for the next round is to gather over 100,000 Translators with a total sales of US$1 million/month.”

Conyac for Business is part of the Startup Marketplace at Echelon this June, where I will also be moderating a panel on mobile, focusing on trends and best practices from across the region. If you’d like to learn more about Conyac and the other startups that will pitch and participate, you can still grab early bird tickets at a discount.

Featured image credit: Countries and flags / Shutterstock

The post Globalization woes? Conyac for Business does human-powered translation appeared first on e27.

21 May 2013

9:30am to 10:30am (India), 11:00am to 12:00pm (Bangkok, Hanoi, Jakarta), 12:00pm to 1:00pm (Beijing, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Perth, Singapore, Taipei), 1:00pm to 2:00pm (Seoul), 2:00pm to 3:00pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time), 4:00pm to 5:00pm (New Zealand Standard Time)

This webinar, the third installment of a four-part webinar series for startups, will focus on how to get from ‘Minimum Viable Product’ (MVP) to scale. It will also explain how to deal with unpredictable demand and how to build a scalable business. Attend this webinar to learn how to:

Scale up Demand: Leverage Amazon in your Go to Market strategy with the AWS Partner Network (APN), Marketplace, and Amazon Appstore for mobile apps
Scale your Reach: Reach customers globally in minutes leveraging AWS’ global infrastructure, including regions, availability zones and edge locations
Scale your Architecture: Use a range of AWS services to build scalable architectures that cater for your first 10 million users

Who should attend:

Aspiring entrepreneurs who are planning to build a tech startup
Startups who are interested to learn more about AWS
Startups who already use AWS but want to take it to the next level
CEOs, CTOs, and those focused on Go to Market and user growth
Engineers, developers and designers
Date and Time:

Tuesday, 21 May 2013

9:30am to 10:30am (India)
11:00am to 12:00pm (Bangkok, Hanoi, Jakarta)
12:00pm to 1:00pm (Beijing, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Perth, Singapore, Taipei)
1:00pm to 2:00pm (Seoul)
2:00pm to 3:00pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time)
4:00pm to 5:00pm (New Zealand Standard Time)

The post [APAC] APAC Start-Up Webinar Series | Getting to Scale on AWS appeared first on e27.

Start-Up@Singapore is a revolutionary entrepreneurship competition in more ways than one. This year, with 1,310 participants and 467 teams and more than S$235,000 (US$187,385) worth of prizes to be given away, the 14th Start-Up@Singapore is the island’s biggest, grandest and most prestigious start-up challenge.

A total of 28 Finalists have now been shortlisted for the grand prize, and will present their business ideas at our Final Awards Ceremony on 25th May, 2013.

The event shall be graced by our Guest of Honour, Mr. Lawrence Wong, Acting Minister, Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth.

Listen to the Top 10 pitches during the Elevator Pitching session and decide the winner of the pitching prize by casting your vote. Bear witness to 28 different, unique and promising ideas during our Finalists’ Exhibition and network with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors and working professionals from the private and public sector!

Be there for this momentuous occassion!

Event Details

• Date: Saturday, 25th May 2013
• Time: 1.00pm – 3.00pm (Tea and Finalists’ Exhibition to follow)
• Venue: Stephen Riady Centre Auditorium 2 (Level 1), University Town, NUS
• Dress Code: Smart Casual
• Register now at https://www.flickevents.com/14thAwardsCeremony

(Seats are limited, so do RSVP! )

The post The 14th Start-Up@Singapore awards ceremony appeared first on e27.

PyCon SG 2013 is a three-day event from 13th to 15th June 2013 held at Republic Polytechnic. There will be many Python related talks and tutorials, targetting developers of various skill levels, as well as startup booths featuring startups using Python in their technology stack. Ticket prices start at $100 for the Early Bird (or should we say, Early Python). There will also be a student price at $50. To register, sign up at pycon.sg.

This year’s PyCon SG will be keynoted by Wes McKinney, CTO and co-founder of Lambda Foundry, Inc. From 2010 to 2012, he served as a Python consultant to hedge funds and banks while developing pandas, a widely used Python data analysis library. From 2007 to 2010, he researched global macro and credit trading strategies at AQR Capital Management. He graduated from MIT with an S.B. in Mathematics. He is on leave from the Duke University Ph.D program in Statistics. He also has a new book out Python for Data Analysis.

In addition to the talks, there will be a mix of tutorials aimed at different skill levels. Tutorial topics include: Introduction to Python 101 and Distributed Task Processing using Celery.

Lastly, for the first time in Singapore, there will also be a startup booth showcasing startups using Python in their technology stack. The founders will be on hand to talk about their startup as well as hiring opportunities. Startups include: Billpin, Plivio, Carousell and Flocations.

The full activity listing can be found on the website at pycon.sg/schedule/. For more information, visit pycon.sg.

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Perpetu is a web-based solution for users to note how they would like their online accounts to be handled after their demise.

On November 13, 2004, someone died. Well, individuals pass away every day so what’s so interesting about this one? It was a US marine named Justin Ellsworth who was fighting in Iraq. Back in the day, there was no such thing as Facebook. The 20-year-old had been receiving encouraging emails from both friends and family members and wanted to create a scrapbook when he got back. However, he never got the chance to do so. Still grieving, the father asked to access the son’s email account, but Yahoo! refused. They went to court and Mr Ellsworth was finally able to receive a CD with his son’s emails.

I didn’t find out about this by searching “justin mark ellsworth yahoo” online; Ryanne Lai had told me about it. While she was working in a law firm, she came across this particular case which led her to worry about her photographs on Flickr, blog posts dating back to 2002 and general presence on the Internet. I’m on the same page with her. What if Justin only wanted his family to see certain emails? There are too many what ifs, and people need certainty.

Ryanne shared with e27 that she had pitched the idea of Perpetu to the crowd at the very first Startup Weekend Hong Kong two years back. It was also there that she met teammate Andrea Livotto who is now the other co-founder of this brilliant solution. And they sure had a pretty good start — they won the Best User Experience Prize at Startup Weekend HK and later received a grant of US$55,000 from the local government. Furthermore, they were also the winners of Hong Kong Satellite and will be part of our Startup Marketplace at Echelon this June 4 to 6.

Perpetu is a web solution developed in Hong Kong, which allows users to handle their social networks way before their demise. They explained, “With Perpetu, you can decide what should happen to your online accounts including Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and Github, after you pass away. Perpetu also helps you carry out your last wishes, such as publishing your final words on Facebook, or handing over your photo albums on Facebook to your loved ones.”

From what I know of many Asians (I’m one myself after all), death belongs in a category we call taboo. People are reluctant to go to the lawyers to write their wills fearing that they will somehow jinx themselves. Ryanne and Andrea explained that they encourage users to think about their lives in a positive way through thinking about what they would have said or done, if they have passed away.

But of course, Perpetu prides itself for being a global platform, and their market is not limited to merely Asia. According to the two co-founders, they have an audience from all over the world, be it Hong Kong, UK, US, Singapore, Canada, Australia, India or Russia. They have more male users than females, and most of their users belong to the 18 to 34 age group. Since their official launch five weeks ago, they have now close to 1,000 users onboard and will be introducing new ways for users to interact with their loved ones using their platform.

Perpetu also shared that they have not received any death reports of their users yet (hooray!) but would like to emphasize that their services is providing value to the user way before they pass away. By allowing these still alive-and-kicking users to indicate their wishes and plan ahead, the family members of the departed will be able to know exactly how they should handle these social networks.

While Facebook, the social media giant, has allowed family members to memorialize the accounts of the deceased, nobody has permission to login and edit the account even though their network of friends can leave comments and photos. Ryanne and Andrea explained that this could lead to many problems such as the following:

• If someone posted an unwelcome message on the memorialized page, that message cannot be removed and will stay there forever. The person’s profile would turn into an “uncared-for grave with weeds growing on it”.
• Being reminded of your loved one’s death may cause too much distress for some. In one recent case in Brazil, Facebook received a court order to remove a memorial as it went against “the right of personal dignity and inflicted great suffering on the mother”.

For the next half of this year, Perpetu aims to roll out support for additional online services like Dropbox, Flickr and Instagram. Users can also vote for the online accounts they would like the service to support. They will also be launching a number of premium features that will allow users to show their appreciation to those close to them even after their death. Furthermore, they will also be partnering up with professional firms in the field of estate planning, will writing and insurance. Later in the year, Perpetu will also be looking towards raising funding to accelerate growth.

Perpetu is part of Startup Marketplace at Echelon. We have extended our early bird tickets until May 26th.Grab your tickets now to be part of Asia Pacific’s biggest startup conference coming this June 4th to 5th in Singapore.

The post Rest (in peace) assured, Perpetu will keep your digital legacy going appeared first on e27.

Earlier last week, foodpanda announced their partnership with RedMart. Following that, the recently funded company has just announced their official merger with Singapore based Singapore Dine.

We received an anonymous tip (thank you!) that foodpanda might be cooking up something huge: a possible merger or acquisition with Singapore based SG Dine. When we dug deeper and spoke to foodpanda, they confirmed it. Here’s what happens after the merger:

1. When you go to Singapore-Dine’s website, it automatically redirects you to foodpanda’s website for all food order deliveries. What this means that you cannot order from SG-Dine anymore.
2. This merger or acquisition must have been quite recent as all SG-Dine existing accounts have not been ported over and existing users have to set up a new account on their website.
3. foodpanda told us that all Singapore-Dine’s employees will be based in foodpanda’s office and their focus is on the logistics whereas foodpanda will handle the platform and the marketing.

Read also: Foodpanda goes mobile, partners with Perx for exclusive promos

Here’s a chat log between a customer and the representative from foodpanda:

Speaking on the merger, Kiren Tanna, CEO Asia at foodpanda in Singapore said: “The merge with Singapore Dine makes us by far the market leader in the Singaporean food delivery market. Customers, who want to order at Singapore’s Dine, will be redirected to www.foodpanda.sg in future to access the broadest culinary variety from more than 200 restaurants delivering island-wide. We are very happy that we can offer the leading and best food delivery platform in Singapore.”

foodpanda, together with its affiliated brand hellofood, is the leading group of online food ordering platforms active in 27 countries and reaches more than 3 billion people. It helps restaurants to increase sales through online and mobile platforms, providing them with constantly evolving technology and analytics. For consumers, foodpanda offers an online marketplace with widest gastronomic range, including salads, pizza, burger and sushi. Consumers choose their favorite meal on the platform or via foodpanda’s mobile app. Consumer’s order will then be routed to the restaurants to be processed, allowing on time delivery to their doorstep.

Read also: foodpanda, food delivering service, receives US$20 million funding deal

The post [Breaking] foodpanda confirms merger with Singapore-Dine appeared first on e27.

Waking up this morning, I must have hit that snooze button about 10 times. I slowly managed my way to my wardrobe and it hit me, “What the hell am I going to wear today?” I hear my inner fashionista ask this question at the start of every workday but time, space and money constraints have stopped me from heading downtown with a mission to shop till I drop. Feeling a slight migraine coming on from having to choose from a stack of clothes, I picked up my trusty black dress and went to work.

Well, having a burning desire for more clothing and not being able to scratch that itch is rather conflicting. I spend a huge bulk of my evenings browsing and scrolling through Carousell, checking to see what my Singaporean peers are selling on the marketplace, online blogshops and fashion e-commerce sites. One of the many reasons why I do not purchase online as often as I probably should, given that I do not have time to hit the shops: there is no space in my wardrobe.

