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!

Singaporean startup incubator Fatfish Medialab has made its first ever investments in four local startups. The new program, a spin-off from the VC firm Fatfish Group that operates around Southeast Asia, has opted to back these guys, who are all still in beta and not yet fully launched:

PeeplePass

Once launched on iPhone and Android, PeeplePass promises to be Asia’s first data-driven social travel app, different to the usual travel diary or search apps.

Blazable Studio

Blazable Studio is working on a game engine to simplify the creation of social mobile games.

VDancer

VDancer is a game studio focuses on a particular niche – what it promises will be a new genre of mobile dance games.

DockPHP

Will be a SaaS business for creating business-oriented websites.

Fatfish is an iJAM-approved incubator. For those who missed the news, iJAM is a tiered funding program created by the Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore. It has experienced entrepreneurs and seasoned investors onboard to guide the startups, such as partners Chow Yen-Lu and Lau Kin Wai.

Mr. Lau says in today’s announcement:

We have quite an exciting first quarter of the year with the investments we made into the four startups. We are selective in finding the right startups to invest in, but we do see a very active startup scene in Singapore. At this juncture, we believe that we will be investing into more than 15 startups over the next 24 months.

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.

Things have been evolving quite a bit for Zalora since it entered Singapore. Last year, there was some controversy over customer service, but this year the fashion e-store hit over one million monthly visitors in March and last week it delivered to its one millionth customer.

Now, Zalora is continuing to step up its game in Singapore by offering customers a cash-on-collection option at local 7-Eleven stores across Singapore. That means it’s even easier to pay for your e-commerce clothing purchases starting from today. This is all part of Zalora’s play to make customer service as good as they can get it. It’s in stark contrast to last year’s mishaps.

Singaporeans can select the 7-Eleven payment option on the Zalora checkout page, which will allow them to check their preferred store to pay at. Zalora will then SMS the customer to notify them when their package has arrived at the designated 7-Eleven. Then they would go to the 7-Eleven, cash in hand. After paying in cash at the 7-Eleven of their choosing, they’ll be able to get the package.

According to Amanda Eng, marketing director for Zalora Singapore:

This is an exciting step for us as it can help those still apprehensive about online shopping get over that initial barrier. We hope that this collaboration can help us grow the market by increasing consumer confidence in e-commerce efficiencies.

Currently, the 7-Eleven cash-on-collection plan is only running in 19 stores in Singapore, but the Rocket Internet-backed company is hoping to expand that to all the 570 stores across the island.

Paying for items that you buy online at a mini-mart is certainly not a new thing in Asia. We’ve seen examples of using convenience stores to pay for online goods in China, Thailand, and 7-Eleven-loving Taiwan.

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.

EatAds, the Singapore-based startup that’s an online platform for buying and selling offline adverts, has today revealed that it has entered the Indian market. Just as the online ads industry has been revolutionized by such services, EatAds aims to do the same for outdoor and out-of-home (OOH) media.

It enters India with one major company already onboard in the form of Times OOH, which is a local powerhouse in outdoor, road-side and landmark advertising. EatAds already has over 100 media owners listed in Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Thailand, and now India as well. The platform has over 6,000 outdoor ad listings.

EatAds co-founder Nigel Hembrow says in today’s announcement:

Being such a large and fragmented country, we had always suspected a need for EatAds in India, and over past months all the India buyers and sellers we have met here have validated this need. We’re excited to be working with our Delhi- based partner to grow our user base in India.

You might recall that EatAds raised seed funding last December. The startup got back into action in October 2012 after remaining dormant for a while as co-founder John Fearon was focusing on building Dropmysite and Dropmyemail. Now EatAds’s expansion is beginning all over again having previously scrapped some of its earlier overseas moves.

After today’s India launch, EatAds is teasing more expansion in the region which will be announced soon. I get the feeling it’ll involve Myanmar and Cambodia or some other market where the outdoor ads industry is fragmented, under-utilized, and somewhat chaotic.

The core EatAds team: Nigel (left) and Dhruv.

Food delivery site Foodpanda has been making headlines a lot recently. First with a $20 million financing round and then a rebrand in Vietnam. Today, Foodpanda has announced a merger with former rival Singapore Dine, though the terms of the deal haven’t been made public.

The Rocket Internet-backed startup claims to be “the market leading food delivery company in Singapore” with this merger.

Kiren Tanna, CEO Asia at Foodpanda in Singapore, said about the merger:

The merge with Singapore Dine makes us by far the market leader in the Singaporean food delivery market. Customers who want to order at Singapore Dine will be redirected to Foodpanda.sg in future to access the broadest culinary variety from more than 200 restaurants delivering island-wide. We are very happy that we can offer the leading and best food delivery platform in Singapore.

Singapore Dine started up in 2010, promising to offer “the widest index of eateries in Singapore, including buffets, coffee places, hawker centers, restaurants and more.” All those delivery options now transfer over to Foodpanda.

Foodpanda operates in nine countries across Asia.

Singapore-based luxury private flash sales site Reebonz (pronounced ‘ribbons’) has completed a $40 million (S$50 million) financing round led by Singapore’s media giant MediaCorp.

Other investors in this round are Vertex Asia Investments, Granite Global Ventures GGV Capital, Intel Capital, Matrix Partners China, and Infocomm Investments, the venture arm of Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore. This financing round values Reebonz at about $200 million (S$250 million).

Reebonz offers short-duration, online private sales events, which are exclusively open to members only. Registration to Reebonz is free. Sales events are for both women’s and men’s brands and are modeled around the concept of ‘accessible luxury’ with up to 70 percent discount.

MediaCorp CEO Shaun Seow told his own network, Channel News Asia (CNA):

We see great alignment between what Reebonz does and what MediaCorp has – audiences, content targeted at the luxury market and our star power. We are confident that by collaborating closely with Reebonz, we’ll see even more breakthroughs from the retailer

Reebonz was founded in March 2009 by Samuel Lim, Daniel Lim, and Benjamin Han who haven’t been speaking much to the tech press recently. Many Singaporean entrepreneurs and investors have long thought of Reebonz as one of the most promising internet companies in the nation. Besides, Reebonz.com, the founders also run Kwerkee.com, a store for designer-created items that was started in April 2012.

Reebonz’s success is built upon layers of experience. Prior to Reebonz, Samuel founded Fusion Mobile in 2000, a mobile content business that was later acquired by a Malaysian listed company in 2007. In 2004, Samuel founded Fusion Direct, a company that did database marketing, and that was acquired by a Singapore listed company in 2010.

Samuel, who’s the CEO at Reebonz, told CNA that with this investment he wishes to “build a world-class billion-dollar Internet commerce group out from Singapore.”

Dr Lim Kuo-Yi, CEO of Infocomm Investments, echoed Samuel’s mission and told us:

We are excited to be working with Samuel, his team, and fellow investors in growing Reebonz as the top online luxury retailer in Asia. It is our mission to support our Infocomm startups to expand internationally, and we are confident Reebonz will show it is possible to build a great startup from Singapore.

Prior to this MediaCorp-led financing round, Reebonz has also received funding from Vertex Asia Investment and Intel Capital. Headquartered in Singapore, Reebonz has regional offices in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, Shanghai, and Korea.

(Source: CNA)

Beijing’s App Annie is growing rapidly with over 80 team members located at Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo, San Francisco, and London. Today it serves over 220,000 apps with 85 percent of the top 100 iOS publishers using its service.

App Annie is largely serving clients from the US, Europe, China, and Japan and hasn’t really gotten into Southeast Asia yet. But the team just might start to look at Southeast Asia as it is seeing growth in this region. Vice president of APAC at App Annie Junde Yu said in an email:

Google Play is growing very fast in terms of downloads in the region, especially in countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, where downloads are much higher than iOS.

Even though Android downloads are much higher, revenue from iOS is still higher in Southeast Asia. Junde also commented that things will get exciting when Google Play manages to establish local payment options as it has done in South Korea and Japan. He added:

Additionally, despite of the growth in downloads, most of the apps downloaded in the SEA markets are published by foreign publishers. There are local publishers, but most of them have more of an international outlook for content and distribution as opposed to local. It will be interesting to observe the rise of the local players for the local markets, as the local markets grow in downloads and revenues.

(Also read: The Story of App Annie)

A Singaporean in China

Junde takes extra interest in Southeast Asia since he was born in Singapore, which is part of the region. Having worked in China for several years now, Junde says that he still has much more to learn from both markets. But from what he has observed, he sees great connection between China and Singapore, noting that SingTel Innov8 (who also invests in China startups) and ACE Beijing Chapter have done a great job bridging the two regions. In China, he sees Innovation Works and the Great Wall Club (which runs GMIC) also having links with Southeast Asia and Singapore.

Junde says people often mistakenly think that Chinese aren’t paying customers. He notes that iOS revenue isn’t significant even with huge downloads because most iOS users in China do not own a foreign credit card to pay Apple. “It is also inconvenient to use local bank cards to top up their iOS credits,” he added.

For Android, Junde says that most revenue-making apps make their bucks from second and third-tier cities, supported by carrier billing that makes paying just an SMS away. He explains that consumers in these cities do not spend much on entertainment outlets like cinemas, pubs, and clubs and thus they are very much content to spend on mobile content.

If you are very serious about the Chinese market, you need to be physically here. If not, you can also work through a distributor/publishers; there are good options available, like iDreamsky, Yodo1, Cocoachina etc.

Coincidentally, Junde will be back in Singapore for the upcoming Casual Connect conference on May 21 to 23. He will be speaking on the topic “Global Trends in App Store Monetization” on May 22, 11.00am where he will be sharing the latest trends about the app store economy and also interesting tips about marketing mobile apps in Asia.

While his work and heart is now mainly in Beijing, Junde does plan to return to Singapore someday to start a game studio, a pub, or a chicken rice franchise.

(Image credit: Startapp.com)

The newest earnings report from SingTel (SGX:T48) makes for painful reading. The giant Singapore-based telco, which has over 420 million subscribers on numerous networks across Asia-Pacific, saw its first full year drop in revenues for 14 years in today’s stats for Q4 and FY 2012. The only ray of light comes from SingTel’s digital business, which saw a 156 percent rise in revenues. Perhaps inspired by this, SingTel will set aside US$1.6 billion for startup acquisitions so as to find “next-generation growth engines in the digital space”.

That $1.6 billion investment will be spread over the next three years, and will be largely ploughed into strategic acquisitions in the online space that can tie in with SingTel’s phone services across the region.

Indeed, we’ve already seen SingTel doing this over the past couple of years, having acquired the mobile ad company Amobee for $321 million, snapped up the food recommendation startup HungryGoWhere, and made investments in things like TheMobileGamer. Plus the telco has a VC arm called SingTel Innov8 that has made lots of significant investments across the region. The most recent one was in the China-based mobile game developer and publisher Yodo1.

Profits down

Getting back to SingTel’s latest numbers, net profit fell 12 percent year-on-year to s$3.51 billion ($2.83 billion) at the end of March 2013. Group revenue fell 3.4 percent to S$18.18 billion ($14.66 billion) for the full year.

SingTel wholly owns Australia’s Optus, and has significant stakes in telcos like India’s Bharti, Philippines’ Globe, and several others.

See more financial data on the SingTel IR homepage or on ZDnet.

(Hat-tip to ZDnet for spotting this)

The one millionth customer was Singaporean mum-to-be Kelly Nguyen, who was surprised by the Zalora team at her workplace, who handed over her order (a maternity dress) free of charge.

The Zalora crew also concocted a little infographic (below) to show some of its other stats. For example, the e-commerce service has shipped to 16,853 towns in the region so far, and over 23,000 new products are added to the site each week. To hold all that stock, the company has over 20,000 square meters of warehouse space, which is the equivalent of five football fields.

