IP telephony startup GNum invests $1.4M in big data company aSpecial, launches new service

Big data and analytics startup aSpecial Media will receive S$2 million (US$1.46 million) in an investment from IP telephony startup GNum, part of the GlobalRoam telecommunications group. According to an announcement made today, GNum made the investment for a “significant minority stake” in aSpecial. Having gained access to aSpecial’s analytics technology, GNum will launch a new service dubbed GNum Analytics, which is meant to give smaller businesses access to consumer behavior data for marketing purposes.

Singapore-based aSpecial was founded in 2011 by former Singapore Press Holdings executives Paul Jansen, Sally Loh, and Christopher Yeo. It specializes in tracking online users’ behavior in real time, and organizing that data into insights that can be extremely valuable for marketers, publishers, and smaller businesses that want to understand more about their intended audience’s preferences.

According to aSpecial co-founder and CEO Christopher Yeo, as more and more devices get online, it gets harder to figure out what the “silent majority” of online users is interested in. There is a small but vocal minority making its opinion heard on social media and comment threads, and traditional marketing focuses on what a very specific and limited slice of the audience wants.

aSpecial’s analytics tool aims to glean that silent majority’s wishes from its online behavior. The company creates “interest profiles” of users that are constantly updated with real time information as they use the internet, creating an always accurate profile of the user’s interests and behavior.

The data aSpecial collects is extensive, and includes information on users’ browsing behavior, online purchasing habits, and so on. However, Yeo points out the company conforms to Singapore’s data protection legislation (PDPA) and takes care to anonymize the data to minimize privacy concerns.

aSpecial claims it has created over 29 million consumer profiles, analyzes more than 127 million articles read every month, and has approximately 300 enterprise customers. With the funding from GNum, the startup will work towards “becoming Asia’s largest database of real-time behavior to enable businesses to reach the right person at the right time.”

The startup had been approached quite a few times by potential investors in the past, according to co-founder and executive chairman Paul Jansen. aSpecial went with GNum, he said, because of its ability to help the startup grow its database faster than ever before. To make the deal even sweeter, GNum’s parent GlobalRoam offers significant access to telcos across the Asia-Pacific region.

aSpecial has previously received seed funding from Red Dot Ventures and Small World Group, and counts Singapore’s National Research Foundation among its shareholders.

Click to call

The investment helps shed a little more light on IP telephony startup GNum and its recent S$7 million (US$5.1 million) seed funding round by Tembusu Partners. GNum offers the ability to initiate a call from your computer to a mobile phone by clicking on a URL that the phone’s user has provided. The caller doesn’t have to install GNum’s software, or download an app, or do anything else other than click on the link to call.

GNum intends for both businesses and consumers to use the service, although the addition of aSpecial’s technology gives the tool a marketing twist that businesses can take advantage of. The plan is for enterprises using GNum Analytics to be able to study the data of users calling in through GNum, such as where they are calling from, which webpage they were viewing when they called, and so on. Eventually, businesses can construct profiles that help them better market and cater to their customers.