Two months back, I met two startups – Infinit Closet and Fashfix – from two different countries with similar ideas. They appeal to the average working female with too many items on their wish list and too little space in their wardrobe. Both startups were founded by females for females and are made for users to borrow and trade (or sell) their clothes. The ability to trade or borrow was one which is essential for peer-to-peer apps or web services.

Infinit Closet

Co-founded by a team of four, Wichaya “Maprang” Sirasupparoekchai, Chayanin “Poon” Sripob, Pongpeera “Artz” Chawalathawat and Songpon “Tull” Buasathit during Startup Weekend Bangkok last year, Infinit Closet was born when Maprang needed to get an outfit for a special occasion and was rather reluctant about the shopping. She thought, “What if there’s a way to know what was in my friends’ closet?”

The web-based solution allows users to upload available items in their closets onto their profile and add friends, enabling a certain fashion discovery. Maprang explained, “Users have to accept their friends first so they can request for borrowing from each other. Users can choose which item they want to just show, which one they let their friends wear. Whenever they browse their friend’s available items, they will find “request for borrowing” button. The system will notify users when anyone request for borrowing so they can arrange a meeting to exchange their items later.”

Read also: Startup Weekend Bangkok turns you from zero to hero in 54 hours

Though borrowing is free, trading will be a freemium feature which users have to pay in order to use features which will facilitate selling and advertising items. While they launched their private beta session last month, they have reached several hundreds of users organically. Maprang also told e27 that they are planning on implementing an integrated marketing campaign to make a transition from merely registered users to a full beta launch. They are also planning to leverage on the influence celebrities have in the Thai community, showing off the personal fashion style of these key opinion leaders.

With regard to borrowing, wouldn’t there be the issue of people running away with someone else’s clothing? Well, not really. Since users are given the option to approve both friend and loan requests, they will be able to know who they are lending it to. They are also planning to embark on getting 100,000 registered users by the third quarter of 2014. This will also include a mobile platform once the 1.0 version is official.

Fashfix

“Boring penguin suits” at “stuffy law firms” in “soul-sucking” Hong Kong made Vivien Chia return home to Singapore with a mission to set up her own tech and fashion startup, Fashfix. Also a web-based solution targeted at female consumers, they too have an online marketplace where users can “like” or buy items they like. This was my second meeting with her and by now, they have about 3,000 users registered online in just six months.

Unlike Infinit Closet which has more of an emphasis on borrowing, Fashfix focuses on trades, which they call “swap.” Users can browse the marketplace for items that they like and add these items to their wishlist. Once there is a match in the wishlists, users can then swap items with one another. Of course, this comes at a small admin fee of S$1 (US$0.80), which is paid by both parties. Aside from trades, users can also buy or sell items made available on the marketplace. In this case, only the seller has to pay the one dollar admin fee.

Even though they are only six months of age, Fashfix has already been covered by many local mainstream media sources like Her World magazine, Singapore Business Review and the Urban section in The Straits Times.

Infinit Closet is part of Startup Marketplace at Echelon. We have extended our early bird tickets until May 26th. Grab your tickets now to be part of Asia Pacific’s biggest startup conference coming this June 4th to 5th in Singapore.

Image Credit: Beautiful woman choice cap / Shutterstock

The post Forget Shopaholic, it’s now Swapaholic with Infinit Closet and Fashfix appeared first on e27.

Roam & Wander founder Jason Warren says kids today need more real-world engagement, amid the rise of touchscreen devices.

Touchscreen devices are becoming increasingly popular as sources of entertainment for today’s kids. But while these encourage interactivity, studies indicate that the so-called touchscreen generation is lacking on other real-world skills. Taiwan-based startup Roam & Wander is trying to address this need by providing a way for children to gain real-world items through their digital interaction.

Roam & Wander founder Jason Warren told e27 that the startup is “reimagining the way software, devices and toys come together to create new entertainment and learning experiences for kids.” Their target market includes children aged two to six, as well as their parents. Jason says that the brand and its products have three aspects that make it unique:

• Characters grounded in untapped cultural legends;
• Business model innovation combining physical rewards with in-game achievements; and,
• Product innovation that creates a new category of toys.

The brand is centered on two characters, TuTu and DiDi, which are based on legends and stories shared across Chinese, Japanese and South American cultures. Jason shared that the launch title for these characters was Sticker Games, which is “the first game in the App Store that rewards kids for their achievements with real stickers delivered right to their door.” The second major product of Roam & Wander is a physical TuTu plush toy that can be played with an iPhone app, plus a set of touch-enabled to accessories that kids can use to play with TuTu. The TuTu project is about to launch on Kickstarter, Jason added.

How they earn their keep

Roam & Wander earns from building a base of parents and children that play the games, driving repeat engagement, which leads to in-app purchases. The service uses stickers and other rewards as incentives. “The major monetization mechanism is through converting our user base from game players to toy owners.” Additionally, Roam & Wander has a range of toy accessories that enhance gameplay.

Right now, Jason shares that his startup is in pre-revenue stage while they firm up logistics for delivering the physical stickers, although they are building their userbase from across Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Their launch game has reached top 100 in the app store in their target markets (across all categories, and not just games). The game is currently only in Chinese, although the team is  launching in English this July, which also adds more content and in-app purchases, as well as improved social media sharing. “We’re launching the TuTu toy for pre-sale on Kickstarter this month, and will be promoting it to our users in our launch countries and in the US.”

Where have you roamed & wandered before?

Jason came to Taiwan in 2010 to create and lead HTC’s cloud services division, and it was during this time when he found himself with the goal of helping foster the thriving startup ecosystem in the country. He hired 150 mobile software creators in the country and built a network from across the region. “In 2011 I realized that touch screen devices like the iPad are replacing the television as the primary screen for kid’s entertainment, which is huge,” he says. However, there is a drawback. “But after 10+ years building mobile software and hardware, I also realized that as so many aspects of our life become more digital, we all want our kids to stay engaged with the physical world.”

Jason says that the Roam & Wander team now comprises about 10 people, with most employees having prior experience with big-name toy and game makers like Hasbro, Pixar and Hello Kitty. Even with its success so far, the team plans to keep itself small and agile. “Everyone has a different skillset, but one unique aspect of our team is that there is no designated designer, and no designated producer/PM, and we plan to keep it that way — we’re organized similarly to Valve Software.”

For the first year and first six employees, Jason had been bootstrapping the operation. Roam & Wander received a series A investment from WI Harper and TMI. With hardware being more expensive than software, Jason says the team is trying to be efficient in its resource usage. “We’re being efficient and using Kickstarter to pre-fund each initial unit of our toys, but doing hardware is more expensive than software, and we’re ready to expand our games/stickers into other geographies – we’re starting to raise our next round now.”

Roaming & wandering into the future

As for the future, Roam & Wander is focused on driving a successful TuTu campaign on Kickstarter. As with most toy- and hardware-oriented companies, the holiday season can be a make-or-break time for sales. “This summer is about building our retail toy presence in Asia, and updating our main game title and launching it in the next set of target countries. This fall is about launching our second toy, a DiDi plush that uses an iPad Mini, and lining up production and distribution for the toys for the Christmas holiday.”

Roam & Wander pitched at the Japan Satellite this year. If you’d like to know more about about the speakers, startups and investors at the event, please visit the Echelon 2013 website. For 10% off your ticket price, please click here.

The post Roam & Wander helps digital kids enjoy the real world through toys appeared first on e27.

Thuy is the co-founder of real-time collaboration app developer Greengar. The team has recently joined 500 Startups’ latest accelerator program. In this Vietnamese video log, she shares some of her experiences and advice about questions that accelerator programs ask startups.

View the subtitles for the English translation and do provide your feedback and comments on what you would like Thuy to explain more on in her next video.

The post [Video] What accelerator programs ask startups? appeared first on e27.

But remember that this strange game has not only been on the number 1 Free Entertainment iPhone ranking and the Android free casual rankings, it has also achieved over 2 million downloads.

When you download the game, the user would be tasked to clean somebody’s ears with instructions and feedback. When in luck, users would be able to dig out giant ear boogers and unlock more points. The different types of ear boogers would also be stored in a collection book and displayed like trophies. (Sounds super weird and fun, doesn’t it?)

Like a skillful ear digger, a giant booger should be dug out without injuring the person’s ear. So essentially, the game is just like the old school buzz wire loop game, only that this is on mobile.

Even though the app is nothing revolutionary, its entertaining sounds, cute flashing graphics and the humourous idea would make it a hit among casual gamers, in and outside of Japan.

The game has been so successful that developers have also created another version of the ear picking daily app that features the ears of different people. Aliens included.

The post Fancy an app that lets you pick somebody’s ear? appeared first on e27.

Singapore-based e-commerce platform Reebonz has just received a US$40 million investment led by MediaCorp, valuing Reebonz at over US$198 million.

Reebonz was founded by Samuel Lim, Daniel Lim and Benjamin Han back in 2009. The site offers high-end designer brands through flash-sale events. According to Today Online, Reebonz reached its two millionth member in September 2011, and recently expanded into design and lifestyle products through its new product line Kwerkee.com as well as Reebonz Vintage.

With its latest S$50 million (US$40 million) round, Reebonz’s total invested capital base will stand at S$100 million (US$79 million). Other investors include Vertex Asia Investments, Granite Global Ventures, Intel Capital, Matrix Partners China and Infocomm Investments, the venture arm of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.

Read also: Intel Capital invests in Vietnam’s VCCorp and Singapore’s Reebonz to a tune of US$17 million

E Commerce boom in the region

Reebonz is MediaCorp’s first investment in an e-commerce company. Owned by Temasek Holdings, MediaCorp is one of the two main media conglomerates in the country, operating in the broadcast, print and advertising industry. This investment into Reebonz comes at a time where e-commerce companies are booming.

Aside from daily deals sites like DealGuru and AllDealsAsia, e-commerce companies in Singapore have been flooded with investments recently. The US$26M funding by Tengelmann Group into Zalora, or the US$1.6 million funding into Inverted Edge, a pre-launched online fashion retailer shows the level of confidence investors have when it comes to the prospects of e-commerce in Singapore and the region. All these investments were concluded and announced in last quarter.

Read also: Zalora to focus on m-commerce after US$26M investment from Tengelmann Group

A glimmer of hope for the Series A investment scene in Singapore

Amit Anand, founding partner of Jungle Ventures mentioned earlier this year that 2013 is going to be an interesting yet critical year for the investment landscape in Singapore: Some of the seed stage experiments such as the Technology Incubation Scheme under the Singapore National Research Foundation will come of age, and teams will have to demonstrate long term viability of their businesses. While the scheme manage to incubate hundreds of companies, the support by the scheme only provides until the seed stage level at S$589,000 (US$469,000).

To fill up the post seed stage investment gap in Singapore, we are seeing more and more media conglomerates like Singapore Press Holdings and MediaCorp entering the investment scene. Back in March and April, Singapore Press Holdings has been especially aggressive in acquiring stakes in local companies: SPH invested S$1.81 million into Chope, owning about 28 percent of the company back in March, and shook the Singapore startup ecosystem with a cool US$48 million cash acquisition of Singapore online car portal sgCarMart.

Read also: Singapore Press Holdings acquires sgCarMart for US$48M in cash

At the upcoming Echelon, I will be moderating an e-commerce platform to find out more about the industry as well as its various opportunities. The panel will also delve into what all the funding means for the ecosystem and how key e-commerce players are shaping the industry. You can check out the agenda here and grab your early early bird tickets now!

