500 Startups backs team that turns social media chatter into big data insights

(Photo by Tamara Sanderson)

As markets across Asia grow faster than those in Europe and North America, more and more brands are facing the quandary of not understanding what consumers in Asia want. That’s a gap being filled by a handful of startups focusing on social media analytics for Asia.

One of these young businesses, Social Media Broadcasts, today revealed that it has secured US$1 million in seed funding from 500 Startups. The Hong Kong startup’s round also included participation by veteran local entrepreneurs Danny Yeung, formerly of Groupon and now heading SXE Ventures, and Yat Siu of Outblaze fame.

Turning gossip into ‘intelligence’

The money goes into building up Klarity, a social big data analytics service that it offers to companies of all sizes – including some major brands.

“Corporate clients include agencies such as GroupM and Omnicom [and] brands like New Balance and Kagome,” explains Christopher Wong, the CEO of Social Media Broadcasts. “Currently the majority of our clients are in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia, such as Japan. However, we are starting to gain traction globally, attracting clients from North America and Europe as well.”

He explains to Tech in Asia that firms are using these insights for “better understanding on social performance, benchmarking against competitors, identifying trends, understanding behavior, mapping conversations, and highlighting influencers.” All that he describes as “social intelligence” – and his startup wants to lead the way in offering that to firms doing business across Asia.

It covers networks like Facebook and Youtube as well as more regional players like Line, WeChat, Weibo, and Youku.

A rival startup in this space is Lamplight Analytics, also based in Hong Kong. The company earlier this month nailed down US$1.49 million in seed funding.

Raw data

This is the first startup that Christopher has been actively involved in after more than a decade of experience in investment banking. “With the rapid growth of social data, both Western and Asian, it was interesting to see how technology could be utilized to transform the raw data into meaningful intelligence,” he says of his motivation to go into this big data niche.

Having 500 Startups on board as an investor is a “great vote of confidence” in the team and its product, adds Christopher.

500 Startups is very active across Asia, particularly in Southeast Asia with the 500 Durians fund and in India, with a separate wad of cash there.

“Asia has long exploded in social network and messenger usage. But corporations the world over can’t even hear what is being said. So they use Klarity so they can understand their market – and evolve with it. This may be one of the largest and most valuable businesses of our time,” said Khailee Ng, managing partner at 500 Startups, getting rather excited in a statement today. He also runs the 500 Durians fund.

See: Dave McClure: having fun and being silly is at the core of 500 Startups