A new S$5 million (US$3.95 million) Kickstarter fund was announced during Singapore Budget 2013 back in March to support lifestyle concepts with strong tourism potential and scalability. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing more startups in the Singapore scene competing in the travel space (think Indiescapes, Travelogy, and Flocations).

Launched last August 2012, Singapore-based travel and lifestyle reviews portal TheSmartLocal.com is the new kid on the block, boasting close to 16,000 reviews to date.

TheSmartLocal editor-in-chief Bryan Choo tells us that the team is pretty stringent on who writes the reviews on the site and they are done by invitation only. It seeks to build a community of trusted reviewers, hailing from backgrounds such as book authors, startup founders, bloggers, and people who are well-versed in lifestyle and travel. In essence, the team wants to have reviewers on board who are passionate about sharing and writing their experiences. This way, it ensures that the reviews are true to what is being written, minimizing the problem of having fake reviews or competing firms lashing out against public submissions. Bryan adds that random reviewers often lament about their bad experiences and hardly do follow-up posts, which admittedly is a very Singaporean culture (an example here).

It also has a points system in place which acts like an incentive for members to contribute more on the site. With more written comments, reviews, and postings on forums, members will get more points.

TheSmartLocal was created to aid not just travelers, but also locals to make better decisions. Common frustrations such as where to find a good photographer for one’s wedding shot, to where one should bring his or her international friends when they visit – the site aims to answer these questions. Bryan elabroates:

There are many times where we exhaust our network and still have no information about things, [often plunging] into the unknown and end up with bad experiences. We want to help people not have to go through that. [That is] our aim, to help Singaporean consumers make better decisions, [to have a better knowledge] about everything Singapore.

But the site doesn’t just focus on Singapore, and has has already expanded to Malaysia (screenshot pictured right) as well. The team of six has yet to work out details on expansion to other countries, but will look into other nations by drawing inspiration from My Destination’s model.

The reviews portal currently has 50 regular reviewers on the site, and will be launching its Android application in the third quarter this year.

Grey Singapore seems to be riding a wave of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, with part of the team launching the Lend an Eye app for the visually impaired which we wrote about earlier. Now, the digital and social media agency Yolk Singapore (a Grey Group company) has launched PawfectPets.sg, which is an interactive website that aims to increase awareness of cruelty at puppy mills in Singapore. This is in collaboration with local animal welfare groups that hope the public will gradually switch to adopting animals from shelters instead of purchasing them.

Singaporeans browsing the web will soon see advertisements that will lead them to PawfectPets.sg (screenshot above). It then brings visitors through a video illustrating the inhumane practices and unimaginable living conditions at puppy mills. For those who are unaware, puppy mills are large breeding facilities where dogs live in dire conditions (pictured right). They are often not given the necessary food, water, or veterinary care and forced to reproduce time and time again. It hopes to highlight that the cute little puppy we fancy at the window of the pet store comes from these puppy mills.

Jun Jek Low, creative director at Yolk tells us that it aims to primarily target potential and existing dog owners so as to reduce retail demand, and also hopes to raise awareness among the general public. She elaborates:

The goal of the campaign is to educate the public that buying a puppy from the pet store is indirectly fuelling the growth of a cruel industry which allows for animal abuse. There is still a good majority of the public who are unaware of the existence of puppy mills. [Through PawfectPets.sg], we would like to create awareness that adopting a pet is the better alternative. We integrated an adoption page on our site that will lead visitors to our partners’ pages, allowing them to contact them should they wish to adopt a pet.

Some of the partners in this initiative include Animal Lovers League, Save Our Street Dogs, and the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Singapore (SPCA). The campaign was launched on April 26 and will run for two months.

I’ve personally had mongrel dogs for a long time, and have adopted them from animal shelters as well. To be honest, they can be as adorable as pure-breed dogs and make really good companions. I’ve made a pinky paw promise on the site (see screenshot above) and shared on my social media channels – perhaps you could do your part by spreading the word too!

Singapore-based incubator JFDI.Asia today unveils its seven startups that have graduated from its 100-day accelerator program. It is down from the original eight that was first announced last February, but it’s still a strong line-up. The seven are:

1. Scrollback: A micro-forum platform for open communities.
2. Collabspot: A sales email platform that integrates customer relationship management (CRM) with Gmail, and aims to simplify data entry, increase CRM adoption, and increase productivity.
3. Krake: This is a data harvesting engine that brings benefits of big data to individuals, helping them to compare market positioning, analyze reputation and sentiments, integrate content, and grow customer base.
4. Klinify: Cloud-based patient record management platform that fits clinics’ workflow, where patient information can be accessed anywhere and on demand.
5. Duable: Uses computational linguistics to customize learning language, allowing you to learn and read effectively according to your language capabilities.
6. OurHealthMate: Helps you book and pay for your family’s health checkup, on top of giving detailed feedback straight from doctors about your loved ones’ health conditions.
7. UserScout: This one is an end-to-end research process management tool.

The startups pitching are collectively made up of 30 percent Singapore citizens and permanent residents, with others entrepreneurs hailing from the United States, Taiwan, the Philippines, India, France, Vietnam, and New Zealand; but all startups are incorporated in Singapore.

The demo day will be held on June 3 at the Joyful Frog Innovation Campus at 71 Ayer Rajah Crescent. It is also sponsored by Japan’s Global Brain, and will see more than 100 investors attending to listen to the pitches by the seven startups. Some of the seed stage investors who will be attending include Golden Gate Ventures, Jungle Ventures, TNF Ventures, and Wavemaker Labs, on top of institutional funds that include Vertex Venture Holdings, Temasek, and Sequoia Capital.

JFDI alumni, both Fetch Plus and Startup Arena Singapore 2012 finalist Flocations will be returning to their alma mater to share their progress after a year. The presentation, sponsored by Global Brain, already has over 100 investors confirmed to attend including 500 Startups ‘Geeks On A Plane’.

See you guys at its demo day on June 3!

Instead of requiring someone to be next to a blind person to assist them, the app allows the user to launch Lend an Eye app and calls a volunteer via voice activation or by double tapping on the screen (screenshots below). The volunteer then picks up the call and would be able to see exactly what is around the user and guide them, as the phone would be hung around the neck, with the camera facing out.

You might be concerned that the live streaming video would be inverted since the camera is hung upside down, but there will be a button for volunteers to invert the video back. And upon accepting the video call, a map will appear along with the live streaming, making it even more effective for the volunteer to guide the user (screenshots below).

Lend an Eye empowers the blind to be able to move from one location to another and also helps them to make simple daily decisions, such as deciding which flavour of soft drink they should get from the convenience store, all without someone to be physically next to them to help them. It also makes micro-volunteering a much easier task, so people would still be able to do some good during the pockets of free time that they have, without having too much time commitment.

As mentioned, this is a CSR initiative and Grey Singapore has no plans to monetize but would like to give this product to a non-profit organization or government organization to use. As to how many volunteers it currently has on hand and how it chooses its volunteers, Deng Yingzhi, one of the core team members of this initiative tells us:

We’re just done with our testing. At the moment, we’re exploring different ways of making this a reality. [Our] immediate plan is to approach organizations like the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped (SAVH), and work with their volunteers. The volunteers will be screened and registered, of course.

This app has also been tested with visually impaired people and have received much positive feedback. That’s important because most of the time, as the blind would require help from strangers to perform simple tasks, some choose not to get out of the house. This app can give them the confidence to be able to step out the comfort of their own homes without much supervision and complete simple tasks they previously were unable to accomplish.

And this awesome initiative was created by a small team of six, which includes Ali Shabaz, Joseph Cheong, Deng Yingzhi, Sudhir Pasumarty, Sandeep Bhardwaj, and Karn Singh from Grey Singapore, taking time off from their normal working hours to embark on this.

If you would like to find out more, you can visit the website here.

In my first interview as part of our new student entrepreneurship series, I speak with SpeakingMax.cn co-founder Jason Lin (pictured right) on his thoughts of stopping school to create a startup. He tells us of his journey as a Singaporean student venturing into Chinese waters and gives words of wisdom from what he’s learnt thus far.

Tell us more about yourself.

Jason: I am the co-founder at SpeakingMax and am also in my final year at National University of Singapore majoring in political science, with a minor in technopreneurship at Tsinghua University under the NUS Overseas Colleges Program (NOC). I took an additional year off on top of my NOC program to embark on SpeakingMax.

What does SpeakingMax do, and what is your role?

Jason: SpeakingMax is a new and unconventional English language learning tool. Our team aims to revolutionize mobile English education and pioneer the future of mobile english learning in China through the use of unique content and innovative learning methods. Users, through thousands of recorded real-life situations, would be able to learn how to speak close to how a native American would.

Also [being] the VP of product at SpeakingMax, I manage almost all aspects of product development, from day-to-day operations, website management, business development, to fund-raising.

SpeakingMax.cn was also one of the finalists at Beijing’s Global Mobile Internet Conference G-Startup Growth Stage competition (pictured right).

What were the challenges faced at SpeakingMax?

Jason: There are three problems faced while penetrating into the Chinese online education market (SpeakingMax.cn screenshots below):

1. Chinese habit of learning online. Most users are used to a classroom education and think that one-to-one and face-to-face would be the most effective way to learn. The general perception of online education is that it cannot be seamless and effective online. Until they are in contact and exposed to the idea of online education, they will not realize how effective it can be. In fact, the Chinese market for online education is still in its infant stages. Korea turned to online education back in 2008. Offline language education firms such as Wall Street English have been constantly fighting a price war but are now eventually losing their Korean market share to online players.
2. Online paying habits and trust issues. Most Chinese do not have the habit of paying large amounts online for intangible goods, services such as ours. Also, people tend to be more wary when it comes to paying online due to the high number of fraud cases in online transactions. We do get calls time to time asking if we are a real operating company, and if there’s the possibility that the company could close down. Also, it gets difficult to make payments online. There are too many different restrictions and conditions for credit cards, such as the amount you can pay per day for different banks. It is also not a habit to pay online using credit cards.
3. Slow internet speeds. All I can say is, welcome to China! Slow internet speeds and bad 3G networks. But we are looking forward to better improvements in internet speeds in the future.

How are your user demographics?

Jason: Our users are mostly white-collar professionals in the bigger cities within China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. There are three reasons for this: One, such cities tend to be more cosmopolitan and have a greater influx of foreign talents. Hence there is a higher demand and need to learn the English language. Two, they tend to have higher spending power, and are more willing to spend on self-enrichment courses which they believe will give them an edge over others in the future. Three, the internet conditions in these cities tend to be better. They tend to be the early adopters or early majority within the adoption curve, and are more receptive when it comes to trying out new technology.

What is your revenue model?

Jason: It is a subscription-based model, which averages out to about RMB 2,000 (US$326) to RMB 3,000 (US$489) per year.

What are the upcoming plans at SpeakingMax that you can share with us?

Jason: We are focused on expanding our user-base in Mainland China before moving to other markets. We will also be expanding our product line, adding a variety of online teaching tools to learning english.

Was it difficult navigating the Chinese waters as a foreigner?

Jason: Yes and no. Ultimately, I am a Singaporean Chinese and look just like anyone [there]. I also have Singapore’s bilingual education system to thank for being fluent in both English and Chinese. In fact, if your Chinese is good enough, they will see you just like one of them.

But the way they do business is still very different. Singapore, as a whole, is still very much influenced by the West. So there is definitely a learning curve in terms of the business culture. It is pretty much a taboo to have confrontations. People hardly say no upfront and in your face.

As much as foreigners may hold an advantage knowing a different language, often the Chinese market is so big that firms do not have to expand overseas in order to be successful. Many of the local firms here are looking to expand within the Chinese territory even before thinking about international expansion plans.

But of course, being a foreigner gives a different slant and fresher perspective on matters, which might blend into a nice fusion of new and innovative ideas to solving problems.

Not to forget, dealing with business in China, as cliché as it may sound, depends on guanxi (关系), which means the connections and networks that you have. As a foreigner, you may not have those kind of renmai (人脉) and contacts, so it is really helpful if your co-founders have that for a start. Be careful never to close doors on people and keep your options open, because you will never know one day you might just need it.

Perhaps one thing I learned that I’d like to pass to the readers at Tech in Asia would be one given to me when I first arrived in Beijing in 2011. A taxi driver said this to me: 办法总比困难多. Short and simple, but it meant a lot to me. It means there are many ways of solving a problem, and one should always think of different methods should one not work. We as Singaporeans are often too used to being black and white, in its absolutes. But we need to acknowledge that there are in-betweens, or what we call gray areas. It depends on the context to the way we solve problems in China, but I guess that should be applicable even in other countries as well.

I understand you are still a student. What made you decide to stop your studies temporarily for this venture?

Jason: Two reasons for this.

One, it was an opportunity that came knocking on my door. The market, when we first entered, was just timely and might be one that if we miss it, it will never come again. Coincidentally, a couple of days back, my team and I were looking back on the past efforts and realized that we had it spot on. We’re pretty glad we entered because the industry is currently at its peak.

Two, I wanted to be part of the early development phase of the product, where I could participate in all aspects of the business from scratch. Most of the my other partners (team pictured below) were much older and more experienced, and I saw it as a privilege and an exponential learning opportunity where I could obtain much from this stint. It saves a lot of trouble since they have “been there, done that”, where I can easily learn from their mistakes.

Would you encourage other students to stop school temporarily, as you did?

As I mentioned earlier, there’s no definite yes and no. It depends on the situation.

For my case, I am left with a semester to complete at school, where I can make sure that the business is smooth before completing my studies. I think the team that you’re going to work with matters as well. If you are not contributing much and will be very much replaceable, then there’s not much point.

Whether one should leave the comfort of his or her home to embark on an entrepreneurial pursuit overseas, depends on your personal goals and [from] weighing the opportunity costs.

Would you give up your studies for this?

Jason: No. I thought about it before, people have been saying I will lose an opportunity if I don’t give up my studies for this. On the contrary, I see it as a lost opportunity if I give up my studies for this.

Yes, there are a few successful cases, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, but there are also many examples out there who have quit and failed are not being taken seriously. For every successful entrepreneur, there are at least 10 out there who have failed. Why look at the one, and not the millions?

In my opinion, getting a degree isn’t just a piece of paper. The entire process of learning, co-curricular activities, and being in a strong student network are part of the package of a student life. For instance, being on the NOC program at NUS has put me in this opportunity to take my career further. Without this platform, I would not be exposed to such opportunities. You will only be able to take part in such programs which are uniquely available to students.

Would you encourage others to give up their studies to pursue entrepreneurship?

Jason: This might sound a little unrelated, but I would think that finishing what you started comes as a form of responsibility to your parents. How I would put it is that a society is made up of many basic family units. Fulfilling my role within a family unit is a good indicator as to how I would fare within the society. Hence, no. I will not encourage others to give up their studies to pursue [entrepreneurship].

Having the perseverance to complete the degree, to me, is also a form of mental endurance which I think is a skillset required during the startup journey. So when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

This is part of Tech in Asia’s series on student entrepreneurship.

I recently read an article titled “Date A Boy Who Travels”, which reminds me of the female version “Date A Girl Who Travels”. We have to admit, as we expose ourselves to situations during our travels that are out of our usual comfort zone, we tend to develop a deeper appreciation for the little things in life. And often such experiences will only come about when you truly immerse yourself in local experiences. Now, there’s a new startup dedicated to searching for such authentic travel: Indiescapes.

The Singapore-based startup, in essence, is a curated marketplace dedicated to wanderlusts who seek out local, authentic travel experiences. From living like a Balinese villager to embarking on a Thailand street food crawl with the country’s top local food writer, travellers will be able to find experiences that are different from what normal travel packages from travel agencies can offer.

And once a guest makes a booking request, the request will be sent to the host. The guest will only be able to make payment after the host accepts the booking. To ensure both parties’ interests are being protected, Indiescapes will hold payment and transfer it after the day-one experience has been delivered. Indiescapes then takes a percentage cut from each successful transaction.

The curated travel marketplace also boasts best-quality listings for its customers, making sure that each host goes through its strict curation procedures which, for some, includes a face-to-face meeting. Co-founder and CEO Seetoh Zhi Min at Indiescapes elaborates on how the team curates content for its users:

We seek for these experiences through our local contacts and an extensive travel network of friends. We speak to the hosts, understand why they do and what they do, because we believe it is very important to find hosts who have a genuine desire to provide a unique journey for travellers. This way, we ensure customers get only the best, and help them save time crawling through the overcrowded internet.

There will be reviews, references, and social elements within the package to help users decide if the hosts can deliver a good experience for them.

As for hosts, there are also cancellation policies in place to protect them, making sure that they receive bookings only from guests who are genuinely interested in the experience. Similarly, hosts would be able to write reviews and references on the users.

Co-founders Heidi Shum and Zhi Min are currently working with a team of six members focusing on customer outreach, web development, and host community building. As to why the two ladies decided to embark on this journey, Zhi Min explains:

[...] I always had the chance to live like a local and have my friends share insights of their countries with me. Heidi too, [during] her stays and travels, also had the privilege of experiencing countries from very local perspectives.

[And] when we finally returned to Singapore after years of wandering the world independently, many of our friends started asking us for tips on authentic experiences when they travel. [We then] realized that what is easily available on the market is usually the touristy and commercialized stuff. Driven by a common desire to make more prevalent the same kind of authentic experiences that have greatly influenced our world views, Heidi and I started Indiescapes.

This definitely sounds like a good option for an alternative travel experience, especially for wanderlusts like myself. I truly believe one of the best ways to expand your horizons, to show empathy, and to understand another’s culture is to see and experience matters from a local’s perspective.

Indiescape currently focuses on countries within Southeast Asia, such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. The experiences currently listed on the site range from $35 for a night life experience in Bangkok to $410 for a three day experience at Khao Sok Park. If you’re a traveler seeking out for local experiences, you might want to check out Indiescapes here.

We recently ran a guest post on the blogshop phenomenon in Singapore, and as Lucas highlighted in the article, payment is the most critical step which closes the entire shopping cycle. But at times it gets rather troublesome and tedious, since bank transfers were the only option available when the idea of blogshops first came about. It takes a long time, especially with bigger blogshops, to wait for sellers to manually verify the payment. That has also been a barrier to e-commerce startups in Singapore who might want to attract overseas customers.

I agree with one of our readers’ comments that it does get inconvenient. Unfortunately, we have neither a local Taobao-like marketplace nor Alipay system in Singapore, where the transaction only goes through after the buyer has received and is satisfied with the goods purchased. With bank transfers, the safety of purchases is not guaranteed, and often buyers would opt to shop at bigger blogshops for fear of losing their money.

Yet e-commerce is booming in Singapore. From popular local online supermarket RedMart to online blog clothing stores such as Love, Bonito and Agneselle, to online beading businesses such as Manek-Manek beads, we’re seeing more and more small businesses being brought online.

Easier e-payments for going global

Now with proper payment gateways such as PayPal in place, the ease of payment is encouraging more merchants to bring their brands into international markets as well. In fact, most of the bigger blogshops have adopted credit card payments and support PayPal, which also caters to international shoppers. According to Helena Tang-Lim, founder at Manek-Manek beads, almost 90 percent of her transactions hail from outside of Singapore.

Helena also tells us that she has integrated PayPal since day one of starting her online beading business, and attributes her wider customer base to the payment platform service. She elaborates:

PayPal has helped eliminate the need for a physical presence overseas and allowed me to sell to the world. [...] Furthermore, their experience in risk management and fraud prevention enables me to provide a safer e-commerce platform to connect to my customers. PayPal’s closed loop system also allowed me to identify good consumers, and remove the bad ones to minimize fraud.

But of course, one of the biggest pull factors for Helena’s online business, she explains, is that she provides a complete experience that makes customers feel as though they are receiving a Christmas present whenever they receive a parcel from Manek-Manek beads. She also makes sure that her designs are easy to match, and has an added Asian accent to her designs which appeals to the international market.

Etsy ranked fifth in most searched online stores

She also has her designs listed on popular online marketplace Etsy, one of the more popular online handicrafts stores, which helps aid and improve in her brand visibility.

In fact, according to the recent statistics provided by PayPal, the top two spots in the e-commerce export categories from Singapore are jewelry and fashion. Just in Southeast Asia alone, there are around 1.5 million active PayPal accounts. Faraz Ahmed, general manager at PayPal Southeast Asia and India, adds:

Our primary business in Singapore is to enable more convenient and secure transactions for local merchants to sell to over 123 million active PayPal users in 190 markets worldwide. Our data and insights clearly show that Singapore SMEs have a fantastic opportunity to reach out to millions of consumers globally and aggressively expand into overseas markets through cross-border e-commerce.

In fact, around 25 percent of PayPal’s businesses globally are cross-border, which shows how local brands are taking advantage of the ease of payment to cross into other geographical regions, into international markets.

Singapore-based company, W-Locate, has successfully raised S$589,000 (US$470,000) in its pre-series A funding, led by TNF Ventures under Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF) Technology Incubation Scheme (TIS).

Co-founder and chief locationist, Stevie Ooi said that with the amount of money raised, it will aid in the team’s expansion efforts for its two core products, FIND and XimLoc, within the region, on top of tapping into TNF’s expertise and experience.

Both FIND and XimLoc are location technologies which help manage companies vehicle fleet and workforce respectively. For instance, if I own a fleet of vehicles, I can use FIND to effectively track the vehicle operational conditions, on top of accurately calculating assigned drivers’ efforts and pay. It aims to improve productivity and optimizes resources and assets. Its solution is currently adopted by a couple of vehicle fleet companies, such as Holcim and Samwoh Corporation.

As for XimLoc, it is a SIM-based cell positioning technology that is able to track all kinds of mobile devices, even when you are indoors with limited reception. It leverages information from the cellular network to detect a user’s position. According to the W-Locate, XimLoc uses a residential java applet on the SIM card to retrieve network information, and sends it to the XimLoc server. Based on its proprietary algorithm, the location engine then computes the most probable location, and has been proven to be the most viable solution to overcome the limitation of GPS.

