2010 in Review: Top 5 e27 posts

A Very Happy New Year to all of you.

2010 by and large was a good, if not a great year, for the startup scene in Southeast Asia. Compared to previous years, there has been a surge of new startups and funding options. 2010 also witnessed increase in the acquisitions and funding numbers, and an uptake of interest in building new products and businesses.

We have seen this transition taking place and have done the best to report it, as and when it happened. To recap the important stories in 2010, here are the top 5 most read posts in 2010 in a nutshell.

- Asia’s Top 50 apps: In Aug 2010, we launched a competition to discover Asia’s Top 50 apps in conjunction with SingTel’s Accelerate 2010 event. This first of its kind competition in Asia, almost caused our servers to crash and had people voting in large numbers for their favorite app. e27 readers nominated and selected the top 50 apps and a selected panel of judges then selected the top 10 apps from this list. This helped to shine the spotlight on the popular and innovative products from Asia.

- Joojoo is dead: The legal tussle between Singapore-based FusionGarage and TechCrunch may not have come to an end, but the product definitely did. In an interview with e27, FusionGarage’s CEO Chandrashekhar declared the end of Joojoo tablet, and added that the company will now be focusing on producing tablet devices for specific industry verticals.

- Groupon clones in Singapore: Groupon was one of the big stories of 2010. With Google and Facebook eyeing their share of the daily deals pie, Groupon has been steadily expanding to many countries, snapping up the local daily deal sites. We covered the cropping up of daily deal sites in Singapore in mid-2010 and few months later, Groupon announced acquisition of three startups in Southeast Asia including Singapore-based Beeconomic.

- Indonesia’s largest community: Indonesia has been in the tech news radar due to the rising power of its Internet populace and for ranking among the top 5 markets for Facebook and Twitter. But more than Facebook or Twitter, it was the story of Kaskus that caught the maximum attention. This Indonesia-based company that started off as an online forum now enjoys the status of largest community portal in Indonesia with its own payment system and e-commerce platform.

- Milestone in Singapore startup ecosystem: 2010 started off with a big bang, with the announcement of seven new startup incubators in Singapore under the National Research Foundation’s(NRF) Technology Incubation Scheme. As part of this scheme, NRF will be co-investing along with the incubators in Singapore startups. Some of the startups that have been funded under this scheme are Foound, Socialutions, Artyii, ShoppingLifestyle and Socialco. This scheme led to an increase in the influx of startups and investors from various countries to Singapore.

While these changes happened in the startup world, e27 has been going through some changes as well.

- Revamped Website: We launched e27′s new look with better navigation and tighter integration with our social media channels.
- New writers on board: Joon Ian (Chief Editor), Aulia Masna(Managing Editor) and John Lim (Contributing Editor) have now joined on board to expand and deepen our coverage of technology space in South East Asia
- echelon 2010: One of the largest startup events in Asia, this two-day conference saw 650 attendees and 50 startups from 10 Asian countries.

What’s in store for 2011?

We hope to hear more stories on funding, profitability, acquisitions and exciting products in the web and mobile space. Also, stay tuned for updates on echelon 2011! :)

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iSoftstone – outsourcing

Recently, there are many Chinese tech IPO, and some of them are pretty famous, such as Dangdang and Youku. There is one company that most people have not heard of, but I believe it is a good one.

The company is Beijing based iSoftstone (www.isoftstone.com). It is the last the last Chinese company to debut in the U.S. for 2010. Found in October 2001, it provides outsourced IT services to clients in China and around the world, with about 56% of its revenue derived from China and the remainder from the U.S.(28%), Europe(6%) and Japan (10%).

In the last three years, the company’s revenue grew 3.6 times and it turned profitable last year with US$9 million net profit, compared with a loss of US$10 million in 2007.

The trend continued this year. Net revenue rose 50% to $135 million in the first nine months of 2010. Net income during that period decreased from $5.7 million to $300,000 primarily due to share-based compensation charges linked to employee and director options. (This is probably one time only, due to IPO.)

In fact, iSoftstone is not alone. In the recent years, the whole outsourcing sector in China is blooming. The overseas market is growing strong, and so is China domestic market. The Chinese government changed labour law and required employers to pay substantial compensation if they want to layoff their employees. (N+1 months of salary. N is the number of servicing years.)

So, many of the major technology companies, such as Huawei, outsource their work. I believe the trends will continue for a couple years. And companies, such as iSoftstone, Hisoft, Vanceinfo, etc., will enjoy a few high-growth years. If you have not noticed these companies yet, maybe you should check them out. They all grew over 50% a year.

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Twitter Shogi – Japanese Chess Over Tweets

Twitter Shogi(= Japanese Chess) by Kayac is a new web service for good-old correspondence (Japanese) chess between two Twitter users.

