IDA announces new startup grant to leverage on “international” technologies

Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) has announced a new grant called iStart:LITE to encourage startups to build on new “cutting edge and international” technologies. According to the IDA website, iStart:LITE  (Leveraging International Technology for Entrepreneurship) grant hopes to seed companies from around the region and help startups overcome the  valley-of-death phase.

The winners of this grant will receive up to 75% subsidy on employee salaries. The maximum amount will be capped at S$250,000. This grant also specifies that companies should hire at least one business development person for every three engineers.

There are seven criteria for this grant, but two of which are ambiguous. These are: “[The company should be] founded by either serial entrepreneurs or experienced infocomm professionals playing regional roles” and “Involve internationally proven technologies from foreign companies with good track record overseas or leading international technologies from reputable universities, research institutions and such in the proposed one-year project.” We’ve contacted the IDA authorities to clarify these points and haven’t heard back from them yet.

The closing date for this application is Dec 15.

You can find more details about this grant by attending the briefing session today at the IDA office. Details below:

Date: Tuesday, 16^th November 2010

Time of Briefing: 5pm

Venue: IDA Multi-Purpose Hall, Suntec Tower 3, #14-00, 8 Temasek Boulevard, Singapore 038988

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The Great Indian Mashup of Twitter, Orkut, Skype, GTalk –Facebook Chatwala [Awesome]

Indians are unique and one of the most creative lot in this universe. While some prefer to use washing machine to make lassi, a few simply join the brand bandwagon (Google Gola anyone?).

Today, one of our readers sent us this awesome piece of mashup – Facebook Chatwala selling BBM (Blackberry Messenger) Tikki Chat, Orkut Sevpuri, Skype bhel, Twitter panipuri and Gtalk dahi bhalla!

Facebook Chatwala - Brings All the Brands Together

Are these products priced on the basis of their market traction? Well, we need to ask the team!

What’s your take?

[image credit, Thanks Vishnu for the tip]

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160by2 Takes The Social Network Route – Will It Pay Off?

Like we hadn’t had enough of social networking, yet another Indian startup is taking the social network route to encourage user activity.

160by2, one of the early and successful startups in the free SMS space is now trying to create a social network around SMS. The feature is simple, encourage users to post public messages of 140 chars and then make others follow them. Twitter, anyone? 160by2 wants to leverage on the existing contact book of the users and build more connections around it. Though the idea is promoted as social network over SMS, it is more targeted towards keeping the user online for as long as possible. SMSes are hardly monetizable probably.

I have been a user of 160by2 from the very beginning and always appreciated the minimalistic UI. But with need to monetize, interstitial ads took over and then few pop ups as well. With the new set of features the UI is certainly gone for a toss. The team could have done a much a better job. In the past, sites trying to implement the twitter like interface have certainly done some good work. The features seem to launched in a hurry with few errors still surfacing.

Little would users remember that when 160by2 launched it had this feature of choosing to let your SMS go public. Since, the whole positioning of free SMS was meant to be P2P, so with privacy concerns the team had to do away with that feature. 160by2 later launched free classifieds as an alternative to SMS ads and probably to generate fresh content. It also gave away free ad credits to users to try and sell some real credits. 160by2 had also had paid user accounts to allow 160+ character SMSes. None of these seem to have given the anticipated push as yet.

I would definitely say this is a bold step by the team to come up with a me too feature so late. Hopefully, they must be having some strategy in place. There was a time, around the end of 2008, when 160by2 ran neck to neck with its competitor Way2SMS but since then the gap has only widened. While 160by2 chose to go international, way2sms added more non-SMS features and is now consistently amongst the top 25 sites of India.

160by2.com Vs Way2sms.com - The Widening Gap.

SMS sites grew virally during the 2007-08 era but with falling SMS rates, not all users stayed around and not all sites manage to grow like the rest of the web. One other reason for 160by2′s slow growth could be its name, too difficult to make sense of for a non junkie and too difficult to refer and remember.

What do you think of this move by 160by2? Will it pay off? Will it be able to rise from here?

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iStart LITE Manpower Grant Up To SGD 250K

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) is launching a pilot grant scheme that aims to encourage and assist Singapore-registered start-ups to accelerate technology commercialisation and go-to-market activities by leveraging internationally proven technologies. iStart:LITE (Leveraging International Technology for Entrepreneurship) will award up to SGD 250K (USD 192K) to technology startups to cover 3/4 of their manpower costs for up to a year.

