Here’s his colourful presentation. Live blog below:

#18:30: “I networked a lot in Silicon Valley.” These are truths distilled, then, from anthropological observation.

Truth 1: Multi-billion dollar businesses need multi-trillion dollar markets.
Take this as a reality check, Cheng says. HungryGoWhere was sold at $15 million in Singapore – they would be much larger elsewhere in the world. “If you want to remain small, play small.”

2: Most starting directions and eventual destinations are different.
“Those who fail are those persisted on a single line or focus.” Pivoting can be crucial sometime. “Success is a frontier, not a point.”

#18:33:
3: 97% of online businesses fail.
“You need to try a lot, and a lot of different things.”

4: Goliaths don’t usually win.
Nimbleness is a significant factor, and there’s no reason to be afraid of big companies. InSing.com, a Singaporean “hyperlocal” portal, even with giant Singtel’s backing couldn’t take on the tiny HungryGoWhere. “David can win.”

#18:35:
5: Sexy Simplicity sells. Simple, dumb products can succeed. You don’t need to be Steve Jobs. Singtel tried to back console game streaming service OnLive, which went bust. But a simple site like Tinyprints, which made baby announcement cards, sold for $333 million. “A simple product we made called Itzme…all it does is send Facebook voice SMSes. How difficult can that be?”. 3 months, 800,000 users.

6: Most in Sandhill Road (where the VCs hang) are not interested in SEA. Go local with your funding sources. Think regional.

7: Foreign Talent: Singapore hates them, Silicon Valley loves them. Silicon Valley is a magnet for the best in the world. Singapore isn’t, not yet.

#18:40:
8: “X-factor” > ideas and experience. What does that look like?
Well, it’s:

9: PASSION x 3
Cheng narrates the story of a lone passionate baker who became supplier of muffins and cakes for half of the continental U.S for Starbucks. She told the roomful of MBA types discussing optimization matrices and business plans: “I succeeded because I love to bake.”

And finally:
“You don’t need sexy products. You don’t humongous funding. You just need fire in the belly and a glow in your eyes.”

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.

In terms of tech, Myanmar is heating up. It’s uncharted territory. It’s a digital wasteland. And everybody wants to get in on the action before their business rivals can do so.

Singaporean, Norwegian, Malaysian and Vietnamese telcos are already rushing in – and the latest is Cisco, the networking and telecoms giant.

Cisco revealed today that it’s planning to open up two network training centers in Myanmar by an unspecified date. It’s very possible that these training centers will be targeted at getting SME’s and large businesses set up with networks.

Foreseeably, by the end of next year, the technosphere of Myanmar will explode – in a good way.

Today, SIM cards cost anywhere from $300 to $500, leaving only one in every ten people in the country with mobile access. Internet penetration sits far below ten percent, and most people in Myanmar still only have a laptop if someone brings one in from abroad. And yet, at the same time, BarcampYangon is the biggest technology conference in the world. That means Myanmar is ripe for the pickings and the big tech companies know it.

With over 90 companies bidding for telco licenses to operate in the country, and companies like Google, Microsoft, HP, Intel, and Cisco visiting and possibly planning to open offices, by the end of 2014 we’ll be looking at a completely different Myanmar. It’s hard to imagine how a country will fare with extremely rapid technological development. If, for example, SIMs come down to a regular Southeast Asian level of pricing, about $5 each, we’ll see Myanmar’s citizens joining the mobile web. By 2014, I’m guessing eight out of ten people in Myanmar will have a mobile, and they’ll be keen to jump on social networks and try out mobile commerce.

(Source: Associated Press)

A group of Singaporean seniors with their donated phones from the Silverline project.

“Why build new hardware when the world is full of amazing iPhones and Android devices?” With that idea, one civic-minded startup in Singapore is building specialist apps for senior citizens that will then be given to elderly folks on donated phones. Called Project Silverline, it’s launching a crowdfunding campaign today on Indiegogo that’s aiming to raise US$50,000.

Essentially, Silverline is a suite of healthcare and personal safety apps (pictured below) that are made with seniors in mind, with large icons and clear, simple text. Among the five current apps are ‘Connect’, which is a replacement for the phone’s contacts app; ‘Well Being’ provides alarms for things like taking medicine; and the ‘Emergency’ app gives one-tap access to Singapore‘s police or ambulance hotlines. The apps are initially available for iOS and can run on older handsets, such as an iPhone 3GS, so that they work fine on the kind of repurposed devices they hope youngsters will donate in a charitable fashion.

Silverline is being backed by local telco SingTel, which has been accepting old handset donations at stores for several months already, collecting any iPhone 3GS, 4, or 4S that can be given a new lease of life as a communication lifeline for a senior citizen in Singapore with these apps.

Senior safety

The ‘Well Being’ part of the Silverline apps for seniors. Click to enlarge.

With SingTel already on board, and the apps already developed for iOS, I asked Ciaran Lyons from NewtonCircus, the startup running this project, why it’s now taking the crowdfunding route:

Part of the crowdfunding budget will be used to work with some neat external devices – such as battery-powered accelerometers – which provide additional functionality. But so far everything can be installed on your factory-fresh smartphone – though we’d prefer it were second-hand.

Ciaran adds that Silverline has so far clocked up “18 months of research, prototyping and user feedback to make sure that seniors love and benefit from our apps.” In addition to what the suite of apps do already, they’re working on bringing them to Android in future and getting the Silverline apps into the iTunes App Store so that anyone can make use of them. Plus, the startup is testing a personal security app that can detect falls, and has started building games that can detect cognitive decline.