The post MediaCorp leads US$40M investment into Reebonz appeared first on e27.

Last month, we covered local merchant Helena Tang-Lim with her e-commerce business, Manek-Manek Beads, which sells exquisite hand-made bead jewelry going cross-border with a credible payment method. With approximately 90 percent of her customers coming from Europe, the US and Australia, she noted that she knew she had to go online from day one.

Vanda Fine Clothing is another example of a Singaporean small business having up to 70 percent of its customers coming from cross-border sales (the US, Australia and the UK). The co-founders, Diana Chan and Gerald Shen, had started selling hand-sewn pocket squares and neckties on a popular fashion forum, Styleforum in early 2010.

The company, founded in August 2011, never really came together until both co-founders realized they really wanted to stake out on their own. Before that, Diana was working at a leading luxury hotel doing corporate sales for some time but just as she made up her mind to leave, a promotion came in. She shared that by then, it was already too late. Gerald, on the other hand, went into this business straight with a degree in finance and economics from the Singapore Management University (SMU). It had always been his dream. So just like that, they set out on their sartorial journey of selling hand-sewn classic menswear.

Payments, complaints and language barriers

Like any other startup business, Diana and Gerald met with numerous challenges along the way. However, they were unfazed. Firstly, there were many logistical issues that had to be countered. Payments was one of them. Diana explained, “Those trying to reach out to a bigger audience [need to accept] global payments. Neither do we need to accept payments on our own.” Hence, they became a merchant with PayPal.

Just like Helena’s hand-made bead jewelry, Vanda Fine Clothing caters to a small audience and not so much the masses. However, that’s the way Diana and Gerald wanted it. “We might not have thousands and thousands, but the ones that do, follow us,” said Diana. She also added that they sell about 150 neckties and another 150 pocket wears every month, and are pleased to say that they have been breaking even and making profits ever since.

And as a fashion e-commerce service, their ability to bring an in-store experience online was very important. Diana said that to be a good online retailer, one needs to have “top notch communication skills.” While good experiences will garner the e-commerce business owner more potential customers, bad experience will smear your reputation and work against you – multiple times worse than the former. Putting in the time to connect with your customers is especially important when there is no real employee by their left and right to cajole them when upset. Gerald said, “You’re not there to smile at the guy and [...] keep up with them to ask if they are happy.”

Read also: Zalora, Planet Retail and TheOutNet on content, care and customers

But of course, complaints can always result in good publicity if you are careful. There was one time in particular where they nipped the issue in the bud with a customer who had some problems with his purchase. They sent him a replacement in three days and that saw many other customers showering them with praises, saying that they were not a company to make a quick buck.

Diana and Gerald also shared about the strong menswear market in Japan which they have not been able to enter fully due to language barriers and payment issues. According to them, the Japanese are not as keen to adopt PayPal as their key payment method.

Image Credit: Vanda Fine Clothing

The post Vanda Fine Clothing on going global, retail prices and good service appeared first on e27.

With Telkomsel and Indosat announcing the development of their own messaging apps based on the GSMA-approved Rich Communication Services (RCS) standard, Indonesia is about to join countries like Singapore, South Korea, and Spain in rolling out an industry upgrade to the aging SMS. In the meantime, their customers are being drawn away and their revenues siphoned out by communication services companies.

When Joyn was deployed in South Korea last December through a collaboration between three telcos, it faced an uphill battle against KakaoTalk, which has upwards of 90% membership of the entire South Korean mobile market. It’s still early days, but from the looks of it, Joyn may have decent traction.

In Singapore, SingTel and StarHub efforts to work with Vodafone plan to implement Joyn was met with skepticism from SGE’s Terrence Lee. Lee said back in February, “it is more logical to acquire a mature, profitable chat app that is already occupying a niche in Asia” because it would be far more efficient, less time consuming, and would not require consumers to adopt yet another new app.

Read also: Google unifies chat, voice and video with Hangouts, SMS coming soon

“So, if SingTel or StarHub wants to build their own chat app, they’ll have offer something that’s truly different rather than adding to the noise by offering more of the same. One way to do it would be to create an API that links all the disparate apps together, resolving the fragmentation issue that is plaguing the market,” Lee continued.

A mobile industry consultant told us that RCS, implemented as Joyn, will have a difficult time in competing with OTT companies. He said that if these services are to be industry standard, handsets of all kinds and prices will have to have built-in support and in the meantime, smartphone owners will have to download a separate Joyn app in addition to their already long list of messaging apps installed on their devices.

Daniel Horan, chief marketing officer at Axis, is skeptical about Joyn. Horan told DailySocial that with limited deployment of the service and limited compatibility, it’s unlikely that it will gain widespread adoption both globally and in Indonesia. “My sense is that with the number of OTT players and the speed that they are deploying new services it will be hard for an industry body group like this to keep up.”

Findings by Informa released in April showed that messages sent through OTT services have more than doubled the numbers of messages sent over SMS.

“By the end of 2013, Informa estimates that 41 billion OTT messages will be sent every day, compared with an average of 19.5 billion P2P SMS messages. There are far more P2P SMS users than there are OTT messaging users. There were about 3.5 billion P2P SMS users in 2012, according to Informa, compared with about 586.3 million users of OTT messaging. Each OTT user sent an average of 32.6 OTT messages a day, compared with just five SMS messages per day per P2P SMS user, meaning that OTT-messaging users are sending more than six times as many messages as P2P SMS users do”.

Read also: Viber launches on desktop with video calling and seamless transfers

The report also says that global SMS traffic and revenue will still increase due to the inherent limitations of messaging services but they will be nowhere near the rate of those of third party apps.

We wrote in December last year that telcos generally have three options when it comes to OTT services. Fight, partner, or imitate. Fighting app companies is downright foolish and carriers will earn the wrath of consumers. Partnering means getting in bed with the “enemy” while imitating them involves more effort and carries a huge risk.

Sumantri Joko Yuwono, Indosat’s group head of product and marketing support said last week that the carrier is currently evaluating potential partners to develop its app, which will not be available at least until the third quarter of this year. He also said that the app will not be exclusive to Indosat, which is interesting considering that Indonesian telcos have a history of not playing well with each other. Perhaps, in the face of this onslaught, they see a reason to unite.

The South Korean rollout of Joyn by three operators in December 2012 seems to show a positive sign, as within two months a million people have downloaded and signed up to the service. However, KakaoTalk has gone beyond merely providing a messaging service, as it has become a platform for games and other services, as well. Recently it managed to get Evernote to run on its platform and it also has rolled out KakaoPages, KakaoHome, and KakaoStory to keep consumers within the Kakao environment.

For a global telco consortium to compete in innovation with individual companies, it may be a futile exercise. Technology companies working for their own interests can develop, test, and roll out updates and features far quicker than the consortium and if members of the consortium operate independently of the group, or form their own groups, it will diverge from the entire point of making a standard product applicable to all telcos and device vendors.

If telcos want to make this Rich Communication Service a full replacement for their SMS business and maybe even their voice call business, which means charging for the service, that train has long departed. Thanks to messaging platforms monetizing their services in alternative ways, it’s very difficult for telcos expecting customers to be willing to pay for built in messaging services.

As the business of communications is being taken away from mobile network operators, it’s up to them to decide in what ways should they be participating in the new ball game, whether they should remain as competitors in the field or as the people who build the field and set the rules of the game.

The post Can Telcos Take on KakaoTalk and Friends? appeared first on DailySocial.

The post Can telcos take on KakaoTalk and friends? appeared first on e27.

In 2013, AngelHack will organize 100 hackathons, bringing together 15,000+ developers in 50+ cities. Winners from every city are put through the AngelHack Accelerator Program, where we mentor them for 12 weeks before bringing them out to Silicon Valley to raise investment and introduce them to incubators.

Previous winners have gone on to attend Y-Combinator, AngelPad, TechStars, 500 Startups, and incubators around the world.

Below are the dates for the following Asia Pacific cities. Visit www.angelhack.com to register yourself at one of these cities!

• Melbourne (AU): 18 – 19 May 2013
• Sydney (AU): 25 – 26 May 2013
• Singapore (SG): 1 – 2 Jun 2013
• Bangkok (TH): 1 – 2 Jun 2013
• Jakarta (ID): 8 – 9 Jun 2013
• Manila (PH): 8 – 9 Jun 2013
• Kuala Lumpur (MY): 8 – 9 Jun 2013

Event details:

• Start: Saturday, 18 May, 2013 09:00 a.m.
• End: Sunday, 9 June, 2013 04:00 p.m.
• Venue: Australia, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia
• Register here
• Organizer: AngelHack

The post [APAC] AngelHack Asia Pacific appeared first on e27.

This will allow developers on the Kakao Games platform to monetize their apps through Tapjoy’s market-leading advertising and monetization tools.

KaKaoTalk  is a popular mobile messenger app by KaKao and currently has more than 90 million users around the globe, with more than 30 million users visitng the platform every day. Its Kakao Games platform allows users to enjoy games with their KakaoTalk friends, share game scores, and compete for the highest ranks on leaderboards in real-time.

The post Tapjoy Partners with Kakao; Boosts advertising in Kakao games appeared first on e27.

The enterprise market is moving toward mobile devices. With work increasingly being done remotely in the field, at home and co-working spaces, employees will need to access data and applications even while on the go. And even within the office, the old IT model of having to install software separately on each machine is quickly going out of fashion.

This is the target market of Japanese startup CloudDock, which helps enterprises build desktop and tablet management platforms that ensures secure but simple management and operation. The technology is basically a thin-client that works with or without a network, and ensures security without sacrificing the end-user experience.

Efficiency and cost-savings for the enterprise

As CloudDock is essentially a thin client, user created files and folders are automatically synchronized with the cloud in the background, without any special operation required of the user.

According to Shigeta Okamoto, co-founder, COO and software architect at Eugrid K.K., which develops CloudDock, the technology’s main differentiator is its cost and resource efficiency. “Unlike virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) offered by Citrix, VMWare and MicroSoft, CloudDock can be used with or without network, and does not require monster servers and additional software licenses, making it affordable for any sized organization,” shared Okamoto.

As such, CloudDock can be implemented at 10 to 33 percent of the total cost of ownership as compared to VDI setups. “CloudDock utilizes Software Thinclient Technology to guard and separate user data from the device, and Cloud Storage Technology to save all user data in the cloud, providing essential features for enterprises including security, business continuity planning, disaster recovery and more.”

Combining cloud technologies

Eugrid K.K. was actually founded in 2005, with Okamoto’s co-founders, CEO Minoru Ikeda and CTO Koichi Shirasuka. Okamoto is founder and CEO at Japanese classical music-based social networking service Number18. Ikeda is VP and CTO at Bridgena (Japan) and Director at Toshiba Advanced Systems (Japan). Shirasuka is enginer at GridNode (Singapore). All three are likewise from Billing System (Japan).

In 2011, the team started working on combining their Cloud Storage Technology with their market-proven Software Thinclient Technology, which makes it possible to store user data in the cloud, rather than on-premise legacy servers. “This innovation significantly increased the potential of our product, for example, enabling secure mobile/remote computing even under low quality network environment,” Okamoto added.

CloudDock was launched in February 2013, powered by this combined Cloud Virtualization Technology. According to Okamoto, uptake from the Japanese market was optimistic, and CloudDock “rapidly gained attention from the Japanese enterprise market.”

