Last year, I wrote that Uber’s spectacular rise was the biggest startup story of 2014. I then said that, like clockwork, we’ll see a glut of “Uber for X” startups come up in Asia. It looks like I’m not far off the mark.
Sendhelper, ServisHero, Beezee, Fipin, and Page Advisor. What they have in common is that they’re startups offering on-demand services through a mobile app. And they’ve all launched just this year.
Singapore-based startup Page Advisor, however, stands out in may ways. Open the app and you’ll be bombarded with an assortment of colored tiles. Each tile represents a different service that you can book through the app. As of now, I spot 33 types, ranging from aircon services to car grooming to wine delivery.
Page Advisor wants to be the go-to app for a whole host of services, connecting consumers to small- and medium-sized merchants through the smartphone. Users select and customize the service they want and wait for the bids to come in. They then pick their preferred option and pay within the app through PayPal.
It’s an unconventional approach. One Thielism goes that startups should try to monopolize a niche market and expand outwards; Page Advisor appears to be tackling many different markets at once. Even mighty Uber started out focusing on very specific segment: premium, classy rides for people who “wanted to be baller in San Francisco.”
What works in Silicon Valley may not work in Asia though, and Peter Thiel was speaking from the lens of the Valley. Founder and CEO Fabian Lim tells me focusing on a tight niche works well in the United States, a largely homogenous market. Not so in Singapore and Southeast Asia.
Lim’s goal is to create an app that users will find super sticky, an app that will sit comfortably in their home screens and stay there. An on-demand laundry app, for example, just isn’t going to cut it.
His guiding principle is to increase the startup’s customer lifetime value as much as possible. This is essential as Asia’s fragmented market drives up marketing costs. By offering users a buffet of services, he hopes they’ll spend more on the app, adding to the startup’s bottom line since it earns from transaction fees. Since the customer acquisition cost for a pure aircon servicing app and a multi-services app are the same, why not shoot for the latter?
And given Southeast Asia’s venture capital environment is not quite as frothy as the United States’, this approach could extend its runway.
A colorful personality
It sounds good in theory, but execution is tricky. Startups focus for one reason: limited resources. Can Page Advisor get enough merchants behind it to satisfy users with a decent selection?
Lim is confident. He’s not exactly conventional either, with a colorful history that matches his app. He has an army of 200 marketers in Singapore and Malaysia who are willing to sell Page Advisor’s services without a base salary. This group has been busy onboarding merchants to Page Advisor, with the promise they’ll gain a cut of future transactions on the service.
How does he get them? You see, he has been running internet marketing and “wealth education” courses. These 200 marketers are his students, and he taught them search engine optimization and internet market skills. They in turn offer their services to small and medium enterprises.
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