XimLoc also comes with a full-feature web-based dashboard to manage these data, and this technology has been integrated into major SIM card manufacturers, such as Morpho Cards and Bluefish Technologies for its global customers. It also currently has two major telecommunications companies in Singapore and Thailand on board with them to provide location-based services, and will be closing some other telco deals within Asia, Africa, and Middle East.

And Shirley Wong, Managing Director at TNF Ventures has high hopes for the company:

W-locate is a very unique tracking and telematics company. 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. Their solution offering has the potential to elevate into wider and more innovative uses. With their sound business model and good partnership with major telecom players, we expect W-Locate to be the leading player in Asia’s tracking and telematics market in two to three years’ time.

Earlier we announced the winner of the Seed Stage G-Startup contest at the Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) here in Beijing, and now we are also delighted to know that Israel-based QR code generator, Visualead, has walked away as the winner of the G-Startup Growth Stage competition.

Interestingly, it was also one of the startups which caught my attention during the G-Startup pitches. It converts ugly QR codes into visually appealing ones, and aims to be one of the most effective and useful technologies in leading consumers from offline to online.

How the idea came about

The current Visualead that you see is actually a pivot from the original idea that the startup founders had. It first started out as an image scanning and detection application, where users can scan images and obtain more information about what’s in the picture. However, this poses two problems: First, how would users know that they are able to scan the picture? It would probably require another line which directs users to scan, which could visually ruin the picture. Second, it would require users to download another specific application to scan the product, which could be tedious for users.

They then saw an opportunity in the perfect marriage between QR codes and image scanning, since there was a rise in use of the former. Visualead was the eventual hybrid solution which takes advantage of both technology. Users would be aware (in theory) that they can scan it based on the prior knowledge of QR code scanning.

Click to enlarge.

Engaging consumers

Speaking to Uriel Peled, co-founder and CMO at Visualead, he tells us that QR codes are too ugly and often placed on the side of offline marketing materials. With Visualead, it has been proven, says Uriel, to increase the percentage of scans, which shows that the prettier image is more effective in engaging an audience.

He also reveals that consumers are more inclined to engage with brands that produce visually appealing QR codes, and it makes it more personal for consumers to connect with QR codes that are branded and more creative. In fact, within six months of operation, Visualead is experiencing an exponential growth of businesses adopting its platform, seeing more than 200,000 new business users each month. CEO and co-founder, Nevo Alva, also revealed in his pitch that one particular Austrian firm saw a 200 percent increase in signups using a Visualead generated QR code.

Nevo Alva gives his winning pitch this afternoon in Beijing.

Looking to China and Asia

At present, Visualead is free to use to replace normal and boring QR codes with sparkly new ones. It plans to collect a premium fee as it rolls out new features, such as analytics that enable companies to better understand consumer scanning habits. This would ensure businesses would be able to effectively target its consumers. It also targets advertisers and designers to adopt its platform in the designing of marketing collaterals, acting as Visualead’s ‘resellers’.

Visualead first opened with the aim of attracting business from the US and Europe, but also sees an opportunity in the Chinese market which is experiencing an exponential growth in smartphone usage and QR code scanning. Indeed, we’ve seen that QR codes are an integral part of WeChat, the hugely popular messaging app. It is looking to have some business co-operation with bigger companies, such as Baidu, Alibaba, and Sina. It is also searching for a Chinese partner.

Uriel explained that as much as copying is a concern for many startups when it comes to entering into Chinese waters, he said that its technology has several international patents, with a China patent currently pending.

Apart from China, it hopes to expand into other markets such as Singapore, Japan, and Korea. It is also currently looking to raise series A investment.

This is part of our coverage of GMIC 2013 in Beijing, running yesterday and today (May 7 and 8). For other stories from this event, click here.

Beijing-based real-time behavioral analytics startup Mention charmed the judges and audience with its startup pitch at the ongoing GMIC Beijing event yesterday. This afternoon, Mention was crowned as the winner of GMIC’s Early Stage G-Startup Competition. Mention’s flagship product, Traintracks, is a real-time behavioral analytics tool made by game designers for game designers. Nils Pihl Bohlin, co-founder and behavioral engineer at Mention, took to the stage and demoed the current version of the product. It serves to empower game designers, giving them useful and powerful insights on user behavioral patterns.

How Traintracks came about

The team at Mention has been working on the marriage between behavioral psychology, game theory, and memetics to create a better predictive model of human behavior. It eventually led to dealing with many game developers, which the team thought was the perfect sweet spot to study human behavior. However, as the team started to delve deeper, it realized that the potential of big data analytics has not been fully uncovered by many game developers today. In fact, according to Nils, there is no such thing as data-driven design today, as many game designers have not been empowered to use the current tools that exist in the market right now. Nils (pictured right) highlights three issues with analytics:

1. People are unaware of the right questions that are deeper and more meaningful, which is vital to lead them to the right answers.
2. Most companies are tracking what is relatively easier to track, since it is difficult to interrogate the data. The result focuses on vanity metrics, but often does not give you deeper insights about player behavior.
3. Analytics can get very costly. It might need several departments to come together to answer a question, and a single question might take hours or days to answer.

With this approach, Nils and his team has developed Traintracks, which aims to solve the pain points that game developers face. It also boasts being an award-winning product to take on the game analytics market. Nils adds:

Traintracks has a state-of-the-art backend built on brand new technology that is up to 100 times faster than our most advanced competitors. The game analytics industry is growing into a multi-billion dollar market, and we’re entering that market with a product that is 100 times faster than the competition.

Founders’ backgrounds and upcoming plans

Mention is founded by Jeff Hsu, Nils Pihl Bohlin, and Ryan Braley, with strong backgrounds in computer science, electrical engineering, and game design. It was by circumstance that the team happened to come to Beijing. However, due to the system’s complex backend, Nils explained to us that the team will be moving its core operations to the United States for talent acquisition. It is also looking to raise an initial seed round of $1 million, mainly for talent acquisitions in the next twelve months.

This is part of our coverage of GMIC 2013 in Beijing, running yesterday and today (May 7 and 8). For other stories from this event, click here.

In this post, we have CEO and co-founder of Travelogy, Winnie Tan (pictured), whose company runs multiple online media properties such as TripZilla, ComeSingapore, and Nearby.SG. She tells us how to take advantage of being in the minority in the tech startup scene, and explains the importance of being sincere and honest towards the people that you meet along the entrepreneurial journey.

She also mentions in our Q&A that one of the key attributes required to succeed in the technology and startup scene is knowing how to sell yourself. Amazingly I realized whilst many startup founders do know how to sell their companies, vision, and product, they don’t actually know how to sell themselves. Knowing how to sell yourself – i.e.: personal branding – is highly important. It attracts not just the money, but also team-mates who would fight alongside you even when you are struggling.

And Winnie also highlights that it is actually possible for women entrepreneurs to achieve a balance between work and family – and feels personally that she’s working towards achieving that.

Vanessa: Tell me a little about yourself.

Winnie: I am a serial entrepreneur and co-founder at Travelogy. My previous businesses included a bubble tea retail chain, a real estate company, and an art gallery. The work that I am totally loving and consuming me now is Travelogy. The little time I have outside of the company is spent with my two precious boys – Ethan who is six years old and Ean who is four years old.

What does your startup do, and what is your role?

Winnie: Travelogy runs multiple online media platforms that attract and influence travellers on their travel decisions. Our focus is in Southeast Asia (SEA) where the markets are fragmented and fast-growing, and hence has great potential for innovation. Our core product is TripZilla. TripZilla is an easy-to-use platform for users to search and book their travel plans. It aggregates travel prices, packages, itineraries, and travel promotions across all major booking channels.

As CEO of the company, I develop strategies and set goals for the business, steering the company towards these goals.

I am involved in all aspects of the business, from product development to sales to fund raising. But I’m very fortunate to have now built a strong team who is performing at each role than me, and so I can now focus on building Travelogy into the biggest online media player in the travel industry within SEA.

How and why did you get started in this industry?

Winnie: The team and I saw that the travel market in SEA is growing very quickly, with more people are shifting online for their travel needs. The rapid growth of internet, e-commerce, mobile, social media, and online marketing means that there are plenty of opportunities for innovation and disruption in this space. Technology adoption in the travel industry is seemingly lagging in Asia as compared to the west, and so we see a huge gap that needs to be filled. We are hoping to tap into the pool of early adopters and early majority to bridge this gap.

Did you face any challenges in particular?

Winnie: Finding the right talent was a major challenge. We wanted to put together a team (pictured above) with complementary skills. But skills aside, it was even essential that they share the same passion and have the right attitude. It was a tedious and often painful process. It wasn’t easy learning who are the wrong people to let go, but as with all other tasks within a startup, we picked it up quickly.

How do you seek out relevant mentors and people for help?

Winnie: It is not that difficult to get fellow entrepreneurs or startup enthusiasts to respond to an introductory email or agree to that first meeting. I think one just needs to be sincere and transparent about the reason why you are hoping to touch base, and most people will be willing to explore possible opportunities. From there, make the most out of the first meeting – share what you are doing clearly and explain what you are hoping to achieve by connecting with this person. Be honest and forthright, and the rest will depend on the personal chemistry between you and the other party. Anyway, the worst thing that can happen is just for the person to say “Sorry, I am not interested”. No big deal.

In your opinion, what are the necessary skill-sets and attitudes required to succeed in the technology and startup industry?

Winnie: Tech startup founders wear many hats and so there is a long list of essential skills. I will probably be able to write a whole article just trying to list all these skills. Let me just list the few skills/traits that I personally think are the most crucial:

1. Ability to sell. Sell your company, your vision, your product, or yourself. You must be able to sell to raise money, recruit talents, and generate revenue.
2. Management skills. With limited resource and runway, technopreneurs must be able to manage the people and funds effectively to achieve clear goals.
3. Tenacity. Persistent determination is a must have because most people will shoot down your idea in the beginning and you will meet with failures. But try, try, and try again. And repeat.

How does it feel to be the only female leader within the team?

Winnie: More than one bitch boss will probably kill my guys! Lol! Seriously, I highly recommend having at least one female in the core team. We females offer a different perspective on things, on top of giving a more balanced and complete solution to problems. I think my teammates feel the same way, and will always give me the opportunity to express my opinions. So yes, it feels great being a female leader.

Do you have any female role model(s) that you look up to?

Winnie: I had the honour of speaking to and listening to talks by many successful women in recent years. Some in the travel space, such as Jennie Chua, Claire Chiang, and Kathleen Tan; and some in the startup arena such as Virginia Cha and Shirley Wong. They are all smart and confident alpha-females, and I have many valuable takeaways from talking and listening to them all. So it is difficult to name one female role model.

But there is one common characteristic they have all have in common: While it is not easy, women can have it all – a successful career, a loving family, and a rewarding life. This is a very encouraging message and motivates me to work towards this level of self-actualization.

How do you strike a balance between work and personal life?

Winnie: I’m married with two little boys, ages four and six (pictured). It is tough and I struggle with some working mum guilt every now and then. I try to outsource the less important child-raising tasks and make sure that I never miss the important moments – milestones, birthdays, character-building lessons, and bonding time.

As much as possible, I try to be home between the hours of 7.30pm to 9.30pm on weekdays so that I will at least be able to talk to my children about their day and tuck them into bed. Work can continue after 9.30pm when they are asleep.

Do you have any advice for fellow female entrepreneurs?

Winnie: Female entrepreneurs tend to stand out for being the minority in the technology and startup scene. You almost always get the chance to ask questions during Q&A sessions, you get more media coverage, and investors will give you that minute for your elevator pitch. Make the most of this “unfair” advantage. Note though, it only helps to get your foot in the door. If you can’t dazzle and prove your worth within that few minutes, it doesn’t help even if you look like Vivian Hsu. Well. I’m sure you’ll get some love from whoever you are talking to if you look like Vivian Hsu! But you get my point.

See more interviews in our Female Entrepreneurship series:

What was originally an idea that came out of a Tech Venture class at Sydney University is now one of Australia’s most unique startups. CloudHerd CEO and co-founder Alexander Stamp’s wanted to solve the tedious and slow process his father encountered while purchasing cows from a cattle market. The service recently came in as one of the final few brilliant startups competing at TechStars New York, on top of being one of the startups to have graduated recently from the inaugural Sydney University Incubate Program.

CloudHerd is a platform that allows farmers to manage the inventory and auctioning of their livestock. It offers an extensive list of features, which includes inventory, paddock, and property management. It has integrated Google maps, Gmail calendar, and Microsoft Outlook into its system as well. Other features for farmers include data logging, charts, email notifications, HTML5 video support, auctions system, payment management, National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) integration, and cattle genetics information.

Alexander explains:

We have a significant percentage of these features complete but [require] a bit of polishing of course. The general idea of the system is that one does one’s inventorying and management on the system and at the same time, the auction information is automatically copied in from the inventorying system.

One of the issues that farmers probably face while being out in Australia’s vast farms would be intermittent connectivity. To combat this, Alexander tells us that the team will be developing a native smartphone and desktop application to ensure that information will be automatically synced once a connection is available. Also, the mobile app will definitely come in handy during paddock inventorying as well.

For every auction that takes place on the CloudHerd platform, the Sydney-based startup collects a transaction fee of one percent. And apart from the basic inventory version, it will also be selling a premium inventory version in the future as well.

This sounds like a good solution for farmers to aid in their supply chain management. We wish the CloudHerd team the best with the upcoming pitch at Echelon Ignite: Australia 2013 organized by our friends over at e27 on May 8.

Taipei-based incubator, Taiwan Mobile Innovation (TMI), has launched its hardware acceleration program earlier this month. It hopes to attract mobile and internet-related hardware startups to take part in this inaugural program, and will render support required from prototype to mass production stage.

Hardware acceleration program details

The program will take approximately nine to 12 months, depending on the product development cycle. As for the funding, seed capital will be provided but according to CEO of TMI, Lucas Wang, it is a separate decision process. It will work more like an angel investment decision along with its investors, and typically the investment amount would be around US$100,000.

The incubator does not seek profit from incubating its startups. In exchange for its incubation services, TMI has the option of being entitled to “discounts” when startups raise their next round of funding. They look to seek “profit” via means of capital gain in the near future. Lucas explains more:

[If] we work with a startup by helping them to get the best fit manufacturing or design service, and they charge this whole production for US$30k, TMI will [not charge] for the extra service in managing the whole process. TMI does not charge on the manufacturing side for [the linking-up] fee and does not charge startups for service fee.

TMI is looking to incubate around six to eight startups. It will be providing guidance on how to penetrate into the Asia market, as well as issues pertaining to manufacturing and production. Startups incubated will receive knowledge on the best design for production, material and component adoption, production schedule planning, quality testing and quality control, forecasting, as well as sourcing of manufacturers and partners.

There will be senior project managers hailing from manufacturing backgrounds as well as investors from hardware design and manufacturing companies. Lucas clarifies the difference in mentorship for hardware startups versus software startups:

In hardware innovation, one of the key points is to deliver the real product that can best comply with the original/innovative design within the planned schedule. TMI converts mentorship, which is popular in software innovation, into project management in the manufacturing side. To startups, it is like Apple being served by Foxconn. TMI helps them connect with the right manufacturers for their businesses.

TMI also explains that it is different from other hardware incubator, such as Shenzhen’s HAXLR8R.

To make things clear, Lucas tells us that there are four differences between HAXLR8R and its program:

1. Stage of the startups: TMI serves startups that already have prototypes.
2. Result of incubation: TMI aims to help startups deliver mass production products.
3. Offerings: Instead of mentorship such as introductions or networking, TMI plays the role of a team member that provides guidance on manufacturing. It deals with details such as molding defects, digital board relay, planning, and quality control.
4. Strong network: TMI sits in the heart of IT ODMs, and is connected to manufacturers that used to service large hardware companies, such as Apple, HP, and Dell. Taiwan’s ODMs provides both manufacturing services as well as design support and quality insurance. Lucas highlights that when it comes to manufacturing a consumer product, it is not just about getting a factory but also about the whole manufacturing process.

TMI was founded in 2012 by US venture firm WI Harper Group, Kaifu Lee, and ITRI (pictured right). TMI also draws inspiration from Beijing-based Innovation Works, which is founded by Kaifu Lee, hoping to foster the entrepreneurship scene in Taiwan.

For Kaifu Lee’s involvement in TMI, Lucas elaborates:

[If] a startup is looking to China market [for expansion], Kaifu and the team [will be] ready for them. [There will be] weekly updates on the progress of the projects.

And yes, Kaifu’s team is looking for opportunities generated [from] this program. The investment decision is separated from it, but is made by TMI and Kaifu’s team.

The program came about due to an observation that most hardware startups take to crowdfunding platforms to raise funding, and often failing due to the lack of proof of concept and failure to scale. For more information regarding the program, you can visit the website here.

[Photo credits: Taiwan Mobile Innovation & VentureData.org]

I consider it as a privilege to have my 83-year-old grandmother staying with me. She cooks delicious peranakan dishes and interests me with her childlike curiousness. But she gets a little stubborn sometimes – especially when it comes to climbing on chairs to retrieve items from hard-to-reach places, despite having a helper at home. There were two occasions where she fell, and it was heartbreaking to learn of it after getting back home. Fortunately, there was someone at home who could attend to her immediately. What about those older folks who live alone?

Sydney-based startup, Edisse, makes what it calls an innovative and lightweight watch that aims to minimize the risk of elderly people not being attended to when they fall. The watch has a built-in fall detection system, which works on an algorithm using accelerometer data. So if the wearer falls, it sends a notification to the nominated carer via the Edisse app on his or her phone.

So apart from detecting a fall, it also collates reports with details information such as the areas where elderly are most prone to falling and a general overview of the number of falls. As it works on mobile technology, there will be a SIM card slotted into the watch, which allows a carer to track in real-time via its mobile app and web applications, anytime and anywhere.

The startup is looking to countries out of Australia, such as the United States and China for expansion. I would think it’s feasible for them to enter into the China market, since many children move to cities for work opportunities, leaving their elderly parents back in their rural hometown. Japan is another viable market to look into, since it is experiencing a serious ageing population problem.

Edisse is also part of the inaugural Sydney Incubate program, where the idea came about during a technology venture class that was run at the University of Sydney. The team is looking at charging on a subscription basis of AUD$30 (US$31) to AUS$50 (US$52) per month, but full details will be out when the team lists its product for crowdfunding on Kickstarter in the next couple of months.

The AngelHack competition prides itself as the biggest hackathon in the world and will kick off this weekend in Los Angeles. And for friends in Asia, this might be your chance if you are looking to Silicon Valley for expansion, as AngelHack will be travelling to your cities, too.

AngelHack will be organizing over 100 hackathons and aims to aggregate over 15,000 developers in more than 50 cities. This is its first step into Asia, which the team had originally planned for the last quarter of the year. But thanks to the kind sponsorship from Amazon Web Services, the plan has been accelerated and hence the launch this upcoming April. So web developers and entrepreneurs in APAC region such as Melbourne, Sydney, Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila, and Chennai can now have their chance to eventually become part of the inaugural AngelHack accelerator program.

Founder Greg Gopman also tells us that they would normally pick two winners from cities that have large pools of talent, such as Toronto, London, New York, and Tel Aviv. For countries in Asia, Greg sees potential in cities such as Seoul and Singapore. Of course, this is subject to a case-by-base basis once the judging has taken place.

Once the winners in each city are chosen, they will be part of the AngelHack accelerator program where they will be mentored over a period of 12 weeks before stepping into Silicon Valley to raise funds and be introduced to incubators. Winners of the previous AngelHack competition have also successfully received mentorship under Y-Combinator, AngelPad, TechStars, and 500 Startups.

And to thank you for being our loyal Tech in Asia reader, AngelHack is giving away 20 free tickets in every city that AngelHack will be going to. All you need to do, is to find your city here, enter the EventBrite page, and key in the code TechinAsia.

On his plans for Asia Pacific region, Greg adds:

[...] I’m sure we have $100,000 in seed funding to award to our Asia-Pacific teams! This investment will be divided between 5 of our 10 winning teams in the region.

If you wish to find out more, please visit the website here, or email Greg at
greg@angelhack.com.

For shopaholics and fans of Zalora, here’s a piece of news that will probably further strain your pockets. Zalora today officially launched its iOS app, and now you can shop for clothes or shoes even while on-the-go.

There are currently over 500 brands and 15,000 products listed on the new fashion e-store app. Users can receive push notifications on the new items and flash sales that Zalora has, and choose from multiple payment methods such as credit cards, PayPal, and cash-on-delivery. The user interface looks pretty and is optimized for the iPhone 5 too.

Unfortunately, the app is not available on Android yet, despite the growing number of Android users within the region. The reason for the initial push on the iOS platform, according to Zalora, is that most of its mobile shoppers are on the iOS platform. For countries with the highest mobile traffic, Zalora has twice as many shoppers on iOS than on Android.

But of course, Zalora is currently proposing to its Germany office to develop an Android app. Other platforms, such as BlackBerry or Windows, are not even in the pipeline yet.

To celebrate the launch, shoppers on the new Zalora app are entitled to a 20 percent discount using its in-app voucher code. According to Zalora, the app is currently the top lifestyle app in five countries, namely Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

If you’re keen to indulge in some shopping while waiting for that train or bus, you can give the app a try here.

The entrepreneurship scene seems to be heating up down under, especially at the top universities in the country. Last week, we wrote about university-run Melbourne Accelerator Program (MAP) launching its second round of applications, thanks to the encouraging results from the first one. And apparently MAP isn’t the only university-run program coming out of Australia.

Incubate is a student union backed startup incubator and entrepreneur program at the University of Sydney. It was founded last year by two students, James Alexander and Mina Nada, with strong support from University of Sydney Union (USU).

