VIPShop raised $50 million in Series B from DCM and Sequoia

VIPShop, a Chinese luxury discount marketplace, announced raising US$ 50 million in Series B funding from DCM and Sequoia Capital, which is the largest Series B funding in southern China B2C market. The discount site had raised US$ 20 million in its Series A in last Oct from the same investors, which is also the largest Series A funding in Chinese ecommerce area.

Generally, more investors would be introduced in e-commerce companies’ Series B funding, but interestingly, VIPShop received funding from the same investors (DCM and Sequoia Capital) in both rounds of funding. VIPShop CEO Wu Hongbo explained this by saying:”By drawing in capital, we are looking for a reciprocal relationship to grow together rather than only taking money from investors. We carefully singled out DCM and Sequoia Capital for neither of them were ever involved in a scramble for stakes with shareholders. ”

It seems now with the boom of e-business in China and more money flow into the area, startups are enjoying more choices with venture capital, and they now bear in mind that they are not just looking for money, but also for partners who can help them grow.

No.1 B2C retail site in Southern China

On top of unique business models and promising prospects, the fact that VIPShop is now the No. 1 B2C site in southern China may be primary reason why DCM and Sequoia funding the company again.

Launched in late 2008, VIPShop was then the first and only luxury flash sales site in China, with a business model of flash sales on luxury goods, designer brands and high-grade cosmetics etc. The vertical now enjoys 2.3 million registered customers and over 10,000 daily orders on average. It also has a 20,000-square-metres warehouse, probably one of the largest in southern China B2C companies.

According to iResearch, a Chinese market research company, VIPShop’s 2010 sales reach RMB 300 million (US$ 46.2 million), with a monthly visitors of over 14 million. VIPShop’s customers spend on average RMB 160 (US$ 24.6) per transaction, similar to what VANCL enjoys.

Southern China Catching up in B2C game

A iResearch report shows that B2C sites in northern and eastern China are in leading position at present, while their southern counterparts are still catching up given the grand economic status of southern China.

Quick Facts about Guangdong, the powerhouse of southern China:

• The Largest manufacturing base in China or even on the planet
• Small and medium-sized enterprises account for more than 1/3 of the national total, important infrastructure base of ecommerce
• E-commerce sales volume of the area is growing 30% annually
• Existing international manufacturing and logistical center

With all the advantages listed above, Guangdong is expected to become the Asian international B2C center in 2012 and world-class international ecommerce center later on. And since the area is catching up with players from other parts of China, more opportunities could be explored here.

Related posts:

1. YesMyWine Raises US$40 Million In Series C Financing
2. Tagged Raised $5 Million And Available For Acquisition
3. Tencent invested US$350 million into US game company, Riot

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Renren Almost Dropped Below Its IPO Price

In just four trading days, Renren dropped almost below its IPO price. Yesterday, the stock fell another 8% to close at US$14.75, which is almost equal to IPO price of US$14.

The so-called China’s Facebook seems to be losing its luster.  In fact, as we have previously noted, besides a valuation too high, the company has other problems, too.  And it is doubtful whether it is really “China’s Facebook”.

But what is pushing the Chinese internet stock, including Renren, beyond their fundamentals, to ridiculous high valuation, at the first place??  I read a comment from SeekingAlpha, a popular U.S. website on trading stock.  The post is probably from a typical U.S. trader:

Every single chinese IPO pullback has been a buying opportunity. Sure it looks scary…..but the scary trade is usually the right trade.

Wait for it to base around the 11-12 dollar range…..and then watch it break prior highs.
I actually don’t know crap about this company, and I really don’t want to…..but I’ve seen this in the charts before. YOKU went from 48 to 28, before ripping hard to 60…left so much on the table after I sold at 50. 

Let the shorts worry about valuation and other nonsense….I just make money.
NFLX, PCLN, OPEN, LULU….keep squeezing those shorts till they scream!!!

- “The Champ”

The trader ”The Champ”, said, he “don’t know crap” about Renren.  Based on his past experience (“I’ve seen this in the charts before”),  he believe Renren will rebound and make new highs.

Clearly, what Renren actually does, this U.S. trader do not care at all.  He just trading on momentum.  As the previous Chinese internet stock has made him money, he believes Renren will be a winner, too.