Zalora released its iPhone app last month, and attracted a further $26 million in funding back in March.

Today Singapore-based Loan Garage, a startup that aims to help people get loans online, announced that it has launched its Indonesian platform KreditAja.com. It’s interesting to note that the expansion arrives only two months after Loan Garage made its full launch in Singapore. The Indonesian version looks to be off to a great start as Loan Garage has secured a partnership with Indonesia’s Ministry of Economic Coordination (KUR) to distribute loans and microcredit worth $3.7 billion in Indonesia.

The KreditAja website looks identical to the Singapore version. Its video tutorial is still just in English, but the Indonesian version will be made available within two weeks time. Just like the Singapore version, KreditAja is an online platform for both borrowers and licensed lenders to conduct transactions. Details such as the interest rate of the loans can also be seen and compared within the site.

Although launched today, Kredit Aja will start its operational phase tomorrow with three banks as lenders. Three months after that, the platform will bring in the rest of the KUR bank partners onboard. Loan Garage CEO Aidil Zulkifli said that they earn money from commissions made from successful loan applications, premium subscription listings, and later on, advertising as well. The team will also introduce value-added services after they have amassed data on consumer financial behavior.

Led by country manager Emir Yamin, six out of nine of the Loan Garage team are stationed in Indonesia. Loan Garage is backed by private investors from various backgrounds like investment bankers and cloud computing specialists. Talking of the personal finance market and the team’s plans, Aidil ¹ added:

The personal finance market in emerging markets is ripe for disruption and there are many inefficiencies in the market for us to take advantage of and arbitrage. It is not as sexy or cool but it is easy for us to monetize. At the same time, all of us come to work excited with the prospect of building a product that could help in the financial inclusion process in emerging markets and help the average person on the street make a better life for him/herself through financial and credit empowerment.

We don’t want to say much, but one thing that is for sure is that we won’t just be in the personal loans vertical.

KUR itself distributed $3.5 billion of loans to Indonesian individuals and SMEs through banks in 2012. And since the beta launch in December, Loan Garage has processed over $500,000 of personal loans.

There have been other startups doing business in similar fields across Asia like Lenddo in the Philippines. Loan Garage itself is one of the startups that competed at Startup Asia Jakarta last year.

1. The quote came from Aidil, not Emir.

Swedish music streaming company Spotify recently stepped into Asia; specifically Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. Spotify’s Sriram Krishnan, head of new markets and Asia-pacific at Spotify, explained to us that Asia was picked because piracy is high in this part of the world.

Sad but true, Singapore is one of the leading nations for digital pirates. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), about half of Singaporeans visit unlicensed sites for music and movies. The report also says that Singapore has an average of about 300,000 incidences of illegal downloading a month. Citing a 2011 report by the Malaysia International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), Spotify pointed out that Malaysia is ranked 26th in the world in terms of the amount of connections to unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing. Sriram added:

Spotify was set up as a better, simpler, faster alternative to piracy […] With the high level of piracy in this part of the world, it made sense for us to enter the Asia market through these markets. According to IFPI, 95 percent of all digital music was illegally downloaded, so combating piracy is by far our, and in turn the industry’s, most serious challenge.

I know it might sound like some corporate bullshit that Spotify was built to fight piracy. But thinking deeper, it actually makes sense. Spotify gets content from labels who in turn make money when people buy their music. But folks who download music from illegal sources – and at no cost – hurt the labels’ bottom line. So this makes piracy a common enemy for music labels and Spotify. The more people use Spotify, the higher the chance to convert them to paying users, thus driving revenue for music labels and also Spotify.

To date, Spotify has 24 million users with about 25 percent of them paying monthly. I guess if you can’t get 100 percent to pay for music, then it’s perhaps good enough to have 25 percent of them paying. But we’ll have to wait and see if that conversion rate from free to paid users also applies to the startup’s new venture in Asia.

In Asia, Spotify faces major competition from Taiwan’s KKBOX which claims to be the largest Chinese music library in the world with 10 million songs from 500 international labels.

Image credit: www.agneselle.com

It is not known who first created the word blogshop or started the first ever blogshop in Singapore, but blogshops have become a huge phenomenon in Singapore, with four of the country’s ten most-searched stores being blogshops. A blogshop is an online fashion store that uses a blog such as Livejournal to conduct business online. Blogshops usually sell women’s clothing and accessories for affordable prices ranging from $12 to $30.

Origins of Blogshops

Blogshops – Love Bonito, Agneselle, Hollyhoque, Dressabelle

In the early years of the blogshop industry (2006-2008), the owners were young females aged between 16 and 20. Most of them were still in school and didn’t start out with the aim of being entrepreneurs. Many thought it was a fun and easy way of selling off their secondhand apparel online, and the money earned from these sales would go towards funding their future fashion purchases.

After a few months, some realized the potential of fashion e-commerce and the huge market of customers who were willing to spend between $15 to $40 for a piece of clothing online without needing a physical fitting. Looking to fulfill the demand of their customers, these owners went to source from apparel importers at City Plaza in Singapore and some even went on frequent sourcing trips to Bangkok to bring back large supplies of cheap clothing.

How do they sell clothing on blogs?

It seemed questionable to start a business using Livejournal blogs with the lack of a proper web framework, inventory control, checkout and payment processing systems. But these young female entrepreneurs were not deterred and came up with various unique hacks. The four points below were crucial factors that contributed to the success and popularity of blogshops in the competitive e-commerce industry:

1. Weekly time-specified launches

As a small business starting out, it would be difficult to stock up clothing in hundreds of different designs without incurring large expenses of warehouse storage cost and labour costs. Instead, blogshops introduced a series of five to ten different designs with limited availability in the form of a themed collection format. The collection would launch weekly at night between 7pm and 10pm, and customers were informed through email newsletter a few days before the actual launch.

2. Backorders

Backorders were available a few days after a successful selling out of a collection launch; it also gave those customers who missed out on the launch an opportunity to purchase sold out designs. It was guaranteed income for the owners, as customers would need to pay upfront to purchase sold out designs that were on backorder. Backorders would take two to six weeks to arrive before they were shipped to customers. The amount of designs available on a backorder was an indicator of the popularity of a blogshop.

3. Gmail

Gmail was a must-have tool of any blogshop owner. Firstly, It was used to issue order invoices manually to customers after they commented on the items they wanted on Livejournal. Secondly, blogshops sent mailers in bulk to inform customers of pending launches and the arrival of backorders. Thirdly, Gmail labels were used as a tool to keep track of those who had made payment by tallying the payment details of buyers’ bank accounts against the owners’ bank accounts. Popular blogshops often exceeded Gmail’s 500 daily messages sending limit during the launch of a new fashion collection.

4. Trust

Payment is an important mechanism to close the purchase loop in e-commerce. However when shopping at blogshops, buyers had no choice but to trust sellers with upfront payments to sellers’ accounts. POSB/DBS internet banking was the primary choice of payment accepted by sellers, but buyers often had to wait up to 48 hours for their payment to be manually verified by sellers through email.

There was no payment protection for sellers in the case of non-fulfilled orders, thus buyers preferred shopping at the more popular blogshops to avoid getting scammed. While it was slow and inefficient for owners to verify every single payment email, there were no transaction costs involved and most customers had an active POSB or DBS account.

Stay tuned for part two of my look at the blogshop phenomenon where I will talk about the golden age of blogshops and the top blogshops in Singapore.

E-shopping marketplace Taobao has been aggressively expanding to Hong Kong and Taiwan. With 1.4 million registered users already in Hong Kong, Taobao today announced at a media event in Hangzhou, China, that it has recently launched a Hong Kong official site at hk.taobao.com.

The official Hong Kong site is customized for a Hong Kong audience in many ways. It features products that Hong Kong users are most likely to buy and also offers a guide to educate users on payments. The design of the site is also much cleaner and neater compared to the China version of Taobao.

Taobao in Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore

Elsewhere, Taobao is also enjoying growth in Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore. By the end of 2012, there were 600,000 users in Taiwan, 210,000 in Malaysia, and 280,000 in Singapore. Daphne Lee, director of international business at Taobao, also shared that Malaysia is seeing explosive growth at the moment. In Malaysia, Taobao is experiencing 78 percent growth in monthly paying unique visitors and also 97 percent growth in daily pageviews.

The countries which are outside of mainland China that Taobao are targeting so far have a significant Chinese-speaking population. Taobao hopes to service the Chinese-speaking audience first before moving on to serve non-Chinese speaking customers. Daphne also pointed out that Singapore is an important market for Taobao since it is a country that uses both Chinese and English languages which could possibly provide Taobao with some data and experience on how to cope with an English speaking market.

A fun fact which Daphne pointed out is that Singaporean shoppers tend to buy winter clothing on Taobao. Well, as you may know, Singapore is really freaking warm all year round. So there aren’t really any offline stores to buy winter clothing for travelers – so online shops like Taobao become the go-to destination for rare items like winter clothing.

While it might seem like a piece of cake for Taobao to expand from country to country, there’s actually a lot of ground work to be done. Daphne highlighted four fundamental building blocks which her team are constantly tackling: process, logistics, payments, and customer service.

As of June 2012, Taobao has more than 800 million product listings and 500 million registered users worldwide. Today is also Taobao’s 10th anniversary and also a day that Jonathan Lu officially takes over from Jack Ma as Alibaba’s CEO.

During Startup Asia Singapore a month ago, I met Streetdirectory‘s founder, Firdhaus Akber and learned about his entrepreneurial journey. From my perspective, it was one hell of a roller coaster ride: one that involved the excitement of seeing exponential growth in traffic, the promise of an IPO and him being courted by flocks of investors; and the low times of being forced out of his own company before scraping his way back in, and getting sued by a Singapore government agency in a lawsuit that lasted more than a year.

StreetDirectory is a Singapore startup that was founded back in 2000. It is a portfolio company of Hong Kong’s JDB Holdings, whose portfolio also includes JobsDB, 88DB, Openrice, Cozycot, FlowerAdvisor and SgCarmart (which was recently acquired by SPH). Streetdirectory has a team of around 200 staff across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Hong Kong and boasts more than 1.2 million registered users and 1.3 million apps downloads.

Connecting the Dots

Firdhaus started his first full time job before starting university. He worked as an instructor at a fitness club and did enough to convince his boss to entrust him with managing the club. He deferred school to focus on the job. Then he moved to join an event company as a salesperson. He also worked at an IT company at a job that involved him handling brands, building relationships and making sales. Reflecting on his entrepreneurial journey, he attributes what he has achieved at Streetdirectory to the many skills he picked up in these previous jobs. He has found that despite the diverse industries he has worked in, it all connects.

Unknowingly, the different exposures in my previous jobs helped me greatly in running Streetdirectory. When I became a boss, all these pieces came together. I got the experience of managing a team in the fitness club; I got the skills of doing sales from the events company and the skills of developing relationships with important clients through my work at the IT company.”

Photo credit to The Titan Times Daily

The Roller Coaster Ride

Firdhaus started Streetdirectory with three other co-founders in 2000. Previously, they had approached him on numerous occasions about the idea of building an online map. But he rejected them every time as he was skeptical that people needed an online map and he didn’t see how it could be monetized. But they were persistent and eventually he decided to give it a shot.

In the beginning, the founders funded the startup themselves. In 2000, there was no other online map company in Singapore. The idea was to get maps from a government agency, Singapore Land Authority (SLA), and put them online. The business took off almost immediately.

After operating for a while, people started knocking on my door. These people were venture capitalists. Suddenly, I realized Streetdirectory is actually in the dot com arena. I didn’t realize that. I started researching and understood more about it. Shortly after the VCs’ visit, HSBC bank also came and offered to bring us to IPO. During this period, something was happening to our site. On a daily basis, our traffic jumped without us doing anything. If today’s traffic is 3,000, next day will be 6,000 and 12,000 day after next. This 100% daily growth rate continued for a while and there was never a day traffic didn’t grow.