First batch of startups and achievements

Recently, Incubate graduated its inaugural batch of startups (pictured right), which includes:

1. WeSit

WeSit is a suite of web and mobile applications that connects parents with trusted babysitters. It taps into a trusted network of people, and parents can schedule babysitters with ease.

It solves one of the biggest issues parents face when they have commitments to fulfill – finding someone to entrust their children in their care. It boasts over 100 pre-registered users and has received AUD$20,000 (US$20,500) from BlackBerry. The fund will be used for the development of WeSit’s BlackBerry app and it will be featured on BlackBerry World.

2. SnapDisco

SnapDisco has developed a web-based, automated image processing technology that traces a clipping path around items. Its ‘computer vision’ has the ability to differentiate background and foreground parts of the photo, and then decides on a clipping path, which eradicates the tedious manual editing process.

It makes it easy for e-commerce sellers to now remove ugly backgrounds. The computer vision technology is also currently in the process of being patented.

3. Edisse

Edisse prides itself as an innovative watch, which has automatically detects when an elderly falls. It allows caretakers to keep track of older folks in real-time, and will receive notifications should the elderly person experience a fall.

4. CloudHerd

CloudHerd is an online livestock management and sales platform aimed at farmers. It aims to be a global marketplace that accumulates the wealth of information on livestock, and allow farmers to tap into other markets.

As the name suggests, it will also take advantage of cloud technologies, which allows farmers to access information no matter where they are.

5. Muro

Muro is an elastic social networking application that enables users to share photos with others who are attending the same event. Once the event has been set up on the app, users can check in at the event, start share photos, and they will be displayed on a live interactive slideshow.

6. Weaver

Weaver is a social robot that helps children to foster logical thinking through the use of sensors and a user-friendly interface. It eventually hopes to create a community where children are able to develop ideas through their understanding and application of engineering principles.

7. Feedback

Feedback is a not-for-profit application that takes advantage of the idle time that you have while you’re on-the-go. Users will be asked to complete market surveys in exchange for a charity donation.

8. The Best Day

The Best Day recognizes the pain of organizing group outings, and positions itself as a social planning tool that churns out the best plan for a group via collection on votes on time and place. It also helps businesses to better plan for their customers with their “Plan” widget, making it easier to organize and pay for group outings.

The Best Day has also raised series A funding of AUD$1.1 million (US$1.13 million) back in December 2012. It has also seen an encouraging 5,000 plans made within 3 weeks of beta launch.

James Alexander, co-founder and program manager at Incubate, also tells us that the startups are currently working out of The Australian Technology Park (ATP) (pictured right), with the Edisse Watch, Weaver, and Muro app currently in talks with interested investors. SnapDisco has also boldly rejected seed funding, because they prefer to have a revenue before raising funds. CloudHerd was also one of the finalists in TechStars New York and is also currently in talks with interested investors.

Differences between MAP and Incubate

Coincidentally, Incubate was launched in the same year as MAP. So apart from being based in different geographical locations – MAP in Melbourne and Incubate in Sydney – what sets them apart? James elaborates:

MAP is a great program and we’re different in a couple of areas. It was completely coincidental that we launched in the same year, as I only found out about them late last year but I was extremely impressed by their 2012 Demo Day. Interestingly, MAP was also originally pushed by a student.

[At Incubate,] we’re supported by the USU which is an independent student governed organisation within the University of Sydney. This means, unlike MAP, we’re open to all students, alumni, and researchers of the University of Sydney.

Also, the USU is not aligned to one single faculty and we believe it’s crucial to have cross collaboration across various faculties.

I think it’s great that two of Australia’s top universities are now actively engaged in encouraging more entrepreneurs and startups. I hope more universities follow suit.

The Incubate program also provides smaller amounts of funding of AUD$5,000 (US$5,100) for each of the eight teams selected. As for MAP, it provides AUD$20,000 (US$21,000) for each of the four teams. Its incubation period is also much shorter – which takes place over 11 weeks compared to the six months provided by MAP.

James also tells us that the Incubate program was launched last year at a panel event that took place late September 2012, with applications closing in the middle of November 2012. The startups officially started on the first week of December 2012, and graduated at the end of February this year during their demo day. With strong support from USU, James and his team hope to engage more entrepreneurial and business-minded students in the future.

The mentors currently with Incubate hail from various backgrounds of having built companies or working with high-growth companies. Some of the mentors include: Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com; Michelle Deaker, managing partner at OneVentures; and our friend Kim Heras, co-founder at PushStart.

It really looks pretty promising for the entrepreneurship scene in Australia, with great initiatives from universities like Incubate and MAP to hone aspiring Australian entrepreneurs of tomorrow. If you are keen to find out more about Incubate, you can visit the website here.

The TV commercial (video above)  will feature WeChat’s so-called Super-Duo Ambassadors, Alan Luo Zhi-Xiang and Rainie Yang (pictured right), who are renowned artistes from Taiwan. The ad will include the duo acting as a couple while introducing the functions of WeChat to the audience. For our readers in Singapore, you will be able to catch the TV ad on Channel 8, Channel U, W drama, and E-City starting this week. It seems that the same video used for promotional purposes in Taiwan will be used in Singapore too.

Speaking about this launch, Louis Song, country manager of Tencent’s International Business Group (Malaysia and Singapore), said the Chinese web giant hopes to strengthen its market position and increase its user adoption within Asia:

Singapore is a very strong market like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Thailand – we are witnessing a sturdy growth in mobile application platforms.

As we mentioned recently, WeChat currently boasts 300 million users worldwide, with 40 million overseas users.

I admit I take a lot of photos. I truly believe in the saying “a picture speaks a thousand words” and that photos are the best way to capture the finest moments that will never be replicated again. So apps like Burpple and Instagram are my personal favourites, and here’s another new photo app that I might possibly fall in love with – Shutterpair.

Shutterpair is an instant and easy way for users to share photos taken on their mobile photos and digital cameras via shared albums. So why would you want to have a Shutterpair account when you already have an Instagram account? The idea behind Shutterpair albums is that it is collaborative, where users can collectively upload photos from their Android or iOS devices directly to the selected photo album. So now with Shutterpair, my friends won’t be complaining that I’m slow uploading my photos again. Ever.

As for photos taken using digital cameras, users can also add them to the albums via Shutterpair’s web platform. You can also choose to share your albums privately with selective groups of people, or even share them via social media platforms. And the team has big dreams, and hopes to be as successful as the hugely popular Instagram. Co-founder Ritesh Angural elaborates:

Instagram is a place for individuals to showcase beautiful photos. [Our team members are] all Instagram fans ourselves but we feel taking photos on Instagram – and every other platform currently – is a solitary activity. They do not capture the aspect of taking photos in groups. Our belief is that photos taken together belong together; right from the moment you take them. That said, we aim to become the next Instagram, in a way that we view them as a role model.

Shutterpair pivots from travel idea

The idea of Shutterpair is in fact a pivot from being a travel app, named Rovoria, that the team was originally working on. Rovoria was a self-serve platform aimed at companies operating tourist attractions to build a mobile app to provide more information to tourists and feature a and simple drag-and-drop interface. Ritesh explains the reason for the pivot:

In a nutshell, that didn’t work out for us because most attractions didn’t care for a self-serve platform and the tourists we surveyed did not see a need for an app for every attraction they visited. That prompted us to go back to the drawing board. We recalled all the tourists we had spoken to and discovered four different problems they faced.

One, organizing a group trip was difficult. Two, there is a language barrier for some. Three, without internet, it was difficult to get around. Four, it was difficult to collect all the photographs taken together in one place. For the last problem, that was how Shutterpair started.

Shutterpair beta launched a week ago, and has already seen an encouraging 1,500 photo uploads. Ritesh also said that the team is seeing signs of organic growth, since Shutterpair can only be used in a group setting.

Future focus

The team comprises three National University of Singapore (NUS) graduates, James Dam, Joshua Newman, and Ritesh Angural with backgrounds in computer engineering. The friendship among the trio goes a long way back, with Joshua and Ritesh attending the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) and scrubbing toilets together while serving their National Service. They are bootstrapped in this new venture at the moment.

On upcoming plans, Ritesh tells us:

One area of the app that we can do better is getting our users to take more photos from within the app. Majority of the photos till now have been uploaded via the camera roll on mobile or via the web platform. We’re working on features to make it more fun for users to take photos within Shutterpair but we’re unable to disclose more on that at this point.

Having played around the app, I realized that the upload feature from the camera roll is not obvious enough. And apparently I’m not the only one who has given such feedback. The team is also quick to adapt and has made changes to make it more easily discoverable. The latest version on the app store will also include the ability to invite people to your album via SMS, and opening the link within the SMS will automatically prompt you to download the app, or bring you straight to the album if you already have it on your phone.

The Shutterpair app is currently available for download on both the iTunes store and Google Play. Users can also expect the team to ship Windows Phone and Blackberry versions in the near future.

In order to fund and sustain itself, Singapore-based non-profit organization One Cent Movement has launched a food delivery project called WeFuel, which strives to deliver quality food for employees.

For a start, the team will be delivering soup dumplings (“xiǎo lóng bāo” in Chinese) within the Singapore central business district (CBD) area in the morning from 8.00 am to 12.00 noon. Each box of soup dumplings costs S$3 (US$2.43) and contains five of the steaming hot confections. To allow the law of economies of scale to work, WeFuel currently caters only to companies that place 60 or more orders at one time.

As a foodie myself, it sounds like a tough task delivering soup dumplings, having to pay particular attention that the skin is thick enough so that the stock does not leak – and also ensure it doesn’t harden as it cools down during delivery. According to Sean, who heads up this project, they will be finalizing certain sustainable packaging which allows the food to be kept warm for a 45-minute window period. All orders will be delivered via a private car initially, but that could change later.

The model pretty much works on volume, and Sean revealed that the project makes around S$20 (US$16.20) for a minimum order of 60 boxes. The team will also look into having other famous Singaporean delights such as chicken rice, char kway teow, carrot cake, wanton mee, and rojak in the future.

So now employees need not step out of their offices, and will be able to enjoy quality food at their own desks, which translates to more time at work. To be honest, I would think an occasional walk out of the office is good for employees, since sitting for long periods, especially when you do not maintain a good posture, might pose as a health risk.

If you are keen to find out more about WeFuel and its food delivery service, you can visit its website here.

I met Ai Ching (pictured right), co-founder at Piktochart two years back when I visited the Chinaccelerator space in Dalian and watched her pitch at its demo day in Beijing. For some loyal readers and supporters at Tech in Asia would also know that Piktochart was one of the Startup Arena finalists at our Startup Asia Singapore 2012 event as well.

And it’s also encouraging to know that Piktochart has since acquired more than 170,000 users, is currently profitable, and has an upgraded infographic builder. For today’s post, we wanted to know about Ai Ching and the Piktochart team a little more, and fire some questions about her philosophy as a female entrepreneur.

Tell us a little about yourself

Ai Ching: I love hardware although I am not an engineer and lately, my number one shopping site is Kickstarter. I did experimental psychology at university, and prior to starting up, I spent 15 months at Procter & Gamble (P&G).

What does your startup do, and what is your role?

Ai Ching: Piktochart is a web app that helps non-designers create beautiful infographics. We’re envisioning that text-based blogs would slowly morph into number-based infographics someday, and our vision is to present information in the most beautiful way possible.

I currently take charge of recruitment, a little finance, analytics, partnerships, UX, customer relationships, and ensure that the Piktochart’s team keeps shipping new code (or removing code bloat). My main focus for 2013 is on growth – both at company and personal level. I hope to have more partnerships with other companies and ensure that each and every one in the team takes away something valuable for the year.

How and why did you get started in this industry?

Ai Ching: When my co-founder, Andrea Zaggia, and I quit our day jobs, I was very fascinated with tech startups but had no business ideas in mind. Andrea and I both loved design and had great designers. And when we saw that the idea of infographics was going to become a permanent trend and there was no infographic editor out there, we wanted to create one that people could use.

Did you face any challenges in particular?

Ai Ching: Similar challenges that any startup would face – Hiring, growing, expanding, and looking for investors who would be like mentors to us

I understand that you stayed in China for a while to develop Piktochart. Care to share more? How did you seek help from relevant mentors, especially when you are in a foreign land?

Ai Ching: We were quite fortunate to find Chinaccelerator as they had a huge network of mentors who were mainly expatriates based in China. Finding a mentor who is experienced in our sector, be it data or presentation, and with the passion to really help us, is not easy. Regardless, we managed to get a couple of them.

You used to work for P&G. What was fundamentally different being in a corporate career as compared to a startup?

Ai Ching: The main reason why I left P&G was because the bureaucracy was always making things move slower. Once you spot a trend, it is so difficult to go through with it with the large amount of meetings and red tapes that comes with it.

On the other hand, a startup has much greater flexibility. That is why Jason Fried of 37signals recommends the strategy of having little or no meetings at all in a startup environment. I agree on that. Keeping lean, keeping agile, and staying hungry were all very attractive to me.

Do you think your gender has played a role in helping you gain an advantage over your male counterparts? (soft skills, personal touch, attention to detail, etc.) Has it been a disadvantage in any way?

Ai Ching: Females definitely bring a different “energy” to the organization. I find that they are generally less stuck in the mud when the going gets tough. Having the ability to multitask and having a super eye for detail would also complement the “Charge, Spartans” philosophy that most males have.

I don’t know about gaining an advantage. When I read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, I knew what she meant when she said that successful women attribute their success to “luck” and “help I got”, while men attribute their success to “my skills” and “my personality”. I have never felt anything that was truly discriminating towards females because the media, public, and investors these days are getting more well-versed with female co-founders. I know for sure that when we were in a networking event in Southeast Asia, women still tend to stand out because the ratio of men is to women is around 80 to 20. In the Silicon Valley, I do not recall a great disparity either.

In your opinion, what are the necessary skill-sets and attitudes required to succeed in the technology and startup industry?

Ai Ching: There are three:

1. Be humble enough to receive feedback and re-iterate/pivot. Quite a lot of people stick to their own ideas and are unable to kill their own baby. This happens with us too. We have to constantly find ways to challenge ourselves to break the rules.
2. Establishing a great company culture from the beginning. A lot of success is attributed to agile and lean environments which I do not disagree with, i.e. “fail faster”. Any startup is only going to survive if the team sticks around, constantly be motivated, and strives to learn new stuff every day.
3. Find joy in everything you do. Do you know what’s the difference between a person who is working versus a person who has actually found THE CALLING in their lives? The working person tries to finish up the codes from 9.00am to 5.00pm, praying that there will not be any bugs or coding issues. The person who finds it as a calling, derives joy in even the most mundane and annoying of tasks. Building a great product is only possible if the team is 100 percent into it, which includes emotional feelings too.

Do you have any female role models that you look up to?

Ai Ching: I am a big fan of Julia Hartz, co-founder and president at Eventbrite. I’ve heard Julia speak in an event and her energy is just contagious! And despite her roaring success, she still speaks with humility. I also love the culture she has established in her company.

I also look up to Danielle Morill, CEO and co-founder of Refer.ly. She’s extremely down-to-earth, not running blind into any trend without thinking it through (it took her 3 years to start Refer.ly). Andrea, my co-founder, has met her in Mountain View and we love what they are doing with its product and direction.

Perhaps another interesting fact that draws me to Danielle is both Refer.ly and Piktochart actually have husbands on the teams as CTO!

Do you have any advice for fellow female entrepreneurs?

Ai Ching: Just go and do it! Find what your strengths are, validate the market over and over again, and have the courage to take the first step.

On a more practical note: You could learn coding if you feel that you have the talent and passion for it. I would definitely recommend at least a bit of a HTML background so that you can edit the copy and website on your own, without bothering the programmers with really simple issues. I have met other female founders who got really frustrated because they felt that the codes were not rolled out fast enough. While at times that might be true, the coders sometimes have a reason for not shipping.

Are you married? How do you strike a balance between work and personal life?

Ai Ching: As mentioned, I am married to my CTO. Piktochart has been all-a-hustling for at least one and a half years now. The funny thing is when the husband and wife are both involved in the exact same business, it is not really like we need to find time to spend time together. When I am travelling, the last email gets shot out at around 2.00 to 3.00 am. When I am at home, the last email gets shot out around latest 9.00 to 10.00 pm.

I find it important to be really focused and keeping up a good fight on the business with joy. When necessary, long hour are not a problem because for one, the business requires me doing so and two, I am totally happy to do so. Otherwise, what is the point?

Was it difficult being on a husband and wife team? How do you both manage to separate personal life from work?

Ai Ching: Initially yes, I was impatient and really pushing all the buttons to get the product out faster. But after some time of understanding the business, I cannot be more grateful for a husband who can get things done. We barely need to discuss to get agreement because it usually comes as a mutual yes/no now.

Anything else you would like to add?

Ai Ching: I would love to get in touch with anyone who would like to visit us in Penang! We are attempting to start a makerspace and a space to invite international speakers to grow talents in Penang.

(Disclosure: Andrea frequently works on the coding of our site)

Following the success of its first ever batch of startups, Melbourne Accelerator Program (MAP) has opened applications for its 2013 intake.

A total of six startups will be shortlisted to participate in this intake. They will be provided AUD$20,000 (US$21,000) and an office space, plus mentoring throughout the entire program which will be running from July to November this year.

On the kind of startups the accelerator is looking out for, MAP manager Rohan Workman tells us:

We are looking out for great teams that have demonstrated progress and we are not restricting ourselves to any particular field or industry. We expect to receive a number of digital startup applications, but also quite a few technology or IP-focused ones too.

As mentioned in our previous article, it has had an encouraging 2012, with two out of its four startups, Venuemob (team pictured above) and 121cast, raising a total of AUD$700,000 (US$730,000) seed investment from Adventure Capital and the Optus Innov8 Seed Program, along with other angel investors.

Rohan also tells us that with the funding raised, Venuemob has since expanded its team from just three to the current 12, and is aggressively establishing its services in other Australian cities. 121cast will also be launching its flagship product in the coming months, so we will keep our eyes peeled for these two promising startups in Australia.

For more information on the program, please visit the MAP website here.

The three-day event heeds the model motto of “failing fast, succeed faster”. It will impart lean startup skills, focusing on the process and validation, such as identifying the problem, testing the prototype, and eliminating barriers to a viable business model. Some of the more specific topics that will be covered during the workshop include customer development, lean UX, landing page design, and how you can develop experiments to get your startup ideas validated. Attendees are expected to walk away with the know-how to build revolutionary products – and products that people will want.

So what sets LeanTOKYO apart from other workshops? Ariba Jahan, global coordinator for Lean Startup Machine Tokyo, tells us:

The key tool people will be using is the Validation Board, this is what makes us so unique. We don’t only educate others on lean methodology, we make sure you get to walk through the process and get your ideas validated.Then you can apply this learning towards any and every future ideas. LSM was selected to be in TechStars for this innovative Validation Board. The Validation Board allows users to test their startup ideas before exhausting time or money. It allows users to strategize their goals, develop experiments and monitor progress. Then, they can make faster decisions, improve team accountability and build not only better products, but products that will actually solve an existing problem.

The event also aims to bring some of the best practices of Silicon Valley, adapting it to the heart of Tokyo. Some of the mentors at LeanTOKYO include:

• Hiro Maeda, managing partner at Open Network Lab
• Toshihisa Wanami, founder at Lean Startup Japan
• Ian McFarland, group CTO at Digital Garage and founder and president at Neo
• Yoshi Oikawa, CTO at Salesforce.com Japan
• Yusuke Takahashi, founder at Appsocially
• Pieter Franken, co-founder at Safecast
• Chiaki Hayashi, co-founder at Loftwork

As this marks the inaugural workshop in Tokyo, tickets are expected to sell out fast. So for interested participants – as long as you’re keen to learn – you can visit their website here to find out more. Better still, for Tech in Asia readers, you can enjoy 15 percent off ticket prices if you sign up here with the discount code 15leantokyo.

Got more questions? Ariba is also reachable at ariba[at]leanstartupmachine[dot]com.

At the sidelines of the Startup Asia Singapore conference, I had the opportunity to meet Nobuaki Kitagawa (pictured above), CEO of CyberAgent Ventures China. He revealed that there are plans to increase the US$15 million fund targeted at the Southeast Asia (SEA) region to $20 million by the end of the year.

Nobuaki also said that CyberAgent Ventures has a keen eye on the Thailand market and started looking into it just three to four months ago. The current situation of the Thai market seemed favorable to them, and he is seeing more accelerators and seed investors popping up in the scene, in addition to the strong support that is provided by the ecosystem. He also noted that there are not many venture capital funds in Thailand. With CyberAgent Ventures focusing on series A and B funding, Nobuaki sees Thailand as a timely opportunity for them.

With presence already in countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam, Nobuaki is sure that they will be establishing an office in Thailand in order to be close to the market. Unfortunately there are no startups who have grabbed their attention yet, and they are still in the midst of meeting more in order to find the right fit. When asked about the kind of startups they are looking at, he tells us that they are looking at sectors involving B2C consumer internet and advertising, which pretty much follows the line of businesses that CyberAgent (TYO:4751) operates in Japan.

A new fund for South Korea this year?

Apart from Thailand, he also said that the CyberAgent company has entered South Korea, and has adopted a slightly different strategy as compared to China and SEA. The latter regions are developing markets and have much growth potential. Hence, most startups they look out for would be in consumer internet and online advertisement services.

On the other hand, as South Korea is a slightly more mature market, CyberAgent has a more specific approach, focusing on smartphone applications. With smartphone apps being a global platform, coupled with a large pool of talented Korean developers with a global vision, all factors seem favorable for them to establish a presence in the Asia Pacific region. In fact, CyberAgent Ventures made an investment in KakaoTalk back in 2011, and opened a Seoul office back in October 2012.

With this, they are very eager to set up an individual fund for the Korean market. Nobuaki explains that it is still in its preliminary stages, but could be established late this year.