To keep the elderly connected once they’ve received the donated handsets, SingTel is giving 1,000 voice and data plans, good for a whole year, to the phone beneficiaries free of charge. Ciaran says that “the need, even just in Singapore, is far greater than that and it’s growing every year. So we have a lot to do.” But the SingTel site suggests that only 27 old iPhones have been donated so far, so the project is in need of a hardware boost so that some of Singapore’s neediest citizens can have these apps at their disposal.

We’re told that Newton Circus is a startup of 11 people. Though they have received funding from different sources for various initiatives, there’s been no venture capital input as of yet. The team is working with registered charities in the US, UK, Hong Kong, and Australia to create similar phone donation programs there.

Get more info on donating your old iPhones (3GS, 4, 4S only) here, or throw some cash at their new crowdfunding page (which runs for 45 more days). Or do both.

Singapore’s largest telco SingTel and Amdocs (headquartered in the U.S.) have partnered to launch L!feLabs in Israel. L!feLabs, as described on its website, is established to “inspire and enable ideas to become reality,” helping startups with everything from commercialization, funding, to acquisitions. The announcement highlighted three key areas of investment for SingTel in Israel:

• Investment in young Israeli start-up companies, whether through a direct investment of capital or active co-operation aimed at advancing developments and technologies that match SingTel’s future plans.
• Working with Israeli academic or research institutes by funding studies conducted by the country’s universities, or working on ideas created in such institutions. The aim is to develop them into products and services which SingTel will sell across the countries it operates in.
• Working with incubators and the angel community to look for interesting business and technology ideas from Israel. SingTel’s initial focus will be on voice and facial recognition as well as technologies that enable mobile and wi-fi networks to work more efficiently and seamlessly.

Allen Lew, the chief executive officer of Group Digital L!fe, SingTel, noted:

We have been extremely satisfied with the wealth of talent in Israel. We experienced this through our recently acquired global mobile advertising company Amobee which has a technology center in Israel, as well as through our venture capital investments in two Israeli companies in the mobile internet business. This has propelled us to open this new development center to scout for new growth engines for SingTel.” ¹

The newly launched L!feLabs’ website also introduces SingTel’s Regional Seed Network (RSN) which is “an alliance of early stage incubation programs operated by various members of the SingTel Group” so far consisting of SingTel Innov8 (Singapore), AIS The Startup (Thailand), Globe Kickstart Ventures (Philippines), as well as the Optus Innov8 Seed Program (Australia). SingTel has been very supportive and enthusiastic about startups and innovation, and that’s certainly good to see.

On a somewhat related note, speaking from experience as a SingTel subscriber, I do hope that the company could invest more to improve its broadband and mobile service to keep its customers in Singapore happy. Some annoyed users have gone so far as to create a hate webpage and lengthy feedback on Facebook. Being on the cutting edge of innovation is cool, but lets hope SingTel doesn’t neglect paying customers in its home market.

(Image source: Yahoo)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many folks in the internet industry know about SingTel’s whopping $321 million acquisition of Amobee. But Amobee’s business is actually more than a mobile ad network management platform. It is also a mobile ad agency, helping clients with creatives, copy, strategy, and media buys. It’s an end-to-end mobile ad solution business.

Over the past few months, the acquisition raised eyebrows and discussions in the Southeast Asian internet industry. Several reliable sources told me that the integration between Amobee and SingTel hasn’t been that smooth. But other sources said that things are okay so far.

So what’s going on with the companies’ integration? I was told that SingTel’s grand plan is to have all its subsidiaries using the Amobee platform. This way, it is easier to plan and push mobile ad campaigns across Southeast Asia: Singapore (SingTel), Thailand (AIS), Australia (Optus), Indonesia (Telkomsel), and Philippines (Globe). A reliable source told me that the subsidiaries weren’t forced to use Amobee, but in the end all of them chose to anyway. In fact, Amobee CEO Trevor Healy told me that all the integrations have already been completed except for Thailand’s AIS.

One of my sources in a company that has integrated with Amobee told me about his experience working with Amobee:

It has been smooth so far. Our technology team is working with Amobee and there isn’t any major problem with the integration. We haven’t actually used it for mobile advertising. So we can’t fully comment until we run it. Even if we don’t use Amobee, our company will not be affected much. We will just use our previous mobile ad management system we had.

But not everyone’s comment has been great when we asked about Amobee. One of our sources from SingTel told me:

Yes, we’re having problems with Amobee which is true. We’ve tried using them, the consumer side has also tried using them but they do not produce results and they are actively pushing for us to use Amobee but most of us are refusing. Besides, they are charging big media agency rates like Zenith, even though we are “related.”

Trevor Healy, CEO of Amobee

To be fair, I also took time to speak to Trevor Healy, the CEO of Amobee. When I raised the problems mentioned above, Trevor was very open and transparent in answering my questions. He took the long route in explaining why these problems can’t be true:

First, Amobee kept almost 100 percent of its employees and if there were really big integration problems, employees wouldn’t be staying, he says. He also commented that out of the four acquisitions he experienced so far, this one with SingTel has been the smoothest.

Second, Healy told me that revenue growth has been rapid, especially in Asia. To the layman it seems like a very predictable growth as Amobee is now able to leverage SingTel’s network. But Healy dismissed that, saying that most of Amobee’s revenue isn’t from SingTel or from its associates. Rather it is from brands who the company has already worked with. The reason Healy is now based in Singapore was because growth in Asia was so fast. Last quarter alone, Amobee revenue hit S$21 million (US$17 million). Healy revealed that Amobee’s 2013 revenue is on track to grow by 88 percent compared to its 2012’s figure. Healy said:

Success and failure of our company does not hinge on whether the [SingTel] associates succeed or not. Most of our business is still [more from brands]. I would say the company is incredibly healthy. You only have to look at the customers of the company to see if the company is performing or not. Personally, I’m very happy with the sale. I think SingTel has been very honorable. They kept us as an independent company.