Grant Calls

For the winners, IDA will co-fund up to 75% of salaries of qualified manpower for up to 1 year. The maximum grant amount to each company will be capped at S$250K, and qualified manpower can include at least 1 business development headcount for every 3 engineering headcounts.

For the first grant call, interested founders must indicate an expression of interest by submitting an executive summary by 15 December 2010. Interested founders are encouraged to send a draft proposal for discussion with IDA prior to formal submission. The second grant call is tentatively targeted to close within the first quarter of 2011.

Eligibility

Be incorporated and physically present in Singapore with at least 30% local ownership:

- Have not more than 25 employees
- Be registered for less than 3 years at time of application
- Be founded by either serial entrepreneurs or experienced infocomm professionals playing regional roles
- Comprise a team with strong business and technical balance
- Involve internationally proven technologies from foreign companies with good track record overseas or leading international technologies from reputable universities, research institutions and such in the proposed one-year project
- Provide a business plan with clear target markets and viable business models

Evaluation of Proposals

The proposals will be evaluated based on:

- Size of the target markets
- Innovativeness of the business
- Business viability
- Strength of the international technology and exclusivity (whether time-exclusive, region-exclusive or vertical-exclusive, etc.)
- Strength of founding entrepreneurs and proposed team
- Significance of the scope of the co-development work on top of the international technology
- Number of local capability developed within the company
- Impact of the proposed project to Singapore

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Grant Briefing

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iStart:LITE was just published yesterday night and IDA is conducting a briefing today before the AppVenture Launch.

When: Tuesday, 16th November 2010
Time: 5pm (expected to take only 30mins)
Where: IDA Multi-Purpose Hall, Suntec Tower 3, #14-00, 8 Temasek Boulevard, Singapore 038988

For all enquiries and submissions, please email Mr Derrick Wong at email: derrick_wong@ida.gov.sg, with the following subjects:
[iStart:LITE enquiry] or [iStart:LITE pre-submission discussion] or [iStart:LITE submission].

The key difference in this iStart:LITE grant is whether “you have a relationship to anchor an international technology to Singapore as a leverage for your business idea“?

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Fanfou Will Be Back Soon, Great but Hold on…

After 16-months lock down, Fanfou, the earliest clone of Twitter seems back soon.

Wang Xing, the founder of Fanfou, now founder of the Groupon site called Meituan, is really a cool guy because he does have quite a lot royal fans who support every startups he’s been doing. So you might be jealous. However, when I read from a couple of microblogs which wondering what Fanfou is going to do in Chinese microblogging market, I laughed. Guys, I know you are loyal users, but don’t be naive, the world has changed.  At least, do not believe it will be a microblogging service like before. You may know, another early adopter of twitter, Zuosa was about to be sold?

So lower down your expectation, please. There is no way back, unless you have something new, or focus on certain user group or vertical market. Current setup of Chinese microblogging market leaves the startups with no chance. Sina takes the lead, followed by Tencent, then Sohu and 163 both want to catch more share. They may not see the revenue yet, but they have been convinced by the value the 140 words.

Wang Xing said he would not be involved in the operation of this new Fanfou, which I think it is good for its new adventure Meituan. I am also quite looking forwards to seeing some new ideas coming from Fanfou. Wang Xing is such a smart and good product manager who can quickly ‘copy’ the ideas from west and localize them nicely, hopefully I want to see some innovation and if possible good monetization models out of it.

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What is Facebook Email? IM + Messaging + SMS + Email

Facebook has unveiled its new messaging service which was earlier touted as email (or to be specific, gmail) killer, but in reality it is not so much of an email service.

Here is what it is.

• The new Facebook Email is not an Email Killer. It’s a messaging service.
• The Facebook messaging is essentially email + IM + SMS + Facebook Messages, i.e. enable conversation between Facebook friends (as opposed to pure messaging). In essence, email is delivered as IM (if you are online).
• Supports XMPP.
• All of your conversation will reside in ‘Social Inbox’.
• The crux is that Facebook’s messaging system is real time view of conversation and enables seamless messaging across communication channels.

Facebook_Messages

Zuckerberg

The new Messages interface not only displays the Facebook messages you exchange with friends, but it also interweaves your chats, texts and emails (should you choose to create an @facebook.com address). It’s a central place to control all of your private communication, both on and off Facebook.
Now when you view a conversation, you’re actually looking at a complete history of all the communication you’ve shared with that person on Facebook — it’s like having an ongoing record of your friendship.