I believe, a lot of U.S. traders of Chinese internet stock are like “The Champ”.  And that is why their valuation is not base on fundamental, but only on perception (China’s Youku, China’s Facebook, China’s Twitter) and trading momentums.

The point is most clearly illustrated in the trader’s remark, ”Let the shorts worry about valuation and other nonsense… I just make money.”

Related posts:

1. Sorry, RenRen Is Just a Social Network in China, Not a Chinese Facebook
2. Three More Reasons Why Renren Is Not Facebook of China
3. CheWen, RenRen's Vertical Q&A Service for Car Business

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AmanzNetwork’s new boss sets the agenda for Malay tech blogs

AmanzNetwork CEO Ikhwan Nazri. Photo taken from his blog.

On May 3, Ikhwan Nazri, who runs community blog OfficeKami and startup WeddingKami (a web-based wedding service), became the new CEO of AmanzNetwork, a Malaysian company that counts several tech sites under its network. The network publishes exclusively in Malay, the national language, which is used by the country’s population of 27 million.

AmanzNetwork was first started by Aman Firdaus under the name Amanz.net back in June 2005, but it was essentially a one-man blog. At the moment there’s only one full time writer, Aman, who is helped by several part-time and guest contributors.

The sites on the AmanzNetwork are Amanz.my, which covers general tech news;gajet.my, which covers gadget news; komputer.my, which covers hardware news, and linuxmalaya.com, which covers Linux and open-source news.

We caught up with Ikhwan to get his thoughts on his new role, as well as the burgeoning tech-blogging scene in Southeast Asia.

What’s your responsibility now as CEO? Do you have any immediate plans for the company’s future?

My job now is to further enhance what Amanz Network offers. One of (the) immediate plans is to multiply the delivery medium; at the moment, the information and content are just blogposts, and I’m looking at creating videocasts ala Diggnation, in BM (Bahasa Melayu, or Malay language). There would be no changes to be done as far as the editorial direction is concerned, but we might be creating a new blog for interesting and niche topics that are still related to technology or multimedia, with the hope of getting more visitors. The delivery medium for these new blogs would still be in BM.

As for funding, we’re open to it, and ever since the announcement, a few opportunities have popped up.

Recently there’s been a trend of websites covering technology popping in Southeast Asia. What do you think the prospects are for these sites in gaining readers and being monetized?

There’s indeed a huge potential for tech-based website in Southeast Asia. One of the key factors is our market; our readers seem much more connected. Indonesia has proven that they can easily break into the trending topics on Twitter. There’s a lot of digital natives around here that consume a lot of data from Facebook and tweet a lot.

What’s the readership like for Amanz now?

Generally AmanzNetwork readers are those aged between 17 – 35, and are interested to know tech news of the day. Most of our readers are male, and we get about 5,000 readers a day, not including RSS readers

What’s the reasoning behind producing a Malay-language techblog as opposed to an English-language one?

We want to cater to the non-urban crowd, those who aren’t familiar with the English language. I know that the government has taken the initiative to encourage the use of English (especially in science and maths in national schools). But where tech news is concerned, there’s indeed a language barrier because tech isn’t being learned at school – science and maths, yes, but that’s not tech.

That’s where AmanzNetwork comes in, to reduce the language gap between the technews and getting people to read and accept it. The other reason is that there are many tech blogs in English, and we’re filling the gap for various groups in this multi-lingual, multi-cultural country.

What are your thoughts on the Malaysian techspace – do you think there’s enough buzz and enthusiasm here to sustain a tech blog like Amanz?

The Malaysian techspace is definitely picking up; we can see how exciting the scene becomes when bigger companies open a local branch, and are more open to hiring Malaysian talent.

How will your new role affect your other projects with WeddingKami and OfficeKami? Weddingkami is a seasonal thing where I’ll only get superbusy during the wedding season. Officekami is just something that can be done any time. This new role as CEO enables me to learn on how to grow talent and in the same time, contribute even bigger things to the community. I feel like I’m playing Command & Conquer – but conquer what you may ask, let’s hold that answer for next year.