Third, Healy said that Amobee is hiring rapidly in Asia. It now has about 50 people in Asia and has offices in Singapore and Sydney. In the near future, Amobee also plans to have offices in Shanghai, Jakarta, and Manila. As a whole, Amobee has over 200 employees spreading across Asia, Silicon Valley, London, and Israel. If the company is hiring, things must be getting busy, and perhaps rosy.

On a fair note, shit tends to happen from time to time within big corporations like SingTel especially when it involves major change. The cynics will say that the product might be really lousy. I’ve been hearing different things from different sources, so it’s hard to be sure exactly what the truth is. But at least from my conversations with Healy, he seems calm and confident. Amobee looks like a company that is growing.

These days, mobile telcos absolutely love HTML5 as it gives them a chance to be app publishers whilst flipping a middle finger at Apple and Google and their 30 percent commissions on app revenue. That’s partly why Singapore’s SingTel acquired the mobile ad company Amobee last year, and Japan’s NTT Docomo picked up the Italian mobile content company Buongiorno. Today, both Amobee and Buongiorno’s HTML5 app store, called AppsFuel, are coming together in a deal to help developers and content creators monetize their HTML5 web apps across any mobile OS.

The partnership means that Amobee’s ad product PULSE for Publishers is now one of several monetization options for developers on the AppsFuel platform. Amobee promises to maximize mobile revenue by showing the most relevant, contextual ads to users within the HTML5 web apps. In addition, Amobee is now the exclusive mobile advertising agency for AppsFuel, allowing developers to use over eighty ad networks globally as part of this co-operation.

The AppsFuel HTML5 app store. Click to enlarge.

In today’s announcement, the head of AppsFuel, Fernando González Mesones, emphasized: “AppsFuel’s mission is to create a profitable ecosystem for mobile HTML5 developers, and we are ensuring this with carrier billing and now with the possibility of additional revenues via mobile advertising.”

HTML5 won’t magically succeed

HTML5 apps are back in the public eye this week after the full unveiling of the open source Firefox OS and its hardware and telco partners – yes, telcos are especially excited about Firefox OS – at the ongoing MWC event in Barcelona. Big web names like Twitter have committed to full-featured HTML5 apps for Firefox OS – just as Twitter can be found in the AppsFuel store – but that doesn’t mean that consumers will be convinced. As the always entertaining Guardian tech writer Charles Arthur pointed out yesterday, “Firefox OS won’t magically succeed just because it’s open source.” The same is true of HTML5 apps, as people still seem enormously keen on native apps, and so developers need to keep making them and keep losing 30 percent of app sales revenues to Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon et al.

Speaking of SingTel, it buddied up with Japanese social gaming giant GREE for HTML5 mobile game distribution and billing in Singapore. That was part of the launch of GREE’s new HTML5-compatible social gaming platform in November of last year.

While AppsFuel is keen to become the global and unwalled app store of the future, it’s not clear how consumers can benefit right now. Tokyo-based gaming expert Serkan Toto reckons that GREE’s strategy with HTML5 can work for certain types of games in Japan, but it doesn’t look promising or convincing on a worldwide scale.

Let us know in the comments if you’re ready to embrace HTML5 apps on your smartphone.

Today, mobile gaming giant GREE announced that it has exclusively partnered up with SingTel to promote its mobile games in Singapore. Besides promoting games, the partnership will allow subscribers to pay for games or virtual items through SingTel direct carrier billing. This partnership, for now, is limited to the Singapore market.

Many folks (myself included) might be surprised and wondering why GREE is focusing so much on Singapore, which just has 5 million inhabitants. Noritaka Kobayashi, VP, Business Development Department of GREE Singapore office, explains that Singapore has a high smartphone penetration rate. According to IDA’s statistics for Q1 2012, there are more than 5.9 million 3G users in Singapore.

Contrary to what Singaporeans might think, Kobayashi explains that Singaporean gamers are actually willing to pay for mobile games and in-app items. He tells me:

Compared to the U.S., Singapore’s average revenue per user (ARPU) is very close. It depends on the games and weeks. Sometimes, Singapore [could be] higher than the US or even Japan.

I was also pointed to the game Cerberus Age, which generates ridiculous amounts of ARPU in Singapore. In terms of growth forecast, GREE hopes to grow 500 percent a year in revenue from today onwards across APAC, excluding Japan, China, and Korea.

Besides Singapore, GREE is also targeting strong partnerships in five particular markets: Singapore, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, and India. So if the SingTel partnership works well in Singapore, there’s a good chance that the Japanese company will extend this SingTel partnership to Philippines, Australia, India, and Indonesia. Yes, SingTel has subsidiaries in each market.

[UPDATED moments later: Our story on GREE's other big news today, its push into HTML5 mobile gaming, is now online. Clearly it's linked to this SingTel deal, so as to side-step Apple and Google, who each take about 30 percent of app revenue via their app stores].

This SingTel tie-up is set up to promote just HTML5 games. So I expressed the assumption to GREE’s APAC head that SingTel is likely taking less than 30 percent revenue share from this partnership. But Kobayashi didn’t deny or confirm if my assumption was right.

Cheong Hai Thoo, Head of Multimedia, Group Digital L!fe, SingTel said in the statement:

We are delighted to be the first to offer web-based GREE games with direct billing to our customers on their smartphones. There has been a huge increase in the number of people playing games on their phones and the convenience of paying and receiving one bill while playing GREE’s great range of games is a definite selling point.

(Original photo: islaythedragon.com)

SingTel’s series of acquisitions and investments has turned many heads in the Southeast Asian tech scene. The buying spree seems to have started off with Amobee, a U.S.-based mobile ad solution company which the group acquired for a whopping $321 million in March this year. That was followed by the acquisition of food sites, HungryGoWhere and Eatability. And more recently, it invested in G-Mobi, TMG, and Pixable.