Being traditional business people and not the typical dot com founders (who value traffic more than dollars), the founders saw this phenomenon growth as a liability because the server cost is expensive. Cash was the main problem for their business then. They started to do consulting projects for governments, schools and get SMEs to advertise on their sites. The consulting projects involved helping government agencies and schools to map out their campuses and also listing them on the street directory maps. Through these projects, they were able to bring in revenue to balance their books. They also raised a million Singapore dollars from angel investors at that time.

During the third year of operations, things got dramatic. Firdhaus was voted out of Streetdirectory as the board felt that he wasn’t contributing enough to the company. At this point in time, Streetdirectory had already grown to become the leading online map portal for Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia and sales were doing well. Firdhaus went off to do consulting work on his own. He re-joined the company only a year later, when one of the co-founders wanted to cash out and move on; Firdhaus bought back his shares and came back.

Firdhaus’s roller coaster ride did not stop there. Due to copyrights issues, the SLA sued Streetdirectory and wanted it to take down the maps. This would effectively put Streetdirectory out of business, as maps are fundamental to its business. Firdhaus took on the lawsuit and fought it for over a year, incurring huge legal fees. During that time, shareholders and directors pulled out of the business, leaving Firdhaus as the remaining shareholder.

Surprisingly, during these troubled times, a Hong Kong investment group still choose to put faith in his team and backed them. The group advised them to develop their own maps and not fight a losing lawsuit against the state-owned agency. Adversity brought out the best in his team and the remaining members of the team fervently re-created their own map. Interestingly, despite having its service suspended for three months, the traffic for the re-vamped site (with the new in-house maps) did not show any decline.

Looking back at his own experiences, Firdhaus advises entrepreneurs to be resilient.

Entrepreneurs need to understand that they may not be successful on the first time, most aren’t. One needs to learn to pick themselves up and try again when they fail. What I learned from my Hong Kong investors was their nonchalant attitude towards failure. Why be so concerned about failure? If you fall down, pick yourself up and try again. Just keep trying, there’s no one who will fail forever.

Rocket Internet’s Asia-based food delivery startup Foodpanda has announced another major round of funding today. The new round is worth more than US$20 million with investment from Sweden’s AB Kinnevik, Russia’s Phenomen Ventures, and several other unnamed investors.

Foodpanda takes orders online from over 5,000 partner restaurants in nine Asian countries and employs 150 staff. It was launched in April 2012. The new funding will be used “to further accelerate growth and optimize customer service,” according to Rocket Internet’s Ralf Wenzel in today’s announcement.

Co-founder at Foodpanda, Kiren Tanna

Foodpanda co-founder Kiren Tanna recently told us that growth has been especially great for Pakistan, India, and Indonesia.

The food delivery startup is run in conjunction with the similar Hellofood, so that the two services collectively cover some cities in 27 nations.

There’s plenty of competition in this sector in Asia for Foodpanda. Hungry netizens can make use of HungryDelivery and Dealivery in Singapore, and there are four strong homegrown rivals in Vietnam’s major cities.

Looking for applications made by Singaporeans? AppsInSg.com has it all. Created by Ryan Tan, the site showcases only made-in-Singapore apps. In a blog post, Ryan explained why he created the site:

I realized people outside of development and entrepreneur circles are often unaware that there are many talented app designers and developers in Singapore. And when I try to show them examples, there isn’t a list of made in Singapore apps. You either know that Autumn Dynasty is one of the top selling games made locally, or you don’t.

So AppsInSg was founded, with the aim to list all made-in-Singapore applications. There are some familiar applications including Burpple, Qlubbr, HungryGoWhere, Viddsee, and more. Currently the apps listed are mostly mobile apps but Ryan noted that he hope to see more web and desktops apps in the future. If your app is made in Singapore and you wish to be listed on AppsinSg, submit it here. There’s no harm in getting listed with a link back, I think.

Besides running AppsInSg as a pet project, Ryan also runs Red Airship, a consultancy that covers a wide range of services from branding, gaming, to UX.

JFDI, which stands for the Joyful Frog Digital Incubator, is an accelerator program in Singapore that helps entrepreneurs turn their ideas to investable businesses in a hundred days. Founded by Hugh Mason and Meng Weng Wong in 2009, the accelerator has turned out to be one of the more successful accelerators in Southeast Asia. It is also the first Southeast Asian member of the Global Accelerator Network.

In exchange of a small percentage of equity, JFDI offers founders S$25,000 (About US$20,000), mentorship, and facilities to build their startups in 100-days. Its first round of incubatees, which “graduated” last year, was quite a success. Out of 11 teams of entrepreneurs, six were funded with an average funding size of S$650,000 (About US$520,000) per team: Kark, Fetch Fan, Flocations, ShopSpot, Tradegecko, and TribeHired.

Starting JFDI

JFDI actually stands for “just fucking do it.” Or rather, it was supposed to stand for that, but for some people, especially government officials, find it hard to say the f-word publicly. So JFDI is now more commonly known as the Joyful Frog Digital Incubator. It’s an easier sell to a wide range of people and the frog mascot sticks in people’s minds. It works, although Hugh and Meng get asked “why frogs!?” so often that the duo has a page to explain all the awesome goodness of frogs.

In 2010, Hugh and Meng wondered if it was possible to bring world-class mentors to Southeast Asia to help entrepreneurs here grow. Both found the answer to be a yes. In 2011, they wondered if they could get the quality raw startups in Southeast Asia they needed to make the accelerator work. JFDI ran Startup Weekends at six different cities in Asia and found that they could source good entrepreneurs for their program. In 2012, Hugh and Meng kickstarted the actual 100-day accelerator program to test if it would work. Again, the answer was a yes, with both believing that an accelerator program would work well in Southeast Asia.

Bring your company to us and we will either make or break your company in a hundred days. If we make it, that’s cool. If we break it that’s cool because you can move on to do something else. You give your best shot in the 100-days.

Our goals at JFDI are:
1. We help individual people explore who they are quicker
2. We help companies reach their potential quicker
3. We are also about building an ecosystem

Secret Sauce

There are numerous accelerators or incubators in this region that haven’t quite reached the returns of JFDI. When asked, Meng said that there isn’t any secret sauce to making an accelerator work. It’s all about execution. Meng explained further:

What we mean is taking advantage of what the state of the art is in helping startups. We’re taking advantage of agile development, we’re taking advantage of lean startup methodology. We’re doing customer development as taught by Steve Blank. We are looking at all the best practices and we’re executing. And this makes us a bit different [compared to those] who aren’t aware of these practices.

JFDI probably has one of the most well-thought-out programs in Southeast Asia that I have seen. Apart from the constant mentorships and product development in the day, every evening, is packed with courses to provide that extra nutrients for startups to grow stronger. For example, JFDI offers core curriculum such as:

• Investor Psychology, Early Stage Fundraising Term Sheets and Legals
• Key Metrics, Traction, Crossing the Chasm
• Solution, No Funding Needed, Agile Development

While it sounds easy to run an accelerator, Hugh says it is more than what it seems. Just as many people underestimate how to run a really good restaurant, people tend to think that building an accelerator is easy. Hugh shared more:

People walked into an accelerator and they [see] a bunch of desks and chairs and call themselves an accelerator. They got this cute little frog. It’s not that stuff. Anyone can get a cute frog. Anyone can get desks and chairs. Anyone can get space. That’s the easy part. The thing is really pulling everything together like a really good restaurant.

Challenges

Despite enjoying early success, Hugh and Meng understood the challenge of running an accelerator, a problem that many accelerators in the world face: Sustainability. Hugh explains that a lot of accelerators are investing huge amount of capital to keep things running. Hugh explained:

An accelerator costs quite a lot of money to run and in the US most of the accelerators cost about $500,000 to $600,000 to run. It is slightly more expensive to do it here in Southeast Asia because you have to fly in the mentors and in places like Singapore, accommodation is expensive.

Despite seeing many of its investments grow in value, these assets remain paper assets until an exit happens, which Hugh believes it will take about five to eight years. Meanwhile, cash is needed to keep the incubator running, mentoring and helping current portfolio companies, while also sourcing for new ones to join JFDI. Hugh explains that there are several approaches to keeping an accelerator alive.

For example, 500startups raised enough money in order to find a hit before the money runs out. Meanwhile it is also running other stuff to stay sustainable. “If you’re lucky like YCombinator, you will get a Heroku or Dropbox to make everything work,” added Hugh. Another approach is to do something more immediate and keep the operation sustainable. JFDI is taking on both approaches, renting out work spaces, running educational courses while looking to raise $10 million more. But Hugh admits that the problem with this approach is that it takes away energy from them doing what it really matters, which is the acceleration itself. He added:

Now we can say that we know how to do quality startups. We know how to do innovation. We know how to teach entrepreneurship. What we don’t know yet is how to make an accelerator sustainable!

A blogger like me can’t say for sure how to run an accelerator. But I do know that JFDI’s first round of success has raised quite a few of eyebrows. Perhaps, it has also increased the pressure on Hugh and Meng’s shoulders to perform even better with their upcoming second batch of startups. If JFDI can keep up with the good results I’m pretty sure investment will follow suit. But as far as we all can see, Hugh, Meng, and the JFDI crew are doing good work for entrepreneurs in the Southeast Asia region.

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.

We’ve been following the progress of Singapore-based Dropmysite pretty closely in the past year. In that time, the website and email cloud backup service has acquired a US rival and expanded into numerous countries. Today the startup has announced an investment from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups. The funding amount hasn’t been revealed, but will be in the usual 500 Startups seed funding range, which is US$25,000 to $250,000.

Aside from the cash, it gives the Dropmysite crew – who also run Dropmyemail, which has received funding in the past and expanded into the US market – access to the entire roster of 500 Startups mentors. Dropmysite says that it currently backs up a quarter of a billion emails and websites a day for nearly a million users.

Singapore’s Payroll Hero and video-streaming site Viki are two other local ventures that have attracted funds from 500 Startups.

Explaining the appeal of Dropmysite to small business owners, 500 Startups venture partner George Kellerman said in today’s announcement:

Very few people think about backing up their e-mail, voicemail, or SMS until
it’s too late, and most carriers and ISP’s can’t help you if they lose your data.
Dropmysite, however, solves that problem and allows any SMB to backup
their e-mail or whatever else they need simply and cost-efficiently. It’s a great
cloud-based business that has the potential to go global.

The Dropmysite crew also revealed today that there are “acquisitions under way” to help the business expand and will be announced in due course. Plus it’s finalizing a reseller program for its software-as-a-service offerings.

Foodpanda co-founder Kiren Tanna

Rocket Internet’s online food delivery website, Foodpanda, was launched last year in April and has since undergone rapid expansion. Today, Rocket Internet’s FoodPanda is in eight Asian countries supported by 150 staff. Foodpanda, combined with Hellofood which is a food delivery site targeted at non-Asian markets, is serving over 10,000 restaurants. Foodpanda alone has around 5,000 restaurants.

Foodpanda co-founder Kiren Tanna (pictured), claims that all nine markets are growing and growth has been especially great for Pakistan, India, and Indonesia. In India, Foodpanda is working with over 2,000 restaurants. Interestingly, Kiren shared that India has a lot of orders from iPads over the weekend. For Pakistan, around 60 to 70 percent of the orders come from mobile. Singapore is a big dinner market while Indonesia and Taiwan prefer to order during lunch time.

Foodpanda works like this: customers go to the website and place orders online, then the restaurants will receive an order slip from Foodpanda’s GPRS box (or through SMS/email/fax), prepare the orders, and deliver them to the customers’ doorstep.