CloudDock looks to grow its market

CloudDock’s target market is basically any business from SME to large enterprise. However, enterprises are the main focus. The company monetizes its technology through channel sales and SaaS licensing. So far, CloudDock targets the domestic market in Japan, although the team does plan to expand to other countries around the region, as well as the US and Europe.

Eugrid is actually in talks with a system integrator based in the US, but mainly services Japanese companies’ US branches. According to Okamoto, they are still studying market differences and coming up with best practices to address each locality. ”We’d like to know the market differences of each region, and figure out what we need to do to expand.”

Eugrid K.K. is funded by Fledge Technologies, which has a 10 percent stake in the company. At this point, the CloudDock developers are “considering the most effective way to utilize funding (recruiting, advertisement, overseas expansion),” in order to reach its goal, and finds advice and networking opportunities as an essential part of meeting their goals.

CloudDock is among the startups that pitched at the Echelon 2013 Japan Satellite, and the team will be attending Echelon 2013 this June 4 to 5, 2013. If you’d like to know more about about the speakers, startups and investors at the event, please visit the Echelon 2013 website. For 10% off your ticket price, please click here.

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Messaging has become a core Google service since it launched Gmail a decade ago. When Google Talk launched, Google brought in instant messaging to its slew of offerings, and the service has since become tightly integrated with Gmail, and likewise into Android as well. But then, Google also launched its Google+ social network, which came with its own Google+ Messenger and Hangouts video-conferencing feature.

While the Google+ Hangout featureoffered a rich communication experience — it offered screen sharing, multi-platform video calls and broadcast — Google’s messaging services have become fragmented. Google+ Messenger had different messaging threads than Google Talk. Even Google Talk itself had its own video-calling features, which had been separate from Google+ Hangouts.

A unified cross-platform messaging app

Google’s latest app release unifies these services under one application: Hangouts.

This is different from the Hangout feature found within Google+, but the functionality is similar.

Hangouts is available for iOS, Android and Google’s Chrome web browser. Earlier code-named “Babel,” the service unifies communication across Google’s different chat services as mentioned above. And because it’s cross-platform, users can pick up conversations from across devices. For instance, if you start chatting with a friend from your smartphone while you’re on the go, your conversation can be picked up from your desktop when you get to your home or office.

Hangouts also offers the same multi-user video-conferencing feature on Google+, which means you can make video-calls with several contacts while on the go or while on your desktop computer. Hangouts can be person-to-person, multi-person or dome as a community or group, through your Google+ Circles. And what may soon become a key advantage is Google’s plan to integrate SMS messaging into Hangouts. This is likely to become an Android-only feature, though, given how little third-parties can gain access to systems on iOS such as calls and SMS.

Competition in the messaging space heats up

With the new Hangouts, Google essentially ramps up competition with messaging services offered by other parties, including the likes of Skype, Facebook, Viber, LINE, and a host of other apps. They key advantage that Google wants to bring to the table is that Google+ itself is aimed at becoming a social layer on top of all of Google’s services, and that it should be integrated into devices and services in the first place.

For instance, most mainstream Android smartphones and tablets come with Google Talk as an integrated app. Since Hangouts is designed to replace Talk, then we can expect the app to come shipped with the millions of Android devices sold each year, not to mention being pushed as an update to Talk on the hundreds of millions of existing ones. Likewise, Google finally released a native chat app on the iPhone, with the iOS version of Hangouts. This means iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users finally get a native Google Talk app that was missing before.

Will Hangouts be a hit? It’s not likely to get a meteoric rise, like some of the cross-platform messaging apps we’ve featured here on e27, like Viber, LINE, Kakao Talk and the like. But since it’s an app that will come built-into devices and even browsers (what’s the chance that Google will not pre-install it with Chrome?), then Google already has a captured market among its users. It’s a matter of users actually appreciating Hangouts as a messaging service, even as we might already communicate with our contacts on the various messaging services, social networks and professional networks that we use.

Get Hangouts now: Google Play, iTunes App Store, Chrome Web Store.

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When it first launched, the Apple App Store only had 500 apps. Since then, it has completely transformed how people use their mobile devices and created a thriving app ecosystem that has paid out over US$9 billion. Today, Apple announces its 50 billionth download by giving out a $10,000 App Store Gift Card to that lucky person who made that memorable download.

The 50 billionth app was Say the Same Thing by Space Inch, LLC, which was downloaded by Brandon Ashmore from Mentor, Ohio. Lucky guy.

In less than five years, the App Store has grown tremendously to offer more than 850,000 apps to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users in 155 countries around the world, with more than 350,000 native iPad apps available. Customers are downloading more than 800 apps per second at a rate of over two billion apps per month on the App Store.

Together with the App Store’s growth also came along with the growth of an incredible developer community, which as created an app for doing almost everything imaginable. Many successful startups were also born based on the Apple apps platform.

“We were blown away with our success on the App Store back in 2008,” said Rich Riley, CEO of Shazam. “And almost five years later we continue to be amazed with how much people love using Shazam on their iPhone or iPad. With the App Store, we can effortlessly provide users with updates that give them great new features while making it easy for new users to discover and download Shazam for themselves.”

To Elizabeth Francis, Chief Marketing Officer of Gilt.com, the App Store has been integral in getting them to the hands of millions of iOS users and has transformed their business.“App Store customers have proven to be a loyal shopper base and have been influential in making Gilt the globally recognised brand it is today” says Elizabeth.

This being said, the Google Play store has also been successful. And with Android phones and community becoming increasingly popular, it wouldn’t be long before they hit their 50th billionth download too.

Note: The 50 billion apps calculated here excluded re-downloads and updates.

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Location-based services are popular not only in the consumer market, but also in enterprise. With the rise of GPS- and WiFi-based location services popularized among retail and restaurant businesses, another solution is on the rise: SIM-based location services.

A Singapore-based startup, W-Locate, develops location-based services and solutions targeted at enterprise customers. The company offers the FIND solution that combine mobile tracking and telematics technologies with business analytics. The aim here is to enable enterprises to track, manage and protect their mobile assets, such as vehicles and shipments.

Meanwhile, W-Locate also develops XimLoc, which is a proprietary location service that uses SIM cards to determine a device’s position, such that geolocation is achieved both indoors and outdoors without the need for satellite triangulation (via GPS). Location is determined via the cellular network, which means the technology should work on either 2G, 3G or other carrier technology. As such, the technology works on both smartphones and feature-phones, which means enterprises can control their mobile costs while still being able to track their assets. The indoor location service can also be used for keeping track of personnel, or for ensuring the safety of people in emergencies.

Read also: Location-based marketing startup Sprooki gets a big push from YFind indoor GPS tech

XimLoc is offered through a special SIM card, and W-Locate has already partnered with two of the three telecommunication firms in Singapore. Meanwhile, FIND is utilized by ASEAN firms like Holcim and Samwoh.

The S$589,000 (US$470,000) pre-series A funding from TNF Ventures “will help W-Locate fund both FIND and XimLoc regional expansion plan,” says W-Locate Chief Locationist Stevie Ooi. The funding is coursed through the Technology Incubation Scheme under the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF).

Shirley Wong, managing director at TNF, lauds W-Locate’s unique location tracking and telematics technology. “They use both GPS technology and their proprietary SIM card-based, XimLoc, to deliver an all-encompassing solution to address their customers’ needs.  We are starting to see where M2M, Big Data and Cloud Computing are coming together to deliver some impressive benefits across a number of industries.”

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After quitting his job as a university professor, Yusuke Takahashi decided to move over to San Francisco for two months to seek validation for his idea. According to a BBC article, Yusuke read Steve Blank’s The Four Steps to the Epiphany, translated into Japanese as The Textbook for Entrepreneurs, on the nine-hour flight from Tokyo, after randomly finding it on his iPad.

“I read the book twice on the airplane,” he says, “and I found out where I’m at right now and what I should do when I land.”

Today, he founded App Socially, an easy-to-use API tool for mobile app developers to integrate customer-acquisition functions into their apps and keep track of “actionable” viral metrics. Essentially, the tool helps creates and analyze viral loops by understanding and engaging the customers meaningfully.

Having previously worked with large Japanese companies such as Recruit or Excite Japan, the product is now pivoting towards helping smaller businesses, like startups or individual engineers. His efforts have brought him success in both San Francisco and Japan that the BBC covered a story about his entrepreneurial journey.

The other startup, Whill, features an interesting hardware innovation that is aimed at improving the transport methods for the handicap and elderly. CEO of Whill, Satoshi Sugie previously worked at the NISSAN Design center and has now created a new kind of wheelchair that is not only modern, futuristic, sleek but also allows the disabled to drive along sidewalks.

Their innovation previously won a grand prize in Tech crunch Tokyo 2012 Startup Battle.

To understand more about the Whill innovation and App Socially, check out their video and slide deck respectively below.

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When talking about building products, Sahil Lavingia is definitely someone in the know. Prior to founding his current startup Gumroad, Sahil was the founding designer for Pinterest. Sahil was part of the early team that helped Pinterest scale to one of the fastest-growing websites today. At Pinterest, he worked heavily on web and mobile user experience. In fact, some of these are items we still use today, such as the “Pin It” button, the “Pin It” bookmarklet, social sharing, as well as Pinterest search.

Sahil then left Pinterest in 2011 to pursue his current startup Gumroad. Gumroad is a platform that enables creatives to sell directly to their audience. To date, Gumroad has helped thousands of creators sell their stuff directly. Many of them make their living doing what they love.

“We have artists such as Coldplay, Eminem, Lil Wayne, using Gumroad to sell — but the more exciting part is that there are many more people that have sold things they didn’t have a means to sell a year or so ago.” – Sahil Lavingia

So why did Sahil leave Pinterest, and how did the experience at Pinterest help in building and growing Gumroad? During his talk last year at Big Omaha 2012, Lavingia answered with his key word: “Scale.” Scale will tell you when it’s time to leave. Take a look at where you are. Can you achieve more elsewhere? Can you learn more, do more? Lavingia suggested that if so, it’s time to leave. Being able to help and see Pinterest scale also helped a lot in building and growing Gumroad.

“In general, the first stages of building a company are about building a product. It was very helpful for that.” – Sahil

Data is everything, “There’s no other metric that matters.”

Scaling follows closely with user retention. With internet users and potential customers spoilt for thousands of options, product design definitely plays a critical role in attracting and retaining users. How do you know if you have “nailed” your user experience? Sahil shared with e27 that at the end of the day, everything comes down to data: if people use and pay for your product.

If you are interested to hear from the 20 year-old founder, Sahil Lavingia will be delivering a keynote titled “Building products that solve problems” at our upcoming Echelon event. The keynote will touch on how to get users to actually sign up for your service, as well as lessons learned from designing at Pinterest and Gumroad. You can check out the event agenda at our Echelon agenda page. Grab your early bird tickets, too!

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Over the last few weeks, the e27 team has been travelling around the region on the hunt for the best Asia startups. We have travelled to 9 countries and connected with various local communities around the region. More than 100 startups pitched at our 9 Satellites, and we believe we have found the best regional startups this year. We will be bringing them to you at Echelon on the 4th and 5th of June.

In alphabetical order, here are the 10 pitching startups:

1. GridMarkets (Malaysia)

GridMarkets is creating a marketplace for institutions to sell their excess CPU capacity to other institutions that have need for large amounts of computational power. The sellers are able to monetise a depreciating asset, and buyers can source the capacity for a fraction of the price of primary market public cloud costs. GridMarkets emerged as the most promising startup at our Malaysia Satellite.