Does SingTel (ASX:SGT) have some grand vision that guides all these investments and acquisitions? Yes, it does. A source tells me that this entire strategy is dubbed “Project Magellan.” I was briefly shown a fascinating deck of slides that detailed the route map and goals of the project.

In short, Project Magellan [1] identifies several key areas in the digital industry which might be the next big boom – including online recommendations (thus the acquisition of food sites), digital advertising solutions, home technology, education, and e-commerce (this last one is especially interesting with so many e-commerce players in Southeast Asia already).

An ex-employee of SingTel Digital Media (STDM) told me that Project Magellan isn’t new and in fact has already been planned out and structured since STDM and SingTel Innov8 were established. I’m told that InSing.com, the online portal owned by STDM, is also part of the Project Magellan initiative. Whatever company is acquired, its services, if possible, will likely be ported over to InSing – just like how HungryGoWhere is now integrated into the portal.

I also learned that InSing has been bleeding money badly for the last three to four years. But of course, SingTel has no problem financing it.

When I asked a SingTel spokesperson for an official comment about Project Magellan, I was told:

SingTel is focused on creating new growth platforms that leverage and strengthen its core carriage business, through complementary digital content and services that are relevant and personalized to customers, as they live, work and play. To support this, SingTel may make strategic investments to gain important capabilities, drive growth in adjacent industries and extend the Group’s customer relationships.

That statement doesn’t confirm the existence of Project Megallan, but the direction stated is somewhat similar to what I’ve come to understand about the project. A second insider source told me that there will be several more acquisitions coming up.

SingTel isn’t just acquiring and investing. It’s also going to create its own services. For example, a current SingTel employee told me that Singtel is “going into online reservations of appointments for clinics.” Some might also recall NewsLoop, a mobile news reader app, produced by SingTel.

Truth be told, there hasn’t been much real activity happening in Southeast Asia recently, so it is good that SingTel is making waves and keeping this tech community alive – and, along the way, making some entrepreneurs rich.

After generating over 260,000 chops in its loyalty program, mobile startup Perx today announced a partnership with SingTel (SGX:Z74), Singapore’s largest telecom by subscribers [1].

With this SingTel tie up, Perx will be integrated into its web properties including inSing.com, TableDB.com, and the recently acquired HungryGoWhere.com. Perx has had some successful use cases, including a ‘Chop Mob’ campaign with Coffee Bean which helped transactions to increase by 50 percent during the campaign period.

Perx investor and board member, Eduardo Saverin, said in the statement:

The SingTel partnership offers Perx a rapid distribution strategy in Singapore and across the region. Perx is the perfect customer retention tool for any brand that cares about loyalty and compliments many of SingTel’s other digital assets.

This is very good news for Perx. But will likely be more of a “OMGWTF” for its local competitors.

Singapore’s largest telco has invested $1.46 million in TheMobileGamer (TMG) for 35.54 percent equity. That puts TMG’s valuation at about $4.1 million.

For those who aren’t familiar with the company, TMG is a Singapore-based startup that builds mobile games for feature phones on platforms like mig33 and Kotagames, TMG’s very own mobile gaming platform. Earlier in March, TMG boasted over three million users growing at a rate of 100x in a year. On a per month basis, TMG has 300,000 monthly active users generating a whopping 100 million pages views. Its users are mainly from big markets such as Indonesia and India.

While most folks have the impression that the feature phone market can’t be monetized, TMG’s data seems to prove otherwise. In his latest interview with us, Alvin gave us a comparison between Zynga and his company:

Zynga’s average revenue per daily active users (ARPDAU) is about 0.046, ours is about 0.038. So we’re about 22 percent lower than Zynga. But because we monetize 20 [times] more people, we are actually higher in terms of revenue potential compared to Zynga.

TMG’s monetization method is pretty similar with most gaming companies. They sell virtual goods but a different approach has to be taken in emerging markets. He explains:

For us, we sell virtual credits for anywhere from five cents (IDR 500) all the way up to a dollar (IDR 10,000). You will never see Zynga doing these types of things, for them the starting price maybe is from $5 (IDR 50,000). So we are pricing our group at a denomination that users can actually afford.

Update: Alvin also elaborates on what Singtel can do for TMG:

We believe Singtel can help TMG with preferred relationships to its affiliates in the region and also preferential access to billing, customer relationships, etc. […] We plan to go on to be the market leader of social gaming for emerging markets, starting from Indo, SEA, India.

TheMobileGamer is one of the few Singapore-based startups to have gained traction by aiming for bigger overseas markets. So this deal with SingTel is very good news for Alvin and company. Congrats!

The NewsLoop app aims to be the new platform to power Singaporean bloggers to reach a mainstream local audience, and is said to differentiate itself from other news apps by first catering to the local readers’ needs and interests. Cheong Hai Thoo, head of multimedia at SingTel elaborates:

NewsLoop is designed by Singaporeans for Singaporeans. [...] It also provides local media and bloggers with a powerful new platform to reach a wider audience and earn additional revenue for their content.

Studies have shown that 30 per cent of consumers who read news on a tablet spend more time reading news than they did before they purchased their tablet. With NewsLoop’s unique mix of content sources, we hope to provide these users with different perspectives of news and events in Singapore and around the world.

It reminds me a little of the popular magazine-like app Flipboard, which is also a personal favorite of mine, and functions very much like it too. NewsLoop also allows you to view the articles in a slideshow format. Should an article interest you, you can click and choose to read it on the app or the web version of it.