He also added that the flow of money is currently all over the place, with both Chinese and South Korean startups looking to enter SEA and Japan, and Japan looking to China and SEA. In his opinion, the Southeast Asian internet community seems immature, but CyberAgent Ventures will be able to lead good exit plans if CyberAgent effectively expands into the region. It also hopes to help enhance the startup ecosystem with its networks.

When asked about its investments in Indonesia, Nobuaki also reveals that it will be soon making an investment in two startups within the gaming and e-commerce sectors pretty soon. Each investment will be under US$1 million. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for those.

PropertyGuru announced this afternoon that it has formed a strategic partnership with Far East Organization to launch a new site called Luxury Gallery showcasing Singapore’s premiere luxury residential developments.

The Luxury Gallery boasts of being a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the two powerhouses in the Singapore real estate market which aims to specifically cater to affluent local and foreign real estate investors. The new luxury site will allow luxury property buyers to browse a delectable selection of Far East Organization developments in Singapore. More information, such as a virtual tour, the location, and floorplans will also be readily available for interested buyers on the new portal.

At present, it lists four luxury Far East Organization properties on the new site. On today’s launch PropertyGuru Group CEO and co-founder Steve Melhuish said:

The launch of the Luxury Gallery forms an integral part of PropertyGuru’s ongoing strategy of growing its core business of offering property purchase options to the property seeker. Our research shows that the demand for luxury residential properties continue to rise with keen interest from new and recurring investors.

For interested investors out there, you can now register as a Luxury Gallery member here to access the materials.

SPRING Singapore has today announced that 15 startups have received the proof-of-concept and proof-of-value grants under its SPRING Singapore’s Technology Enterprise Commercialization Scheme (TECS). The total value of the grants add up to S$6 million (US$4.85 million), encompassing a variety of startups in areas such as medical devices, electronics, engineering, and infocommunications. The 15 startups are:

1. Neurostyle

Through virtual reality games, Neurostyle aims to teach the brain to ‘rewire’ itself, which serves as a new methodology to help people recover movement in their limbs.

2. Hexalotus Technology

Liver cancer is one of the top ten cancers diagnosed in male Singaporeans. The Singapore-based company specializes in the development and provision of 3D modelling that will aid doctors in risk analysis and surgical planning. The web-based platform also helps facilitate consultation and provide assistance to surgeons.

3. T.Ware

T.Jacket, a product of T.Ware, simulates deep pressure massages, which calms children or patients suffering from autism, preventing them to going into uncontrollable fits. The patient can wear the T.Jacket anywhere and be controlled using the T.Jacket smartphone app, making it easy for parents and therapists to activate and control the jacket discreetly and remotely. The pressure levels can also be customized and varied according to individual preferences.

4. Envichem

[UPDATE: We previously wrote that this is Malaysia-based. Correction now made.]

Founded in 2012, Envichem Technologies Pte Ltd is a Singapore-based environmental engineering firm, which provides sustainable environmental technologies for heavy industries.

5. Water Optics Technology

This startup aims to offer real-time monitoring of water quality using its ‘parasitometer’, where you can detect germs and bacteria within 24 hours, instead of taking several days to find out the levels.

6. Zimplistic

The Singapore-based startup is developing the world’s first fully-automatic flatbread maker, the Rotimatic. Families who eat flatbread as a staple food can now make them easily at home, which was once a process where skilled hands and intensive labour were both required. Rotimatic also has a sensing system where it can adapt to different flour types which have different water absorption characteristics and capacities.

7. RecordTV

RecordTV caters to an audience in Singapore, and positions itself as a smart content compression technology that allows users to start playing partially recorded live content, as opposed to digital video recordings that requires content to be fully recorded first.

8. GridComm

GridComm is a self-configuring software which can identify and adapt to changes in power lines to help optimise energy consumption.

9. Eyeota

Eyeota is an international marketplace for anonymous web audience data. It helps publishers to build and segmentize audience data, then monetizes it via the Eyeota data marketplace. It aids owners in maximizing audience data revenue, find the audience they want, and maximize campaign results.

10. DynaOptics

With DynaOptics, you can now say goodbye to ugly digitally zoomed-in photographs. It aims to develop a miniature optical zoom lens for mobile phone cameras to allow optical zoom to be achieved through minute, lateral movements. With its compact size, it makes it appealing for use with mobile phones.

11. Membrane Instruments

Also a Singapore-based company, Membrane Instruments is a membrane process optimization company. It offers value-added advisory services and implements a whole suite of proprietary sensing, computing, and actuating system in membrane plants.

12. Banff Cyber

The Singapore-based company positions itself as a cyber security specialist, offering a wide range of cyber security services and solutions to meet the security needs and requirements of enterprises and organizations. It provides alerts on abnormal activity on websites, which is especially useful for corporations that face security risks such as website defacement and malware.

13. Maxsolar

This is an enhanced technology for solar panels that overcomes current limitations of both centralised and detachable inverters, and can increase energy yield by up to 20 percent.

14. Printed Power

(Unfortunately, we were not provided any information on this startup.)

15. CellSievo

CellSievo allows you to diagnose cancer using non-invasive methods. It utilizes circulation of tumor cells in the human blood as a biomarker. With the system, it can isolate cancerous cells from patients’ blood and report on its quantity. The isolated cells can then be eluted for further analysis, which will assist doctors to predict the progress of the disease, hence choosing the right treatment options for personalized cancer management.

Since the launch of TECS, SPRING has around 150 projects, which adds up to around S$50 million worth of grants. Some noteworthy startups include Sofshell, Clearbridge Biomedics, and Endomaster. For startups who are keen to participate in the quarterly grant call for TECS POV, the applications will close June 30, 2013. For more information, please visit its website here.

In essence, Maskr is a privacy service that allows you to create an unlimited number of free, anonymous aliases that would be associated to a single email address that you own (see screenshots below). First, you will need to head over to the site to create an account and get verified. You will then be able to access a secure dashboard, which has features that allow you to create new aliases that will be associated to the email that you have used to sign up with. In the event a user starts to receive unsolicited emails, one can easily disable and create new ones. Ken Tan, creative director of The Bang Table Company (who are direct investors of Maskr), tells us more:

[There is] an additional protection feature allows direct blockage of senders per alias via a manageable blacklist. Maskr currently works on all platforms with seamless integration between desktop and mobile. An upcoming iOS mobile application will further enhance the mobile experience: store multiple email addresses to create aliases instantly with a single tap.

So what’s the difference between signing up for a new email account and having a Maskr account? The latter makes it extremely easy to create new email aliases. We’re drawing parallels between signing up a new account which typically takes two to five minutes of your time, a click which takes a couple of seconds.

How Maskr came about

The idea behind the Singapore-based service first came about when Ken once left his personal email with a hotel while he was travelling overseas. He then found his personal email flooded with endless honeymoon promotions (which can be annoying, really), and wondered if a service that removes such “bad points of contacts” existed.

The idea was then brought forward and conceptualized towards the end of 2011, and launched just a month back. In the interview, Ken tells us:

Maskr was built in direct response to the increasing number of solicited emails (BACN). We’re on the consumers’ side – we’ve built Maskr to protect the identities of personal email addresses around the world.
Maskr takes away the hesitation when asked to share one’s personal email address, knowing you can kill the alias anytime.

At present, Maskr is free to use, and the team promises more updates with newer features. They are also planning to look into white-labeling the Maskr technology for enterprises (which I personally think is a brilliant idea, since a significant amount of my time is actually spent on clearing unwanted emails).

The Maskr team

Another thing that caught my attention about the Maskr service is the company behind it: The Bang Table Company (TBTC). I like the company name, and thought it added a little local Singaporean flavor. Ken explains more:

We wanted something colloquial, yet that makes sense. We make noise in the [startup] scene, banging on the tables of convention. [...] TBTC is a pre-seed investment company that aids and grows business ideas from their nascent stages, providing support to accelerate the route for startups to profitability. These startups could be either external or internal staff (or both), whom we encourage to think big. We provide the funds and infrastructure for them to develop their ideas, taking them from build to beta and then to launch; after which we’ll take on a bigger stake (and role) to get to the next stage which is typically seed or series A.

And the team (pictured top right) seems pretty solid to me, having a good mix of digital professionals and aspiring entrepreneurs who understand the needs when it comes to emails.

Future plans

The team promises to release its iOS app early June 2013 (pictured above), and is looking to translate the service into Malaysian, simplified and traditional Chinese, as well as Spanish so as to cater to users in the other regions.

Plus, they’re also looking to develop an e-commerce service in the near future. In fact, Ken’s pretty excited about the journey ahead for the TBTC company:

We’ve always been innovators, and we’re obsessed with technology. The process of going from scribbles on paper to actual users embracing the product is both exhilarating and scary for us.

And normally in Singapore, we can easily purchase from the shop located at most local markets, but here’s an alternative for Singaporeans who would want to purchase at the comfort of their own homes: KimZua.com.

Kimzua, in Hokkien dialect when translated directly, also means gold paper. I first noticed the site when my friend told me that he ordered a paper kayak online for another friend who passed on due to cancer. He then convinced me to visit the website, which I thought would be boring and traditional with an unattractive layout, but to my surprise, I saw this:

In all honesty, I was impressed because I didn’t expect anyone to design a site with such flashy colours and a vibrant layout. After all, it’s an e-commerce site dedicated to gifts for friends in the other world (aka spirits). They sell items ranging from paper clocks and paper accessories to paper cars and paper houses. And for those busy bees or people who simply don’t know what to pack in, there are special packages available too.

Also, the team is committed to protecting the environment amidst preserving traditions. According to the site, it says:

That is why we source for alternative paper materials around the world, such as bamboo and hemp fibres, that emit less smoke during combustion. We also use recycled paper for 33% of our paper products to reduce the effect on deforestation.

It might sound bizarre to some, but hey, it’s an offline business brought online. Perhaps another noteworthy startup in the “spirit” of this post to take note of is UK-based Rent a Mourner, which supplies people to boost visitor numbers at funerals.

And for those who are interested to find out more about Kimzua.com, you can visit the site here.

We concluded our Startup Asia Singapore 2013 event last week with a blast, and our female entrepreneurs had fun on the panel debating issues facing women at tech startups.

At the event I had the privilege to speak with Akiko Naka, CEO of Wantedly, a Japan-based social recruiting site. She told me of her struggles during her corporate career and how she managed to take the first leap to pursue entrepreneurship. Her love for coding and a stint at Facebook Japan inspired her to create her current startup, and she hasn’t looked back since.

Her advice to entrepreneurs out there? Gender doesn’t matter. The three skill sets necessary to survive in this technology and startup industry? Read on to find out more.

Tell me a little about yourself.

I was born and raised in Japan, always had an interest in web services and front-end coding as my dad was teaching IT at a university. I had my own Mac since elementary school, and used to create visual games using Visual Basic. Later at a university I ran a small business with few other members, who are all students, creating static homepages.

I chose Goldman Sachs as my first career, but I just could not forget my passion for web services. So, I moved onto Facebook Japan at the age of 25 where I felt a phenomenonal social wave coming to Japan. I then started building my own service Wantedly, a social recruiting site at the age of 26. Now the service is taking off after a year from its launch, having over 1,000 clients and about 40,000 members, making us the largest social recruiting site in Japan. Now Wantedly has eight full-time team members.

What is the startup about and what’s your role?

We believe good hires happen through friends’ recommendations, because having mutual friends guarantee the quality of candidates to an extent. It works the other way too – where candidates have a good chance of meeting a good team through mutual friends. We have a core feature called “support this job listing” that encourages your friends and team members to share job listings. In this manner, through the power of social media, the listing gets passed around, leading to a good match.

Companies are able to list one job for free, forever, but will be required to pay JPY 35,000 (US$355) for unlimited job listings. Our clients include DeNA, CyberAgent, Amazon Web Services, SalesForce, and Engine Yard.

I currently serve as the CEO and am in charge of marketing, hiring, and a bit of front-end coding. My previous experience includes front-end coding so I still help design, UI, and fixing bugs.

How and why did you get started in this industry?

Two reasons for me choosing social recruiting. First is my passion in work. Our goal is to grow the number of people who truly love what they do as their job. My first career at Goldman Sachs was exciting but at the same time I started to ponder; I wanted to do something that creates 1s and 0s; the finance industry is more about calculating millions, and it was not something that I was truly passionate about.

Initially it was tough to move on to the next career. And I feel that there are so many young people like me who are afraid of stepping forward to pursue what they truly love. With this, I want to help those people to make the first move and discover a job that they would fall in love with.

The second reason is my experience at Facebook. I was fascinated with the power of social media, during my stint at Facebook Japan back in 2010. I was amazed at how it empowers individuals, and hence wanted to create something surrounding the same theme.

The birth of the social recruitment service, Wantedly, was a beautiful marriage between the love for work and social, allowing people to pursue the career they truly love.

Did you face any challenges in particular?

In the early days, I had my friends to help code and create a prototype of the site. However, my friend was holding on to a full-time job and could only help me at night or on the weekends. Hence productivity was pretty low. So I self-taught Ruby on Rails with a book to build a prototype. Learning backend coding was not easy but I tried hard and came up with something that works. That prototype was featured on TechCrunch and created a huge buzz. That was my first challenge, and my first turning point in my entrepreneurial life.

How do you seek out relevant mentors and people for help?

Fortunately for me, I knew many CEOs and entrepreneurs through various events and work. I relied on those people (around five to six of them), and asked for advice so they were my mentors. The biggest chance I had to create that kind of network was attending Infinity Ventures Summit (IVS) in Japan.

What were the sacrifices you’ve made in the pursuit of this move? What was fundamentally different between a corporate career and startup life?

To me, it felt like I gave nothing up to pursue this. To put it this way: I think I was sacrificing so many things working for larger, and more established companies.

The difference between a corporate career and pursuing the startup route is freedom. In a corporate career, it is very difficult to pursue what you truly love. The fear of losing a stable fixed income sometimes blinds you and makes people difficult to step out of corporate career. In a startup life, you have the choice of freedom. You, of course, will have less income in a short term, but upside potential is unlimited. I believe, learning how to build a service/organization/business in your twenties is much more important than earning some amount of money and doing what you are not passionate about.

Do you think your gender has played a role in helping you gain an advantage over your male counterparts? (soft skills, personal touch, attention to detail, etc.) Has it been a disadvantage in any way?

Perhaps in terms of publicity. I had many interviews and much media exposure in Japan due to my gender, and that’s due to being in an industry where I form the minority.

In your opinion, what are the necessary skill-sets and attitudes required to succeed in the technology and startup industry?

First is to learn fast. The key is you have to learn very fast in order to survive. You need to execute fast, fail fast, and learn fast.

The second is to focus and keep things simple. Focus on what you are doing – keep your product, UX, and organization simple. Just do one thing at a time.

Lastly, be user-oriented. Always place the users as your priority and don’t let any excuses come in your way. Stop giving yourself excuses, like “this is too hard to code”. Do your best to realize the best user experience.

In summary: Learn fast, focus and think/act/make it simple, be user-oriented.

Do you have any female role models that you look up to?

At present, no. But I do look up to Steve Jobs, Hayao Miyazaki who is an animation creator, and Taro Okamoto, who is a contemporary artist.

Do you have any advice for fellow female entrepreneurs?

My advice is that you don’t need to be too conscious about your gender. I have never been. Just be you, and you might get lucky in terms of publicity if you stand out in the pool.

Are you single or married at the moment? How to you strike a balance between work and personal life?

I am not married, but I’m hoping to be within a few years. I think having a family is a very important factor in our lives. It would be ideal to spend half of your time at work, and half of your time with your family. I believe family is as important as work.

Anything else to add?

Wantedly is solving a problem to reduce the number of people who hate their career. Work should be something that you truly love and makes you want to dedicate your life to doing it. To achieve that, we have come together to build and operate Wantedly, which we’re proud to say is the largest social recruiting service in Japan. We believe having a good team matters, which adds value to loving what you do.

This is part of Tech in Asia’s series on female entrepreneurship.

#10:23: We have Steve Melhuish, CEO and co-founder of PropertyGuru on stage.

#10:25: Steve: I am originally from UK and arrived in Singapore in 2005. He was involved in a couple of startups prior. There was a void in property portals in Singapore, and he saw the opportunity in that.

#10:27: Steve: Back then, the competitors in the property site market. Most were listed on the newspapers, and Singapore Press Holding related sites such as ST701.com and MediaCorp’s Mocca.com. We had three competitors into the first few months of operation, and the other co-founders and I didn’t take salary for the first three years.

#10:28: Steve: The reason why we were successful was because we were very focused.

#10:30: Steve: The biggest challenge was that 99.9 percent of most estate agents were on newspaper. They spoke of a different language compared to Steve, and Steve was speaking in a foreign accent, making communication difficult. Also, Steve was introducing a new concept of the Internet, while the current existing solution was the traditional media and agents have been using it for a long time.

#10:31: Steve: Today, we have 24,000 agents on PropertyGuru site.

#10:33: Steve: PropertyGuru Group was profitable 2009 – 2010. 2011 to 2012 was not. Singapore was very profitable. In 2011 we went from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. We have been taking the money from Singapore, 70 percent of the revenue, to invest in other markets.

#10:34: Steve: The organization in 2010 was very much focused on Singapore – from marketing to editorial. In 2011, we almost stretched the company and our people to breaking point. We stretched people to the max, and we were too ambitious. That was one mistake we made.

#10:36: Willis: How would you do differently then, since you’re running against time for the acquisitions?

#10:37: Steve: You can still buy the companies, but not completely change the platform. I will look at a step-by-step approach, rather than expanding into multiple markets immediately.

#10:37: Steve: We have raised S$22 million, and last year we raised S$60 million last year. One thirds was cashed out to shareholders.

#10:42: Steve: We still have substantial amount of money in the bank. We continue to hire. We have around 300 people across 4 countries. We will still be hiring 60 – 70 people this year.

#10:43: Second is emphasis on products. We will be focusing on mobile. Property and the idea location-based gels very nicely. Countries like Indonesia, we see traffic picking up very nicely, but monetization was slow.

#10:44: Steve: One strength was that we made sure that we did well in one market e.g. Singapore. And using that model to expand to other markets, since we already have a strong foundation in one. We’re starting to see other countries becoming profitable. We’re looking to Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Philippines as next expansion targets.

#10:48: Steve: We’re looking to IPO in the next eighteen months. It sounds exciting, but it can also mean more paperwork involved.

#10:50: Steve: We don’t see many Singaporean tech companies listed in the stock exchange.

#10:51: Willis: What do you think of the current batch of entrepreneurs in Singapore?

#10:52: Steve: Back then when I first started, I met fresh graduates who were really passionate about building products with little investments going on. Now, the entire scene has fundamentally changed. We have now locals and international entrepreneurs. Now we have also government backed investments as well as international heavyweights entering the scene.

#10:53: Steve: Now the whole online space is also growing. Most of bigger tech companies have their headquarters here, and more M&As happening in the space. The platform and infrastructure are in place. I have also recently invested in RedMart.com last week.

#10:54: Steve: I have been very impressed, the whole market has changed.

#10:55: Willis: Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs out there?

#10:56: Steve: I have an enormous admiration for people who have the drive to do things they believe in. The environment is favorable now, which makes it much easier to embark and explore entrepreneurship. People in corporate careers have been saying to entrepreneurs that they wish they could be doing things they are passionate about. Just do it.

#10:57: Steve: Even if the market is small, just go for it.

This is a part of our coverage of Startup Asia Singapore 2013, our event running on April 4 and 5. For all our newest Startup Arena pitches, see here. You can follow along on Twitter at @startupasia, and on our Facebook page.

I’m told that it takes 21 days to develop a habit. Here’s an app, DodoHub, that encourages you to develop good habits. It tracks and records your progress in a new goal, which eventually leads to achieving the thing you’ve set for yourself.

The Singapore-based startup took to the stage today at Startup Arena to tell us how the app aims to eliminate the act of procrastination. There are a good number of apps out there that allow you to set a goal and guide you towards achieving it, but DodoHub aims to be the assistant that allows you to develop minor but meaningful habits in your life. It could range from drinking water to walking your dog, to calling your parents.

For instance, if you are looking to lose weight (I probably need this) and be a healthier person, you can set a weekly target and reminder. You can set these to run three times weekly, sit-ups daily, etc. DodoHub generates a daily as well as a weekly report which will be sent to your email. You will be able to track your progress. The team seems to have placed a larger emphasis on healthy weight loss too, and has made a feature separate from others to monitor weight changes.

DodoHub also motivates individuals through gamification methods. Each user will be a character within the app. With each completed task, users will be given experience points (EXP). With the experience points, it allows your character to progress from one level to another. And once the character levels up from one to another, you will be given health points (HP). These points, according to founder Hu Chen, are what keep the characters alive. Once it hits zero, the character will be demoted to level one. In order to make sure that the HP continues to climb, users need to make sure that he/she keeps to the positive habits and does not break the cycle.

Jeffery Paine said that there needs to be careful pronunciation of the startup’s name, as the “do do” on DodoHub has a slang meaning as well. (ie: “doodoo” is “poop”!) On the other hand, Yasuhiko Yurimoto was pretty impressed with the app.

This is a part of our coverage of Startup Asia Singapore 2013, our event running on April 4 and 5. For the rest of our Startup Arena pitches, see here. You can follow along on Twitter at @techinasia, and on our Facebook page.

Whether you’re a student, an individual, or a business owner, at some point you’ll probably need to create presentations that aim to impress. Second to pitch at our Startup Arena stage today is Hong Kong-based Mmixr which positions itself as the all-in-one presentation management tool with three main features: creation, management, and distribution.

So with Mmixr, you can organize all your presentation and media assets, such as a PowerPoint presentation, videos, flash, and images, in one place. You will be able to create your own slides using your own presentation tools or choose from Mmixr’s template library while just simply dragging and dropping the assets you wish to include in the presentation. Users can also manage users, groups, and obtain analytics from the admin dashboard. Mmixr is hosted on the Amazon S3 app engine, which allows you to store unlimited presentations, which can be easily accessed online from a computer or on a mobile device.