Foodpanda GPRS box

In places like Indonesia where food orders can be done by text or phone without the need of such a platform, I asked how Foodpanda differentiates itself. Kiren explained that the experience ordering food through the phone isn’t ideal. There’s a higher rate of errors when communicating information on the phone. Plus, expats who don’t speak the local language wouldn’t be able to place an order. With Foodpanda, it remembers customers’ delivery information when they next place an order, minimizes errors in communication since information is digitized, and ensures the most updated menus and prices available.

Although food orders are mostly done online, Foodpanda occasionally accepts phone orders to help new users get started. In such cases, the login details are sent to first time users together with discount perks to encourage them to order online in the future.

When asked about how Foodpanda selects restaurants to work with, Kiren told me:

We find the [restaurant] leads based on what we see [online], for example, HungryGoWhere. When we signed up a restaurant, we asked them questions like how many deliveries do you do? Are you ready for weekend peak capacity?

Foodpanda also orders from new restaurants to ensure that the food delivery experience is good and the food is in a good state when they are delivered. Orders from Foodpanda, though great, can be stressful for restaurants. Kiren shared that there are cases whereby a company flooded one store by ordering 200 sandwiches and another ordered 120 lunch boxes!

Moving forward, Foodpanda is looking to integrate with the big restaurants’ points-of-sale (POS) to make the process from ordering to billing smoother. Foodpanda is also investing heavily in mobile as it sees “very good traction” and growing number of orders from mobile devices. Kiren added:

We’re looking at city expansion […] and we want to be the number one in emerging markets for delivery services.

In Asia, Foodpanda competes with Dealguru’s Room Service Deliveries which operates in Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia. There’s no way to investigate who is bigger since both sides aren’t willing to share any data.

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.

Singapore-made food app Burpple was featured on the front page across 14 countries in Apple’s App Store in recent weeks. The 14 countries include Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Sri Lanka. We asked but the folks at Burrple didn’t even know how they got featured. But I think we all can agree that the Burpple app is beautifully crafted. So it didn’t come as much of a surprise that the App Store editors would like it. If you haven’t played with Burpple yet, you better download it here now.

This isn’t the first time Burrple got featured on the app store though. Co-founder Elisha Ong says that Burpple was featured last year on an iTunes mini-banner in the US and Europe. Though this is the first time the app was actually featured on the App Store homepage. Since the beginning of this year, Burpple has added more than 25,000 new users. The startup declined to reveal its total number of users.

Of course, downloads don’t equate to money since the app is free to use. Burrple is currently exploring how it could generate revenue first by communicating with restauranteurs. Elisha told us:

We are working closely with restaurants and merchants to develop products and services that adds real value and benefit to them. Burpple Pages is one such offering that helps them grow their online and mobile presence, giving potential customers just what they’d need to know and decide where to dine.

Just yesterday, Burpple also made a move into the web, launching a Yelp-like food search site which I think could potentially turn into a restaurant reservation service. Elisha added that Burpple is looking to “change the landscape of restauranteurs, hawkers, and business owners” but didn’t elaborate exactly how. So keep waiting and burpping, folks.

After making fast progress from first launching its foodie-oriented photo app in May 2012, now Burpple has rolled out a user-submitted restaurant listings and reviews site in Singapore. It’s an interesting challenge to Yelp – which launched in the nation in September – by this local startup, covering “5,000 popular places and hidden gems” all across Singapore, replete with maps and plenty of excellent pictures.

The new web app is called Burpple Find. It lets you search by area, food type, or jump to a specific eatery. With Burpple users having posted over 150,000 food moments around the world, plenty of those took place in Singapore and are now laid out in Burpple Find. The listings give lots of useful info, such as a price range, tags, and dishes recommended by users (pictured below). The new feature looks great, too – way better than Yelp, and nicer even than the aesthetically pleasing Zomato. Interestingly, India-based Zomato is pondering Singapore as its next launch, so the local startup will likely have more competition later this year.

(UPDATED: Elisha from Burpple says: “While ‘Burpple Find’ is currently in beta in Singapore, we’re looking for local foodies who simply love to travel and recommend good eats in the region. If you have readers from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines who might be interested, they can write to us at community (at) burpple.com with the title BURP & TRAVEL.”)

Burpple has users in over 3,300 cities on its iPhone and Android apps, so the Burpple Find site will likely expand in the near future. For now, here are a couple more photos of the new site:

So what kind of data have we collected over the past couple weeks? Besides the usual attendee breakdown, we surveyed participants to find out what they thought about the conference. Out of a possible five, participants at Startup Asia Singapore 2013 rated:

• 4.12 on average when asked how much they agreed with the statement: “The choice of speakers at Startup Asia Singapore is great”

• 4.00 on average when asked how much they agreed with the statement: “I’m overall happy with Startup Asia Singapore 2013”

Last year, participants were complaining about WiFi issues and I think our team overcame the problem this year. There were no major complaints as far as we have heard. Even so, we will be seriously studying all the feedback to serve our participants better at our upcoming Startup Asia Jakarta on November 21 and 22.

Videos of every coffee chat, panel, sharing session, and Arena pitch will be out soon. Our videographer is working hard on it so we seek your kind patience on that front. Meanwhile, you can catch all of our articles about the conference here.

Last but definitely not least, we would like to thank our sponsors and partners for making Startup Asia Singapore 2013 possible. Only with their support can our team continue to do what we love doing: covering entrepreneurs, startups, and technology in Asia.

Networking equipment maker Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) is celebrating 20 years of operating in Singapore with a huge new office that replaces its four previous Singaporean bases. It thereby brings all 1,000 employees in the nation under one roof, located at the UE Biz Hub near the airport.

After initially setting up a presence in the country back in 1993, the first Cisco office at Wheelock Place in 1996 had only eight staffers. But by 1998, Singapore had been selected as the company’s Greater Asia HQ.

San Francisco-headquartered Cisco – allegedly one of the architects of China’s Great Firewall – claims that its new pad in Singapore has some nice green touches, such as motion based sensors for energy efficient control of lighting. There’s also an e-waste recycling program four times a year, and a concerted effort to use less paper.

During its 20 years in the Lion City, Cisco claims that 46,000 students in Singapore have passed through its Cisco Networking Academy Program via its partnerships with 15 local educational institutions.

See more photos of the new Cisco base in Singapore below this little infographic of the company’s local milestones:

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.

We mistakenly leaked last week that Spotify is set to launch in Singapore. So today’s launch by the Swedish music streaming giant into Singapore isn’t too much of a surprise. But, wait! There are a few more countries included in today’s launch — Hong Kong and Malaysia. This marks Spotify’s first big push into Asia.

At the launch event this morning, Spotify’s Sriram Krishnan, who takes charge of new markets, demoed how simple to Spotify is to use. In a nutshell, simple to search for songs, create playlists, use Spotify radio, and one-click sharing to Facebook with your friends. The premium package allows users to listen to Spotify across all their devices for SGD$9.90 or you can give a try for free on your PC only. Krishnan said:

Asia has always been on the roadmap for us. We always have an eye for Asia. We take as long as we want to create that perfect [service]… for this part of the world.

To date, Spotify has over $500 million paid to music rights holders since it launched. Spotify is available in over 23 markets with one billion playlists created. It has 24 million active users and six million paying subscribers. An average user spends about 107 minutes per day on Spotify with over two billion music objects posted to Facebook last month. 30 million playlists are created monthly by Spotify users.

In Asia, Spotify faces challenges from Taiwan’s KKBOX, which has a presence in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and Malaysia. KKBOX claims to have over 10 million songs from 500 international labels. But most of its music, it seems, are Chinese-language songs. Spotify, in contrast, is stronger for English-language songs. More on that as I wait for my Q&A session with Krishnan…

Spotify is now available in Singapore ahead of a launch event later today. Some basic fiddling with the music streaming service’s geo-specific URLs reveals that spotify.com/sg-en is now live.

Interestingly, Singaporean music fans only get the choice of two accounts: free (with ads) or “premium” across all devices for S$9.90 per month. In contrast, other markets like the US also have a middling “unlimited” plan (US$4.99) that’s actually limited to desktop/laptop usage only. Perhaps the Spotify team felt that smartphone-mad Singaporeans didn’t want to be tied to PC/Mac-only music streaming.

My colleague is at the Spotify event in Singapore later, so we’ll hear what the Swedish startup has in mind for its first ever yet another Asian launch. (UPDATE: A reader points out it is launching in Hong Kong and Malaysia today too – more on this later).

But the truth is, it seems users don’t even care about filters, more than half of Instagram users don’t even use filters. I think most of the draw of Instagram has been the social network that’s built and ease of use. Some of the apps below do a good job of that, others not.

The nice thing about these photo apps, is it gives you a good idea of how each of these countries is innovating.

China

Most of these Chinese apps are feature-packed filter machines. I think the only one that currently interests me is Photo Wonder since it’s so thorough. Some have social networks attached, while some are standalone funky filter apps.

Camera360 (iOS, Android) – One of the most popular apps with over 80 million users. It’s chalk full of features on top of the obvious Instagram-like features (it’s got way more than Instagram). Users can decorate photos with stickers, edit photos, upload photos into the cloud and even create puzzle patterns with the photos.

Lemeleme (iOS) – A super simple app that doesn’t innovate much on what Instagram already does. It basically allows users to take pictures and post them to emails or social networks. It doesn’t have its own social network so I’m not sure how it’ll fair in the near future.

PaPa (iOS, Android) – An interesting concept that we’ve written about before, basically users can add sound to their photos. Japan’s Voicepic also does the same thing. It’s a cool concept but it might get steamrolled by the new wave of video apps coming to the fore.

Photo Wonder (iOS, Android) – Acquired by China’s mega search giant, Baidu, it actually allows users to see the filter before taking the picture, which is lightyears ahead of Instagram’s post-filter feature. But that’s not all, Photo Wonder also has an edit, collage, and allows users to download extra features like stickers and frames.

PIP Camera (iOS, Android) – This photo app departs from the traditional filter-oriented apps and has none of the usual filters you’d see in apps. PIP Camera focuses on framing your photos in different things like glasses, umbrellas, and computer screens. Fun, but a bit overwhelming.

Vida (iOS, Android) – In addition to adding pollution data to images, Vida is a fully packed app that allows filters, and sound. It’s even got its own social network. Unfortunately, you have to have an account with a Chinese social network to use it.

Japan

Japan’s been pretty innovative with photo apps, especially with apps that mangafy pictures. Fun for friends hanging out.

Camely (Android) – A cutesy app that, according to Rick, is “almost like Instagram if it were force-fed estrogen supplements”. Most of the filters are pretty female-oriented and pink, which makes for a particularly cutesy set of pictures. Download it for your girlfriend.

Cameran (iOS) – Cameran’s got an interesting take on decorations. It’s all about allowing users to randomize their decorations. Click on a flower decoration filter multiple times and you get to see different flower arrangements. It also comes from a rather famous Japanese photographer.

DecoAlbum (iOS, Android) – Another photo app centered on females, DecoAlbum allows users to create photos with text, backgrounds, glittery virtual stickers, and more and even allows you to assemble your photo collections into albums. It’s one of the few apps that actually prioritizes making albums.

Decopic (iOS, Android) – This app takes decorations to a whole new level. From adding customizable resizable decorations to hearts and stars painted across the pictures to artsy frames around your picture, Decopic a nice app, if you’ve got time on your hands.

Line Camera (iOS, Android) – Since it’s released by NHN, you just know this camera app is going to be feature packed. It’s 600 stamps, over 100 frames, 14 different filters, 156 brushes, and more. It’s Line’s flagship photo app, and nicely integrated into the chat app. Since it piggybacks on the Line platform, there’s lots of users.