You can simply start a new game with @your_opponent by tweeting like,

@your_opponent 7六歩 #tw_shogi

then the service will find the new game begins, record your and your opponent’s moves.

The second word shows the player’s move, which unit to which row and column in standard Japanese chess notation. The notation is strictly ruled [J] but you should be able to handle if you play it well.

From the site, you can check the current board. Searching by two twitter accounts give you (if any) the playing or finished board.

Searching Twitter by its hash tag #tw_shogi returned that there are several games were being played.

Japanese chess, one of the world’s many chess variants, has a characteristic which you may reuse your capturing unit, which makes it more complicated for computers. different from western chess, the world champion of which can be beaten by computer, there are over 100 professional players who are still stronger than machines.

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Dingzai, the Mobile Photo-Sharing Application Raised Another $1.5Millions

We were saying that mobile business should not only focus on location, but also the phone pictures. Glad to see more and more Chinese mobile applications have emerged and entered the market. Camera360, invested by Matrix Partner is one of the best on image processing, but we are still waiting for its iPhone version and more social elements to be implemented. Dingzai, as one of early players working on mobile photo-sharing available for both iPhone and Android, also confirmed its $1.5millions investment from Junwei Financial Group.

Like Instagram, Dingzai also provides several image filters, such as Lomo, B&W etc. You can create a new album and upload the image which can be shared with others too. Dingzai also has a web-based service via which users can manage their images uploaded, view their friends’ uploads and send a message to friends. Using Dingzai’s mobile application, the images can be easily shared to social media such as Sina weibo, Renren etc. Every user can upload up to 25,600 pictures for free.

We are playing with Dingzai. The web-based service has limited functions but is good complement for its mobile application. On mobile, the photo processing is good and fast but not that convenient as we expected. e.g. You are only allowed to use one filter per image, and seems that now you can not view your friends’ uploads right on the application.

Dingzai team is based in Shenzhen and the company is set up in 2008. It is reported that the $1.5millions new investment takes 50% of company share. The money will be used on team building, R&D and international marketing.

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How Wedding Couples Use GuestDay For Onsite Registrations

Registering guests at a wedding dinner in Singapore is typically a tedious affair, and often stands in stark contrast to the glitz of the event. Imagine a row of flustered helpers, trying to locate the seating for the barrage of arriving guests by searching for their names in stacks of printed sheets of names and tables. Hardly a picture of elegance. GuestDay helps couples eliminate such hassles.

GuestDay is a networked computer-based guest registration system which aims to help couples register their guests in style. I attended James Chan‘s (of Neoteny Labs) wedding last month where GuestDay was deployed and found it to be a very pleasant experience and got really excited to cover them on SGE.

What guests do:

1. Walk to registration terminals.
2. Tell wedding registration helpers while watching them type, allowing guests to correct misspellings.
3. Confirm attendance, shown what table number, where table is and fellow guests at the same table.

Screenshots given to us by the GuestDay team, with James and Uzia’s actual wedding shots that they provided:

GuestDay’s registration interface is a single powerful search box that accepts any detail about a guest: name, affiliation or other tags (e.g. “VIP” or “aunt”). The “live search” process allows guests to see what’s being typed and the names being matched, so they can point out their names or correct a typo on the helper’s part. A subtle status bar informs helpers on how many guests have arrived so far, and if the ang pow goes to the bride or groom’s side.

The process for wedding couples pre-wedding dinner is:

1. Prepare two photos to personalise the registration screens, the ballroom layout, and the guestlist.
2. Send the items to the GuestDay team up to two weeks before the event, and the couple can make minor changes to the guest list until the night before.

The Day:

- GuestDay team will brief the helpers doing registration.
- GuestDay team will be on-site for technical assistance.
- Guests need not be searched by “bride” or “groom” side, but by “name, affiliation or tags”.

Because the entire thing feeds into a central database, GuestDay allows the wedding couple to check if any particular guest has arrived, and what the total number of guests is at any point. This helps in deciding when to start the dinner.

At the end, the wedding couple gets full logs of who showed up and at what time.

Pricing starts at S$488 per event, inclusive of equipment rental. For anyone interested in speeding up the registration process further, GuestDay can also generate individualised 2D barcodes for each guest. Wedding organisers can post or e-mail these to guests, who can then scan and self-register when they arrive.

From now until March 2011, a 20% discount is available if you mention this SGE article. Head over to GuestDay to check it out.

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Now Get Pune Bus Service Information on Google Maps

Google earlier launched Transit in Bangalore, (in partnership with BMTC), Delhi (Delhi Metro route) and has now announced the launch of Transit service in Pune (in partnership with PMPML).

