This 22-year-old hustler wants to build Asia’s 1st wireless charging network

Novelsys founder Kenneth Lou (center) with the team.

22-year-old startup founders are not supposed to be this polished, this well-networked, or this prepared. After all, older entrepreneurs are more likely to succeed than fresh-faced college kids because of their abundant professional experience.

But Kenneth Lou, the founder of Novelsys, a Singapore-based startup with the stated mission of “powering the world”, thinks he’ll be the exception.

“I have slide decks for everything,” Lou says as he pitches his company’s plans. He fishes out a deck with his thoughts on student entrepreneurship – he’s doing a gap year at the National University of Singapore. He then opens another one on the founding team’s journey.

He’ll need all the gumption he can muster. Novelsys’ plan would challenge even seasoned entrepreneurs. Today, the company launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for Ampere, a wireless charging sleeve for mobile devices based on the Qi standard, an inductive electrical power transfer system created by the Wireless Power Consortium.

It’s supposed to be more user-friendly than existing power banks by removing the need for wires. It’s smarter too, with a companion app that lets users preset the points where the phone would start or stop charging.

The Ampere is also not phone-specific, making it more flexible than charging cases like the Mophie. Slot a Qi-enabled phone into the sleeve and the battery will start filling up. For devices like the iPhone, the Ampere ships with a casing and a removable receiver patch.

With a battery capacity of 2,700 mAh and a retail price of US$99, the patent-pending Ampere seems costly compared to battery packs from Xiaomi and others. These cost five times less but have four times the capacity. But Lou hopes he can bring the cost down in subsequent production runs.

Assuming he gets that far. Fellow Singapore startup Pirate3D learned the hard way that crowdfunding campaigns are fraught with landmines once the euphoria of achievement dies down.

Dealing with hardware in addition to software means an extra ball to juggle. Manufacturing defects cause startups to miss the promised delivery date. As a result, disgruntled customers might demand a refund, and that puts a strain on cashflow. That’s a lot of trouble for a device that seemingly offers only incremental improvements over existing products.

While Novelsys is currently selling Ampere at a loss of a few dollars a unit, he says that shifting the devices at a much higher volume would make up for it. “The campaign for us is one big expensive marketing shebang,” he says. Retail distribution is key too, but that comes in later.