How is it different from the normal SlideShare experience? Mmixr’s David describes SlideShare as the YouTube of presentation, and Mmxir, as the iTunes of presentations. While the former allows you to share stuff publicly, the latter allows you to share selectively with people whom you choose to share with.

Mmixr targets larger corporations with a large sales force. For users in such companies, Mmixr offers a package at US$22.99 per user per month, which allows you to have access to the full feature-set which includes a dedicated account manager for support and training.

This is a part of our coverage of Startup Asia Singapore 2013, our event running on April 4 and 5. For the rest of our Startup Arena pitches, see here. You can follow along on Twitter at @techinasia, and on our Facebook page.

I believe many startups, app developers, and site owners are plagued with the issue of creating an excellent user experience for their users. Often, with lousy user experience (UX), it translates to users who quickly abandon the app, and low conversion rates among premium customers. Often, testing can be expensive and take up long hours for startups, and hence many opt to skip this initial process.

Here’s a new startup that aims to solve the problem. First to take to our Startup Arena Singapore 2013 stage today is Malaysian-based startup NetizenTesting, an online usability testing service that taps into a crowdsourced pool of online citizens to test applications. During the entire testing process, all the screen activity and voice comments of the testers will be recorded and given to clients so that they can understand user behavioral patterns, point of exit, and so on.

So a typical testing cycle begins with the client listing the test instructions and requirements online, and then proceeds to choose a tester from the pool of crowdsourced testers that NetizenTesting already has. Once the tester is done digging through the website, the results will then be delivered to the client.

How does NetizenTesting ensure that the results are of top quality and effective to the client? In the event that the tester is found not to follow instructions or produces irregularities, the client has the option to get a refund or choose another tester.

At present, clients are charged at US$35 per tester, and there’s a bundled offer of $19.90 per tester should clients opt for three users or more. If the client wishes to have a more in-depth analysis, a full UX report can be churned out for $1,000 per report.

This is a part of our coverage of Startup Asia Singapore 2013, our event running on April 4 and 5. For the rest of our Startup Arena pitches, see here. You can follow along on Twitter at @techinasia, and on our Facebook page.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, our original speaker, Le Hong Minh is unable to attend the conference. But we’re fortunate and honored to have  Jamie Lin, founding partner of appWorks Ventures to speak on the Taiwanese startup scene.

#10:35: Jamie: On building appWorks, Jamie had this in mind: what kind of resource would I want my VCs to bring to the table?

#10:38: Jamie: appWorks has both incubator and accelerator programs. During each batch they will incubate for six months, and then do business development for them. They will then link them up with suitable investors. Think of them as early stage investors. They see themselves as VC built for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.

#10:40: Willis: What are the interesting startups in Taiwan?

#10:41: Jamie: Gamesofa is one, and was generating US$30 million per year.

#10:43 Willis: Who are the more popular investors in Taiwan?

For the past ten years, the VC industry is not growing much. We have around 120 GPs, 200 LPs in Taiwan.

#10:44: Willis: Biggest challenge facing entrepreneurs in Taiwan

#10:45: Jamie: The government. The people are lamenting that they should be more like Singapore. For instance, it is very difficult in Taiwanese corporate structure to give shared equity.

#10:46: Jamie: Second problem is that there is no third party online payment service like PayPal.

#10:47: Jamie: Third problem is Wimax adoption VS 4G LTE.

#10:50: Willis: What are the possible trends to ride on in Taiwan?

#10:51: Jamie: Smartphone penetration. Taiwan has around 50 percent smartphone adoption rate. And the ratio of the number of iOS devices to Androids is 1:3.

With this smartphone trend, gaming becomes huge. From the growth of smartphones, gaming can ride on this trend. It is about US$1 to 2 billion market we are looking at.

#10:52: Jamie: For entrepreneurs looking at Taiwan, e-commerce in Taiwan is really good. It is a good environment and platform.

#10:54: Jamie: In Taiwan, Jiaotong University is known to produce the most entrepreneurs. If you are looking to hire good quality engineers, you can look at Tsinghua University. Taida is known for business talents.

#10:56: Jamie: Taiwan, compared to US, is a small place. 90 percent of the more successful startups are in Taipei.

#10:57: Willis: Is it normal for Taiwanese companies to expand into China?

#10:58: Jamie: China is seemingly easier for Taiwanese startups to enter. But the cost of doing business in China is increasing at 20 – 30%, increasing the barriers to entry. It is typically not a move for Taiwanese companies to move into China. Expanding into SEA is relatively easier.

#10:59: Jamie: Doing business in China is really different. What is being said could mean something else. In Taiwan, people start off with a whitelist of companies to work with, whereas the in China, it is usually assumed that companies are bad (they start with a blacklist of companies), and slowly work their way to become a whitelist of companies.

#11:02: Willis: Why would Taiwanese choose SEA market, when it is so fragmented?

#11:03: Jamie: The GDP growth for a lot of SEA countries are actually much higher than China. It presents a good deal of opportunities and challenges for Taiwanese entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are very eager to learn about the region, in fact.

This is a part of our coverage of Startup Asia Singapore 2013, our event running on April 4 and 5. For all our newest Startup Arena pitches, see here. You can follow along on Twitter at @techinasia, and on our Facebook page.

With the launch of the new instant booking service, Roomorama aims to reduce users’ waiting time – travellers can now easily book their desired rooms and obtain immediate confirmation. CEO and co-founder of Roomorama, Federico Folcia says:

It works just like it sounds; find a room, book it, done. No waiting and you get your confirmation in real time. Obviously this service makes us very excited for our users, who will still be able to enjoy what Roomorama offers without sacrificing the efficiency of a hotel room booking.

At present, the new feature is only available in 15 European destinations, such as Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, and aims to extend the service to the 5,000 destinations they are currently offering globally.

Apart from the new service, Roomorama has also entered a partnership with Wego, reaching out to more travellers in Asia, adding to the five travel sites already on the list. Travellers can now find Roomorama listings on the “vacation rental” section of Wego.

With this partnership, Roomorama, which is based in Singapore, will be able to provide Wego users a pool of 100,000 unique travel accommodations, in over 5,000 destinations globally.

As mentioned in Willis’ new year post, we will be largely focusing on the Southeast Asian region in our newest event, particularly Thailand, Vietnam, and Philippines. To kick-start the entire conference, we’ll have entrepreneur and angel investor Darius Cheung (pictured right) to reveal the trends, findings, and opportunities that he has discovered regarding the opportunities available in Southeast Asia.

And for those who are unfamiliar with the Singapore startup scene, Darius is currently embarking on his second startup, BillPin. Prior to this, he was the co-founder of TenCube, which was acquired by McAfee back in 2010.

So what kind of opportunities does Darius see from an entrepreneur’s point of view? How should entrepreneurs effectively exploit the region, especially when you are dealing with different cultures, languages, and habits? More importantly, how should entrepreneurs go about tapping into the pool of users, such as those in rural areas?

And from an investor’s point of view, what kind of investment opportunities does Darius see in the Southeast Asian region? Will we be able to see the next Facebook emerging out of this region?

Darius’ coffee chat session is scheduled on April 4th, 9.15 to 9.45am, where we will understand from the second-time entrepreneur the trends, views, and the investment opportunities that he sees within this exciting region.

It’s the last day to grab your tickets, so do so now and join us in this exciting conference! See you tomorrow!

And of course, don’t miss any of the other speakers at Startup Asia Singapore 2013 either. That list includes:

• Kee Lock Chua (Group President and CEO at Vertex Venture Holdings)
• Ole Ruch (Managing director APAC at Airbnb)
• Steve Melhuish (Co-founder at PropertyGuru)
• Stefan Jung (Co-Founder and Managing Director SEA, Rocket Internet)
• Nobuaki Kitagawa (Managing Director at CyberAgent Ventures)
• Daphne Lee (International business director at Taobao)
• Tetsuya Mori (Managing Director at DeNA Asia Pacific Holdings)
• Evan Spytma (Regional Director at Popcap Games)

Alexis will also be on our panel discussion on female entrepreneurship at the upcoming Startup Asia 2013, along with some other awesome panelists that we’ve featured before in this series: Aileen Sim, Meri Rosich, Gina Romero, and Carmen Benitez. Be sure not to miss out on that.

But first we wanted to find out before about Alexis as a person and an entrepreneur:

Tell me a little about yourself.

Alexis: I’m originally from Boulder Colorado, USA. I have been in Asia for more than five years. I originally moved here with a Washington DC-based consulting firm called Frontier Strategy Group, where I had the opportunity to start the Asia business based in Singapore for them. I love it here and haven’t been able to leave since!

What does your startup do, and what is your role?

Alexis: Luxola is the leading e-commerce platform for skincare and cosmetics in Southeast Asia (SEA). I am the founder and CEO. My daily work varies widely but I am always working on the strategic goals of the business and am heavily involved in brand acquisition, sales, marketing, and operations.

How and why did you get started in this industry?

Alexis: This is my third startup and the second one I have founded. I really fell in love with the e-commerce space and knew that I wanted to create a platform that focused on customer service and product selection as its differentiators instead of price. I knew the beauty industry somewhat from my consulting days and saw that there was a lack of platforms in SEA that were above board (meaning, not gray or black market imports) for brands to work with.

Simultaneously, we did a lot of market research with potential customers and discovered there is a huge demand for many brands which were not yet available in SEA. We wanted to create something where we can work with brands to ensure their brand equity is protected, while simultaneously creating a shopping platform that had a great selection of brands, was easy to use, educational, and inspiring for women.

Why did you choose to move to Singapore?

Alexis: Originally the consulting company I was with decided this would be our HQ for Asia, so I didn’t really have a choice. But once I was here I just really fell in love with the country. From the perspective of starting and running your own business, the ease of doing it in Singapore and the support of the entire eco-system around is just above and beyond any other country in SEA.

Did you face any challenges in particular?

Alexis: Of course! I have faced a million challenges. I think everyone starting companies does, but I would say the biggest ones have been finding/hiring the right people, we have been very fortunate so far in that area but not without a ton of effort and some mistakes along the way.

How do you hire right?

Alexis:It definitely takes time and effort and I make it a priority. I will stop at nothing to find the right people, I’ll stalk you on Linkedin, find you at a conference, or call your company – watch out! People are the key to any business, I’m not good at everything and I’m well aware of that so I’m always looking for the next fantastic hire.

How do you seek out relevant mentors and people for help, especially in a foreign country?

Alexis: I think Singapore has a fantastic ecosystem for entrepreneurs. If I want to talk to someone specific, I just reach out to them and very rarely is someone not willing to spend at least a few minutes speaking with you. I find it to be a very open place for the most part.

What were the sacrifices you’ve made in the pursuit of this move?

Alexis: Starting a company is a huge sacrifice, it takes a toll on your life everywhere else. You don’t make as much money – immediately anyway – as you would in a regular job. You are constantly working, you are always concerned about your employees and investors, and you don’t have enough time to spend with friends and family. I think the key is to surround yourself with great people who understand what you are going through and support you through the tough times.

Do you think your gender has played a role in helping you gain an advantage over your male counterparts? Things like soft skills, personal touch, attention to detail, etc. Or has it been a disadvantage in any way?

Alexis: I don’t tend to think of gender much in my position. Of course being in the beauty business I feel I identify a bit more than a man would with my customers, but we have a lot of great guys on our team as well so I’m not sure even that is true! I think entrepreneurs are successful more because of traits they have in common, not so much their gender.

In your opinion, what are the necessary skill-sets and attitudes required to succeed in the technology and startup industry?

Alexis: Tenacity and the ability to roll with the highs and lows. You face a ton of setbacks in a startup and if you let them get you down you get worn down very quickly, you just have to pick yourself up, learn from the problem, and move on. It’s really a grind but if you can push through it and learn to celebrate the little wins than I think you are in a good position to survive.

Are you married/attached at the moment? How do you strike that work-life balance?

Alexis: I have a wonderful boyfriend who doesn’t mind me working all day/night/weekend. I’m pretty sure he wants to throw my computer and phone off our balcony but he understands that this is the most important part of my life at the moment, and I’m lucky that way. I try to find time to relax with friends. I find wine a great anti-dote to overworking.

Do you have any female role models that you look up to?

Alexis: Tons! I look up to women from all different walks of life. Hillary Clinton is amazing, Natalie Massanet who founded Net-a-Porter is a huge inspiration to me, what she has done to combine commerce and media is really something Luxola aspires to. I look at women everywhere for inspiration, I think the women who surround you are usually the most inspirational in the moment – people like my mom, coworkers, and peers.

Do you have any advice for fellow female entrepreneurs?

Alexis: Be tough, in every way.

(Also read: Luxola Founder Talks About Her Journey As An Entrepreneur)

This is part of Tech in Asia’s series on female entrepreneurship.

As mentioned, Alexis will be speaking at Startup Asia Singapore 2013 in our Female Entrepreneurs in Asia discussion panel on April 5, 3.15 to 4.00pm. (The full event is April 4 and 5).

And of course, don’t miss any of the other speakers at Startup Asia Singapore 2013 either. That list includes:

• Kee Lock Chua, (Group President and CEO at Vertex Venture)
• Shin Hasegawa, (Director at Rakuten Global Marketing Office)
• Ole Ruch (Managing director APAC at Airbnb)
• Steve Melhuish (Co-founder at PropertyGuru)
• Moo Natavudh (President Director at OOKBEE)
• Ming Shen (Co-founder at Nuffnang)

See you guys there!

On top of all the other awesome women mentioned, we are also honoured to have Carmen Benitez, founder and managing director at Fetch Plus joining us on the panel. For today’s post continuing our female entrepreneurship series, we’d like to give a little background on Carmen and her entrepreneurial journey. She tells us how she strikes a balance between work and family by compartmentalizing and seeking help from family and friends.

A huge fan of art, music, and reading, Carmen also looks up to to female models such as Estee Lauder and the latter’s commitment to the brand. Her advice to fellow female entrepreneurs? Read on and you’ll find out.

Tell me a little about yourself.

Carmen: I am a relentless driver and a passionate observer. While I love pushing through barriers and getting to the point, I have also learned through experience and good mentors’ actions that patience is a good benefit to one’s ultimate goals. I am totally into technology, but that’s not necessarily just cloud-based systems, applications, or gadgets. I love learning about space, fractal design, and other influences that help me piece things together.

What does your startup do, and what is your role?

Carmen: Our company, Fetch Plus, develops Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) social media marketing technology for major brand franchises, global media companies/publishers, and telcos worldwide. I serve as the founder and managing director, heading both the technology and product teams.

How and why did you get started in this industry?

Carmen: I’m a survivalist, which is something I think many women could carry and use to their benefit. I was that kid who would inadvertently raise my hand and volunteer to do or fix something when I didn’t necessarily have the “skills” to do it. That type of survival attitude started at a very young age where I was one of five kids in a household of immigrants. I was the kid who sat in the front seat of the car, learned navigation and mapping in order not to get lost; I was the kid, at age of six, was selling sno-cones (a type of shaved ice with colored fruit-flavored syrup, pictured right, from Carmen) using commercial grade dessert machines out of my parent’s garage; I was also the kid managing my mother’s accounts and sales transactions by the age of 11 for her alterations business.

In college, I remember raising my hand when I was in a work-study position for the office of the university’s president to build the staff database. After college, I moved with my then husband to a very large state school university town and felt lost. So I started working on a project called Vusion, that used mobile and photos to connect college students and offered mobile coupons to places like Starbucks for them to meet. This was early 2004. Subsequently, an incubator out of Athens sent me to Boston to meet up with some other college kids with a college network. Those college kids were the Winklevoss twins and that network was ConnectU.

Unfortunately (and fortunately), Facebook launched and I, with permission from the Winklevoss twins, went south to try to promote ConnectU to colleges not yet hit by Facebook, but the wildfire was already set. And I ran out of money. But that experience shaped me significantly as I knew then that technology was the spreader and generator of wealth.

After this, I went into marketing and kept raising my hand at my employment to fix things through technology. I then realized my commitment towards raising my hand and fixing was a great reason to move into entrepreneurship.

Why did you choose to move to Singapore? (FYI, Carmen is currently based in Singapore.)

Carmen: Love chose Singapore! I was in a long-distance relationship with someone from Australia and was actually living in Melbourne starting to get my bearings of starting a business. He then received a work opportunity to come to Asia and had the choice of Beijing, Hong Kong, or Singapore. Because I had vacationed in Singapore – understood the quality of life and biz opportunities were better suited for me as a person – we then decided Singapore was the best spot. It was the best decision for me as a person, both professionally and personally.

Did you face any challenges in particular?

Carmen: I think the biggest challenge has already been solved: The decision to build a business in Singapore. At the end of the day, when you decide to startup, each city will have its pros and cons. But the biggest challenge is just taking the step to say, “I’m willing to risk many other comfortable ways of living to give this a good go.”

How do you seek out relevant mentors and people for help, especially in a foreign country?

Carmen: I tend to be very specific in my mentors. I don’t agree that everyone is a mentor. You go and seek advice on really specific areas and find those to help. Incubators are good aggregators of a variety of mentors, so they help to make it easier to suss people out, but still it is important to read and stay abreast on current trends. Participate in organizations where your customers participate and engage in those circles. Many of your customers are great xtmentors themselves.

What were the sacrifices you’ve made in the pursuit of this move?

Carmen: I really can’t think of sacrifices, just pluses and minuses but that comes from making decisions. You do one thing and you give up another. But the outcome of what you have done, should create more benefit than the loss of the outcome of what could have been gained with the other decision.

Do you think your gender has played a role in helping you gain an advantage over your male counterparts? (soft skills, personal touch, attention to detail, etc.) Has it been a disadvantage in any way?

Carmen: Going back to the top about women having survivalist mentality. I think this is a great benefit even after you look at why we’ve developed it. For example, I read how Brian Wong of Kiip was this kid that spent 14 to 20 hours straight on his computer. For girls and women, we aren’t as fortunate to have such luxury of time or even supporters of such time. (Give us that type of luxury and boy, we sure as heck probably could deliver even more compelling successes!) We have to survive and be resourceful even when we deal with getting less attention in school, getting less airtime during meetings, getting paid less, being automatically viewed as a risky hire, especially during childbearing years. Knowing how to navigate and succeed in that type of foundation often equals to greater success for a company overall.

In your opinion, what are the necessary skill-sets and attitudes required to succeed in the technology and startup industry?

Carmen: I was told early on that I was aloof and I took that personally. Now I realize that my aloofness is actually a great asset in the world of startup. It enables me to keep a good distance from human resource headaches and office dramas. Think pragmatic, appreciate levels of disclosure, maintain calm, and keep others appreciative that things are under control.

Do you have any female role models that you look up to?

Carmen: Sure. I think most women in top senior leadership positions bring their own unique set of approaches, values, and attitudes as they’ve managed to climb a very tough ladder. So kudos to those women who have managed to understand how to survive in each of their professional lives.

One example would be Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. I love how this woman graduated 3rd in her class at Stanford Law and couldn’t get a job due to the barriers against women. Nonetheless, she overcame the obstacle and became the first female US Supreme Court Justice. Another would be the late Estee Lauder). This lady understood customers and even as big as Estee Lauder became, she was still at every beauty counter or store opening. That is, commitment.

Do you have children? If yes, how do you effectively balance between work and family?

Carmen: Yes, I have three children (pictured right)! All boys, too! My eldest son is 16, middle one is five, and the youngest is seven months old. The best approach to balance I have taken is to compartmentalize. So when I am with my children, I am 100 percent focused on them. When I work, I give my 100 percent as well. I am fortunate to have the support of a full-time nanny, so for fellow founder mums out there, do your best to leverage resources such as family and friends.

Do you have any advice for fellow female entrepreneurs?

Carmen: Remember your audience. Remember yourself in that audience. Be resourceful.

This is part of Tech in Asia’s series on female entrepreneurship.

As mentioned, Carmen Benitez will be speaking at Startup Asia Singapore 2013 in our Female Entrepreneurs in Asia discussion panel in April 5, 3.15 — 4.00pm.

And of course, don’t miss any of the other speakers at Startup Asia Singapore 2013 either. That list includes:

• Kee Lock Chua, (Group President and CEO at Vertex Venture)
• Shin Hasegawa, (Director at Rakuten Global Marketing Office)
• Ole Ruch (Managing director APAC at Airbnb)
• Steve Melhuish (Co-founder at PropertyGuru)
• Stefan Jung (Co-Founder and Managing Director SEA, Rocket Internet)
• Moo Natavudh (President Director at OOKBEE)
• Ming Shen (Co-founder at Nuffnang)

Tomorrow is the last day for our early-bird 10 percent discount, so if you haven’t grabbed your tickets, do so quickly! We will see you at Startup Asia Singapore on April 4 and 5.

With this investment, Singapore-based iCarsClub is looking to expand the business to other countries within the region. As mentioned in our previous coverage on iCarsClub, the team (pictured right) is made up of mostly mainland Chinese exptrepreneurs, hailing from backgrounds at Tsinghua University and Baidu. Naturally, the first step in the expansion plans would be to their homeland, China, kicking off in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Its goal for China this year is to have 1,000 participating cars in its marketplace.

The numbers seem pretty encouraging for the team at iCarsClub. Just three months from its official launch last December, the company has 3,000 members in its database with over 300 cars available. The five-man team has also set goals for 2013 – to gather a total of 5,000 members and 1,000 cars.

Singapore’s internet service provider startup, MyRepublic, prides itself as the fourth consumer-focused high-speed broadband service provider in the country. It claims to have higher bandwidth than local, major telcos and ISPs SingTel, Starhub, and M1 (pictured right). It also boasts 17 percent market share of the fibre broadband consumer market, establishing itself in a short time as a disruptive influence. Plus, the company claims to have lots of positive feedback from customers.