And of course, readers are able to customize the categories and content sources according to their needs, and it also allows you to add in feeds from Facebook and Twitter. Conversely, it also allows social sharing to the two most popular social networking sites in Singapore, and via email.

With so many neat reading apps out there vying for attention, along with established players like Flipboard, it’s a wonder if users would ditch their existing app for this one. Would you switch over to NewsLoop? For interested iPad users, you can download NewsLoop here, watch its video below, and throw us your thoughts in the comments.

[UPDATE on June 27th, three hours after publishing: The original version of this article identified a different company with the name General Mobile, which was inaccurate. Our apologies. The article has been changed significantly to reflect this].

SingTel Innov8 is in action again, this time ploughing its venture capital into – along with Japan’s Mitsui & Co. (TYO:8031) – General Mobile (G-Mobi), which makes mobile platforms and runs mobile services aimed at developing nations. The funding amounts to US$5million, which G-Mobi plans to use for future growth.

The financing clearly represents an investment in mobile tech in developing nations as a whole, since Innov8’s parent company, SingTel (ASX:SGT) has hundreds of millions of customers around the world not just in Singapore but also in nations like Bangladesh, Pakistan, and across Africa. Plus, another of General Mobile’s investors is Taiwan-based MediaTek (TPE:2454) which makes processors that are commonly used in some budget smartphones.

In addition to its mobile apps and services – which include making JAVA MRE versions of apps like Facebook and Yahoo Messenger – G-Mobi generates revenue from partnerships with mobile telcos in developing nations, as well as from its app store.

G-Mobi’s CEO, Paul Wu, said of this funding round:

With this round of investment, we have on board world-class strategic partners across all the fields to help accelerate our worldwide service deployment as well as enabling us to provide a more complete set of services and solutions.

The CEO of Innov8, Edgar Hardless, said that the investment recipient “addresses the strong demands for mobile application and services seen by emerging market mobile users.”

Now, some of our friends in the Australian startup scene, especially those with an Asian angle, are going to rejoice. Telco giants Optus and SingTel Innov8 have recently announced their joint efforts to launch an Australian seed program, which aims to help fund early-stage digital startups. Clearly, the role of the incubator Innov8 is to provide itself as a platform for startups to expand into Asia.

The Optus Innov8 Seed Program, backed by SingTel Innov8, will provide up to A$250,000 (US$252,000) in every startup investment. Apart from giving the cash and dedicated co-working spaces, startups will also have access to mentoring and networking opportunities. With this, it hopes to support startups’ growth and progression to series A funding.

Selected startups can look forward to working in dedicated co-working spaces provided by Fishburners and York Butter Factory located in Sydney and Melbourne respectively. Founders can expect regular events to be hosted in these spaces, which aim to connect them with industry experts and potential investors, and share ideas with fellow entrepreneurs.

On the launch, Edgar Hardless, CEO of SingTel Innov8, said:

[T]here is tremendous talent in the Australian market and we expect to invest in up to eight Australian startups in the first year. With the SingTel Group’s strong presence and scale of over 445 million mobile customers, we can assist startups to go regional.

So, if you are an early-stage registered company with an established team based in Australia, have developed solid business strategies, are able to demonstrate a working prototype, have innovative or disruptive digital solutions (either in proof of concept or advanced development stage) in the areas of mobility and convergence, or with a focus on health, education, and media, you can apply for the seed fund.

If you’re interested in the program, you can be referred via incubators or accelerators, such as Pushstart, Pollenizer, and AngelCube. You can also apply directly through ‘pitch events’ held at Fishburners and the York Butter Factory. The first pitch event will be held this late July, and it promises to release more details when the date draws closer. You can keep yourself updated from the website here.

So, to me, this comes across as good news for startups in Australia. But I wonder with such funds becoming more accessible, will Australian entrepreneurs become more complacent? Also, perhaps due to the common language spoken, most Australian entrepreneurs look to the United States for expansion. With this, will more Australian startups take a second look at its neighbouring region, Asia?

For some perspectives on this, I reached out to a good friend of mine, Kim Heras, who is the co-founder of Pushstart and former editor of The Next Web Australia:

I think that this will definitely help the local ecosystem. There is more and more money coming online at the Angel and Series A stage in Australia but it’s always great to have another solid option for startups, particularly those that have an eye on Asian expansion.

[Also,] there’s already a growing awareness of key countries within Asia as attractive markets for appropriate Australian startups and the new fund will only add to that. What’s important though is the support Optus and Innov8 have provided on the ground to the Australian startup ecosystem. My feeling is that they’ll continue to support all startups, even those they don’t fund, and that will do a lot for fostering relationships between Australian startups and Asia.

So will startups be complacent with increased accessibility to funds as such? Kim replies:

No, I don’t think they’ll be complacent. There’s more money but certainly not an oversupply.

Last week we wrote about SingTel acquiring Singapore’s food recommendation site, HungryGoWhere.com. Whilst this came as a surprise to many, according to co-founder and managing director of GTW Holdings, Dennis Goh, the talks had been ongoing for some time prior to the acquisition. Dennis tells us:

The actual talks lasted several months but what you must also know is that we have had a long relationship with inSing. In fact, we have been working with them for several years already, since we started integrating food reviews on inSing.com.

With this acquisition, fans and users of HungryGoWhere can expect a brand new site to be launched later this year under the HungryGoWhere brand, incorporating the best of HungryGoWhere and inSing Food. SingTel assures that the reviews and ratings on HungryGoWhere will be kept and be transferred to the new site.

On the decision to acquire HungryGoWhere, SingTel tells us:

HungryGoWhere is the clear market leader for peer-review food and beverage listings. It has a well-respected brand name in Singapore and recently launched new services in the online restaurant reservation segment. SingTel sees significant potential in the restaurant review and reservations space, especially the combination of both reviews and reservations. Together with our inSing online community, we will be well-positioned to provide a holistic service for customers looking for restaurant reviews and reservations.