Manga Camera (iOS) – With One Piece and Naruto being the world’s most widely read comic series’, of course Japan would come up with Manga Camera, an app that would literally turn you into a cartoon. You can even add in decorations like Japanese “wow” text.

Million Moments (iOS, Android) – Produced by Sony and primarily focused on photo viewing, Million Moments is a nice though possibly useless departure from the other apps in this list. It allows you to assemble small slideshows so that you can view with your friends. I’d rather view photos on my computer or TV though.

Snapdish (iOS, Android) – Another interesting niche take on photos is Snapdish. It’s all about photos and food, the ideal app for food-lovers, and they’re big population, half of my friends take photos before they eat. Snapdish puts this all in one place and connects food-lovers with each other, thus socializing food.

Voicepic (iOS) – Possibly the progenitor of PaPa from China, this app also allows you to add sound to a picture. It also allows you to add various filters on top of your sound-enabled pictures. I’m not sure how this is catching on though, especially with services like Vine gaining popularity.

South Korea

Pudding Camera (iOS, Android) – Despite the odd chocolate-like name, don’t be deceived, this app’s got the usual Instagram-like features plus a cool panorama feature. A panorama feature is not something most apps in this list have.The app annoyingly posts to Twitter, but can be circumvented.

Cymera (iOS, Android) – This photo editor app is a bit complicated and not so much fun, but it’s got lots of options for editing your photos. It takes quite a few clicks and touches to get to what you want to edit, but the result it really nice since you can do so much.

Southeast Asia

Since Southeast Asia is particularly fresh to the game, there’s not too many apps from each country, but certainly some worth noting, strong unique contenders to their East Asian counterparts.

Singapore

Babygram (iOS) – Have you ever been sick of all the baby photos you get barraged with on Facebook from your friends? Well, never fear, Babygram is here. The app is very specifically about sending baby photos into a timeline for yourself and your close family. Very cute and cuddly.

Fotobook (iOS) – Forget taking photos and posting them to a separate social network, this entire app is dedicated to browsing Facebook photos from your friends. It makes it really easy to look through all your friends’ photos. Other than that, not much to it.

PixaRoll (iOS, Android) – A concept rather similar to KeepShot from Vietnam, you take pictures and you can have them sent to people in other countries. Great for travelers who are on the go and don’t want to have to carry an extra pen and camera. Why buy a postcard when you can just get your photos sent straight to people?

Malaysia

Nostalgio (iOS) – One of the simplest framing collage apps out there, which basically has a set of 20 basic collage frames and 6 borders to choose from. Nostalgio also has filters to give your collages a little more effect. It costs $0.99, though.

Vietnam

Fuzel (iOS) – An Apple Editor’s Choice photo app for 2012’s best photos apps, this swanky app from Not A Basement Studio makes stitching photo collages together really fancy. You can select from a host of readymade collage patterns as well as customize your own, and then directly post to your social networks.

KeepShot (iPad only) – Not A Basement Studio newest iPad app allows users to create, edit, and assemble photo albums together. Then it lets users print the beautiful physical photo albums and delivers them straight to users’ doorsteps. It’s like Pixa Roll for albums, unfortunately, currently the service only ships in the USA.

Indonesia

PicMix (Android, Blackberry) - Indonesia’s feature-packed PicMix is awesome. You can edit photos with captions, filters, frames, and text, and following Instagram it’s also got a nice snazzy social network to post to. In February this year, PicMix has hit the eight million milestone with more than 108 million photos posted so far.

If we missed any apps, please let us know in the comments, and we will add them to this list.

LongPlay is a mobile app that allows your peers to listen to your music on the move. The idea is pretty straightforward. You upload your library of music to LongPlay and send an authentication code to your peers who will log on to enjoy listening to your music. To prevent piracy, friends can’t download the music from peers.

LongPlay is a product that was launched in influential Chinese tech blog 36kr’s developers’ day. The founder, KJ, told me that he was inspired to create an application to allow easy music sharing in real-time because he saw couples and friends listening from the same earphone. LongPlay started as a web service before having its shiny new iOS app. KJ is originally from Shanghai but moved to Singapore for work. He told me:

LongPlay first comes with a web version, with a real time engine, which can play your own music in your Dropbox, then became an iOS app now.

LongPlay is a pretty cool app which can’t really be felt by reading this article. Give it a try on the web or download its iOS app to starting listening and sharing music with your friends in real-time.

Singapore’s VIP membership online luxury travel site ImpulseFlyer has launched its iOS app, available to download for free on the app store now. The app looks neat, making it even easier to visit ImpulseFlyer on iOS devices. There isn’t any Android app planned since ImpulseFlyer believes that most of its members are iOS users.

ImpulseFlyer has so far signed up over 100 luxury and boutique hotels in Asia. The travel startup remains mum when asked about membership numbers and nights filled. Competitors in the region include Luxe Nomad in Singapore and Privepass in Thailand. Privepass last claimed that it has 40,000 members and is working with 150 hotels and lifestyle providers.

ImpulseFlyer was founded by Andy Croll (CTO) and Steven Gong (CEO) and its investors include Neoteny Labs and angel investor John Tan. Gong remains secretive when asked about ImpulseFlyer’s future plans. We hope something good is brewing, though.

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.

Tech in Asia Meetup number five, and we are back in Singapore! We are more than happy to bring this event back to the Lion City and I’m sure startups here will benefit from this meetup in one way or another.

We have invited Hyungseok Dino Ha, founder of Memebox. The subscription e-commerce service is now the leader in terms of market share in this sector in Korea. Dino will be sharing his startup story at this event, and how he bootstrapped to $1 million annual revenue for Memebox. Participants can expect to learn some tips from Dino on how to bootstrap and grow a business with limited capital.

You are welcome to join us on April 25 at 6:30 p.m. Tech in Asia Meetup tickets are free but grab them fast while stocks last!

Agenda:

• Registration: 6.30 – 7.00pm
• [Interview] How Memebox Bootstrapped to $1 Million Annual Revenue: 7.00 – 7.40pm
• Q&A from floor: 7.40 – 8.00pm
• Networking & Dinner: 8.00 – 9.00pm

Venue:

Plug-In @ Block 71

Block 71, Ayer Rajah Crescent, #02-18 Singapore (139951)

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About our speaker: Hyungseok Dino Ha

Hyungseok Dino Ha is the founder of Memebox. He launched the first subscription e-commerce service in Korea with seed money of $35,000 and is now number one in terms of market share in the country in this sector. Memebox expanded to beauty products e-commerce in August 2012, working with more than 250 beauty brands from around the world.

The startup recently raised funds from SparkLabs Ventures and Chester Roh, the CEO of Ablar.

Dino Ha worked at Ticket Monster as a sales/new business development manager (2010-2011), Tom Ford International (New York HQ) as a PR assistant covering the US market (2007-2009). He then worked on launching Korean fashion brands including Bean Pole (Samsung), General Idea, Lee Sang Bong, and Steve J & Yoni P (2009-2010). He studied environmental science at Kyunghee University and graduated from Parsons The New School for Design in fashion marketing.

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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.

Singapore-based mobile social gaming and entertainment company FunSpot announced today that it has signed a partnership agreement with Indonesia’s largest telco Telkomsel to bring FunSpot’s services in neighboring Indonesia. The agreement, according to the statement, will see FunSpot providing Telkomsel’s customers with a fully integrated mobile social gaming network in the Indonesian language and nine mobile social games. It looks like this latest deal will pit FunSpot head to head with another mobile social gaming platform Kotagames (by TMG) for the Indonesian market.

With around 125 million Telkomsel subscribers in the country, there’s still plenty of room for the two companies to share. But it seems like their battleground is not only in Indonesia as they are both eyeing stakes in the Southeast Asian market. Note that Singaporean telco Singtel has invested in Kotagames and it also owns a 35 percent stake in Telkomsel. This could make FunSpot’s partnership with Telkomsel a little tricky as there is a potential conflict of interest.

One thing that could make FunSpot more appealing than Kotagames though, is the company’s feature which lets users share media files via the website. You can see some of them being shared and commented on by a few users in FunSpot’s Indonesian mobile site here. I don’t think that feature is available on Kotagames.

Kotagames itself is definitely keeping its presence felt in Indonesia by currently holding to six million users so far, with around 90 percent of them as feature phone users. With the huge pie in Indonesia, FunSpot’s emergence in the country shouldn’t deter Kotagames’ 10 million user target by the end of this year.

Spotify is set to launch in Singapore, perhaps as soon as next week. The Swedish music streaming startup has just sent out invites for an event soon in Singapore, but no further details are available at present. (Updated 30 minutes after publishing: Removed one detail at Spotify’s request).

This Singapore launch will mark Spotify’s debut in Asia. The premium music service has only opened up to music fans in 20 countries so far, no doubt held back by Luddite music labels. The only areas in the broader Asia-Pacific region where Spotify is available is Australia and New Zealand.

Spotify has over 20 million tracks available for legal streaming and downloading, and features some neat apps and playlist functions. The premium service costs US$5 per month for laptop/desktop-only access, or $10 for both mobile and laptop usage in the US, so it’s likely to cost the same kind of amount for Singaporeans.

The Spotify rollout might be bad news for local startup TellMyFriends, which wants to help Singaporeans make a profit from legally sharing MP3s with buddies over social media.

E-commerce marketplace site Qoo10 revealed that in 2012, its Singapore operations transacted US$73 million in sales. In Singapore, Qoo10 has a total of more than 900,000 members and 53,000 sellers.

The online marketplace charges commission from about six to twelve percent commission on sellers and makes about three to six percent off each transaction after footing peripheral costs. Based on its margin, we can deduce that Qoo10 Singapore’s commission revenue is anywhere from two to four million. Qoo10 also generates revenue by offering premium listings.

Qoo10 is the rebranded version of Gmarket which originated from South Korea and has a total of 450 employees with 40 in Singapore. Besides Singapore, Qoo10 is also operating in Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and China. It is also celebrating its third anniversary on 23 April 2013.

Singapore-based startup ShopBust offers an interesting way for shoppers to earn money by doing what they love the most, which is by shopping. How does the team do that? Founder Saad Kamal is now speaking onstage on our Startup Arena event, explaining how exactly the team aims to give money to shoppers all the while offering businesses some insights to its frontline activities.

The concept is quite simple, users first register as a ShopBust “mystery shopper” and then select an available assignment from the site. These assignments are scenarios that clients asked ShopBust do at selected retail outlets, with some of them include making purchases at the store. After the user gets approved for a particular assignment by the team, and have done the scenario, then the user will receive the “mystery shopping fee” which covers the purchase and a bit extra.

Typically, a regular mystery shopper will then review the store’s performance in areas such as staff appearance, friendliness, engagement, wait and service time, cleanliness, the store’s appearance, and overall on-site customer experience. The shoppers themselves will be curated based on location and social media profiling so that ShopBust’s clients get the kind of demographic the store owner wants to hear from.

Saad explains that they now have about 12,350 members to help run the startup’s operations in Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia. They have so far signed a couple of clients in the region and got a deal to run a pilot with two big fast-moving consumer goods brands and consumer electronics brand.

So far, ShopBust’s private beta is now operating in Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The team’s concept has received a good response so far, encouraging more than 12,000 people to sign up to be a mystery shopper.

Judge Nobuaki Kitagawa asked how they can convince retailers better than the current mystery shopping business models. Saad answered that they promise 48-hour full report, rather than a 10 to 12 weeks traditional reporting time. He added that they promise real-time data to clients.

When asked by judge Yasuhiko Yurimoto asked how they can convince retailers to use ShopBust’s services, Saad explained that it isn’t that hard to do so because retailers are already familiar with mystery shopping business model, ShopBust can simply do it better with more technology behind it.