2. MathSpace (Australia)

Based in Sydney Australia, MathSpace is a cloud-based maths learning software. Now in its trial phase for 15 schools in New South Wales and Victoria, MathSpace has a very high conversion rate among clients, and is currently a revenue generating company. MathSpace also emerged as the most promising startup at Echelon Ignite Australia.

3. MyLegalWhiz (Philippines)

Mylegalwhiz is an effective resource for lawyers and law professionals. Think of it as the Google for all things law related. The company is incubated by Kickstart, and was given seed funding by Launchgarage as part of its first batch of Garageheads in October 2012.Currently, Mylegalwhiz has about 1,300 paid subscribers from among lawyers, law students and other professionals, with subscription being set at PhP 500 (US$ 12.50) per month. MyLegalWhiz was lauded as one of the most promising startups at our Philippines Satellite.

4. NoonSwoon (Thailand)

Based in Thailand, NoonSwoon is a mobile app that introduces you to other singles who are friends of your friends. Everyday at noon, the app introduces you to your friends of friends, and if you and your match like each other, you will get connected. NoonSwoon is the runner up for our Thailand satellite and is among the recently-chosen five development teams attending AIS the Startup Boot Camp.

5. POP (Taiwan)

POP is one of the latest rising stars in Taiwan. Launched last year, POP helps designers prototype on paper by converting sketches into workable mockups. The breakout hit was also picked up by 37Signals, which then used it to prototype their recently released Basecamp iPhone app. POP recently joined Silicon Valley based AVOS and is part of 500 Startups’ latest intake.

6. Stamp (Thailand)

Stamp owns a patent-pending device that makes it easy for merchants to track customer loyalty. Stamp’s product, which is 100 percent developed and manufactured in Thailand, generates a unique code each time to prevent fraud. It is also easy for merchants to use. All they have to do is press the device onto the phone’s screen – the exact same thing they have been doing with cards. Since October 2012, Stamp has had a total of 75,000 downloads with 55 merchants on board. They emerged as the most promising startup at our Thailand Satellite.

7. TanyaDok (Indonesia)

Based in Indonesia, TanyaDok is an online health portal started by medical doctor Gregorius Bimantoro. The medical consultation site currently features over 200 doctors and medical practitioners. TanyaDok also has a comprehensive support structure and helps people to get professional and accountable medical advice online. With every consultation session archived, patients and doctors can easily access previous consultation sessions, and doctors can provide patients with the most appropriate action or advice for any medical query. TanyaDok was the most promising startup at our Indonesia Satellite.

8. TradeHero (Singapore)

TradeHero is a finance trading app launched in December 2012. To date, the company has has reached US$5 billion worth of virtual currency through 350,000 trades within its community, with a total of 50,000 registered users. T he app enables their users to practice trading with virtual money. Users can also learn from best performing traders on the in-app leaderboards. TradeHero was one of the most promising startups at our Singapore Satellite.

9. TopAdmit (Taiwan)

TopAdmit offers the editing services of its team of more than 45 English-speaking editors. Other than just pure editing, TopAdmit also aspires to expand into editing of research papers and business editing. They charge 30 cents per English word, or a retainer fee of US$500 per month. TopAdmit emerged as the most promising startup at our Japan satellite.

10. WayGo (Taiwan)

Last but not least, Waygo is a Optical character reader (OCR) translation app. Hover your smartphone camera over Chinese and instantly read it without connecting to the internet. The startup currently monetize through in-app purchases and is part of the 500 Startups accelerator batch that graduated in February earlier this year. Waygo emerged as the most promising startup at our Taiwan satellite.

If you would like to catch all these startups in action, you can head over to and grab your early bird Echelon tickets now.

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In 2003, Imagine Cup started with just 2,000 students from 25 countries. Held by Microsoft, this is the 11th year of the world’s student technology competition, which allows these young minds of different backgrounds to come together and bring their concept to life. Students can form groups of up to four people and pitch against other teams at local events to compete at the Worldwide Finals, which will be held at St. Petersburg, Russia, from July 8 to 11 this year.

Registration ended last February, and just a few weeks ago, Microsoft Singapore announced the two teams of students from Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) — EyeCanSee and SilNovation –have clinched the championship titles in two of the three categories of this year’s Imagine Cup Singapore finals. The local event saw over 200 students from various institutes of higher learning in Singapore participating in all three categories: World Citizenship, Games and Innovation.

Bright young minds 

EyeCanSee came out with Kinect Infantry Training System (KITS), a solution to help soldiers to improve their shooting posture. They awarded overall winner and headed home with the top prize in the Innovation category. The team will also be representing Singapore in Russia come this July.

The other team, SilNovation (short for “silver innovation”) was just as impressive. They pitched with their sensory-based fall signature and detection solution that can identify if an elderly has fallen. They entered through the World Citizenship category, and built their intelligent system on the Windows 8 platform.

EyeCanSee

Bernard Yip, Chan Meng Wah and Goh Jing Loon sat quietly in the room with their mentor, Gary Lim, opposite them. As I began my first question for them, Jing Loon quickly replied, “Oh, that! Let me see …” as he peered at a piece of A4 paper, presumably one with standard answers. His answer made everyone laugh, and you could sense that the atmosphere in the room was less tense. Smiles broke on the faces of these young men, all National Service enlistees (National Service is a kind of military conscription for Singaporean males here in the city-state). It seems one of their group members, Joshua Tan, was not free for the interview.

As with any other idea, we wanted to know how this first started. The teenagers started looking at each other, scratching their heads as to what first birthed this idea. One of them shared that since they were all enlistees, and will join the Army in less than a year’s time, they started talking about military service. Gary revealed that since Bernard and Meng Wah were from Archery and National Cadet Corps respectively, the correlation between shooting posture and accuracy was nothing new to them. Being an idiot when it comes to guns and bullets (and a big skeptic), I asked, “Does it really have a correlation?” It seems that the youths have done their fair share of research to determine the right skeletal posture and breathing system.

With all of them from the Information Security and Technology courses in NYP, building the system was not a huge issue. However, the biggest challenge they faced was actually getting people to help test out the system. They asked friends to test the system out but for it to be truly accurate, they have to find people of different heights and sizes. They also spoke to industry experts in the military, who can’t be named, saying that this system will be viable for soldiers in the Army.

KITS makes use of sensors in the Windows Phone and Skeletal recognition on the Kinect to give feedback on the soldier’s shooting posture and breathing techniques. The package runs on Windows 8 and makes use of advanced macro programming in Microsoft Office Excel 2013 to generate visual analytics of an individual soldier’s performance. While the students had five to six modules to work on in school, this was their side project which they devoted about three to four days every week to build.

What I truly found commendable was their passion for this project. The students shared that for their presentation in front of the judges, Meng Wah shaved his head, put camouflage on his face and wore army fatigues.

SilNovation:

Nadiah Bte Zailani, on the other hand, belongs to Team SilNovation. Having represented Singapore last year at Imagine Cup 2012 Worldwide Finals with a solution for dementia patients, she now came out with another idea: helping elderly to get help when they fall. Her team consists of three other male students all from Information Security course in NYP, but Nadiah studied Occupational Therapy in another faculty.

Participating in the World Citizenship category, their solution was a sensory-based fall signature and detection hardware that can be placed anywhere in a house to detect human falls. This is particularly good for elderly who live alone, which make up quite an awful lot of Singapore’s aging population. The device can differentiate between human and object falls, to prevent false alarms from being triggered.

According to Nadiah, the hardware costs about S$70 (US$56.24) to produce, but they are looking to sell it to elderly for a subscription fee of S$10 every month. They wish to get subsidies from various government agencies so that this low-cost solution could be made available to all elderly.

Champion to go Russia

As the overall champion, Team EyeCanSee will go on to represent Singapore in the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia, from July 8 to 11 this year. They will go head-to-head with other brilliant student teams from all over the world for the grand prize of US$50,000.

Of course, this means they would have to find a toy gun that will not alert authorities to think they are smuggling weapons. In the meantime, Team SilNovation will pit their creation against other World Citizenship teams around the world in the Imagine Cup Online Semi-Finals for a chance to represent Singapore in Russia.

Image Credit: Microsoft/Nanyang Polytechnic

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Whether you are a typical Andrea Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada or the biggest fan of Vogue magazine, there is no way going around this: fashion is money. In the David Frankel-directed movie, Meryl Streep — who acts as the chief editor of a fashion magazine — reacts to her assistant’s scoff that there is no difference between various shades of blue with this line: “However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.”

For the majority of people on this Earth, a lot of effort is put into stocking their wardrobes. There is an abundance of online fashion stores in the blooming e-commerce scene, with Zalora, ASOS and many others taking the lead. And at Asia Fashion Summit 2013, we meet up with Zalora, Planet Retail and TheOutnet to talk about how online retailers have to move forward with their customers in a keynote and panel session.

Don’t discount service

TheOutNet.com, a discount-oriented site whose team had come from the one behind Net-a-porter.com, saw its managing director, Stephanie Phair, share about their vision in Asia. She started off by saying that they have always had their eyes set on this region, but only in the past year did they really focus on it. They launched a year ago with outnet.cn, a translated site for their Chinese users. TheOutNet has also partnered with 250 brands, many of which are really luxury brands like Alexander Wang.

She also revealed that there are three things that every online retailer should pay attention to: content, customer care and mobile.  Although for most discount sites, price is a huge differentiator, TheOutNet realized that they have to balance content and commerce. She said, “We needed to represent, support and educate about the brands. Content was essential. The way we support was through brand stories [and] trends.”

Though fashion trends come and go with seasons, a few of them do carry on for some time. They also focus on occasions, helping to develop a voice that helps consumers decide on what to wear, similar to that of a fashion magazine. In Stephanie’s own words, it is really about having a sales assistant asking, “How can I help you today?” when you go to the site. However, merging the two together can be hard work — you have to ensure your customer stays on track and buys something, instead of getting distracted by the editorial side of things. At the end of the day, you want sales and numbers.

But you can’t achieve all of that without proper customer service and care. They created a site they thought had a customer who was young, broke and living from hand-to-mouth. They were dead wrong. With statistics, it seems that their customer was more likely to be 37-year-old female with an average annual fashion spend of £10,000 (US$15,231) and travels about six times a year. She chooses to buy discounted items even though she would absolutely go for full priced ones. Main concerns were about availability and whether everyone else was wearing the same piece of clothing, and not so much the price.

After targeting the likely person to be on their site, they set up a live chat, a quick email response system, and then tried to maintain top-notch service. Live chat has also been a very popular way for them to interact with their users, as it is highly non-intrusive. Furthermore, customers can communicate with customer service officers in their own language, which makes it very personal. They also have a policy on replying emails: no matter if it is day or night, weekday or weekend, every email gets replied within three hours. A colleague of mine just lost his tablet on a flight, and had to wait until a Monday for the customer service officers on the respective social channels to address the problem. This is the Internet. You cannot be slow.

She also talked about mobile shopping and how their second app, launched in January, has garnered quite a fair bit of traction. With mobile accounting for at least 10 percent of all sales, it certainly must not be neglected. Stephanie added, “Service is being where the customer is [...] In fashion, it’s towards iPhone and iPad but we’re going towards Android as well.”

Localization and going mobile 

Zalora Southeast Asia’s regional managing director, Harry Markl started his keynote by saying, “I’m not here to sell my company, not yet; I’m here to basically make you excited [about] the opportunity of fashion in the e-commerce space.” Well, the e-commerce space sure looks promising for Zalora — they had just crossed one million orders since going live in February 2012. He then added that Southeast Asia is a huge market: extremely fragmented and complex. Though Zalora has a presence in a total of eight Asian countries, six of them are in Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines).