The merger of both HungryGoWhere and inSing sites will essentially make the new site the largest food and lifestyle site in the nation, with a total audience of over two million people in Singapore.

SingTel looks like it’s on an acquisition spree of late. It also acquired AdJitsu, a 3D mobile advertising company earlier this month, and acquired U.S. based digital ads company Amobee for US$321 million just last March.

Here’s some interesting information that was sent to us by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) regarding a mobile service disruption that occurred in Singapore last year:

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) has imposed a financial penalty on SingTel Mobile Singapore Pte Ltd (STM) for breaching the Code of Practice for Telecommunication Service Resiliency (the “Service Resiliency Code”). This follows IDA’s investigation of the disruption of STM’s 3G mobile services on 6 and 7 September 2011, which found that STM had not fulfilled its obligation to provide resilient mobile telephone services under IDA’s Service Resiliency Code.

The service disruption caused some of STM’s mobile subscribers in the central region of Singapore, including Orchard, Tanglin, and Telok Blangah, to experience intermittent difficulties in making and receiving calls and accessing SMS, MMS and mobile data services via STM’s 3G network. […] Investigations showed that the service disruption was caused by a software glitch in the new switches that were progressively being installed by STM in the central region of Singapore to upgrade its network. The software glitch affected the normal routing of data packets in the network, and mobile services in the central area were intermittently disrupted over three periods between 6 and 7 September causing a total of 22 hours of service disruption. More than 5 per cent of STM’s base stations were affected.

And the fine is a hefty SGD $400,00 (US$312,000). Wow. But it does keep the 3G service standards high here. I have been using SingTel’s (ASX:SGT) service for a couple of years now. It’s been good, not perfect but good. You will love it when compared to the 3G services in a few surrounding countries (no offense intended).

The fine is an interesting mechanism, one that ensures that telcos do their best for the consumers. To our knowledge, there’s no such consumer protection measure in other mature mobile markets like Japan, where outages have been on the increase recently. IDA raised its minimum quality of service standards just a couple of months back on April 1.

Although the disruption was reported last year, this news was strangely timely — right after its recent acquisition of HungryGoWhere. Some Twitter users were commenting about the deal, stating the SGD$12 million spent on that acquisition could be better spent on improving mobile services. I found that pretty funny, but come on, everyone screws things up once in while, including the big boys. These tweets sum things up pretty well. Enjoy:

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/contrabandkarma/status/204870606963998720"]

[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/radhumandummy/status/204937342295879681"]

[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/casandrafml/status/204955595185463297"]

According to SingTel, GTW Holdings Private Limited (GTW), the holding company of HungryGoWhere.com, will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of SingTel. Operations-wise, it will be merged with inSing.com, a Singapore lifestyle and local search site, which is also a subsidiary of Singtel.

Food bonds people together, and that’s especially true in Asia. With this acquisition, SingTel is attempting to make it easier for people to find, rate, and book restaurants in a personalized way. Users can expect to get access to over 100,000 restaurant reviews, deals, and discounts. They can also have convenient access information from their mobile devices on over 15,000 restaurants currently on board with HungryGoWhere.com.

On the acquisition, Mr Dennis Goh, the founder and managing director of HungryGoWhere, said,

We are delighted to be joining the inSing.com and SingTel family. This deal allows our award-winning content to be seen by even more people in the region and will accelerate the investment and distribution of our new online restaurant reservation system.

Its new online restaurant reservation system, the TableBD reservation platform, allows restaurant owners to take and manage reservations, and improve productivity in restaurants through TableDB’s customer relationship management (CRM) tools. With the acquisition and merger of both HungryGoWhere.com and inSing.com sites, they are looking to provide a one-stop shop for restaurant reviews, deals, and reservations.

Its new service sounds pretty similar to what Chope is offering, and I wonder what other food applications, such as Burpple and Buffet Mania, are looking at this acquisition. Will the startups in the food apps space be merging to take on the bigger boys? Let us know your thoughts on the acquisition below.

[Singtel via @danielgoh]

Last year we told you about California-based Amobee, an ad company which was making a strong push into Asia, opening a new headquarters in Singapore back in June, and partnering with companies like MCM in Indonesia, and Ambient Digital in Vietnam. But today there’s big news from SingTel (ASX:SGT) that it has signed an agreement to acquire Amobee for about $321 million [1].

According to the announcement, Amobee’s management team will “remain in active control” of the company. Trevor Healy, Amobee’s CEO commented on the deal:

We are delighted to partner [with] SingTel to continue our leadership in mobile advertising. SingTel and Amobee have a shared a vision of the future of mobile marketing and by leveraging each other’s strengths, we will be able to advance the industry on a global scale at a faster pace.

For SingTel, which is expanding its mobile ad presence, Amobee will certainly be a big help. SingTel also announced a new organizational structure that reflects consumer segments. The three new units will be ‘Group Consumer,’ ‘Group Digital Life,’ and ‘Group ICT.’ It will take effect on April 1st.

SingTel has over 434 million mobile customers in over 25 countries.

SingTel Innovation Exchange is searching for Asia’s top 50 apps for 2011. The idea is simple. If you’re the creator of an app, you can submit it here for voting. To view all submissions, you can head over to the voting site to check out the list of apps already on board. No login hassle, just vote. Also note that “apps” here means applications (duh) for both web and mobile.

The list looks familiar so far. Many of the apps listed have been featured on PO too, including Roound, MobDis, MySellr, and BisTip. Indonesia-oriented apps seem to be leading the way with both Wayang Force (this Indonesian e-reader has 300 votes now) and Idblognetwork (195 votes so far; it recently raised a round of funding) both with high vote counts. Social sharing and conversation site, Likables, is also getting popular with 230 votes.