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.

You might have heard a bit about 8Villages. Not only has the startup been interviewed by us, but also by the BBC, which is a rare feat for a small company in this region. The startup offers farmers in Southeast Asian rural villages access to important information about farming-related topics like weather forecasts and crop prices – stuff that’s crucial to crop yield and farm profit. CEO Mathieu Le Bras and Sanny Gaddafi is now onstage at our Startup Arena event, and he is looking to convince the judges that he deserves to be the champion.

8Villages is now operating in Indonesia. Its main customer product is called LISA (Farmers Information Service) and farmers can subscribe to it using their basic mobile phones. Through LISA, not only will the farmers be able to receive the agricultural-related information, but they will also be able to ask their own questions and get expert advice.

8Villages uses its channels to connect brands and businesses to its users and earns revenue from that. So far, 8Villages has cooperated with two of Indonesia’s biggest telcos, Telkomsel and Indosat. The team has also secured its first large corporate client and has seen revenues generated out of it. They are on track to enter the Philippines in the upcoming season.

The judges mainly asked about how the business is going right now. Mathieu explained that They have three clients putting in US$6,500 every month. These clients are big multinational corporations. Regarding 8Villages’ cooperation with telcos of Telkomsel and Indosat, they are at initial agreement of 50-50 revenue sharing.

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.

Tell My Friends recently at SXSW.

Singapore-based Tell My Friends is one of the more established young tech companies on our newest Startup Asia roster having been in beta for nearly a year. It’s a social music store for legal MP3s where users can actual earn money from referral sales of songs that you post as links to places like Facebook.

For example, if you share one of Tell My Friends’ licensed songs on Facebook, you will get S$0.21 from each purchase that results from clicking on your custom link. That could add up to a profit on the song that you yourself bought. Songs generally cost S$2, which is a bit pricier than from Apple’s iTunes Music Store, but this service brings profit-making potential for music fans. As shown in Tell My Friends’ startup pitch this afternoon, this is the revenue share:

Since my colleague looked at Tell My Friends last July, the startup has been, CEO Ben Looi tells us, focusing on content acquisition and improving its user experience ahead of a solid launch soon. Ben has also been traveling around, becoming the first Singapore Startup to get invited to pitch at Seed Forum New York last November, and more recently back in the States to exhibit as part of IDA’s Singapore Alley at the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas.

Now Ben’s back in his native Singapore, and pitching to our knowledgable but very picky judges. We know that the startup is in talks with some labels and content providers about adding more music, but the judges will surely be wary about the significant costs involved in such a venture. Plus, as mature a market as Singapore is, some of its netizens still find that music piracy – or finding some clever way to listen to overseas services like Spotify – is more convenient for them.

As for funding, Ben explains:

We are working with Mercatus Capital to raise US$500,000, and have received a bridging amount as a convertible loan while the fund-raising is taking place.

Of that funding, they anticipate that a whopping $300,000 needs to be spent on marketing, with $50,000 for licensing content.

The panel of four judges is worried about legality as this is a sort of pyramid-like monetizing program. Ben says it’s legal in Singapore. The focus for the startup will be Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. He says there are just over 600 downloaders who’ve made use of the service so far.

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.

Singapore-based cosmetic and skincare e-commerce startup Luxola announces today that it has received series A funding from GREE Ventures for an undisclosed amount. The startup will use the funds to help its expansion plan across Southeast Asia as well as growing its product offerings.

Luxola founder and CEO Alexis Horowitz-Burdick said that they hope to expand to Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. e27 explained that Luxola has become GREE Ventures’ biggest investment as a Southeast Asian company. And that this falls into GREE Ventures’ US$ 25 million Asia fund.

Luxolaʼs founder and CEO Alexis Horowitz-Burdick

As mentioned, Luxola’s customers are women. And we know that GREE Ventures does believe in putting its money in e-commerce businesses, including Indonesia’s Berrybenka which targets women as well. This latest investment can complement those two portfolio companies to be the women’s answers to online shopping in the region.

Today Luxola also revealed its two new senior executives Christine Ng as chief marketing and product officer as well as Adrien Barthel as general manager for Indonesia. Prior to this investment, Luxola had raised S$740,000 funding from WaveMaker Labs, Singapore’s National Research Foundation, and angel investors. GREE Ventures itself has invested in an Indonesian women’s fashion online shop Berrybenka. This latest investment could be a signal to bridge those two businesses in Indonesia.

By the way, Alexis was one of our panelists speaking about women in tech startups at our Startup Asia Singapore event. She was quite straightforward in giving her answers and had some support from the audience for her views. And this latest news is a testament that women can indeed excel in the tech startup industry – not that we had any doubts at all. Her suggestion for fellow female entrepreneurs: be tough, in every way.

#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.

Triibe is what co-founder Chun Kiat Chua describes as a ‘smart feedback’ channel, one that helps businesses both receive real-time feedback, and act on it.

Customers at a Triibe enabled shop or restaurant share their experiences and receive reward enticements for honest feedback, while businesses receive on-the-spot customer experience data and a more ruminative private feedback channel between them and consumers (rather than dealing with an expletive-laden shouting match on public online forums)

Nobuaki Kitagawa wasn’t convinced about the level of persuasion to get customers to give rich feedback. Chun Kiat responded that the discounts being offered in return for feedback were “good”, and successful in creating a feedback cycle.

Triibe began as a broader customer intelligence platform offering all sorts of analytics for small businesses, but the three co-founders soon decided to focus on the subset of customer feedback – helping beauty boutiques, restaurants and small businesses know their customers better.

Judge Andrew Collins questioned the potential market size of the operation, pointing out that earnings potential looked very low. Triibe responded that it charges a monthly price per location for small businesses, and is scaling up towards offering enterprise plans for larger entities like chain restaurants and big hotels, which will become the main revenue sources.

Their competitors in the small business space include the JFDI-backed Jungle Ventures-backed Mobikon – Chua claims Triibe is more device agnostic than the iPad-centric Mobikon (UPDATE: A Jungle Ventures representative points out that it actually invested in Mobikon, and that the service is platform agnostic) – and countless other market research firms and platforms like Survey Monkey at the enterprise level.

Jeffrey Paine asked what the conversion rates for feeedback was. The team admitted that it didn’t have precise data on that, but detailed a case study involving Singapore-based bar chain Timbre.

Yasuhiko Yurimoto pointed out that the product fit nicely with Japanese business culture, and asked them if they’d considered the market. They hadn’t…until now.

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’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.

#13:59: Kee Lock has nurtured two billion-dollar companies, so our guest interviewer, Darius Cheung, asks how to build a billion-dollar business. Kee Lock says there are invisible barriers to entry and difficulties, but there are opportunities all across the world to do that. In terms of success factors, he says that it’s all down to the entrepreneur and the staff. Then, the ability to change enough to adapt to shifting markets and technologies. “Ultimately, it’s all about the team”.

#14:05: Regulations are often the biggest barriers, he says. Telcos are an example of where regulations and high prices – previously $1 per minute for SG-US phonecalls – inspire innovations. That’s part of the story behind Kee’s MediaRing business.

#14:08: But he admits to mistakes with MediaRing, like when it ditched PC-to-PC calling. That perhaps caused MediaRing to lose out to Skype. He and his team listened to analysts, Kee says, rather than listeners.

#14:12: However, it’s not really about money – the startup is about a bond among the team, “about building something great” and keeping the right startup culture.

#14:13: What are his favorite portfolio startups? Kee first points out that the VC task his hard – he has to be a sort of fortune-teller. Even after two or three years, he can’t be sure how the startup is performing and new challenges always emerge. So, no names named.

#14:14: Is there a series A crunch in Asia, as hype seems to suggest. He says that NRF does a great job to give funding and often gives around $1 million, which takes them up to the next level. But, for the next levels, you’re talking ten-million-plus levels, taking you to needing $50 million or more in funding for major expansion and capital-heavy work. He concedes that late-stage funding is tougher to find, as well as medium-stage startups. He calls that “the valley of death” where the company is operating well but has no money to scale. That’s sad, he says.

#14:20: Vertex has put three rounds of funding into Reebonz, the luxury flash sales site. At first he called it “a stupid company” but then saw the virtue in it, and at first Reebonz addressed Singapore and Malaysia well. That’s when the first input came.

#14:24: Reebonz is also a good example of keeping ahead of the competition, Kee says. It’s a bit like martial art Tai Qi. It seems easy to copy, but it’s very hard to master.

#14:27: There are still more startup opportunities in social and other areas. Though Vertex tends not to invest in that area.

#14:29: Which leads Kee back to the hardest part of the job: seeing trends. That requires a mix of objective and subjective – data and feelings about the market and where it’s heading. Look for opportunities in growth areas. Like Vertex looking into mobile components and smartphone usage grows.

#14:31: Vertex invests in six, seven, or eight startups per year. Typically mostly in China. Hopefully, he says, in Indonesia soon – but not yet.

#14:32: Vertex does co-invest, he says, in response to an audience question. In terms of startups themselves, he looks for those in the business for the long-haul.

#14:33: “A good entrepreneur needs to be arrogant – but also listen.” That’s hard to do. The arrogance is mainly confidence, he says, which is needed in the industry.

#14:39: What drives you, Darius asks? Kee Lock says that it’s possible to create great companies if you’re passionate. He points out that Singapore Airlines didn’t exist 35 minutes ago. It’s the same in sport: whoever wants to win will stand out from those who don’t want to lose. But those striving to win will succeed in the end. “We need more want-to-win companies”.

#14:41: Thanks for following the live blog.

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.

It’s not too often that an acquisition happens around here – even less so do we see a startup snap up a larger rival. But that’s what happened today. The Singapore team behind BillPin, the app that helps friends split bills and keep track of group expenses and friendly lending, has acquired its more established competitor BillMonk. BillMonk itself was bought by Obopay in 2007, so today’s deal sees the service changing hands again.

The financial terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, but BillPin co-founder Darius Cheung (disclosure: he’s an occasional guest writer of ours) explained to us how the deal went down:

We caught a perfect window of opportunity to do this and we negotiated hard, and as a result we picked up BillMonk for a very, very reasonable price.

That’s surprising as BillPin has only been around for about six months. He added:

Other than a S$50,000 government grant (iJam), BillPin has been self-funded so far. We have not even done an angel or seed round – but we may do soon though, investors are welcome to find us.

All BillMonk users and their data will be switched over to BillPin starting today. Though unable to say how many money-lending buddies have signed up to BillMonk over the years, Darius admits that his fledgling app will see a huge boost in numbers from this buy-out:

We are quite happy with BillPin’s growth over last six months, we’ve been averaging nine percent week-on-week growth (almost hitting Paul Graham’s magical number). But our base is nowhere near what BillMonk has accumulated over time, what we are shooting for is to be able to turn on the growth factor on BillMonk’s large base, which is probably more than 50-times our user base.

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.

First launched in May 2012, MediaCorp’s e-book store ilovebooks is now in the deadpool. Its homepage now urges users to backup their e-books and they have until May 6 to do so. Of course, it’s good news for the region’s e-book store startups that include Wayangforce (Indonesia), Ookbee (Thailand), and Scoop (Singapore/Indonesia) (1).

I reached out to Moo Natavudh, president director at Ookbee, who believes that ilovebooks faced huge competition from Amazon and Kobo, as it serves mainly English-based e-books. “The only reason we are unique is because Ookbee’s content can’t be found elsewhere,” Natavudh told me.

Scoop’s Willson Cuaca has a different view. As ilovebooks uses Adobe DRM, he commented that ilovebooks is hard to use as it requires two logins, both MediaCorp’s and Adobe’s. He also said that the Adobe DRM license is very costly and it takes a cut for every purchase made.