Facebook Messages Features

Get Facebook messages, chats and texts all in the same place.

• Include email by activating your optional Facebook email address.
• Control who can send you messages through your privacy settings

See everything you’ve ever discussed with each friend as a single conversation.

• No need for subject lines or other formalities
• Easily leave large conversations that no longer interest you

Focus on messages from your friends.

• Messages from unknown senders and bulk email go into the Other folder
• Spam is hidden from view automatically

In the long run, Facebook email/messaging service can impact the way we communicate/converse (across different medium), though the product seems to be as interesting (and confusing) as Google Wave.

Expect the new generation to use more of such social services as compared to pure email (which is way too formal, as Mark Zuckerberg aptly mentioned).

Currently, the product is invite only and will be rolled out over the next few months [you can request an invite here].

Also see: Claim Your Facebook Email Address

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Entrepreneurs Dilemma: Is my Business Venture Fundable?

[Editorial Notes: Guest article by Indus Khaitan, Partner at theMorpheus.  Indus dwells on a classic dilemma every entrepreneur faces – i.e. is my business fundable or not?]

Companies have become easier to build. There are fewer breakout companies with the size of JustDial, Via, One97, etc. Should the entrepreneur build a company to cover the expenses and have a good supporting income? Or build a business which is large enough to be venture-funded with an exit the size of MakeMyTrip?

This is classic entrepreneurs dilemma when starting out. The choice a founder makes and the venture he is building would determine the outcome. I was at recently concluded unpluggd2 event where someone asked the same question.

A very interesting blog post is doing the rounds and was shared by Shashank, Sameer and others. Quoting the bullet #41 & #42:

41. Know what kind of company you are trying to build.  There are very few Googles and Facebooks.  A good outcome for your business might be a $10M exit or a $20M exit or a $100M exit or no exit at all.  Plan for the business you want to build.  Don’t just shoot for the moon.  From a money-in-your-pocket and return on time spent standpoint, owning 20% of a $20M exit in 2 years is much better than owning 3% of a $100M business in 5 years.

42. Related to #41, understand whether your business is a VC business or not. A VC business is expected to deliver 10x returns to investors.  That means if you’re taking money with a $5M post-money valuation, the expectation is that you are building for a minimum $50M exit.  $10M post-money valuation = $100M target.  That’s not to say that you might not sell the company for less and everyone involved might be happy with that outcome, but that’s not what you are signing up for when you take VC money with such a valuation.  Know what the implications of taking VC money are and what it means for expectations on you.

I don’t have to add any thing–the bullets say it all. You can overcome this dilemma by answering the following:

1. If I take Rs. 1 crore from an investor, can I return Rs. 10 crores back in 5 years or so?
2. Can the business double it’s revenues every year without adding a lot of people to it?
3. If my neighbor finds out about my business, can he also build it?
4. Am I building something which very few people have built?
5. If there is a list of top 100 innovative businesses, would the business qualify?

It’s totally fine, if your business is not a venture fundable business. A lot of businesses are like that.

[Reproduced from Indus’ blog]

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Web Developer, UI Designer, Mobile Developer Jobs in Bangalore [Sponsored]

TringMe is expanding its technical team in Bangalore. It was awarded the NASSCOM’s Most Innovative Startup of 2009 award and has been recognized worldwide for its innovative and breakthrough technology. Be a core part of this next generation telephony platform company. They have immediate job openings in mobile and web development areas:

Sr. Web Developer
Required: PHP, MySQL, AJAX

Experience: 3+ years in design and development of web applications

Web Developer

Required: PHP, Javascript, CSS, HTML

Experience: 0-3 years. Freshers willing to learn and adapt will definitely be considered.

Mobile Developers

Required: J2ME, Blackberry OR Android experience preferred.

Experience: 1-4 years. Freshers willing to learn and adapt will definitely be considered.

UI Designers

Required: Photoshop, Flash, Actionscript

Experience:

Creative minds who can quickly put together UI prototypes, screen-flow, mobile UI

Executive Assistant

Required: Knowledge of MS-Office and Web-savvy, Good written English skills.

TringMe offers an exciting environment with challenging opportunities, able compensation with stock options. To apply, send your resume to techjobs@tringme.com.

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Facebook Email [PI Cartoons]

Dear Friends of Sid,

Rumor mill has it that Facebook is launching an email service. Ain’t that cool? Rumors of the secret project aptly named “Titan” have been circulating since February. Ave to complete Facebook domination over communications within your social networks! But what is really going on behind all this product development?

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