Voting has already started and will end on October 10. That leaves 13 days for nominating and voting. The 50 apps with the most votes will be included into the top 50 list and the app with the most votes will win the “People’s Choice Award.”

Other awards, to be selected by a panel of judges, include:

• Most Valuable Application
• Rookie of the Year
• Solution of the Year
• Design of the Year

The awards will be held as part of TechVenture. For tech enthusiasts or founders looking to connect with key people, you may wish to attend this event, which is held in Singapore from the October 13 to 14. Key speakers include Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin; founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Tim Draper; and possibly Robin Li the head of Baidu – or so I’ve heard.

This buyback issue goes all the way back to 2008. But the pressure is recently getting stronger since government mandated it in a general meeting of Telkom shareholders in May. It encouraged the company, as Telkomsel’s holding company, to complete its share ownership and make it a 100 percent Indonesian cellular company.

The company’s CEO, Rinaldi Firmansyah, was quoted by Bisnis Indonesia as saying that the Telkom will prioritize buyback within the year. He also said that management had informally communicated the buyback plan with SingTel.

This subsequently resulted in the stalling of Telkom’s plan to acquire Indosat StarOne. Even though it aspired to consolidate StarOne with Telkom Flexi, it seems they don’t want to lose the opportunity to boost Telkomsel’s business through a buyback.

Telkom is still waiting for Indosat to follow up on its proposal.

Other investors in this round includes Yuuwa Capital, Pollenizer, and several angel investors.

Dealised will use its regional Asian headquarters in Singapore to drive global business expansion and develop mobile group-buying solutions.

Dealised is the first to offer a group-buying solution in Asia and already has a presence in UK, Scandinavia, Middle East, and US. The Daily Telegraph and Mecom are some of its notable clients. Dealised was created in late 2009 to provide group-buying platform solutions to Spreets in Australia which was acquired by Yahoo7! for A$40 million (US$42.9) in 2010.

The group-buying platform solution company has also appointed Jonathan Marchbank as CEO to spearhead Dealised in Asia. Marchbank has over 20 years of experience in the mobile operator and device manufacturing sectors and has served as COO for Virgin Mobile US prior to joining Dealised. Marchbank commented:

Dealised partners in Australia and Scandinavia have already beaten Groupon and Livingsocial in their local markets. With our platform & services, partners quickly create and manage regular offers for their customers, maintaining revenue and relationships at risk from Groupon-like clones. We are busy repeating that successful formula in other markets.

The most exciting trend is in mobile, especially in Asia, and we see the volume of group-buying transactions on smartphones and other mobile devices growing exponentially over the next couple of years. Our operations in Singapore, as the business hub for Asia, are where we will focus on mobile growth.

Jari Tammisto, image courtesy of SingTel

#15:28 Jari says hello and encourages everyone to join up for tonight’s MobileMonday in Singapore (I’ll be attending). He shows a cool video featuring how MobileMonday has grown across Asia, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China.

#15:32 “Today we’re in the wireless confusion,” says Jari. The future of mobile depends on ecosystems like Facebook, iOS, Android etc. But we’ll never know which platform will be the winner. How do we encourage people to use technology to build a business. For example, Nokia has laid off a hundred employees who have the tech knowledge to build sustainable companies. How we can help these people is one of MoMo’s core purposes.

#15:37 Jari shows some interesting mobile trends: Cheaper smartphones at $10 each and mobile advertising. He also shows an interesting article about an integration between social networking and mobile technology in Uganda and Kenya, in cooperation with MoMo. MoMo is also excited about mashing up mobile with other technologies to make lives better and also to tap onto more markets.

#15:42 [A little about mobile games from Finland.] Jari talks about Angry Birds by Rovio. “It takes a lot of hard work. Rovio builds over 50 games before achieving success.”

#15:49 Lawrence Cosh-Ishii, another key figure in MoMo takes over and talks about Docomo’s i-mode in Japan. Docomo, one of the largest telco in Japan, controls the phones and their features. Similar to Apple, Docomo has full control over what features it wants its phone to have. It is pretty much an app store to itself, profit sharing with developers in a 90/10 ratio, in favor of the developers.

#16:00 The telcos in Japan understand that they don’t have the agility. The same goes for most telcos in Asia. The telcos have built up the infrastructure and “milk” them by providing network services. The next step is to extend its services through consumer or even enterprise services. Mobile games, songs, are just some examples.

#16:08 “Recurring income is so much more important compared to just selling the app at $0.99 one off,” said Lawrence. [On a related note, we previously wrote about Kaito Royale, mobile game in Japan which attracts over 10 million gamers per month and generates over $12.5 million in monthly revenue. Kaito Royale runs specifically on features phone and any web browser.]

Lawrence says that we all love to SMS, tweet, play games, and listen to songs while on the go. One of the challenges is to pick and mashup these services to create a sustainable mobile product.

“Who cares if its a feature phone or a smartphone. It’s the content inside that counts,” said Lawrence.

• Mr. Robert Yap Min Choy, Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer, DFS Group ltd.
• Mr. Patrick Liew, CEO, HSR Global Ltd.
• Mr. Epifanio Quahiansen, Associate Director, Asia Site Services, Procter & Gamble Japan K.K

(Submit you ideas here)

Attention mobile app developers and entrepreneurs. Singapore’s largest mobile service operator, SingTel, has organized iChallenge11, a mobile app competition that aims to find the next big mobile app for enterprise.

This isn’t just a business plan competition. With a right idea, you have the opportunity to leverage on SingTel’s assets and customer reach to build and launch a mobile app in style.