At MyRepublic’s first anniversary event which was held yesterday at Singapore’s The Art House, CEO and co-founder Malcolm Rodrigues revealed the startup’s new ‘Teleport’ service, which allows consumers to connect to international TV channels and online media content with ease. This new feature will launch in beta next month.

In essence, now Singaporeans will be able to stream content from the likes of Netflix, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, and Pandora internet radio – even though those are usually geo-restricted to certain countries. The role of the Teleport service here will be to provide access to such content, but users might be required to sign up for an account with those sites before the content is made available. And of course, content that is available for viewing will ultimately still be subject to regulation by Singapore’s Media Development Authority (MDA).

Often, people use free or professional virtual private networks (VPN) to access geo-restricted stuff like Hulu. What sets MyRepublic and VPNs apart is that the latter would have all its data redirected to a third-party server for encryption, which often results in a bottleneck. Whereas for MyRepublic’s Teleport service, it will integrate and leverage on MyRepublic’s network, which assures users premium transmission priority and minimal buffering.

The company also hopes to make setup of things like Teleport easy for customers. It is not required of users to have additional home networking configurations or technical knowledge, as the activation of the add-on services will be configured on MyRepublic’s end.

The homegrown high-speed fibre broadband service is also inviting the first 1,000 customers to register for its Teleport beta trial which is scheduled for launch in April. After the trial is completed, the Teleport service will be made available at a monthly subscription fee of S$5 (US$4) per month.

In the interview, Ollie tells us how the idea of entrepreneurship was not embraced coming from an Asian family, how she overcame obstacles while building startups, and how collaboration can help aid startups scale to greater heights. She also hopes to spread the spirit of female entrepreneurship around Indonesia, encouraging more women to enter the technology and startup scene.

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

AH: Aside from startup work, I have written both fiction and nonfiction books, which range from novels and poetry to how-to and business motivational books. Due to this passion in writing, I have also co-founded NulisBuku.com.

What does NulisBuku do, and what is your role?

AH: At NulisBuku, we pride ourselves as the first online self-publishing platform in Indonesia, helping aspiring writers to self-publish and print their books on demand. We will also be available in e-book format soon.

As for my role, I am currently serving as the chief technology officer, where I help to build, maintain, and chart out the technological progress of the company.

How and why did you get started in this industry?

AH: I have a penchant for technology, and have always wanted to create the best websites since my high school days. Hence, I took the path of studying IT in college, and upon graduation I worked as a web developer.

After gaining some experience, my passion for reading drove me and a couple of my partners to build my first startup, Kutukutubuku, an online bookstore back in 2006. Back then, the idea of a shopping cart was not introduced in most Indonesian online bookstores. As an avid reader who would buy many books within a week, it became a hassle to keep having to fill out forms in each online store. We eventually fixed that pain point with our shopping cart system in Kutukutubuku.

As mentioned, I am also a writer. Nulisbuku came about when I wanted to publish a research book for writers called Inspirasi.net. Despite having a couple of bestselling books under my name, my publisher rejected and deemed it as uninteresting. The other option was to self-publish it in the traditional way, but there is a minimum printing requirement of 3,000 copies.

Hence, my partners Angeline Anthony, Brilliant Yotenega, Oka Pratama, and I decided to come together to build NulisBuku.com (team pictured right). We solved the problem by allowing writers to self-publish for free, print on demand, and also have the opportunity to obtain royalties from their book sales on our website.

Did you face any challenges in particular?

AH: For NulisBuku, the challenge was to introduce the concept of self-publishing, which is very new in Indonesia. We have to introduce the term to people, make them familiar with it, and get them to use it at the same time.

In order to do so, we have created a community of our own, called the Nulis Buku Club (NBC), and it currently has presences in multiple cities within Indonesia. We also create writing projects on Twitter and hold monthly meetups to share tips and tricks to writing, on top of strengthening the bond among writers.

(Related: NulisBuku Responds to New Rivalry from Gramediana, Now Has 27,000 Members)

How do you seek out relevant mentors and people for help?

AH: I attend a lot of networking events to get to know people on top of introducing my startups. I also seek help from friends to point me to the right person to talk to. I have to admit, Twitter and LinkedIn have been really helpful in connecting me with the right people who would be able to help me with my business.

What were the sacrifices you’ve made in the pursuit of entrepreneurship?

AH: I left my stable full-time career in the pursuit of entrepreneurship in order to build my startup back in 2007. As a single girl coming from an Asian society, I had to seek permission from my father prior to my resignation. It was difficult because my father did not come from an entrepreneurial background, and it was difficult for him to comprehend how I was going to survive by selling books online and bootstrapping. Naturally, he refused my decision at first.

But it didn’t stop there. To gain his trust and confidence in my choice, I introduced him to my partners and brought in my mentor’s name in our discussion talks as well. To date, I am appreciative of his trust, and I don’t think I am disappointing him at all.

Do you think your gender has played a role in helping you gain an advantage over your male counterparts? Or any disadvantages?

AH: Being a woman helps, especially in the technology and startup scene where it is pretty much male dominated. It is relatively easy to stand out from the crowd and gain media attention. In fact, earlier this year, another female co-founder Angel and I were featured by a couple of media and it has definitely helped in gaining more user traction.

Perhaps the ability to multitask has also put me in an advantageous position in running multiple startups. As far as I recall, I have yet to face any obstacles being a female co-founder – only advantages. Or, I’m just being too positive!

In your opinion, what are the necessary skill-sets and attitudes required to succeed in the technology and startup industry?

AH: Regardless of gender, everybody can work in the technology and startup industry. What is essential is the openness to collaboration and the willingness to innovate – those are the keys to be successful in the startup industry. With collaboration, one can unlock limitless possibilities that will aid in startup growth. It is important for leaders to nurture innovative mindsets within the company to bring their startups to the next level.

Do you have any female role models that you look up to?

AH: I have a few in fact! One, is Ibu Mari Elka Pangestu, minister for tourism and creative economy of Indonesia. She is a very inspiring lady who has contributed tremendously and played a great role in supporting Indonesia’s creative industry.

The second one comes from the writing industry, Alberthiene Endah, who is a very famous Indonesian biographer, novelist, and journalist. Her works are of high quality, on top of being inspirational and productive.

I do admire Queen Rania of Jordan, for her ability to influence and passion for philantrophy. And Margaret Thatcher, for her power and leadership style.

Do you have any advice for fellow female entrepreneurs?

AH: I believe fellow female entrepreneurs know best when it comes to what works and what does not for them. But there’s one thing: I hope that more female entrepreneurs within Indonesia would connect and spread the spirit of entrepreneurship to more women in Indonesia.

Anything else to add?

AH: Apart from the startups I’ve mentioned, I also organize various activities to promote some initiatives.

My partners – namely Natali Ardianto and Nuniek Tirta – and I are the organizers of StartupLokal, which is one of the biggest digital startup communities in Indonesia. It is a series of monthly seminar meetups to connect startup founders, investors, and media with topics revolving around startup and technology.

I am also a strong advocate of women in entrepreneurship. So back in 2011, Anantya Van Bronckhorst, Ria Ariyanie, and I started a Girls in Tech Indonesia chapter (pictured right), organizing meetups to encourage more women to adopt technology in their work.

This is part of Tech in Asia’s series on female entrepreneurship.

Today, The Athena Network also celebrates its first anniversary with exciting plans and initiatives lined up for year 2013 and 2014. Gina Romero, managing director at The Athena Network Singapore, tells us that there are a good number of women in Asia Pacific who currently do not have easy access to training resources that would equip them with the necessary skills to start and sustain businesses.

So the organization is looking to build an online platform, managed by The Athena Network community, to share skills and develop relationships with women within the Asia Pacific region. Gina tells us more:

Providing access to resources and networking support systems are important factors to empower women in the region. These can significantly increase opportunities for women to engage in economic activities and improve social mobility. We believe an e-business environment will be a powerful tool for women’s empowerment. Our project to build an online community and e-business environment for female entrepreneurs seeks to address these challenges.

The platform is based on the idea of paying it forward, where aspiring female entrepreneurs are able to learn from other women through knowledge sharing. The Athena Network hopes to benefit women who are homemakers, single mothers, low-income earners, ex-offenders, and women living in rural areas who do not have easy access to training, skills, and community support.

For starters, Gina tells us that her team will be targeting Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia for this initiative.

Also, the organization is looking to drive more women-led startups, and is partnering with the Hub Singapore to run a new initiative called Women’s Startup Connections. It will be held monthly, which will serve as a female-focused platform to connect, share experiences, and meet mentors.

In fact, the enterprise is currently looking for support in its latest participation in Diageo’s Plan W initiative, where it could win $10,000 to kick off its plans to empower women in the region. So, if you believe in empowering women to pursue their entrepreneurial and career dreams, you can start supporting The Athena Network by tweeting and including the hashtag #planwAthena.

How BillPin Came About

Some of you might recall in the interview with BillPin co-founder Aileen Sim, she mentioned that having to live in shared households poses a problem because most expenses are shared – from bigger expenditures such as rent and utilities, to minor ones such as groceries and McDonald’s delivery.

As for Darius, having lived overseas for 15 years, he has resorted to various expense-tracking services. He used to keep track using Billmonk, but since the acquisition six years ago, the service has become dated and lacks sufficient mobile support. In recent years, he has also used platforms like Google spreadsheets, Evernote, and even WhatsApp group chats to track shared expenses.

But none of these solutions were ideal, so the team decided to build something that was: BillPin. BillPin is designed to allow you to keep track of your shared expenses fairly, lowering the risks of you getting into an argument with your housemates.

How BillPin Works and Some Statistics

Available on both iOS and Android platforms, BillPin is simple and straightforward to use. All that is required is for me to click on the “Bill” tab located at the bottom of the screen. I will then be brought to the next screen to “Select A Friend” from my contact list, indicate whether I owe my friend money or vice versa, enter the amount, and the purpose for the amount owed. All the minor details will then be recorded in the “Events” tab, and the general summary will be in the “Home” tab (pictured below).

Users who do not have the app will receive an email notification once the bill is pinned, and users who have the app receive both push and email notifications. It is also a plus if you have a Gravatar profile, because your picture will show up in the list too.

Darius tells us that while there are many bill-splitting apps on the iTunes App Store or Google Play, they do not notify friends once there is a bill pinned. He explains:

[The] goal is to create the social graph for your money, to have a transparent and real-time record of the tabs you keep with your friends, which would reduce friction and disputes caused by shared expenses. Friends are fun and it’s good to share, but we want to take away the stress of dealing with the money!

BillPin is currently still in the early stages of its launch, with a healthy user acquisition rate of five to ten percent per week. It has also recently launched its Android version, and is hoping to see a higher growth rate soon.

Darius also tells us about some interesting behaviors in the app. He notes one passive user in a group could possibly be a very active user in another, and the top five words that are frequently pinned include lunch, dinner, rent, grocery, and Internet. I wonder why would they include the word Internet?

Using user data, the team has even created an infographic on users’ favorite drinks during the holiday season (pictured below):

Second-Time Entrepreneur – Good or Bad?

Apart from the fact that most of the co-founders are from NUS Overseas Colleges, they are also second-time entrepreneurs. While being a second time entrepreneur could mean that you’re wiser, it can also thwart your imagination. Then again, could also mean that you will get preferential treatment from the startup community, including investors. On this, Darius shares:

[We] obviously have an advantage. It is much easier to raise funds, [but fortunately], we have the ability to self-fund it substantially for now. [There] are certainly many other advantages too, [but] above it all, would be the chance to work with an excellent team (pictured below) where you had the chance to form [friendships with] over time and experience. We have a great team at BillPin. [We have known each other for a long time,] because we were comrades in our respective startups, and found the opportunity to come together to make something worthwhile.

But as much as being second-time entrepreneur can be an advantage, it can also be a double-edged sword. Often, Darius finds himself at a crossroads wondering whether to move forward or do something else, particularly because with his previous startup experience, he is even more cautious about taking the next step:

I find myself dismissing many ideas because my past experience tells me that they are unlikely to [succeed]. On one hand, I [could] probably be right and end up being more efficient; while on the other hand, [it is uncertain] what works and doesn’t. [Often,] you will have to try and eventually figure a way out. A first-time entrepreneur […] will try everything one can, with all the energy and zest that one possesses.

He also draws parallels between the ambition levels between a first-time and second-time entrepreneur. With the success of the first startup, the ambition level is a notch higher. Darius explains:

You will want to do something that has a lasting significant impact. [However,] it is very hard to foresee how one move will lead to the other, so you end up second guessing yourself very often, on top of being much more careful about making decisions. In comparison to [a first-time entrepreneur], the motivation to keeping afloat is very strong. Survival is what keeps you on your toes, so you keep jumping from one place to another, [in the hope of finding] a break in the process that would get you somewhere.

A more geeky way of putting it is perhaps that it is hard to find the path to the global maxima especially if you can’t see very far; while without the compulsion to reach such goals, it would be easier taking small incremental steps to somehow get to a local maxima. I guess these are both double-edged swords, and we constantly remind ourselves to know how to use it to our advantage.

For the entrepreneurs out there, give us your thoughts on this in the comments below. And for those who are keen to give BillPin a shot, it is available on both iOS and Android.

In our previous post featuring female entrepreneurs in Asia, we spoke with Adriana Gascoigne, the CEO and founder of both Girls in Tech and HelpLearn.Asia. Today, we are honoured to have Gina Romero, the managing director at The Athena Network Singapore. She drives various initiatives, and hopes to empower female business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs in Singapore. She is also one of the co-organizers of the recent Singapore Women Startup Weekend Singapore.

In the interview, Gina highlighted the challenges faced while trying to set up the Singapore chapter, and how one should never be shy to ask for help when in need. She says that passion is what drives (female) entrepreneurs forward, and persistence is always the key to success. Gina also reminds us that as much as one is determined to succeed, one should also be able to embrace failure.

What does The Athena Network do, and what is your role?

Gina: The Athena Network is an organization that brings women, entrepreneurs, and executives together to network strategically. At the heart of Athena, we aim to help women learn valuable networking skills so that they can leverage the power of community to build and grow successful businesses.

When I moved to Singapore in 2010, I realised that there was huge potential for The Athena Network here in Asia Pacific. I launched The Athena Network Singapore in February 2012 with my co-founder, Claire Kidd. We had great traction with over 30 events and over 900 attendee registrations.

As the managing director of The Athena Network Singapore, I am on a mission to redefine the way women-led businesses collaborate, and share skills, knowledge, and resources.

How and why did you get started in this industry?

Gina: I was a founding member of The Athena Network when it launched in the United Kingdom in 2005. I benefited so much from being a member while I was running my IT business, that I became a total advocate and an ambassador for the brand and everything it stood for. In 2008, I took the role of operations director at Athena UK and worked alongside Jacqueline Rogers, who is the CEO and founder at the UK chapter. We were both really passionate about creating a unique business networking experience for our [2,500] members based in UK.

Did you face any challenges in particular?

Gina: There are always challenges and I love them! Challenges make everything more fun and interesting.

I guess the biggest challenge I encountered with launching Athena in Singapore was localization. The Athena community is very precious to me and I feel responsible to uphold the integrity of the brand, but I also feel strongly about having a firm grasp of the local market. I was determined to build Athena with local Singaporean women in mind. Hence, I immersed myself in local culture as much as possible to make sure we build a company that delivers what Singaporean women want.

How do you seek out relevant mentors and people for help?

Gina: I have been very fortunate to be surrounded with immensely talented and generous people who have supported me over the last year. I recognize that my tenacity and dogged focus have attracted quite a bit of interest. However, I believe that if you are true to your purpose, people will buy into it, and want to offer their help. If the help I need isn’t offered, I ask. The power of just asking for help is truly amazing. No one has said no so far.

I am really grateful to my wonderful, growing team of associates who have offered not only valuable advice, but also immense amounts of time and effort to get Athena off the ground.

Do you think your gender has played a role in helping you gain an advantage over your male counterparts? (like soft skills, personal touch, attention to detail). Has it been a disadvantage in any way?

Gina: This is a tricky question. I have never been a ‘girly girl’. When I was little, I preferred Transformers to Barbie dolls. Admittedly, I still prefer superhero movies to chick flicks and World of Warcraft to shoe shopping! I’m not sure if I am a typical woman and I think this makes running a women’s organization easier. My key strengths are my vision, [and ability] to rally people. But I guess I must have those interpersonal skills too. I am certainly obsessed with creating a better experience. If anything, that’s what keeps me awake at night — fixating on how to create a better experience for our members.

I have never really had an issue with gender. I was a flight stewardess for ten years, and subsequently worked in the ‘male’ world of IT for seven years. I have also been very active in women’s organisations for the [past eight] years. I guess for me it has never been about gender, it’s just about people.

In your opinion, what are the necessary skill-sets and attitudes required to succeed in the technology and startup industry?

Gina: You need to be consumed with passion, and have a willingness to fall down and get back up again with mud on your face — over and over again. You need to take criticism on the chin, have a little cry, then just get back out there. More than anything if you are determined to succeed in a startup, you need to be prepared to fail. If you aren’t prepared, you might as well not bother.

You need to be ready to know yourself inside and out. Identify your strengths, weaknesses, and boundaries. Most importantly you need to have faith in the people around you who know better and have faith in yourself to know when they do.

Do you have any female role models that you look up to?

Gina: I am very inspired by the James Bond character ‘M’ (played recently by Dame Judy Dench). She is a formidable woman, with integrity guiding her strength. She is a woman of substance. You can’t make that happen, it happens with time.

Do you have any advice for fellow female entrepreneurs?

Gina: A lot of the time, balance is the biggest issue for women entrepreneurs. There’s always so much talk about choices, sacrifices, and balance – typical buzzwords for the working woman. Being an entrepreneur is not an easy path to take. But if you play it smart, it is possible to juggle. I have an awesome family, I love my work, I want to do amazing things, on top of being a fantastic mum and wife. I want to have it all.

Sometimes I burn the roast because I’m on the phone with an important client. Sometimes I miss an important meeting because one of my kids is sick. Sometimes I wonder why the hell I am trying to do it all. Then I remember. Because most of the time, I can.

And if you can, then why not?

This is part of Tech in Asia’s series on female entrepreneurship.

Similar to US-based Stanford’s StartX program, MAP invests around AUD$20,000 (US$21,000) in each startup without taking any equity stake, on top of providing mentoring and office space for them. The program first started in June 2012 and lasted for six months. As stated in our earlier report, Venuemob (team pictured top) and 121cast have successfully raised AUD$450,000 (US$475,000) and AUD$250,000 (US$264,000) respectively from SingTel Innov8, with the latter having a co-investment from Adventure Capital too.

This certainly helps to promote and encourage a startup culture in Australia. David Wei, CEO of Venuemob explains:

In Australia, there is basically no startup culture at university level. The initiative by The University of Melbourne will play a tremendous part in building the startup scene among young students in Australia.

Edward Hooper, former Stanford student and co-founder at 121cast (team pictured right), attributes part of the team’s success to MAP:

In the Melbourne Accelerator Program, we’ve got amazing support from various alumni. We hope more educational institutions realise that they have so much capacity to develop the next generation of business leaders.

Surely, it also validates Stanford’s StartX model. The Dean of The University of Melbourne’s School of Engineering, Professor Iven Mareels, says that it empowers students at university level, which helps support and nurture aspiring entrepreneurs in Australia.

The next round of applications for MAP will open mid March. For more information regarding the program, you can visit the MAP website here.

Earlier this week we mentioned Singapore Geek Girl’s plans for 2013. But today we’re also pleased to let our Indonesian readers know that it also has a sister chapter on the way. The Indonesia Geek Girls team comprises seven volunteers, hailing from different cities around the country.

ID Geek Girls is still in its early planning stages. It started up last September when the founder and CEO of Petshopbox Studio, Sissy, met up with the co-founder of Singapore Geek Girls, Joyce Huang, over lunch during her trip to Singapore. She highlighted her interest in building a blog for Indonesian women in the technology and startup scene, and that was when the idea of ID Geek Girls came into being.

The group aspires to connect more women for its initiative. Sissy highlights some of the issues in trying to build this team:

We hope to reach out to more geek girls in Indonesia. At present, the entire team is based in Bandung, which makes it difficult for us to have the latest news or events coverage outside of Bandung. Initially, we were keen to tap into bigger cities with more geek communities such as Jakarta, Yogyakarta, and Surabaya. But eventually we decided that we should also target cities where there are few geek communities, such as Malang, Makassar, Medan, and Palembang.

The team is also looking to organize some workshops for the women in the Indonesian technology and startup scene. The topics covered will be slightly different from the ones covered by the Singapore chapter. Sissy explains:

While the girls in Indonesia are not so much into the IT or technical side of things, they take a big interest in social media, startups (especially in the retail sector), and design. Therefore, we will be focusing on that area. Unfortunately, none of our team members have the experience in organizing workshops, hence our workshops will require more thorough and careful planning.

ID Geek Girls will officially launch this upcoming Valentine’s Day, where it will reveal more details about its plans and upcoming activities. And here’s an appeal to all geek girls and friends (guys included, too) out there in Indonesia, if you’re keen to connect with like-minded female entrepreneurs and would like to contribute to this cause, you can connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, or visit the blog here.

This announcement validates the direction that the Carousell team has set for themselves. The Singapore-based startup hopes to make its service really simple, convenient, and easy to use. Co-founder Quek Siu Rui tells us more:

This partnership brings us closer to our vision of being the simplest [way] to sell anything. [It helps] our users’ items reach [a large pool of audience] with the least amount of time and effort. So in 30 seconds, you can create a listing which Carousell will then broadcast to as many prospective buyers on various relevant platforms. STClassifieds is one of them.

Now users of STClassifieds are able to exploit the various built-in photo filters by Carousell to enhance their photos prior to uploading them. This makes the items seem more attractive, thus increasing the chances of them of getting sold.