According to Harry, there are 580 million in these six countries in Southeast Asia but 440 million of them are still living in rural, remote areas. Fortunately, this difference of 140 million users are ones who belong to the growing middle class. 200 million of them have Internet access, which stands as a huge opportunity for Zalora to convert them into future users. Harry also told e27 that most of their revenue comes from tier-1 countries like Singapore, which has a mature market consisting of people with higher purchasing power. However, he added that with regard to growth rates, there is no difference between mature and young markets.

In each market, Zalora has their own warehouse, which Harry thinks is extremely important, with 400 local and international brands and 20,000 products in 10 different categories. This is to give users the ability to choose what they want in whatever size, colour and payment method. Going local with brands isn’t the only thing Zalora is doing to get in touch with their users; customer service needs to be localized as well. Harry opined that if he were a customer in the Philippines, he would not want to talk to someone from another country on the service hotline. He added, “Customer service starts how fast you deliver, do you answer all the calls and do you use the language? People want to hear their own accents.”

Big data should be renamed ginormous data, it seems. Everyone is raving about it and for good reason, of course. Harry explained that big data is the new normal as retailers now focus on targeted online and offline marketing. Dynamic pricing is one thing these retailers should check out — it is the ability to judge pageviews according to products and adjust prices to get consumers to purchase it. Of course, your site should also be able to determine who viewed what, and by using an algorithm, you are able to recommend these users products they will like.

Singapore can learn from the US and China

When Malcolm Pinkerton said he was going to share how Singapore could learn from the US and China, I raised my eyebrows. The senior e-commerce analyst at Planet Retail, a company which provides retailers, suppliers and investors with retail insights, then shared that four out of 10 shoppers in Singapore are willing to make purchases on mobile devices. Frankly, that does not sound optimistic at all with 60 percent of the population being resistant to mobile shopping. And with a population of merely 5 million people, where do we even begin with this mimicking of the two giants? But as he went along, I saw what he meant. Singapore is one of the tier-1 countries in Southeast Asia and has the most potential to grow and scale up, albeit its small population.

He shared that over the next five years, online users will be key to driving growth and retailers must prioritize e-commerce within their plans to grow and expand. As seen in numbers and statistics, clothing and footwear are set for phenomenal growth. In the US, Malcolm shared that 41 percent of the e-commerce market buys clothing and footwear online, and another 41 percent have said that they are likely to buy clothing and footwear online in the future.

There are also barriers that Singapore retailers have to get past, as seen in the US and China. In the US, 72 percent of people are worried that their purchases will not fit properly while 71 percent in China have the same issue. 61 percent in the US are concerned that what is shown on the website is not a true reflection of the product, while about 73 percent in China agrees. Additionally, 58 percent of those in the US would prefer to touch and feel the product before buying, while about 55 percent in China are concerned about the quality of clothing online.

In Singapore, we need to alleviate fears over tangibility and sizing by mimicking an in-store experience. Malcolm shared a few ways of doing this: offering free deliveries and returns, facilitate customer integration at all time and giving an array of payment options. One example would be Qoo10 which has just launched their “Pay at 7-Eleven” payment option in Singapore. He also advised retailers to remember that channels and buzzwords mean nothing to consumers. All that matters to these consumers is that they want the best of online and in store all the time.

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BlackBerry has been known for its exclusivity, particularly with BlackBerry Messenger, which is perhaps the messaging service that has inspired the presence-indicator and read-receipt features now common among instant messaging services. Even as BlackBerry has waned in popularity, a push-based messaging service like BBM remains to be a sought-after feature among users.

And so, even as cross-platform messengers are seeing a meteoric rise, BlackBerry may have found its saving grace in BBM, with CEO Thorsten Heins announcing at the recently held BlackBerry Live that BBM will be available on iOS and Android starting third quarter of the year.

Heins said that the time is now ripe for BBM to become a cross-platform service. “BBM has always been one of the most engaging services for BlackBerry customers, enabling them to easily connect while maintaining a valued level of personal privacy. We’re excited to offer iOS and Android users the possibility to join the BBM community.”

Read also: BBM 7 voice comes to BlackBerry OS 5 devices: call me, maybe?

According to BlackBerry, BBM has about 60 million active users globally, and among the key highlights of the service are the “D” and “R” status indicators, which stand for whether a message has been “delivered” or “received.” BBM also advocates security and privacy, as adding users to one’s contact list is opt-in for both parties. According to BlackBerry, almost 50 percent of BBM messages are read within 20 seconds of receipt, which they say is an indication that the platform is a truly engaging one.

Channels on BBM

Apart from BBM going cross-platform, Heins also announced a slew of new features on the BlackBerry 10 platform, in particular the new BBM Channels feature lets users create interest-based groups and share information updates with the immediace of BBM. Users can discover channels, subscribe to updates, participate or simply view updates from the group.

BBM Channels is now available for BlackBerry 10 users, and the feature is also rolling out to BlackBerry 5 through 7.1 as part of the BBM 8 update. Channels will not be available to iOS and Android initially, although BlackBerry expects these to be available within the year.

A new midrange BlackBerry Phone

On top of these new platform updates, BlackBerry is also introducing a new entry-level device, the Q5. Being positioned at the youth and the emerging markets, the BlackBerry Q5 offers a first taste of BlackBerry, enabling users to create, share and explore on the go.

Being a Q-series BlackBerry, the phone features a QWERTY keypad, and is powered by a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, 5-megapixel main camera, 2-megapixel front camera and a 3.1-inch display. The phone will support LTE networks for high-speed data connectivity, and also has NFC support for short-range data transfers.

A key highlight of the Q5 is the BlackBerry keyboard, which “has been re-engineered and elegantly designed to help you type fast, accurately and with the least amount of effort.” This also includes the Instant Action shortcuts that offer quick access to favorite apps, contacts and features just by keying in the first few letters. The phone intelligently searches these using the appropriate context.

Enterprise + Entrepreneurship

Along with these updates, BlackBerry has announced two updates, focused on entrepreneurship and the enterprise. First is the release of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10.1 update, which brings Regulated-Level policy controls, which are appropriate for government agencies and enterprises that require an advanced level of logging and control.

Second is the BlackBerry Global Women’s Initiative, which includes the BlackBerry Scholars Program. The program provides full four-year tuition scholarships to outstanding women seeking degrees in the STEM areas (science, technology and mathematics) with particular focus on mobile computing. Recall that focus on retaining talent from within STEM-educated graduates has been one of the thrusts of the US’ startup visa effort.

Will it compete?

Now as for BBM, the question that’s probably on smartphone users’ minds is whether BBM on non-BlackBerry platforms will succeed. We already have popular apps like LINE, Kakao Talk, Viber, WhatsApp and even Facebook Messenger. New players like MessageMe are also trying to carve their niche in the market. Is there a place for yet another one?

Remember that the main advantage of BlackBerry with BBM is the persistent data connectivity of the BlackBerry data plans, which include push email, as well as presence indication (whether a contact is currently online). In Asian markets, persistent data plans are still not that, well, persistent. This is unlike in western markets, where data connectivity is increasingly becoming the main purpose of mobile phones. But data services are growing, and mobile services are quickly eating into traditional voice and SMS revenues among Asian carriers.

Read also: Is the Asian instant message space too saturated?

In this regard, BBM service is actually very accessible for BlackBerry users in emerging markets like the Philippines and Indonesia, where the basic, unlimited BBM service costs just an equivalent of US$2.50 per month. Will carriers support a similar rate for Android and iOS access to BBM?

Cross-platform BBM is an excellent opportunity for BlackBerry to re-capture its lost market share, both in the enterprise and consumer markets. Considering that enterprises are quickly shifting to iOS and Android as communication and mobile computing platforms, having BBM on board these devices will enable BlackBerry stalwarts to still remain in touch with their Android or iPhone-using colleagues.

As such, going cross-platform will help BlackBerry escape its walled-garden approach, thereby attracting a bigger market, without necessarily losing the security features that have made BlackBerry a enterprise favorite in the first place. Personally, having long switched from BlackBerry, I’m looking forward to being able to use BBM once again on my iPhone and Android smartphone.

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Dressed in a hoodie, Tudou founder Gary Wang gave his opening keynote at InnovFest 2013 today. Currently working on his new venture, Light Chaser Animation Studios, which aims to be the what Wall Street Journal calls “China’s answer to Pixar”, Gary shared two important stories in his life.

Anger

Gary talked about his youth, which was filled with anger. This anger became a relentless propulsion force that drove him in his various ventures. His anger at the fact that consumers were limited to the mindless programming on television helped him conceptualise and build Tudou. Now, not as angry as in his younger years, Gary advised the attendees to find their kickstart force, much like how he used his anger.

Timing

Addressing the commonly asked question of “when is it a good time to start a company,” Gary’s straight up answer was, “There’s no such thing as good timing or bad timing.”

According to Gary, Tudou was started at a “pretty bad timing”. As an early player in the online video space, Tudou went live at a time when according to Gary, “the Chinese market was still digesting the new excesses from the Internet Bubble years.” During that period, there was limited amount of venture capital around. Gary and his team raised US$500,000 dollars, giving up 30 percent of the company, which he thought was a pretty good deal then. And then the Internet industry boomed after they raised funding.

Six months after raising their first round, the value of Tudou was up 20 times with users growing at five to 10 times each month. Gary commented that it was good to start Tudou early which gave them a runway to grow users.

Image Credits: Businessweek

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NUS Enterprise and the NUS Interactive and Digital Media Institute (IDMI) announced today at InnovFest 2013 the launch of the NUS Living Lab. The joint initiative will see the National University of Singapore’s Kent Ridge campus serving as a major test-bed for new interactive digital media or info-communication solutions. With more than 40,000 tech savvy pilot users from the students and staff, the NUS Kent Ridge campus is an ideal test-bed environment for solutions that can be rolled out in Singapore and international markets.

In the press release, Professor Lawrence Won, Deputy Director of NUS IDMI explained, “When developing new apps or solutions, researchers and developers typically test them on a small scale or within a laboratory setting. This may not be representative of the real world. Through the NUS Living Labs, we have created a pervasive and extensive test-bed for commercialising projects to be scaled up in a live environment. The key advantage of the NUS Living Lab will be its infrastructure support available for testing, pilots and trials.”

The NUS Living Labs provides the following support:

• Sensing technologies – Sensors have been installed in key public areas on campus including bus stops, dining areas and building entrances. The sensors include location, video, vehicular system and environment sensors.
• Shareware – A repository of assets available includes mobile communication infrastructure, data sets, maps, building blueprints, databases and a library of APIs.
• Coordination and support from IDMI.

IDMI has already commented a few pilot projects which include estimating crowd density, indoor navigation and detecting a flu outbreak.

Image Credits: University of Illinois

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Singapore-based Sent.ly is on the lookout for advisors and partners that can help expand its access to the regional market.

One of the startups we are keeping a keen lookout for is Singapore-based Sent.ly. Founded by ex-tenCube cofounder Varun Chatterji, Sent.ly has made quite some progress since we last spoke with Varun last July.

For those unfamiliar with Sent.ly,  the platform lets your application send and receive SMS using an Android app on your phone. While it is competing with US-based Twilio, Sent.ly is localized to the Southeast Asia region, and unlike Twilio, Sent.ly customers can use their own mobile number (their commercial identity) and have the option for local replies.