Starting yesterday, iChallenge11 kicked off yesterday, inviting mobile developers to submit ideas in the following app categories:

• Asian Business Traveler: Mobile apps that increase cost transparency, improve productivity, and make every minute overseas count.
• Date Driven Enterprise: Mobile apps that use data to find new customers, uncover business risks and hone new product features.
• The Business Exchange: Mobile apps that help companies exchange opportunities, surface and close sales and partnership leads.
• Office on the move: Mobile apps that make it easy for workers to get things done and to collaborate wherever they are.
• Mobile Agent: Mobile apps that enable individuals to work while on the move, including real estate agents, financial services advisors and car sales representatives.

Click here for more information on iChallenge11. Concept submission will close on June 30 July 8, 2011. There are 12 prizes of SGD $1,000 and four prizes of $20,000. But the financial prizes might not be worth as much to some as SingTel’s assistance and expertise.

From a consumer’s point of view, Singtel is brutally hungry for sales and sees us as its money pot. It’s okay to do up and cross selling. But it has to be done right. Singtel’s marketing and sales team is apparently oblivious about how consumers are feeling.

Last night, I switched to Mio Channel 112 to catch the English League Cup final between Arsenal and Birmingham (football). It turned out that I had to pay for the channel. I was surprised because I wasn’t informed about it. My family subscribes to Singtel’s English Premier League and Champions League channels; so naturally, I supposed it includes the League Cup game as well. No, it didn’t. Singtel wanted to charge viewers for the final game (ka-ching).

Okay, fine… I switched to the buy menu but Mio hanged (it always does). So, there wasn’t a way to buy and catch the game. That really got consumers mad. The tweets below are the best evidences (Note: Profanities included but with much understanding):

“I’m shocked that I have to pay to watch the Carling Cup final. My friends and I aren’t notified about it. It became the talking point in school today. This isn’t the first time as it happened with the FA cup too. Singtel is acting like a money machine after it won the rights to broadcast English Football in Singapore,” said Lester Chia, a final-year undergraduate at Nanyang Technology University.

My previous experience with Starhub (another telecom company in Singapore) was much better: One payment and you are entitled to all English football games. If you haven’t already known, football lovers in Singapore had to switch to Singtel because the telecom company went gung-ho to acquire the broadcast license in Singapore. As football lovers, we were left with no choice but to switch.

“I used all of Singtel’s services. But this Carling cup final is seriously absurd. I’m determined to switch to another telecom company for my mobile and broadband services,” said Teoh Ming Hao, a business owner.

“However, most football fans are likely to stay put with Singtel for its cable TV service since it owns the broadcast rights. I wouldn’t hesitate to switch back to Starhub if it were to win back the license one day. Singtel’s aggressive sales tactic is hurting its brand,” he added.

I’m singling out SingTel and zooming in on this brand simply because I’ve seen too many of their complaints flying around social media platforms and not being addressed.

A month ago, SingTel broke news that it would be offering social media monitoring services to SMEs.

Uh……..

It’s not that it isn’t an ingenious plan – it definitely is a useful tool, and it clearly fills a gap that many of the leading social media monitoring tools don’t; that is, monitoring social media within Asia via Asian languages. (Still, not all of it. They’re missing a huge Indian pie.)

It’s just that… have you seen what people have been saying about SingTel on the world wide web? It really makes you wonder if they’re talking the talk. Let me do a quick Google search of updates -

6 out of 9 updates within 40 minutes were negative. None were positive. (Unhappy smileys and neutral smileys – courtesy of me.)

Is SingTel doing anything to address these angst-ridden tweets? By the looks of their Twitter page – 567 followers and 0 tweets – I guess not. The slightly more active SingTel Youth Twitter account isn’t doing much else but tweeting about promotions. In my desperate attempt to find out if they were monitoring anything, I tweeted:

No response. Save for a few RTs. (And we all know fellow writer @ameliachen‘s got my back.)

So much for social media engagement.

Lesson 1: don’t get on a platform if you aren’t planning on using it.

Lesson 2? If you’re not listening to and addressing online chatter, someone else will. I get a good laugh from the tweets at @SingtelPR. Their logo alone cracks me up:

Yes SinkTel… what in the world are you sinking about.

Now let’s turn our attention to their Facebook page.

Commendable effort in using a Facebook page to push out updates on the company, as well as recent promotions. But that’s about as far engagement goes.

Take a look at this relatively recent post which highlights their latest ad for Mio TV. Comments which put down the service (and, well, an unrelated but still negative comment from Mr. Bruce Li) are left unaddressed and hanging on their wall.

At least they’re not deleting negative posts?

A recent post on CSR efforts garnered 14 ‘likes’ – and a slue of other unrelated questions – a sign of customers struggling to be heard?

Well done, SingTel… can you fix my broadband now?

On the flipside, StarHub at least manages its Facebook profile on a daily basis. It’s set up @starhubcares to trawl and maintain conversations between customers and the brand. (Click to read an example of how they did so.) Granted, they’re baby steps, but at least they took the step and allocated resources to manage these platforms.

(I’m sure you’re curious about M1 now. They seem to be selective in replying posts on their Facebook page, and don’t seem to have an official M1 Twitter account.)

In conclusion – there’s so much more our local telcos can do with social media, and a large part of it counts on how they leverage on these platforms to listen to their customers. Take a look at efforts by the largest American telco – AT&T. They do a pretty good job in maintaining their Facebook page, and use separate Twitter accounts to address different needs. (A generic account, one for news, another for corporate announcements and the like, and the last dedicated to CRM) All accounts on these platforms are highly engaging, and address concerns surfaced.

Learn well, my young padawans.

Disclaimer: I do not work for any of the telcos. Neither am I related to anyone who works for any of the telcos.