Talks on the partnership begun three months ago, when the m-commerce startup was introduced to the STClassifieds team at a crafts fair. The idea of collaborating only came about in the past month. On the collaboration, Steven Wong, director of marketing and business development of SPH Online Classifieds (ST701) adds:

[STClassifieds] aims to engage users with convenient features that optimize users’ buying and selling. This joint partnership with Carousell allows us to reach out beyond our users and strengthen our foothold with the mobile-savvy young generation.”

The more popular categories on Carousell include for her(which mainly contains ladies’ fashion and beauty products), lifestyle gadgets, and design & craft. These top three categories represent 80 percent of the total listings on Carousell.

At present, the three-man team is also looking to raise funds in the upcoming months to support its expansion into neighbouring countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. It has also recently released an Android version.

With Chinese New Year around the corner, perhaps Carousell could be a good way to give a new life to your old items. For iOS users, you can download the app here.

The organization was first formed last January 11, and to date has around 250 people attending its events, with approximately 200 females in the pool. But the SG Geek Girls, which is run by a group of eight volunteers, isn’t just stopping there. Co-founder Joyce Huang tells us that the team is hoping to reach out to 1,000 ladies for its events in 2013, on top of expanding its online reach through a series of interviews with females in the technology scene.

Happily, the initiative is attracting a lot of attention from younger female entrepreneurs, including a 12-year-old girl, Roopal Kondepudi, who attended one of its HTML and CSS Geek Squad Drills. Tan Yan Ling, who heads marketing and partnerships at SG Geek Girls tells us:

[...] Her objective was to make a website with her sister. She was really enthusiastic, and [attended the sessions with her parents.] She wrote to us [via email], which I presume that she got it from the write-up on our workshop in [local newspaper] Straits Times.

In its first year, SG Geek Girls saw a good mix of female entrepreneurs and venture capitalists sharing their startup experiences and funding advice. Speakers included AllDealsAsia.com founder Goh Yiping, Soldgers co-founders Angeline Tham and Tian Qiuyan, PlayMoolah founder Min, and Monica Tsai from SingTel Innov8. The year concluded with a sharing session on the US entrepreneurship scene by Jacqui Chew, principal at iFusion Marketing, who has lived in the States for 25 years.

To kick-start the new year, SG Geek Girls will be co-hosting Janice Fraser, co-founder of LUXr, for Lean UX Week this January 25 to 27. Friends of SG Geek Girls will also be delighted to know that the organization will be having two technical workshops this year, focusing on HTML/CSS, and JavaScript.

Joyce also hopes that the workshop will encourage more females to build more web projects and boost their confidence in their technical capabilities. In essence, SG Geek Girls aims to be a platform for all to come forward, exchange skillsets, and develop practical skills to aid in their day-to-day activities without having the fear of sounding silly.

In fact, it also has a new sister chapter in Indonesia, called Indonesia Geek Girls headed by Sissy from Petshop Box Studios, whom the Singapore team met during our Startup Asia Jakarta event.

And for those who are based in Singapore, you might wish to attend SG Geek Girls’s 48-hour hackathon come June, which is open to all (both genders, yes) to attend. Joyce adds:

[We] will spice things up with lightning talks and have some surprises in store for our female audience. [..] With this, [we] hope [to] consolidate the efforts of the [attendees of] our workshops, [for them to] practice their development skills. Also, we just want an excuse to throw a big party and have fun!

For more information on SG Geek Girls and its initiatives, you can also visit its website here.

In the Moolah It app for iPhone and iPad you can add the child’s key details, such as name and date of birth. It then prompts kids to input the budget they have decided to set aside for making a purchase. For instance, if they want to buy a $10 present for grandma’s upcoming birthday, the app visualizes how they can save for that. So when the child goes shopping with parents, he can take photos of possible items that gran might like, and then rank the potential gifts and take note of the price.

The app also tells the child if he has exceeded his pre-set budget. The idea of ranking teaches children the idea of opportunity costs. I can imagine parents teaching their children about what would be a better choice, along with verbal explanations while interacting with the app. It also allows a child’s wishlist to be shared with friends and family, perhaps in the hope of letting them know what the kid wants in occasions such as birthdays and Christmas.

According to co-founder Audrey Tan, the app aspires to educate children on better decision making:

By making budgeting and prioritizing fun, we’re helping parents to avoid their child’s tantrums at the toyshop, and to avoid the impulse buying of a mountain of toys that are quickly discarded. We’re actually starting a conversation between parents and children about budgets and priorities.

With more and more products advertisements targeted at children, this app, in my opinion, could come in really handy to educate the next generation on how to prioritize spending at a young age. For parents who are keen to try Moolah It, it is available for download on the app store for free, for both iPad and iPhone.

As a startup founder, what do you know about building a good user experience? We all know how important our customers are, but before we can attract customers we need to know how to identify who they are, how to cater our features to their needs, how to track metrics to be sure they’re interested, etc.

The inaugural Lean UX Singapore 2013 is a workshop you might wish to attend if you are keen these topics. Jointly organized by local design firm Minitheory, National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore Geek Girls, and Girls in Tech Singapore, the event hopes to educate startup founders in Singapore on the best practices of Silicon Valley, in particular in the area of user experience design.

Janice Fraser, co-founder of LUXr, will be speaking at the workshop. Janice is also the founder of Adaptive Path, an experience design consultancy which sold one of its products to Google.

According to the Michael Chen, the executive producer of Lean UX Week Singapore 2013, each day of the workshop is different and will be targeted to a different audience. The first day is a closed-door event, only open to aspiring student entrepreneurs and focused on educating them about starting a business. The next two days will be open to the public and targeted at both mentors and geeks.

The event will be taking place January 25 to 27. For startup founders who are keen to attend the workshop and would like to find out more information about the schedule, you can check out the website here or purchase your tickets here.

So Sogamo aims to address this issue, offering analytics to enable social game developers to better understand their users and how to effectively earn money from them. With this Singapore-based real-time analytics and monetization platform-as-a-service (PaaS), game developers can place more emphasis on the design as well as game creativity instead of fretting over the analytics.

What sets Sogamo apart from conventional analytics tools is that it analyzes the gamers’ personality and preferences using an intelligent automated recommendation engine. With this data, game developers can customize their monetization strategies accordingly. For instance, if the user comes from a higher purchasing-power background, it will recommend goods according to the users’ willingness and ability to pay. In essence, it can increase user retention rate, help the studio acquire more users, and enhance gameplay for the end-users.

Sogamo monetizes through a pay-per-usage model, specifically targeting Facebook game developers and publishers at the moment. It will be based on the number of users that are being tracked in the game, how Sogamo is being utilized, and the percentage commission based on the improvements made to the game.

Geraldine Tay, marketing associate at Sogamo, tells us there are other potential revenue sources that the startup is also exploring, including:

• Directly licensing of the technology to social networks to offer Sogamo as part of their services
• Transactional revenue sharing with partnering social networks to offer Sogamo as part of their services
• Analytics consultancy services charged based on hours
• Training services charged based on programme package

The company is currently working with 20 developers and publishers, hailing from countries such as South Korea, the US, Turkey, and Hong Kong. The service is free at present, as it aims to attract more developers on board with them.

Sogamo and its creators, ZelRealm, recently revealed that it successfully raised US$500,000 in seed funding in September 2012 from Incuvest and the National Research Foundation (NRF) under the Technology Incubation Scheme (TIS). On how the new money will be used, Geraldine explains:

The investment would aid ZelRealm to accelerate its pace in scaling Sogamo internationally as well as creating a wider outreach for companies to use Sogamo. We are hoping to achieve a status of tracking five million monthly active users (MAUs) by the end of 2013. Right now, we are working with several game developers and publishers in Southeast Asia, except for China.

The startup reminds me of the Innovation Works-backed startup XingCloud, where I used to work when I was in Beijing. The teams’ backgrounds are pretty similar, in that they are made up of developers with experience in developing and designing games, which means they both understand the pain points of game developers, and have developed a platform catered for game developers. It is also interesting to note that the name, Sogamo, comes from Social Games Monetization. If you are a game developer and keen to give Sogamo a try, you can visit its website here.

Relocating from one country to another is never an easy task. For some, the decision would probably mean sacrificing friendships, family, and other things you enjoy in your pursuits.

Adriana Gascoigne, the CEO and founder of both Girls in Tech and HelpLearn.Asia, initially moved from the United States to Singapore for personal reasons. When things fell through, she quickly picked up the pieces, and secured a position in startup within a couple of months. After eight months in sunny Singapore, she decided to embark on her own venture, HelpLearn.Asia, while continuing the expansion efforts of Girls in Tech throughout Southeast Asia. She is also currently working on a social enterprise, which will also be revealed in the upcoming months.

Prior to starting up, Adriana had a taste of both corporate and startup life. She was the vice president of marketing at SecondMarket, where she was responsible for marketing, branding strategy, event production, and digital media efforts. Adriana has also worked at various technology startups, such as ImpulseFlyer, hi5, SocialGamingNetwork (SGN), Jambool’s SocialGold, and GUBA, where she spearheaded marketing, communications, and analytics. Her background as the vice president of 360 Digital Influence at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide and vice president of the digital group at Edelman has also reinforced her experience, which proved essential in the setup of HelpLearn.Asia, an e-learning platform providing tutorials on online and digital marketing tools.

With regard to the Girls in Tech Singapore chapter, that initiative grew to over 600 members in just a couple of months. Managing a non-profit organization virtually poses two challenges: How does Adriana(pictured right) motivate the managing directors of each chapter? And how does she manage to grow her member base so quickly?

In the video interview above, Adriana tells us that she leads by example. Regardless of the circumstances or challenges posed to her, she continues to work hard and is dedicated to build her passion around technology startups. She hopes to empower, engage, and educate women in technology, and is driven to make Girls in Tech succeed.

Was the move to Singapore worth it? Does Adriana miss her family and her friends?

She admits, yes, but communication tools like Skype have helped her to stay connected to her loved ones back home. In Adriana’s words:

It is a sacrifice but also an opportunity. I’m learning a lot about doing business in another part of the world, [where] the economy is thriving and people are eager to learn from those of us who have lived in Silicon Valley for many years. I most likely won’t be here forever, but for the time being – I’m living everyday as if it was my last – enjoying what I do, the people who I surround myself with, and focusing on the things that make me smile.

What’s her advice to fellow female entrepreneurs? Take risks.

If you would like to find out more about her entrepreneurial journey, challenges faced, and how she overcame them, check out the video above.

And for those who are keen to find out more about the HelpLearn.Asia seminar series, check out the website here. There are also early bird discounts for those who register before December 28!

This is part of Tech in Asia’s series on female entrepreneurship.

Some of our readers might recall back in February where we reported that GGV, had set up a US$10 million venture fund focusing on startups in Southeast Asia. These new investments appear to be the result of that, although, the individual investment amounts were not revealed. According to to GGV, the decision was a careful and thorough one. It took more than a year of researching, meeting more than 400 teams, and hosting events to eventually decide.

On the selection process, Vinnie Lauria, founding partner at GGV, said:

We selected these investees for two reasons. First, for their strength as high-growth start-ups that are already impacting regional buying and selling behaviours positively and expanding e-commerce in Asia. Second, because they plug us into a market of more than half a billion people. Southeast Asia sees 650,000 new internet users come online each month. Smart mobile devices are the future in this part of the world and our portfolio puts us right at the heart of the mobile space.

So what do the three startups do, and what is so attractive about them in the eyes of the GGV team?

Coda Payments deals with micropayments, offering a hassle-free solution for users to make online purchases through their mobile accounts. Coda Payments CEO Neil Davidson tells us that the new money will be used to support the development of the platform and go-to market activities.

You probably won’t be able to find out much information on Coda, other than it being the first recipient of Japan’s GMO VenturePartners latest fund (GMO VP III), since it has not launched yet. But Neil told us that the startup will officially launch with its first operator partner in Indonesia next January. Taking full advantage of GGV’s positioning as a Southeast Asia specialist, Coda also looks to expand across the region for the year 2013.

Vinnie has full confidence in the team on its partnership in Indonesia too:

Even in the US, you have more than Paypal. You have Google Wallet and Amazon. So a country like Indonesia will definitely support multiple payment systems. There is definitely room for multiple players. Payment is the bedrock for any startups to exist in this ecosystem.

RedMart is no stranger to some of our readers. RedMart is an e-commerce site made for busy bees to purchase non-perishable goods and it delivers right to your doorstep. It has also attracted investment from Skype co-founder and angel investor, Toivo Annus.

According to co-founder Roger Egan, the gross annual run rate revenue is a whopping S$3 million (US$ 2.46 million) and the company is fast approaching profitability. It also helps that the capital requirement for building robust, sophisticated logistics along with the technology infrastructure has been surprisingly low.

The team will be using the investment money to build both its technology and physical fulfillment centre required for its scaling efforts. As for RedMart’s expansion plans, Roger tells us:

We do plan to expand internationally and are currently evaluating potential Southeast Asian cities [to expand to,] as opposed to entire countries. However, we must first establish a strong foundation in Singapore. The Singapore grocery market is US$ 5.2 billion, so there is plenty of opportunity for growth here.

We’ll move as quickly as possible to capitalize on the tremendous opportunity in the region without risking distraction from getting the basics right in Singapore first.

TradeGecko is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for businesses to manage their inventory, orders, and customers. The Singapore-based startup is also one of the recent JFDI-Innov8 2012 Bootcamp program graduates, and is run by three founders from New Zealand.

And it was also the Kiwi founders who impressed GGV. Vinnie elaborates:

First the team. [TradeGecko has a strong] technical team giving back to the community. I see them hitting a global trend with the indie retailers being able to find and connect with the wholesaler in today’s on demand world.

These three investments neatly wrap up the year 2012 for GGV team. It has aggressive ideas for the upcoming year, and is planning more than ten investments for the year 2013.

With the new center, it promises dedicated after-sales services for BlackBerry owners, and onsite repairs so customers won’t need a replacement handset. It will also have a range of BlackBerry accessories available for purchase.

Charles Dufourcq (pictured right), the country director for RIM Singapore, says that customer service is a vital component of RIM’s brand, and that the company has invested significant amount of resources in this area:

[It] makes complete sense for us to ensure that all BlackBerry users have access to excellent after-sales support [here in Singapore]. The BlackBerry brand is hugely important as we believe it represents not only our products but also our customers and our commitment to them.

For BlackBerry users based in Singapore who are keen to visit, the expert center is located on the fourth level of The Cathay, and operates daily from 11:00am to 8:00pm.

Earlier this year, we wrote about Philippines-based startup TrafficDito, which provides updates on traffic in Manila. Nine months later, the same team has a new project: Looloo app. It allows people to discover the best dining, entertainment, and travel destinations within Metro Manila.

The Looloo app for iPhone has three core features: Explore, review, and recommend to friends. With the explore feature, there are eight different filters such as the ‘nearby’ filter, where you can find out the places around you. There are ‘trending’ and ‘latest’ filters, where you can find popular and recently reviewed places. In this way, the app aims to be a local pocket guide for people in the area.

Looloo app prides itself as the only friends-powered place discovery app that is focused on Metro Manila at the moment. In fact, the development of the app was fuelled by Odell, the founder, and his enjoyment of discovering new places, particularly new eateries. When he first moved from the United States to Manila, he had trouble searching for new places given the lack of websites and mobile apps with information about the city. He then realized that there were also people out there who shared similar frustrations, and so the app was created.

The team has been working on Looloo since the start of the year, and is also looking to grow beyond Metro Manila to other areas in the Philippines.

For those based in the metropolis who are keen to give it a try, the app is currently available in the App Store.

1. Two of the three founders of Crowdmass, a group-buying site in Australia later acquired by Groupon’s StarDeals in Australia in April 2011, are behind Venuemob.
2. The venue search site is from the inaugural batch of the Melbourne Accelerator Program and from the Optus Innov8 Seed Program, where the team was one of the first two Australian startups to receive A$450,000 (US$468,000) in funding.
3. The brains behind Venuemob have been blazing an entrepreneurial path since they were students, showing that it is possible to work on a startup while being in school.

Venuemob has a directory that lists venue information in Melbourne, allowing you to compare them and view booking availability. It aims to gradually add more features, enhancing the entire user experience for both venue owners and those searching for venues.

Events planners will appreciate that the entire venue search process is streamlined for your own convenience. It cuts down on the time spent gathering information about the venue, from the venue availability to the menu. There are also 360 degree tours on the website, which save you the hassle of scouting the site yourself.

Co-founder Ying Wang tells us more:

[T]he comparisons aspect is a pretty important part of what we do, and we are ultimately looking to make it as easy for people to find venues for functions. How we allow people to compare is to standardize the information for all the venues, including 360 interactive tours inside each of the venues. We provide these awesome tools to help users find relevant results.

With Venuemob, you would be able to explore venues you may not have considered. Venuemob also has a concierge service for busy bees who would prefer to have everything arranged.

So what inspired them to start Venuemob in the first place? Ying elaborates:

I think it was a combination of our previous local e-commerce and marketing experience while at Groupon, [along with] our personal [affinity] for exploring new exciting venues. Initially we actually worked with a lot of venue owners and we personally introduced a few functions to venue owners in Melbourne and Sydney.

The venues ended up loving it because it drove a lot of revenue to their business, and our friends were really well looked after because we knew these venue owners. [Conversely,] we were confident that they would be able to look after our friends.

The site currently boasts around 300 venue spaces in Melbourne, including bars, restaurants, hotels, and function spaces. And they are pretty selective in the venues they choose, says Ying, noting that this ensures that venues have a great reputation and are able to deliver quality service to its users.

This points back to the startup’s bottom line of ensuring top-notch customer service on its site, and that is why they have been getting frequent inquiries and more listings. In order to meet this demand, the startup has expanded from just a mere three-man team in July to 10 people at present.

The team is an impressive one in my opinion. First, they managed to pull off an exit while still in school. Second, they were able to obtain funding in a bleak investment scene like Australia.

If you happen to be in Melbourne and are looking for a venue to hold Christmas or year-end parties, you can check out Venuemob here.

The idea behind Rewardz first came early this year, and was officially launched in October. I got in touch with co-founder Nicole Seah to find out more. Nicole tells us:

Our motivation was to enable employees in small-scale organisations to be able to enjoy benefits that are typically available in large companies. Many of our friends are in the startup circuit and we hear so often about SMEs not being able to provide better benefits to help retain their talent; that is when we decided that we should do something to bridge that gap.

We also wanted to provide a benefits solution to HR managers, which is holistic – beyond the typical medical and dental packages as well as simple to use and administer. Thus Rewardz was conceived – a simple way to engage your employees.

SMEs should be getting similar benefits to what the big companies have. […] Rewardz will definitely enhance any existing employee packages employers have [provided for their staff].

Rewardz prides itself as one of a kind in Singapore. It leverages on the concept of economies of scale where it consolidates employee numbers across small companies. As the Rewardz employee base becomes even bigger, participating startups would then be able to enjoy even more benefits as it becomes more favorable for merchants to come on board, providing corporate rates that previously could not have been enjoyed by them.

As Nicole gave a run-through of her site over coffee, it was easy to understand given the simple and straightforward Rewardz UI. Once you are logged into your account, you will be able to see the benefits that are available to you (pictured below).

So how does Rewardz generate revenue? Participating companies will be charged S$3 per employee per month, and at the moment it is also extending a three-month free trial of its services to employers. Nicole also tells us that the next version will be integrated with a payment gateway, where employees would be able to make purchases for goods and services through the site.

Co-founder Jaya Maru also reveals that the four brains behind this team hail from corporate banking positions, with one in the IT consulting industry. It is also interesting to note that the first two who were gutsy enough to leave their comfortable corporate banking jobs to embark on this project are women. To both Nicole and Jaya, the choice was pretty straightforward: “Well, someone had to do it, right?”

The team also plans to look beyond Singapore, targeting regional neighbors such as Hong Kong, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur.

At present, Rewardz is looking to build up its pool of merchants and provide benefits on corporate travel as well as insurance. And for startups out there, Rewardz is currently offering a three-month trial. If you guys are keen to try out its service, you can visit the website here.

The inaugural Singapore Startup Weekend, Women’s Edition took place over the weekend. There were a total of 60 participants, and 60 percent of those were women. In total, there were 54 gruelling hours of brainstorming, developing, and pitching over the course of the event.

On Sunday evening, 10 ideas emerged after the dust had settled. You’ll notice that some are more fully formed than others, and a few of the new startups have sites up already. And here’s a quick summary of all 10:

1. Tiny Dare: Gathers online communities and fans to market and speak about lifestyle products they love.
2. Uncle Habit: Having spoken to some of the audience members at the event, this idea appears to be a popular one. It is an app which allows you to cultivate or change a habit within three simple steps and a click.
3. STE Crossroads: The name stands for ‘science, technology, and engineering’, and the idea aims to become a community to support women in the areas of science, tech, and engineering within the Asia Pacific region. It also aims to help women who have left the working world try to get back in.

4. Linksavvy: Linksavvy is a platform that aims to link neighbours and people, which could potentially make neighbourly relationships closer and friendlier. Also, in the spirit of the female-focused event, one of the male team members, Kevin Straszburger, a FrenchWeb correspondent and the CMO of PricePinz, donned a skirt and wig (pictured right).
5. STUBIT: This idea also received positive feedback from one of the judges, Elizabeth Tan, the managing director of Heatwave Shoes. It aims to close the gap between payment technologies and post-payment experiences, eliminating the problem of paper receipts. There are still the challenges of security issues and employee integrity, which the team would need to solve should they take the idea forward.
6. Instaroid: This follows the model of a very exclusive social network, where it takes shots during exclusive events and posts them online. This reminds me a little of the Chinese startup, p1.cn, catering to high net-worth or good-looking individuals.
7. Code4Kids: This is a personal favorite of mine, as it combines children’s education with technology. It is a platform catered for children aged nine to 12, teaching them how to code through games. Through visuals, it effectively engages children, and even adults, who are keen to learn the fundamentals of coding.
8. SeeIDoo: This is another favorite of mine. It’s a platform to educate families about world issues and social responsibilities through gamification. However, the judges also highlighted that they do face the challenge of reaching out to those who are apathetic towards such issues.
9. Bizeo: This is an online platform that helps small companies and startups to be able to upload, edit, and distribute videos. It positions itself as a simple, affordable, and professional solution for businesses to reach out to their audience.