Read also: tenCube co-founder launches BillPin. Start of an Asian PayPal Mafia?

Since its launch, Sent.ly currently serves clients such as foodpanda, which operates in 28 countries; UK-based logistics and asset management company FleetSmart, Zalora Philippines, Zalora Singapore, Singapore-based TaskAmigo, Singapore-based customer employee platform Rewardz, as well as DrinkDeals. While Sent.ly has still a long way to go to be the dominant market leader in this space, the startup is eyeing the regional market for expansion.

 ”We are planning to run Sent.ly based in Singapore, but the ASEAN region has been our primary market focus.” – Vijay Thampy, Business Development at Sent.ly

With that in mind, Sently is currently looking for angel investors, as well as advisors and partners, who can help them access the regional market.

Sently will be exhibiting at our upcoming Echelon Startup Marketplace. If you are an investor looking for a fundable startup, or if you are interested to find out more about Sently, the team is more than happy to talk to you at Echelon.

Read also: Varun Chatterji, cofounder of tenCube, now working on Sent.ly to improve international SMS delivery

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500 Startups has announced a new batch of startups in its latest acceleration program, although representation from Southeast Asia is low.

500 Startups has just announced its latest intake of startups that have joined its accelerator program this spring. Of the 28 companies that was selected, 20 of them are international startups. Here are some of the companies representing Asia in its latest intake:

1. AppSocially (Japan): Make your application’s Viral Loop awesome with an API that lets you track activity and conversion, allowing you to take action using customer data.
2. Credii (India): A service that arms businesses with all the intelligence they need to make smart software and service choices.
3. GreenGar (Vietnam): Seamless real-time collaboration on mobile devices. It’s building a platform that enables apps to intuitively connect people together.
4. POPAPP (Taiwan): An app to help sketch application prototypes quickly.
5. PriceBaba (India): A product research engine that lets users shop around them.
6. School Admissions (India): Helps parents and children choose the right school.
7. Seat 14A (India): A clothing subscription service for the “discerning man” every week.
8. Tushky (India): A self-service platform to monetize free time by offering interesting activities.
9. WHILL (Japan): A personal mobility service for wheelchair users and the elderly.

Read also: Prototyping App POP joins both AVOS and 500 Startups

Other than GreenGar and POPAPP — we wrote about their acceptance into the 500 Startups Spring intake — there is a huge representation of startups from India. Pankaj Jain, partner at 500 Startups told YourStory that all the applications were made through Angel List, so all the short lists were mainly based on merit. Pankaj also believes that the “longer opportunities lie in India,” and that 500 Startups is looking for global quality companies, which should solve local problems.

While there was a call from 500 Startups for Southeast Asia based startups to join their Spring intake this March, there is a lack of Southeast Asia based startups represented on the list, other than Vietnam based GreenGar. For startups looking to be part of 500 Startups and to know more about them, founding partner Dave McClure as well as his Geeks on a Plane crew will be attending Echelon on the lookout for great companies.

You can check out the agenda for Echelon 2013 here.

Read also: 500 Startups’ Geeks on a Plane coming to Southeast Asia, stopping by Singapore for Echelon

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ChatWork is one of the only collaboration solutions that combines group or individual text, voice, and video chats, task management, and file sharing in a single service that can be used both within and between companies.

Since ChatWork has been adding an average of 15,000 new users per month, and is on track to reach 1 million users in 2013, the team has decided that it is well-positioned for solid growth in the U.S. market.

With the two new features released, ChatWork would be able to further increase their user’s productivity and efficiency at work. Already, more than 90% of their paid users use ChatWork everyday, and with a 4-4.5% paid conversion rate that is three times greater than Dropbox and Evernote, ChatWork is indeed headed for a solid growth.

ChatWork has been widely used because of its advantages over traditional email. Its instant messages are immediate, brief, better suited for team conversations and assigning tasks, have no spam, and can be enhanced by voice and/or video chats. This can help overcome some of the productivity problems arising from emails.

For example, U.S. employees spend an average of 28% of their work day reading emails, including an average of 105 emails send and received daily. (source: McKinsey Global Institute and IDC). According to Chatwork,

According to ChatWork, this translates to nearly 90 work days per year, or $4.62 million lost in reading email alone if extrapolated to a 1,000 employee company. But instant message accounts are projected to grow to 4.3 billion worldwide by 2016, growing faster and becoming as widely used as email (source: Radicati Group).

The company has also previously partnered with KDDI from Japan, and IT company Malifax Technologies (S) Pte Ltd from Singapore.

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Three-dimensional printing has caught the imaginations of people the world over as architects in Amsterdam are printing an entire house, 3D-printed guns are creating legal dilemmas, and researchers of regenerative medicine have printed a living, working human kidney ready for transplant.

The second 3D Printing Jam was held in Taipei last weekend in the same spirit.

Yushan Ventures and Via Technologies teamed up again to bring the Printing Jam to the city, a two-day event in which teams spend the entire weekend exploring the potential 3D printers have for creating fully customizable products, turning the above-mentioned tech news headlines into a tactile experience for participants, albeit on a smaller scale. Other organizers of the event included Detekt Technology Inc., Idea-Diy, and Fabraft, local companies all involved in 3D printing.

The firms have been teaming up to create these events in order to develop awareness of 3D printing technology, educate interested members of the hardware and design community, and bring together like-minded individuals who want to build.

The tagline for this event was “Unleash Your Inner Artisan”, as participants put their heads and design talents together to furnish a number of scaled-down houses with objects built using the 3D printers on hand. The actual building and design was preceded by a crash course in Google Sketch-Up 8 led by a group of 3D design experts.

The house provides a fitting metaphor for what is happening in Taipei. This event has provided another brick in the foundation that small companies, financiers, media companies, public institutions, and large hardware firms have been laying over the past couple of years. The development of Taiwan’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, as well as the role hardware has to play in that development, have been described well in previous months.

At the event, some talent was on display, and I had the opportunity to chat with one of the founders of Fabraft, a design company and one of the organizers of the Printing Jam. He introduced me to some novel commercial uses of 3D printing currently being employed in Taipei, including commercial interior design.

The event was also held in a fitting location, just above the newly-opened FabCafe, a space for design and hardware enthusiasts to sit down, have a coffee, and use 3D printers to bring their designs into existence. Any hardware or design aficionado living in or visiting Taipei should drop by the café, take the machines for a spin, and keep his or her eyes peeled for the third Printing Jam.

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Catcha Media is perhaps one of the most well-known company in Malaysia right now: Part of the Catcha Group, Catcha Media Berhad is a publicly listed new media group with operations online and print magazines. It also represents all Microsoft online properties in Malaysia and owns the advertising space for Malaysia’s largest technology forum, Lowyat.net.

Says on the other hand, is founded by Khailee Ng, who previously co-founded GroupsMore, a Malaysian group-buying site which was later acquired by Groupon in 2011. Currently, Khailee is also the Entrepreneur in Residence for Mountain View-based 500 Startups. Says runs a crowd-sourced content broadcasting platform that leverages on active social media users to curate and share trending news items, paying them when they broadcast advertised or sponsored content.

Read also: Khailee, co-founder of Groupon Malaysia, talks about the Malaysian startup opportunities

Currently, Catcha Media has a reach of 9.78 million Malaysians every month, and owns 15 magazine titles under its publication arm. Says on the other hand, serves over 80 leading brands including Nike, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Maxis and Nestle. The merger of Catcha Media and Says.com, estimated at US$20 million, will see the formation of a digital advertising business that could revolutionise the way advertisers reach out to Malaysia’s increasingly socially co-populace, Catcha Media said in a statement.

Newly merged company eyeing IPO in the next 12 months

According to Patrick Grove, the CEO of Catcha Media, they are eyeing IPO within the year.

“This new company offers a tremendous opportunity to dominate the future of digital marketing in Malaysia by pairing two clear leaders in the space in a manner that creates a holistic and complete solution for any brand looking to ride the crest of the new media wave. We intend to expand this business regionally and the expected profitability of this merged entity should make us able to consider an IPO within the coming 12 months,” – CEO Catcha Media, Patrick Grove

While there is a lack of company acquisitions in Malaysia as compared to in the region, Catcha Group is definitely priming Malaysian companies to understand that mergers and IPOs are definitely viable strategies. Under the Catcha Group umbrella, iProperty Group, Catcha Media, and iCarAsia have all been publicly listed.

To bring its expertise to Southeast Asia countries, Catcha Group has recently launched a US150 million fund to invest in internet companies in the region.

Read also: Patrick Grove of Catcha Group shares the secret ingredients of a successful IPO

Khailee Ng, the founder of Says.com and EIR at 500 Startups, will be attending Echelon 2013 as part of the Geeks on a Plane. You can check out the agenda of Echelon 2013 and grab your early bird tickets now.

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foodpanda and RedMart are partnering to gain access to each other’s platform. The partnership with see both companies pursuing joint marketing, including advertising activities and exclusive deals for both customer sides.

As part of the campaign, foodpanda offers an exclusive S$10 (US$8.14) cash-back discount for first time RedMart customers (code: PANDAREDPR) on www.foodpanda.sg. Similarly, foodpanda customers can get 10 percent discount on their first purchase at RedMart (code: RMFP).

While the promotion is only available to customers in Singapore, foodpanda head of operations and marketing Chinmay Malaviya said that they are happy to extend the promotion to regional countries “once Redmart opens into other Asian countries.”

Kiren Tanna, CEO Asia at foodpanda expressed optimism with this partnership. “Both companies are leaders in their areas and share a similar target market and a strong culture for customer service and value. With this partnership, we aim to provide the best service, choices, offers and create even more value for our customers. This will help us further firm up our leadership position in Singapore.”

Roger Egan, CEO of RedMart, added: “Both RedMart and foodpanda have the same focus – making people’s lives easier by offering great deals on food and related items with the convenience of online ordering and delivery.  This is a natural partnership and we are confident that all of our respective customers will benefit from us working together.”

Read also: foodpanda, food delivering service, receives US$20 million funding deal

foodpanda, together with its affiliated brand hellofood, is the leading group of online food ordering platforms active in 27 countries, with a reach of more than three billion people. It helps restaurants to increase sales through online and mobile platforms and provides them with constantly evolving technology and analytics. For consumers, foodpanda offers an online marketplace with widest gastronomic range, including salads, pizza, burger and sushi. Consumers choose their favorite meal on the platform or via app, processing the order through the restaurant, which then delivers the meal to the customer’s doorstep.

foodpanda Singapore currently provides food delivery services for over 200 restaurants in Singapore. Earlier last week, foodpanda also announced that they have received US$20 million in funding from investors including AB Kinnevik and Phenomen Ventures. Other than RedMart, foodpanda recently also partnered with Singapore based Perx for cross platform promotions.

Read also: Foodpanda goes mobile, partners with Perx for exclusive promos

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SeedAsia is a web-based equity crowdfunding platform that provides accredited member investors the opportunity to “shop” for interesting startups around the region. SeedAsia is building up a curated portfolio of promising early-stage startups from China and the rest of Asia. Director for Southeast Asia Beryl Chavez Li told e27 that the fund seeks startups that have demonstrated traction, and those that have already gone through reputable incubation programs. Eligible startups can seek funding from US$50,000 to US$1.5 million in exchange for equity.