“With a daily ridership of approximately 1 million passengers, PMPML is the second Indian Bus service to launch on Google Maps. Commuters in Pune can now find out bus schedules and routes for 320 of PMPML buses via Google Maps on desktop and mobile. The easy access of this service helps commuters and tourists find their way around the city using buses” [blog].

The service offers following features

• The user searches for information to reach from Place A to B on Google Maps

• The result shows a map with the possible route and driving directions for the commuter

• By choosing the transit option, commuters would get first hand information on Pune’s routes and schedules

• Commuters get to see the step by step directions for the entire route including frequency, travel duration for each leg of the trip in text and on the map.

With Google launching these services in India, what do you think will be the strategy of startups like M4Mum?

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TechBeat 5: Goodbye 2010, hello 2011

The podcasters return with a cast bigger than ever for this episode, which looks back at the biggest stories of 2010, and what their expectations are for 2011. Join host John Lim, together with panelistsErna Mahyuni, David Lian from Text100, as well as Tech Idiots Uncensored duo Chan Wern Shen andKelvin Lim as they talk about:
1) Apple’s continued rise to dominance despite the iPhone 4 fiasco earlier in the year.

2) The future of WiMax and broadband connectivity in Malaysia, as well as IPTV’s growth in the country.

3) What’s next to come for geolocation services.

4) What we can expect from CES 2011.

5) BlackBerry’s surprising popularity amongst the younger generation in Malaysia.

Direct download here, subscribe using the RSS feed, or iTunes.

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Near Year Resolution for an Entrepreneur–Be Awesome

New Year Resolution for an Entrepreneur

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary – Steve Jobs”

Bring Discipline.

Building a business is tough. One of the challenges of entrepreneurship is the lack of a boss. If you have nobody to report to, you are free to define your working hours, holiday seasons etc. Unless you are building a lifestyle business, this is a no-no for the high impact entrepreneur.

Discipline is the key and define 2011 to be the year when you will chose to get disciplined.

[Collaboration] Stand for We.

Collaboration is the key and even earlier, I have suggested startups to collaborate among themselves. Given the limited resource you will have (unless extravagantly funded), share your technology with others. Leverage other’s channel/technology, if you can.

[Lean] Release Early – Release Often

Define the balance between perfection and speed. Do not wait till eternity to release the perfect product, yet do not launch a half-baked product. Even if you have earlier committed the crime of launching a half-baked product earlier, start afresh and focus on the core.

[ Funding] A Milestone or End of the Journey?

For some reason, a lot of Indian entrepreneurs believe that VC funding is the first sign of success. Sometimes startups reach out to angel investors/VCs, even before they have a concrete idea.

Well, no gyaan here, but raise funds only when you have to. But first, focus on building a great business – at least do a Proof of Concept (PoC), before you start fund raising activity (will take anywhere between 2 months to 8 months and might end up spending the entire of 2011 chasing the sun).

[Hypothesis] Try, Fail, Modify, (Re)Validate

As we enter a new era (plus a lot of hype) of lean startups/products, I’d recommend startups to validate their hypothesis with simple PoCs before they actually start building a mammoth product. And once you have identified the gap, don’t be lean for the sake of it. Get to the real meat when it comes to the feature sets and keep trying unless you attend product/market fit.

Read: Groupon Story – WordPress Blog to Billion Dollar Company

[Delivery] Be Awesome

Awesomeness is in the delivery. Awesomeness is in the user experience. As more startups continue to target niche gaps, quality of service/offering will be the key. An entrepreneur I know calls himself ‘Chief Awesomeness Officer’ – before every decision, he’d ask ‘Is this going to be an awesome thing to do?’,

[Metrics] What Matters

Doesn’t matter if you are a solopreneur or have a 10 plus team, define metrics of your success.  What is important to measure? How do you measure that?

Define metrics for the team as well. How do you build a culture of individual performance that leads to the collective win?

Start Selling

If you are a geeky entrepreneur, stop coding. Stop waiting for the perfect product.
Start selling. Meet lots of sales guys. Meet marketing fellas. If you attend any event, do not get into your comfort zone (i.e. end up meeting the same old geeky friends), instead meet new guys.
And if you are an entrepreneur from marketing/sales background, get to know the engineering behind products. Get into the depth of ‘what does it take to build great products’. Helps in selling the product.

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2011 is beginning of a new decade (which ends with the famous 2020) and unless you are a believer in Mayan prophecy, this is the year to make awesomeness.

Again, we wish you a happy new year 2011 and will be your friend in the journey.

If you are an entrepreneur, what are your new year resolutions?

Recommended Read: How to Keep up Your New Year Resolution [Seven Rules]

[Image credit: Matt Hunsberger/Flickr]

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