While Mediacorp tries to build its own e-book empire, its competitor, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), chose to partner with Ookbee and Scoop. SPH has been making headlines in the tech press recently with the acquisition of Sgcarmart and also an investment in restaurant booking site, Chope.

(1) Disclosure: Apps Foundry, the creator of SCOOP, is an East Ventures portfolio company. East Ventures also invested in TechInAsia. See our ethics page for more information.

Perk by Kate is Singapore’s representative lingerie e-commerce site. We have seen similar lingerie vertical e-commerce sites in Vietnam, India, Indonesia, and China, so it’s about time one appeared in Singapore!

Perk was founded in February 2011, selling lingerie imported from U.S and U.K. Ladies might be familiar with the various brands on offer: Eberjey, Mimi Holliday, Samantha Chang, Addiction Lingerie, etc. Perk’s selection is carefully curated by the founder, Kate Low.

She believes that the lingerie selection in Singapore has become stale, which is why she decided to look overseas to offer a wider variety to her customers. Today, Low believes that Perk has a selection of lingerie which appeals to a niche group of both ladies and men alike, who are looking for a fuss-free way to shop for good lingerie for themselves or their partners.

Low says that her merchandising strategy focuses on bralettes, which offer a lot of comfort to ladies, especially in the hot and humid Singapore weather. She also sells – ahem – moisture absorbing and also leak absorbent panties which are both made of patented fabrics. While she’s only importing goods from overseas for now, Low aspires to design her own label one day.

Currently, Low is the only person running the show at Perk – from design to merchandising to the site itself. She regularly talks to her customers to find out what they want and need, often buying and bringing in products her customers request. And like every entrepreneur, she also has her own set of mentors whom she relies on for business advice. Perk has no outside investment as she is looking to grow the site organically.

I’m quite convinced that a lingerie e-commerce site could work well in Singapore. While it is harder to scale working on this alone, Low says that the advantage is in her dedicated customer service which allows every customer to feel valued. We wish her all the best.

Yesterday Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) announced that it has acquired SgCarMart.com, a popular online classified site for cars in Singapore for SGD 60 million (US$48 million).

According to SGE, the valuation is a 12 times multiple of SgCarMart.com’s 2012 revenue and the site has over 90 percent market share in Singapore in terms of online vehicle classifieds. SgCarMart was founded by Henry Seah, Tan Jing Lun, and Vincent Tan in 2004.

SPH has been on a spree shopping for potential online sites to boost its business. Last month, the group also invested in Chope, a fast growing restaurant booking site in Singapore.

Founded by Shobhit Datta, Kevin Vo, Deborah Wee, and Danny Tan, HipVan is a design-focused e-commerce site in Singapore that went live today. Similar to Fab.com, the idea is to bring great design products to buyers. Besides DSYR in Malaysia, I haven’t had the chance to check out too many sites working on this kind of idea in Southeast Asia.

Co-founder Danny Tan believes that well designed products, though in high demand, are often hard to come by and are only available at a limited number of places. Danny also believes that HipVan will help connect more independent designers to customers so they can focus on what they do best — design a great looking product. “We are relentless when it comes to finding great designs and featuring them on HipVan,” said Danny today.

Readers might recall that Danny was the creator of Found, an app that helps users organize meetings with friends through mobile. The startup, unfortunately, didn’t gain traction and is now history. I was curious to hear Danny’s thoughts on the things he learned from the previous experience. He explained:

The greatest failure of Found is building a product that has no demand. I know this is a cliché and something that is often mentioned, but it’s very easy to get sucked in when you are too driven by the vision. Of course, it comes a little with the territory when you think you are working on a breakthrough product. HipVan hopefully mirrors my own maturity because its much more measured. Ultimately as entrepreneurs we are interested in providing value to people, so we will keep testing this by observing demand.

Anyway, it’s good news that Danny is back building a startup. He now has a sort of badge stuck to his chest to commemorate his failure in the last venture which I think is certainly something to be proud of rather than to ashamed about. We look forward to his new venture at HipVan.com.

I wrote a very positive review about Tradehero’s concept before it was launched (which amusingly attracted some hate comments) and was pretty excited to give it try. Admittedly, I was hooked on it for awhile, but I eventually realized there were limited things to do.

My user feedback

Most users, like myself, bought shares and held them for long term growth, which didn’t leave much virtual currency to do more trading. It became that I logged in everyday to check if the shares’ value grew, but that itself wasn’t a strong enough motivation to log in frequently. After awhile, it started to feel stagnant and I gave up trading. My last trade was probably at least a month ago.

That said, I still believe that concept is good. But apparently some problems weren’t fixed quickly enough to retain users like myself. For example, I think hardcore users might really be willing to pay real cash for virtual currency just to keep trading, which I believe is the key drug keeping users coming back. So selling virtual currency is actually fitting as one of its app monetization methods. Thankfully, the option to buy virtual currency was added in recently.

When I shared my thoughts with Gary Gan, Business Development Manager at TradeHero, he told me that the TradeHero team is constantly improving the app based on users’ feedback. The option to buy virtual currency is one of the many improvements thus far.

The big win for TradeHero may not be TradeHero itself, which could end up being a sacrificial lamb to perfect its gamification trading concept. This concept can be applied to several models. Football betting, for example, is another approach I believe is likely to work in Asia. The Tradehero team is already planning more apps similar to TradeHero’s concept but declined to share what’s in the pipeline.

Stay tuned.

The world’s top messaging apps might have over half a billion users between them, but plenty of startups still see room for growth – especially in Asia. That’s the case with Finland-based Jongla (pronounced “yong-ler”), which launched in December and is now seeing strong uptake in the region, particularly in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Australia.

Available for iPhone, Android, and as a HTML5 web app, Jongla CEO Riku Salminen tells us that the team is encouraged by the “involved, hardcore” users they’re seeing in Asia and plan to open an office in Asia in the second half of this year. The messaging app is aimed at users globally, but Riku reckons that the specially commissioned artwork in its animated emoticon packs is proving particularly popular in this region. The next version of the iPhone app will add language support for Vietnamese, Indonesian, Japanese, and Korean, and all that is in the newest Android iteration already.

Facing competition from the likes of WeChat, Line, KakaoTalk, Whatsapp, and newcomers like US-made MessageMe, Riku believes that they’re strong rivals but they’re mainly “good for getting users at home”. Instead, Jongla wants to be truly international and inclusive. The Finnish startup sees many ways that can happen: with quality content, a growing in-app store, and being ready to roll with HTML5 once Firefox OS hits the market.

I get the impression that the Jongla store is going to be used for a lot more than just sticker packs – such as its latest range featuring the Scandinavian classic cartoon Moomins – and that content publishing might be on the horizon as well. Though unable to reveal specific plans, Riku concedes the store will be used for “any content, including localized” stuff, and he says they’ll “sell any other content that’s relevant to users”. We’ve seen KakaoTalk do this recently with a new publishing platform that, for now, is limited to Korean content.

As chat apps evolve, it’s possible that they’ll come to be defined by their ancillary services – Line for games and as a broader social network, KakaoTalk for social gaming, Cubie for doodling and drawing, WeChat for (maybe) a mobile wallet and much more in future, and Whatsapp for… er… ummm… something.

Indeed, such accompanying feature-sets will likely be crucial to survival. So we look forward to seeing where Jongla takes its content, and how its user-base in Asia and around the world reacts to that.

Grab Jongla for iPhone or Android, and there’s a Windows Phone version coming soon.

Scoop, the e-reader newsstand app, continues to expand its publisher partnerships in India, Singapore, and the Philippines. Willson Cuaca, the CEO of Apps Foundry which makes the Scoop app, announced this morning that the company has partnered with India Today Group, SPH Magazine, and The Philippine Star Group of Publications to have their digital content distributed through Scoop.

Partnerships with these major publishers will bring more content to the Scoop app, which focuses on countries like India, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, China, and Hong Kong. With the diversity of new content, Scoop has also launched country-specific apps including Scoop Singapore, Malaysia, and India to better serve local audiences.

When asked if Scoop will have offices in India and the Philippines, Cuaca said that he currently has no plan to do so unless a need presents itself. He also shared that Scoop’s good ratings (4 out of 5 stars) on the app store makes it easier to partner with overseas publishers. Scoop currently has more than 500,000 downloads on iOS and Android.

Disclosure: Apps Foundry, the creator of SCOOP, is an East Ventures portfolio company. East Ventures also invested in Tech in Asia and Willson is also a good friend/mentor of mine. See our ethics page for more information.

About eight months after LoveByte was first launched, the couples’ messaging app today has more than 100,000 downloads in 96 countries. In total, its users have sent three million messages and 700,000 photos, memos, and dates thus far.

The numbers look OK considering LoveByte only had about US$80,000 of funding so far. The team consists of four founders, two developers, and one marketing intern.

Meanwhile its Korean counterpart, Between, also a couples-oriented messaging app, recently raised $2.8 million and boosts 2.35 million downloads. But very few Between uses are from Southeast Asia and it has no immediate plans to expand in that region.

Ad tech is quite a confusing arena for most folks. There are a number of stakeholders in the game ranging from agencies, demand-side platforms (DSP), data management platforms (DMP), ad exchanges, ad networks, supply-side platforms (SSP) to publishers. And this doesn’t even take into account the many other flavors of companies who, in their own way, are adding value to the industry (dynamic creative companies, retargeting companies, various flavors of video, mobile, and tablet ad-enablers, in-game advertising companies, etc.).

Often, advertisers and media agencies will be faced with trying to understand how each of these standalone services work and how they may fit into a bigger ecosystem that helps them achieve their marketing goals. But one Singaporean company, AdzCentral, is solving the problem by connecting the dots. AdzCentral coins its service as “scientific media buying.” It provides advertisers with a one-stop shop service to buy ad spots in real-time, using techniques such as visitor profiling, targeting, optimization and differential bidding, to ensure its clients’ ad dollars are well spent.

AdzCentral simplifies all of this into one platform…

AdzCentral was founded in 2009 by Reza Behnam with the aim of simplifying the display ad buying business. It started first as a DSP to help clients manage advertising placements and budgets across various publishers and automated media-inventory-exchanges. But over time, as multiple flavors of standalone tools have emerged ad tech became more fragmented, AdzCentral has become more technology agnostic. It considers itself a solution-oriented company now, as AdzCentral has adapted over time to what the clients need for a full suite of advertising solutions.

Prior to AdzCentral, Behnam was a marketing science and management consultant for about nine years and then started working at Yahoo U.S. in 2001 in Yahoo’s Data Sciences group and subsequently in the Global Alliances team which managed large international partnerships. His journey in Singapore started at around late 2004 when he was appointed the managing director of Yahoo Southeast Asia in Singapore until mid 2007. He also had a short stint as a Venture Partner at IDG Ventures from 2007 to 2009.

Way back when Behnam was at Yahoo, he felt that buying online ads, especially display ads was an extremely complex process. “As the ad and media industry, historically we have not made it simple enough,” said Behnam. He added:

We like to blame other people (marketers) for not spending as much as their media budget online but as an industry we share the blame. We haven’t made it simple enough. Really, the idea is to simplify the display buying business.

When I looked around in Asia region, there weren’t too many ad tech players or providers that were independent, not part of Yahoo or Google. These were the two data points that I was really looking at [before I decided to start AdzCentral].

Most of the DSPs and ad networks track data through cookies placed on consumers’ browsers. So imagine a client who uses DSP platforms A, B, and C to buy display inventory. The cookie identifiers, which are used to track and decipher cookies, are kept on a platform that is used to drop the cookies. However, once a clients uses a particular DSP platform the identifiers are usually “trapped” in that DSP platform and that prevents marketers from applying what they learned on one platform (say platform A) on another platform (say platform B). AdzCentral is providing data portability by allowing clients to own and manage their own customer profiles so that markers’ learnings can be applied across all touch-points and toolsets. He added:

A lot of data is in silos in the providers’ system. How do you really bring this [data] together and develop a 360 view no matter where the touch points happen to be. This is what we’re trying to do at AdzCentral.