SeedAsia is memership-based, meaning individuals and entities can apply as “accredited investors” or “professional investors,” which are then screened by SeedAsia’s management before being given access to the portfolio. Once qualified, members can then browse for pre-screened and curated startups. If an investor decides to invest in a startup, SeedAsia will then assist in engaging the holdings company and doing the paperwork. The fund charges a percentage-based fee for transactions, liquidations or other conversions. SeedAsia lauds its low barrier to entry, with US$2,000 being the minimum investment commitment per member, depending on the startup and portfolio.

As for startup companies, these should be referred by venture capitalists, incubators and other entrepreneurs of repute, or should have been part of internationally-recognized startup award or competition programs, such as Echelon. Referrals are then screened, based on standard criteria, such as the size of the startup’s potential market, traction in sales or customer acquisition, visibility, as well as the strength of the founding team.

SeedAsia is co-founded by Tom Russell and Yelena Sedyhk and is based in Shanghai, China, with a development team from the Philippines.

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With Echelon 2013 just around the corner, the team at e27 is hard at work putting all the pieces together. This year, Echelon will feature 100 exhibiting startups (50 more than the previous year). Other than that, we are really excited to be bringing to you excellent content featuring speakers such as Sahil Lavingia (early employee at Pinterest, founder of Gumroad), Dave McClure (founding partner of 500 Startups), Ernest Kim (founding member of 37signals, currently Strategic Planning Director at XM Asia Pacific) and others.

Aside from content, one of the things which e27 does for our exhibiting startups as well as the investors who attend Echelon is to find out what each party is looking for, and we try our best to matchmake both parties. To facilitate this process this year, we are releasing an investor kit which interested investors can purchase for a small fee.

What is the investor kit?

1. The investor kit aims to promote more cross border investments in Southeast Asia.
2. Inside the investor kit, investors can gain access to exhibiting startup informations such as revenue, traction, company profile and funding requirements.
3. Not only will you be able to look at Singapore based startups, you will also be able to look at regional startups which made it to exhibit at our startup marketplace. Over the last one month, we have travelled to nine countries in the region on the hunt for the best startups in Asia. These startups included in the investor kit went through a careful screening process and made it to pitch at our regional satellites.
4. In the investor kit too, there will be comments from other investors and satellite judges which can provide you with a better understanding of the local dynamics of these startups. You will be able to find out what other investors think about these startups.

To protect the interest of the startups which entrusted us with their information, e27 will verify and check the investor’s credentials before said kit is released.

We truly believe that the investor kit will deliver a lot of value to the ecosystem and it ties in to our vision for e27: to be the best tech resource for Asia. Investors can purchase the Echelon investor pack which includes the investor kit (comes in both hard copy and soft copy) from our Eventbrite page. Along with the investor pack, e27 will also arrange a private session to meet with the exhibiting startups at Echelon.

For more information or if you have any questions regarding the investor kit, you can drop us a note and we will be in touch.

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For those who are not familiar with TMI, the fund was founded in 2012 by the US venture capital firm WI Harper Group, Kaifu Lee, head of Innovation Works —China’s largest foreign owned Venture Capital Fund— and ITRI. TMI makes early stage investments in promising entrepreneurs who focus on the mobile, Internet, e-commerce and hardware acceleration spaces, and also incubates them.

Here are the three companies which TMI invested in:

Citiesocial

Citiesocial, a Taiwan-based startup, operates Citiesocial.com, an online curated mall focused on “Discovery Through Food & Design.” In addition to presenting many exclusive gourmet and design goods for purchase, Citiesocial engages users through exclusive content related to gourmet and design culture that collectively enrich users’ everyday life. By creating a more desirable and enriching shopping experience, the company disrupts and challenges the traditional marketplace format of Taiwanese e-commerce.

Launched in October 2011, Citiesocial currently has more than 100,000 members, over 100 brand partners, and many well-known corporate partners and celebrity users. Curation is a proven business model in the US and Europe. TMI believes that Citiesocial is the category leader in Taiwan and that by combining the company with TMI’s extensive global network and resources, the platform will be able to accelerate its growth and value.

Driving Curve

Driving Curve Inc., a Taiwan-based maker of the iOS app ”Driving Curve”, uses GPS to capture a user’s speed and fuel efficiency, information that will enable a user to drive more safely and fuel efficiently.

The app has reached more than 20,000 monthly downloads after launch and is a popular application in both Taiwan and France. “TMI has had a keen interest in apps related to the auto sector. Driving Curve has an exceptional product and stylish UI design. Most importantly, the team is top-notch: focused, passionate and ambitious. We believe our cooperation has unlimited potential,” said Lucas Wang, CEO and Partner at TMI.

Peeridea Inc.

Liu Weiting, the founder of Peeridea Inc., is a serial entrepreneur and two-time Y Combinator alum. His first startup is SocialPicks, a pioneer in the social finance space, backed by Silicon Valley VCs and acquired in 2009. He is also one of the early app developers to gain traction on the Facebook platform (with more than 10 million app installations). With Weiting’s past experience, TMI is looking forward to being involved in his third startup.

While the investment amount is undisclosed, Joyce Hsu, the principal of TMI Ventures, told us that the funding amount is between US$100,000 to US$300,000. Other than these three startups, TMI is looking to invest in another three to five more startups, and they are currently looking for investment opportunities in Southeast Asia.

TMI Holdings is an investor of e27.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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In a recent survey conducted by online market research OnePoll on behalf of travel aggregator site Skyscanner last end-March, 77 percent of Indonesian travelers are more likely to go abroad while half of the respondents are keen to visit local destinations. The report adds that exploring new and different local delicacies is the main driver why the adult travel junkies are eager to do the latter.

According to the same source, 43 percent of those surveyed travel for leisure and another 20 percent of them for business and work, while 36 percent of all surveyed did it for both reasons. More male respondents travel for work – 25 percent to be exact, more than two-fold compared to women surveyed.

Around 36 percent of female respondents preferred adrenalin-pumping activities such as hiking and bungee jumping. Learning a new language or local skills, introducing and sharing favorite places to others and working aboard voluntarily are the top three travel reasons revealed by the travel search site providing online comparisons of flight, hotel and car hire in the press release.

Commenting on these behaviors, Tika Larasati, the person-in-charge for market development in Indonesia, said, “It is never too late to start listing your travel goals. In fact, it is rather inspiring and it gives everyone something to look forward to and it can even be a reward to yourself after a year of hard-work! As for myself, I hope to engage in more ecotourism this year.”

For those who haven’t delved into it, they are available in 40 countries, 30 languages and lots of platforms – iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Windows 8. Dubbed as #3 worldwide, the site founded ten years ago has gain traction of 30 million monthly visits and 20 million downloads for its aforementioned apps. Within their search tool, we are able to grab more than thousand airlines and million of routes to find the best buy flight and airline ticket deal.

For those who are curious to know how many of these users have actually never traveled outside the archipelago, the figure tells us, it is 17 percent. They prefer to explore local scenic destinations, natural and culture heritage attractions spanned across the country with 17,508 islands (6,000 are inhabited) despite the lack of infrastructure development to support the ever-growing tourism industry. We also see 61 percent being avid travelers, having been in one to five different countries.

On top of that, according to their latest travel trend report end of 2012, domestic holidays are increasingly popular for those who want to travel. Well, there are three good reasons why. Firstly, these Indonesians love to learn more about their homeland. Secondly, the economic outlook has remained positive which keeps things affordable. Thirdly, no visa is required. Last year, we witnessed the number of domestic tourists reaching 245 million, up from 2011 with just 236 million people.

Well, there is an assurance that there is no culture-shock or language barriers to overcome if these travelers are visiting within their home country. Furthermore, 40 percent of the respondents said that they are able to learn more about their own country while 17 percent of them feel that it is definitely more affordable to travel within the country and 10 percent prefers to travel without the hassle of applying for a travel visa.

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An Echelon 2012 alumnus, Beatrobo is a music discovery and sharing service that lets you build music playlist form YouTube and SoundCloud. Essentially, it is a social music platform but what makes it different its the interface and concept of the app. Unlike the clean and sleek UX of Spotify, Beatrobo’s UX is more graphically intense and interactive.The app groups playlist into actual robots and users can customize each robot according to the genre of each playlist, and all these robots would live in your “room”.

They also previously released a physical device, called the BeatPlug to facilitate the sharing of music content. The startup has previously received an investment sum of $600,000 from CyberAgent Ventures, KLab Ventures, and Movida Japan. Ever since, they have launched an English website to target the global audience. Today, their iPhone app version is finally out.

This is part of the team’s expansion plans into the global market. Currently, the team is still working on the second version of the app to make sure all the functions available on the web app will be reflected on the mobile app too.

Personally, I appreciate the premium functions of Spotify over Beatrobo, however, one should not cancel out the browsing preference of people from other cultures such as Japan. I’m pretty sure that the signature cute robot avatars of Beatrobo can be more attractive to people from the world of anime and manga.

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Update: The post has been updated to reflect its accuracy. 

Zalora is a brand that most of us are familiar with. Earlier in March, we reported that they have over 500,000 daily visitors on their website. Zalora just informed us that they have also crossed their one millionth order milestone. They have also released an infographic revealing some interesting statistics:

1. Current product listing: 6,218 beauty products, 8,687 dresses, 6,930 heels, 7,714 men’s shirt, 417 watches, and 2,738 sneakers
2. Zalora has 20,023 square metres of warehouse space across the region, enough to fill five football fields
3. 23,375 new products are uploaded to Zalora every week
4. Zalora has shipped orders to 16,853 towns
5. 17.9 million visitors go to Zalora’s website every month.

With its phenomenal traction, Zalora is definitely one of the top e-commerce brands in the region right now. Of course, the traction is fueled by the recent €20 million (US$26 million) investment from German retail giant Tengelmann Group. While Zalora Taiwan winded down and shifted their operations to Singapore (perhaps from a lack of traction in Taiwan), the company is still seeing healthy traction and interest from Asia as a whole.

Read also: Rocket Internet’s Zalora receives investment from JP Morgan for further growth

At Echelon 2013, one of Asia’s largest technology conferences happening on June 4 to 5, there will also be a e-commerce panel discussing the landscape in the region. You can check out the agenda here.

If you’d like to know more about about the speakers, startups and investors at Echelon 2013, please visit our website. For 10% off your ticket price, please click here.

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On May 8th, Plutus Software, the Singapore-based startup behind LoanGarage.com and its Indonesian subsidiary KreditAja.com, announced its partnership with Indonesia’s Ministry of Economic Coordination (Komite Kredit Usaha Rakyat or KUR) to distribute US$3.7 billion worth of loans every year.

KreditAja.com was first launched earlier this month in Indonesia as LoanGarage.com expanded into Indonesia, representing one of the first web and mobile platforms for personal finance seen in the 242 million-strong Southeast Asian country. According to LoanGarage.com, the Indonesian government, through KUR, is currently focused on improving the distribution of micro-finance credit and SME loans to individuals and SMEs. In 2012, KUR distributed US$3.5 billion of loans to individuals and SMEs through banks in Indonesia, which is said to increase in 2013.

Read also: Need a loan? Don’t seek out the sharks, check out LoanGarage.com

Indonesia is known to be an emerging market with great potential for mobile and web growth, and thus, we think this expansion is a smart move. Aidil Zulkifi, founder and CEO of LoanGarage.com, shares, “Improving the distribution of loans in Indonesia will be instrumental in enabling sustainable growth in one of the world’s fastest growing economies. On a personal level, and for the team at KreditAja.com, this is an opportunity of a lifetime to leverage technology to make a difference in the lives of Indonesians.”

Featured Image Credit: Loan Application / Shutterstock

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