10. Design Sprouts: It addresses the frustrations faced by global fashion designers, and aims to be an online crowdsourced funding and e-commerce platform, connecting independent fashion designers and labels to trendsetters. Design Sprouts (team pictured right), simply put, is sort of a cross between Kickstarter and ASOS.

Who walked away the winner of the women entrepreneur-oriented weekend event? Design Sprouts came out on top, followed by Code4Kids, and STE Crossroads.

Thoughts From The Organizer

The event was jointly organized by four power-packed female individuals over the span of six weeks. One of those is Gina Romero, the founder and managing director of The Athena Network, who shares her takeway from the event:

As an organisation that runs regular women’s business events, it was not easy to bring in the female numbers for this one. I had lots of feedback from women who couldn’t attend due to family commitments, particularly on the second day. Despite channelling marketing efforts through various different communities, tickets were slow to move. However the result of marketing through over 40 different women’s, business, and tech communities led to a very diverse set of attendees.

My biggest lesson was that billing an event as a women’s edition in order to increase female attendance is a great marketing exercise, but to make this type of event more accessible to women (and men) with parenting responsibilities, we need to rethink the format.

This event is certainly a first, but definitely not the last for aspiring female entrepreneurs. In one of the #SGWSW tweets, Lee Min Xuan, the co-founder of PlayMoolah, who is also one of the mentors at Singapore Women Startup Weekend, highlighted:

Having women in teams brings out the humanity in business Had much fun mentoring #code4kids #seeido #linksavvy Good luck guys! #sgwsw

— Min Xuan (@minxuan) November 25, 2012

Over this weekend, we’ve seen really impressive female individuals, includes an eight-month pregnant mom staying throughout the entire event. It goes to show that women can juggle the demands of always-on startup life and familial commitments.

[Group and Design Sprouts team photo from Gina Romero, Kevin's photo from Instagram]

Despite all the entrepreneurial buzz happening in this tiny, little island of Singapore, often one of the pain points raised by startups is the lack of talent. I would agree that it’s an issue, given the select pool of working hands is already pretty small to begin with. Generally, most graduates would prefer joining large corporations or banks, leaving startups as the secondary – or last – option in terms of their career choices.

Hence, founders of three Singapore-based startups, Hagglr, Ubersnap, and Spawt, have joined forces to organize CodeRage, a hackathon and party event catered to students and hackers in the nation. This event aims to raise awareness of startups as potential employers, on top of educating the public that Singapore has exciting startups where students and hackers can build careers.

One of the co-organizers, Arnav Kumar, tells us more:

With this event, we would like to highlight the problems that [students and hackers] can potentially tackle. [...] The competition is based on a question that can be implemented [and solved] in several different ways. [...] It will also be timed so they will have to figure out the most suitable solution to the problem.

Arnav also added that participants will be tested on their web development skills, using RESTful APIs.

The event will take place on December 7th at Fusionopolis. For more information, you can visit the CodeRage 2012 website, or grab your tickets here.

Most companies, large or small, are taking their businesses online these days. So it is important that they educate themselves about various online and digital marketing campaigns in order to increase their ROI.. HelpLearn.Asia is a all-new seminar series that helps attendees to better understand these fundamentals.

The series aims to educate small medium enterprises, startups, and of course, marketers on how to create campaigns professionally through the thorough step-by-step guidance, live demonstrations, and case studies. The first seminar will kick off next January 28 and 29 in Singapore at the Genexis Theatre. Speakers will be exploring key topics like maximizing social media campaigns and analyzing marketing campaigns.

Heading this seminar series is CEO and founder of Girls in Tech, Adriana Gascoigne, who will speak on online marketing. Other presenters will also be sharing their success secrets along with localized online marketing knowledge with participants.

Those looking to understand online marketing fundamentals will also be pleased to know that HelpLearn.Asia will also be held in other cities within the Asia region. We also learned that that Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Phillipines are in the pipeline for this event as well.

For more information about the event, you can visit the HelpLearn.Asia website. Tickets are also available, and you can grab yours here. There is also a discount for registrations before December 28. See you guys there!

In our last post featuring female entrepreneurs, we had Quality Time Lab co-founder, Meri Rosich, sharing her startup experience. In this post, we’re honored to have our own Singaporean female startup founder, Aileen Sim, to share her startup experience with us.

Friends in the local startup scene probably know and have met Aileen. She is currently the co-founder and product manager at BillPin, a startup which helps friends and roommates easily manage shared expenses, keeping friendships squabble-free.

Prior to BillPin, she founded First Meta, a virtual currency startup, which she grew to profitability. She had an impressive list of awards upon graduating from National University of Singapore back in 2006. This includes winning the Red Herring Asia 100 Award and being voted as one of BusinessWeek’s Asia’s Best Young Entrepreneurs.

She was first introduced to the startup scene when she was selected to enter the NUS Overseas Colleges program, and has never looked back since.

She highlights that there are actually a lot of female entrepreneur support networks in most entrepreneurial hubs, and there are also a lot of impressive women entrepreneurs out there who are making an impact. She cites Melinda French Gates as a female leader making a difference and looks up to her as one of her role models, in addition to popular favorites such as Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer. Her advice to fellow entrepreneurs? Just do it. It’ll be worthwhile.

I admire Aileen. Despite having a long list of achievements under her name, she remains down-to-earth, unassuming, and ever ready to help fellow entrepreneurs when in need. I enjoyed the interview with her (video above), and I hope you guys will enjoy it too!

Also, if you guys are keen to try out the BillPin app, you can download it on iTunes here.

This is part of Tech in Asia’s series on female entrepreneurship.

This morning the winners of the competition were announced. The team from Raffles Institution came in first, followed by teams from Crescent Girls’ School and Victoria Junior College. As students, you can imagine how excited the Raffles Institution team was when they were told they will be visiting Google HQ in Mountain View, California, for a total of four days.

Speaking to the winning team at Google Singapore’s office this morning, Christabella Irwanto, one of the members of the team, told us that the idea came about when they were on a bus. The resulting animation which they subsequently created (see below), shows a man showering in public, subjected to public scrutiny. It highlights that the man is exposed to the world, a metaphor for sharing everything about himself publicly.

I thought the video was really brilliant, given that it took the seventeen-year-olds a mere two weeks to complete. With the win, the computer science team hopes to convey a message to peers to be careful of what they post online.

As for the Victoria Junior College team, team members Jerome Wong and Shawn Hoo felt the competition was a fantastic attempt by MDA and Google to reach out to fellow peers on cyber-wellness. When such messages come from the government or schools, they do not hold as much appeal. In fact, they usually find it pretty boring.

This is part of what Google set out to achieve with this competition. Deborah Nga, the youth literary lead for Google APAC tells us that this competition aims to get youths into thinking about good online practices. Often young adults hold a certain level of skepticism hearing messages from older folks, and videos are best way to convey messages.

This competition attracted over 200 student participants, and more than 60 group project submissions from 30 schools. Google is also looking to have another collaboration launching similar competitions with MDA early next year.

You can view the other two videos by the Crescent Girls’ School and Victoria Junior College team below:

Singapore, out of the 393 professionals surveyed, engineering and teaching took the top spots for males and females respectively. Below are some of the statistics of the most favored jobs in the country:

As for dream jobs like astronaut, artist, zoologist, or race car driver, those stood at 2.5 percent, 1.8 percent, 0.3 percent, and 1 percent respectively. I guess I wasn’t alone, standing side by side with the 1.3 percent wanting to become superheroes someday. And yes, people do dream of becoming princes or princesses (0.5 percent), and even ninjas (0.3 percent) too.

According to LinkedIn, we have some pretty awesome careers among the site’s members in Singapore. There are apparently 4,700 who are fashion stylists, 115 geologists, and two archaeologists residing here in Singapore.

It was also revealed that having a high salary is not the main allure of a dream job. In fact, more than 70 percent of the professionals surveyed said that “taking pleasure in your work” was most important, followed by “helping others.”

In essence, it is an internet-connected GPS navigation system which gives users step-by-step, turn-by-turn voice guided directions. It gives you the latest maps, business information, and live traffic updates from Google Maps. You can view the route in both street or satellite view.

Some of the features include street and satellite views, where it will automatically switch to street view as you are nearing your targeted destination. Users do not need to know addresses and are able to easily search by just typing in a landmark name or the kind of businesses they are looking for.

You can also search along routes. For instance, if you are looking to grab a bite from a fast food joint, you will be able to search via Google Navigation to find one that is on your way.

Where traffic data is available, Google Navigation will be able to guide you on the best route to your destination. You will be able to find out the real-time traffic conditions along your route, by a single touch on-screen indicator that shows a traffic view. It will also tell you whether it is advisable to travel via various routes through the indicator, which will glow green, yellow, or red, depending on the current traffic conditions.

In Singapore and using an Android smartphone? Try downloading the newest release of Google Maps on Google Play. Let us know your experience with the navigation system too!

With the advent of the internet and social media, local travel agencies are losing business due to the “more perfect” knowledge that is readily available at the click of the mouse. These traditional businesses are sometimes run by the older generation, with a huge inertia to adopt new and innovative methods and customer acquisition channels. On the other hand, with more information available, travelers are no longer keen on following packaged and guided tours, in which offline stores often specialized. With these two factors combined, travel agencies realize that they are slowly losing market share – and sales.

But those who prevail are the ones who embrace and use technology to their advantage. One such Singaporean travel agency, Maple Aviation, is an example. It has been around since 1988, and prides itself as the first local travel agency to adopt social media as its primary platform to reach out to its customers. It is also the TransAsia Airways Singapore’s general sales agent (GSA), and so it takes charge of all TransAsia Airways bookings in Singapore.

More recently in May, Maple Travel launched a “Book My Flight” tab on TransAsia Airways’ Facebook page that allows users to book Singapore to Taipei air tickets direct without having to leave Facebook. It has also integrated PayPal as its payment solution, which streamlines and simplifies the purchasing process for customers, thus enhancing the purchasing experience. It has since seen over 200 return flights sold through Facebook in the first three months.

Tan Meng Aun, director for Maple Aviation, also shared with us that 20 percent of its customers are between 18 and 24 years old and 50 percent are aged between 25 to 34 years old. It is mainly made up of students, couples, young working adults, and newlyweds. Unsurprisingly, these customers are also the ones who are constantly on the popular social network, adopters of PayPal payment services, and look to blogs as well as online guides to prepare for their next holiday destination.

Meng Aun also adds that with Facebook, it brings the brand closer to its customers:

They are able to answer their questions and solve their problems on a platform that the customers are already very comfortable with. This is in contrast to a static website where customers are unable to ask any questions or have to call in and hold before being able to speak to a company representative. With Facebook, they can simply leave their question as a message and later check the answer on their mobile phone while on commute. In addition, having PayPal integrated seamlessly together makes it easy to streamline the purchase process and improves the customer service experience when businesses merge these two platforms.

This also means that local travel agencies are able to coexist with the internet, when technology is embraced. Meng Aun adds:

While the internet is certainly muscling its way in to be a dominant sales channel in the travel industry, the local travel agencies are still able to find their niche, especially in the form of the customer service they provide. Airline ticketing and hotel bookings are no longer a major value proposition for travel agents to pitch to customers, as these customers are able to do that themselves on the internet. However, the nature of travel is always complicated. [For instance,] if a flight is cancelled or if the passenger’s travel plans change, and this is where the immediate service a travel agent can provide, will prove to be of value to customers. Hence, while the internet will continue to grow its dominance in the travel industry and the roles of the local travel agencies continue to evolve, the local travel agencies will never become redundant.

But really, how many local travel agencies, especially the smaller ones, would have the resources and money to integrate a platform like this? Not many. Perhaps the bigger ones will survive, but it’s still a tough task for the smaller players to take their business online.

LifeCrumbs

The Taipei-based startup was the winning idea in an internal rocket pitch within the team back in May. It first came about when they were tired of filtering through content spread across different social networks, and envisioned a platform that allows friends to have a more intimate sharing experience.

The idea of having a more personal social network reminds me a little of the Path app, which restricts users to only 150 connections. However, Maggie Cheung, co-founder of LifeCrumbs, tells us that her app stresses thoughtful content sharing above all else:

[...] Path encourages users to share every moment, such as music they are listening to, or when they wake up and go to sleep. We encourage our users to share only the memorable moments that truly define their day. These are the moments that they value and want to remember about their day. This the quality content that is really worth sharing.

In my opinion, the app looks pretty. It does take a bit of getting used to, because unlike most apps which have the features laid across at the bottom of the app, LifeCrumbs has them hidden. It appears only when you tap on the arrow at the bottom of the screen.

Maggie also says that the startup will be releasing a Chinese version in mid November, and the startup has an Android version in the works too. It also plans to take advantage of the calendar feature and introduce a new “planning” function, letting users easily plan events with their friends.

If you’d like to give the app a try, you can download it for iOS here.

Meri Rosich is the co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based startup Quality Time Lab (formerly known as Splaype) [1], which makes a platform for families to stay connected online together. A self-confessed fan of Captain Janeway from Star Trek, Meri tells us how her corporate experience prior to starting up has shaped her thinking, and how her gender has put her in a slightly more advantageous stead over her male counterparts.

How did you get started in this industry?

Meri: I am an inventor at heart, trained in innovation in my native Barcelona with a PhD in 3D technology history, and later an MBA focused on innovation from the London Business School. I started working in internet startups right after university. I was doing research for my PhD and learned to code and create websites to organize my research, and this took me to some of the top startups in news, e-commerce, and social portals. Later I launched my [own and it] was a lot of fun.

Is Quality Time Lab your first startup? I understand prior to starting up, you had an impressive corporate career. How did that corporate experience help in your startup today?

Meri: Quality Time Lab is my third startup, after a design studio in Barcelona and a technology consultancy in London. After my MBA, I joined American Express in London, Hong Kong, and Singapore, where I learned about payments, and mergers and acquisitions. Amex is a wonderful organization, truly focused on work-life balance, and employee satisfaction. My role had a reduced schedule, virtual and flexi-work, and that inspired me to help others achieve quality time in their lives.

Do you think your gender has played a role in helping you gain an advantage over your male counterparts?

Meri: Being a woman has helped me see the world in a different perspective and that [itself] is an advantage. Women today in the startup world are starting to find solutions for problems related to family and children because of their first-hand experiences. And [mothers] are the primary buyers so there is huge potential for women in technology. At the same time, women should be treated equally and evaluated based on their skills and performance. Gender equality still does not happen today in most countries around the world. Even in the most advanced you can still find underlying discrimination. There has been dramatic progress over the past 50 years, and I hope it will continue to improve.

Do you have any female role model that you look up to?

Meri: I follow [a lot] of female role models such as Sheryl Sandberg [Facebook’s COO] and have learned from excellent leaders at Amex. But I confess my favorite female role model is the fictional character Captain Janeway from Star Trek Voyager. She is determined, value-driven and fair – a true role model for women.

Do you have any advice for fellow female entrepreneurs? Would you encourage them to embark on entrepreneurship or a corporate career first?

Meri: The skills you learn in the entrepreneurial and the corporate worlds are transferable. You must know your industry and competitors inside out, work well with people, be able to sell at all levels, and have a core knowledge of technology. It doesn’t matter where you start, work hard to expand skills, and always think big because everything is possible.

Anything else to add?

Meri: We hear a lot about startups and their technical founders. But, guess what? Some of the most hip and interesting startups in Silicon Valley are founded and led by women who are not engineers, and women in Asia should know it is possible, and dare to think big.

This is part of Tech in Asia’s series on female entrepreneurship.

iCarsclub

The team also has a hardware system in place, called iCarBox, which enables keyless entry. Car rentees will be able to unlock the cars using their smartphones and start driving. With this keyless entry system, it aims to enhance the rental experience. Taking full advantage of the benefits of mobile, it allows users to find a car within a small area very easily. Co-founder, Jamie Wang, explains:

Our driving box will be installed in the vehicle and integrated with the locking syste. [It will be able to] receive a lock/unlock signal from our central server to the driving box via SMS or GPRS. So when a user clicks the unlock button on his smartphone, our central server will send the unlock signal to the driving box, and the door will be opened. Then the driver can get into the car and find the ignition key in the compartment and start driving.

So how does iCarsclub monetize? In essence, it takes a fifteen percent cut from each transaction via its in-platform payment support. It also provides insurance coverage for all transactions.

Interestingly, whilst everyone else is looking to China for better opportunities, the team is comprised of four mainland Chinese, with qualifications and backgrounds hailing from China’s top Tsinghua University and Baidu. They have chosen to launch their product in Singapore first. Jamie elaborates:

Singapore is the best place to test our our idea because of the high demand on private cars, [coupled with] better trust between people and overall safeness, such as low theft and low accident rates. Once our idea is validated in Singapore and [we have figured the ideal execution method], we can easily replicate our business in other cities similar to Singapore.

The team is indeed looking to expand its operations to China after Singapore, targeting first-tiered cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. The service sounds similar in many ways to YongChe or America’s ZipCar. Co-founder Eddy Zhang tells us that iCarsclub is different because it gathers from both private and business car owners, which allows higher flexibility in car model types and at the same time lowers the rates.

For those who are keen to try out iCarsclub services, the team currently has discounts and offerings in place if you sign up with them via their site. You can visit them at iCarsClub.com.

It all happened when the team was speaking with its new advisor from New York City back in late September. They received a call from Dave McClure that the startup was selected for 500 Startups. I can imagine the level of excitement in the office when they were also offered another US$50,000 from PalGenesis, thanks to the advisor, within that very same day.

Some readers might recall that we covered Kickfolio before. Since then, the team has made two significant improvements to its product. Co-founder Chris Nolet tells us:

[First] is that we’ve refocused the product on a new, incredibly strong pain point. [...] We now help developers distribute ‘test builds’ (or beta releases) to their clients via a web page, with the Kickfolio technology providing an interactive experience, right there on the page. People can test the app, live in their browser. There’s no mucking around with UDIDs or downloading the app. Testers or clients can leave comments. We also record the last 30 seconds of their usage so developers can see how people are using their app. That’s our first strong use-case, and we’ll shortly branch back to marketing once we’re established and bootstrapped.

[Two,] we’ve rebuilt the technology stack from the ground up and it flies. This is easily the smoothest experience we’ve created to date and we’re especially proud of it. We really looking forward to showing it off.

I absolutely adore the Kickfolio team, not only because it’s got a great product, but because it has adopted a “Think Bigger” mindset during its pursuit of great mentorship and opportunities in the United States. The startup’s decision to move to the US was propelled by their visit back in September. In Chris words:

As Australians, we tend to downplay our abilities and successes, and we generally aim lower than American entrepreneurs.

Perhaps another reason driving the move was due the lack of funds available in Australia. Chris elaborates:

We have, for example, noticed the incredible focus here on traction and growth as opposed to revenue and profitability in Australia. Silicon Valley is much more prepared to have a runaway success with millions of users, which then gets acquired – as opposed to VCs in Australia who look at ‘money in, money out’ to judge a company’s viability. We’re lucky enough to be able to switch between those points of view on a whim now and we think we have a wonderful mix of both.

Now that the team is in Silicon Valley, it is not letting any chance of succeeding slip by. Chris tells us:

We want the Kickfolio brand to [be] pervasive at the end of 500 Startups, and synonymous with cutting-edge technology, practically applied to make mobile developers’ lives easier. We intend to be bootstrapped by the end of the program (or close to) and we want to meet more great people with new ideas about how we can our apply our tech.

And no, the team isn’t just stopping there. The boys are intending to sponge as much knowledge as possible from the Silicon Valley startup culture, and contribute back to the Australia startup scene. Chris adds:

The scene in Melbourne is young and emerging and we hope many more people will hit California, learn from people like Dave McClure and Paul Singh, and bring that knowledge back to Australia to feed the next round of Aussie startups.

This is certainly encouraging for the Australia startup scene, especially since most students choose to pursue the comfortable corporate route upon graduation. It definitely takes time to build an ecosystem, but undeniably, there’s a lot of potential in Australian startups with their mindset of “thinking bigger”.

Aside from Kickfolio, another two teams from Asia which have made it into 500 Startups include Japan-based Cinemacraft and Taiwan-based Cubie App.

[Kickfolio team photo from diesellaws.com]

The competition is tailored specially for students, regardless of which country you are from. In essence, it serves as an opportunity for students to showcase their business talents to the global audience, on top of building their networks and entrepreneurial dreams.

In fact, the competition has received good feedback from those who have participated. One of the finalists, Ariff Munshi of Referoll (previously known as Lobangz in the 2011 competition), tells us that it is probably one of the best planned and executed events around in the startup scene:

The quality of the ideas and teams are at a different level. [Judges] do not actually know which country you are from until the [final round].

The competition has benefited me in a [many] ways. Other than getting the chance to pitch in front of [mentors and veterans] and [obtaining] their feedback and suggestions, it was from this competition that I got [the] chance to be part of the Plug and Play accelerator programme in Silicon Valley.

[But] participating in competitions has its pros and cons. It can be very time-consuming and it does take your time from running your business. I would definitely recommend students to join, [...] because you will never know where it [will take] you.

The winning team will walk away with US$36,000 in prize money, on top of other prizes and business development opportunities. International teams who have qualified for the final round will have their lodging provided for two core team members for five nights.

Applications close January 31, 2013. For more information on the rules and regulations, you can visit the competition website here or follow the competition updates at its Facebook page.