In a fragmented world of ad-technology, a typical client will face many recommendations regarding the various technology options they have. So AdzCentral ensures that clients have the proper information and guidance on choosing the appropriate technology tools to achieve their higher level marketing objectives. AdzCentral further ensures that the clients have the support and assistance they need to build and maintain their customer profiles so that they can target the right message to the right customer and achieve efficient media buys.

There’s a major change in display advertising. The majority of advertisers still book online media spaces in weeks advance (“upfront” or “reservation” buying). But more and more advertisers are starting to understand the beauty of automated buying as it optimizes their media expenditure in real time. In the last two to three years, in APAC, Behnam says that automated buying has shifted from almost nothing to three percent of all digital media buys and is projected to hit 20 percent by 2015. The total digital media spend for APAC is $25 billion in 2011 and is growing 30 to 40 percent each year.

As ad budgets shift, the rise of automated buying has triggered a lot of ad tech companies to be founded. “In the next 10 to 15 years, most [digital media buys] will be done through automated buying,” said Behnam.

In Asia, Behnam says that AdzCentral is the only company he knows of that is piecing the ad tech ecosystem together using a solution-oriented approach as opposed to a tool-oriented approach. “We are not in the business of technology-for-technology’s sake, we’re in the business of technology-for-performance’s sake. We will assemble the suite of tools that makes sense to deliver a solution for the client,” he said. In the other parts of the world, similar companies include Rocketfuel and Acceleration which was acquired by WPP.

Having raised $3.2 million recently, AdzCentral is looking at Southeast Asia, Australia, Middle East and India in the next two to three years and with China part of its longer-term plan. To date, AdzCentral has already served over 100 clients including SingTel, American Express, 3M, Unilever, Standard Chartered, MasterCard, Citibank, and Hyundai.

For entrepreneurs trying to raise a series A round in Singapore, Behnam (pictured) has this piece of advice:

Focus on [series A] investors who are specialists in your space, or at least those who have a passion for your space.

Social recruitment startup TribeHired has concluded a US$560,000 seed funding round led by TNF Ventures through the Technology Incubation Scheme (TIS). Angel investors Ben Ball and Ben Chew also participated in the round.

In short, TribeHired taps into its users’ Facebook connections to spread job recommendations. So the more friends you have on TribeHired, the more job recommendations you are likely to receive. Using it is simple. You log on using your Facebook account and select interests to view related jobs that are posted on TribeHired. The site creates resumés as well, with a user’s CV based on his/her Facebook information and customizable on TribeHired.

Posting a job is simple and seems to be free for now. (I posted one in just a minute). You fill in the job description and upload a picture either through your Facebook or computer. Japan’s Wantedly is another startup working on social recruitment.

Prior to today’s funding, TribeHired received funding from Cradle Fund, a government agency under the ministry of finance, Malaysia. TribeHired was also part of JFDI’s accelerator program in 2012.

JFDI CEO Hugh Mason tells us that TribeHired’s news means that it’s the seventh of JFDI’s eleven graduates from the 2012 batch to have secured backing (including the likes of ShopSpot and Fetch Plus). He adds:

Our startups have now raised S$3.9m between them, going from idea to investment in 100 days and creating around 40 jobs along the way.

Singapore-based mobile loyalty app, Perx, has been growing steadily over the past year. In my last email exchange with co-founder Andrew Roth he revealed that Perx now has over 130,000 downloads who generate 650,000 chops so far.

Besides helping merchants to manage their loyalty chop cards digitally, Perx now also has the new Net Promoter Score (NPS) Loyalty Task feature for merchants. In short, the NPS Loyalty Task helps merchants measure how likely it is that customers are going to recommend the merchant to others. Users will get to input the NPS survey after they receive their chops after making a purchase (see image).

From the beginning, [Perx’s] goal was to help the merchant unlock the value of their customers. Tracking NPS for a merchant is just one component of our ‘customer experience’ methodology.

As a service, we help our clients build a community of advocates by discovering ‘promoters’ and closing the loop with ‘detractors’. In other words, we don’t just collect data, we help our clients take action and measure results with specific goals.

So far, Perx’s Loyalty Tasks module is active with 46 clients right now, with 81 percent of its users actually completing surveys. The conversion rate of the survey looks impressive and seems to open a new path for Perx to provide even more value to merchants.

From the looks of it, Perx is an even more compelling service since merchants are more likely to pay for an end-to-end digital customer loyalty and feedback solution. Perx charges its merchants anywhere from $1 to $2 per active customer per month for its Loyalty Task module. If you’re interested, you can find out more about Perx here.

Singapore’s Startup Academy teaches folks to design and code.

Powered by Subhransu Behera (SAP), Joyce Huang (Microsoft), Jaryl Sim (Tinkerbox Studios), Adrian Chua (DivZero Consultancy), and Jeffrey Paine (Battle Ventures), the Startup Academy now has three courses for you to choose from: HTML & CSS, iOS Development, and Ruby on Rails. More courses will be added in the future.

Jeffrey explains that the key purpose of Startup Academy is to help business founders understand the basics of front end, web, and mobile application programming so that they are better equipped to navigate the world of tech startups.

Startup Academy’s courses will be held at co-working space Hub Singapore at 113 Somerset Rd. Check out the video below to understand why it’s good and cool to know how to code.

Feeling inspired? Now, click here!

Taobao is a household name in China, being the online marketplace that first got the country going nuts for e-commerce. But Alibaba-owned Taobao is not necessarily confined to mainland China, and it’s definitely an area we want to explore more.

That’s why our upcoming Startup Asia Singapore 2013 will feature a coffee chat session on the topic ‘How E-Commerce King Taobao Is Expanding Out of China’. Shedding light on Taobao’s moves across Southeast Asia will be Daphne Lee, who’s responsible for managing Taobao’s business development and marketing strategies outside of home turf. That covers significant expansion into Hong Kong, Taiwan, and even Singapore.

Indeed, Daphne tells us that, as of the end of 2012, Taobao has 1.2 million registered members in Hong Kong and 600,000 in Taiwan. That’s a fairly good start – as well as cause for concern for other C2C marketplaces in the region. Could the Chinese e-commerce giant be heading into new areas, like taking on Kaskus in Indonesia? I’ll be sure to ask Daphne when she’s onstage for our chat at 2:30 to 3pm on April 5.

With lots of online shopping startups at the event, and Rakuten’s Asia-wide marketing officer onstage the day before, we’ll be firing hot-button e-commerce questions from all angles.

If you haven’t grabbed your tickets, do so today. Check out all the superb participants and guest speakers who’ll be there as well. See you at Startup Asia Singapore on April 4 and 5.

Having already buddied up with China’s TuJia and Singapore-based Wego last year, today HomeAway (NASDAQ:AWAY) has agreed another Asian tie-up – this time with Travelmob. As regular readers will recall, Travelmob is from Singapore and aims to be Asia’s Airbnb.

HomeAway’s Victor Wang – from HQ in Austin, Texas – explains that this is part of the site’s strategy of increasing “the inventory and awareness of vacation rentals in the Asian market.” For holiday-makers, it means that Travelmob’s Asia-Pacific listings will be made available within the HomeAway site.

Travelmob founder Turochas “T” Fuad, who was the managing director of Skype Asia before his new startup venture, said in today’s announcement:

Travelmob is honored to partner with the global leader in vacation rentals. This partnership enables us to significantly expand our global reach and provide our property owners and managers with the opportunity to market their properties to more travelers worldwide. It is also a testament of Travelmob’s mission to enable global travelers to experience Asia Pacific like a local.

Home vacation rentals have been very disruptive in the online travel booking sector, proving to be a huge growth area for companies like HomeAway and Airbnb. The latter has been pushing into Asia as well, especially into Southeast Asia.

Singapore-based AdzCentral has concluded a SG$4 million (US$3.2 million) financing round with Electric Sheep Capital and Digital Media Partners (DMP).

AdzCentral in a nutshell provides clients with a one-stop platform for convenient automated digital ads buying including social ads, search, mobile, email, and video. The AdzCentral platform integrates with DSP and trading desk technology to run real-time ad bidding.

AdzCentral platform doesn’t just stop at automated digital ad buy but also includes other ad tech point solutions such as campaign measurement, analytics, visitor profiling, targeting, and optimization to ensure its clients’ ad dollars are well spent, achieving optimal CPM, CPC, and CPA based on real-time data. The entire suite is coined “scientific media buying” by AdzCentral.

To date, AdzCentral has already served quite an impressive list of brands onboard including SingTel, American Express, 3M, Unilever, Standard Chartered, MasterCard, Citibank, and Hyundai. Founder and CEO at AdzCentral, Reza Behnam, told me that AdzCentral has delivered over 1,000 campaigns serving across 100 clients. Behnam commented on APAC’s digital ad market in today’s statement:

APAC and especially Southeast Asia represent an extraordinary opportunity for AdzCentral, where (according to ADMA) digital advertising was worth US$25 billion in 2011.

Prior to AdzCentral, Reza Behnam was the managing director of Yahoo Southeast Asia and also a venture partner at IDG Ventures in Southeast Asia. Juggling his role at AdzCentral, Behnam is also the co-chairman at IAB Singapore, a director at e-payments platform MOL Global, and co-chairman at H2 Singapore Chapter.

AdzCentral first received seed investment from Joichi Ito’s Neoteny Labs, Toivo Annus (founding engineer of Skype), Jayesh Parekh (co-founder of Sony Television Network India), the Chinese Founders Fund, and other undisclosed angel investors. Amid the Series A crunch in Southeast Asia, AdzCentral managed to pull things together, which certainly deserves two thumbs up.

Singapore-based Nonstop Games has raised a $2.9 million seed round led by Creandum and Lifeline Ventures. The investment allows Nonstop Games to continue building its upcoming free-to-play (F2P) game, Heroes of Honor. The four founding brains behind Nonstop Games are Juha Paananen (CEO), Henric Suuronen (President), Teemu Ikonen (CTO), and Henrik Karlström (Lead Programmer). Vlad Micu, our guest writer, actually wrote about Nonstop Game first on Tech in Asia last year.

The investment will also give Nonstop Games the opportunity to hire one person in San Francisco who will focus on marketing and customer acquisition. Paananen believes it’s an essential part of the team. He explains:

I think Finland (where I’m from originally), with Clash of Clans, Angry Birds, Alan Wake, Max Payne, etc. is a great example that great games can be built almost anywhere. But lot of the business side is really concentrated in the US.

OK, but why is Nonstop Games in Singapore?

Simple. Proximity to other Asian markets makes Singapore an attractive place for Paananen and his co-founders. Through the phone, I asked whether places like Bangkok, Bandung, or even Ho Chi Minh City might actually be better bases to invest and set up in a game studio. But Paananen believes that Singapore is able to attract the needed talent both locally and also from Europe. “Our philosophy is that we want to build THE best team in the world making F2P games for touch devices and I think we can build that in Singapore,” said Paananen.

So far Nonstop Games has already launched two games as pilot tests. Dollar Isle and Paint Stars both have a combined 500,000 downloads and Paananen says that they drive decent revenue. The company will continue to update both of them as the team switches its focus to Heroes of Honor, a mobile fantasy strategy based game which is scheduled to launch around April or May this year.

I’m not sure what exactly the game is about, but I was told that Heroes of Honor allows players to “do coordinated attacks with up to thousands of players playing real time in the same world.” The game will be available on iOS and Android at the same time. So stay tuned.