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InMobi Launches SmartPay, Global Mobile Payment Service

InMobi has launched SmartPay, a global mobile payment service that will enable app developers, game companies, and content providers in the mobile content and virtual goods space to expand their business and monetize their users quickly by providing a one-time, no setup cost, single point of integration across multiple countries.
The solution offers consumers a seamless, pure mobile checkout experience using secure, direct to carrier billing to start, but expanding to all forms of mobile payment methods including credit cards, PayPal, and local mobile wallets by the end of the year.

“Today’s mobile payment options are basic transaction pipelines and offer very little beyond providing transactional support. InMobi SmartPay™ is a ‘performance based’ payments platform that provides data and insights through an easy to use interface, which help merchants optimize conversion paths, product offering, and pricing to maximize their ROI. Developers can also track advertising performance from impression all the way through to conversion. The result is better ad targeting, higher conversion rates & better revenues.”

“InMobi SmartPay™ technology automatically recognizes the country, handset, operator and OS of the consumer and dynamically serves the buying path most likely to convert. With 4.2 million possible combinations, automating this task is a huge benefit to developers.”[blog]

InMobi’s SmartPay currently supports 7 countries (US, UK, Germany, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, and South Africa) and plans to expand to 30 countries by end of this year.
Given that InMobi has witnessed phenomenal success in non-US markets, this seems to be the logical move by being more developer friendly and hence, be the pipe that enables transactions across platforms.

The road however isn’t going to be smooth for the team, as there are multiple options (for payment plus there is quite a mafia everywhere) and integrating payment systems across different countries will entail its own friction.
Of course, if this succeeds, InMobi will be a super awesome acquisition target.
What’s your take?

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Google I/O kicks off today : Here’s what to expect

One of our most beloved companies is kicking off its annual developers conference today and as you may have expected, the internet is buzzing with what we can expect from this annual gathering of the Google geeks. In its third edition, Google I/O is expected to focus on the most popular technologies that Google offers today , including its Android mobile OS and Chrome OS. Many rumors have been circulating the internet about the imminent launch of Google’s own music locker service. Here’s a look at what we can expect from one of the leading companies in the world when it comes to innovation.

Android Ice Cream/ Ice Cream Sandwich.
Android is booming, no question about it! Fragmentation is a real issue that most app developers are struggling with, combine that with the low number of paid apps on the market and it should sound the death knell for a platform. But consumer adoption is forcing developers to consider that supporting Android in their development efforts may become imperative. The breakneck speed at which Google develops upgrades to its Android OS has reached its destination for this half of the year with developers longing for a taste of the new version on Android that promises to bring some sort of unity to the fragmented Gingerbread2.3 and Honeycomb3.0 landscape of Android. Ice Cream/ Ice Cream Sandwich is expected to unify the OS scenario for Android, of course there will be some additional functionality and APIs that will be unveiled too.

Chrome OS
Chrome OS may be getting ready for an official launch soon, with reports that Acer and Samsung plan to launch Chrome OS powered notebooks later this year. Chrome OS is a linux based OS that uses the cloud services in browser based interface. This effectively turns your notebook into a dummy terminal. Chrome OS may make an official public appearance at the end of the conference with Samsung netbooks. Exciting technology for sure!

Google Music Beta
News blogs are reporting confirmed comments from a Google spokeswoman that the company will unveil the much awaited cloud music streaming service. After talks with record companies stalled, Google will pull an Amazon and go ahead without any licensing agreements with the four major record companies in the world. Google will reportedly open the service for a beta test internally and make it available to users in the U.S. shortly thereafter. The service will allow users to upload their music to their cloud locker and later stream it to any device on their Android phones running version 2.2( froyo )  with adobe flash support. Amazon launched their cloud music streaming service earlier this year that allows users to upload their music to a personal music drive and stream it to multiple devices. Apple is rumored to be readying its own cloud music storage and streaming service and not surprisingly is calling it iCloud.

Google TV
It is believed that Google will show a glimpse of its new version of internet enabled TV, Google TV 2.0 with software and hardware upgrades. The software will be Android Honeycomb like and will most likely bring Android apps to Google TV.

This will be Google’s first developer conference since the replacement of Eric Schmidt by Larry Page as CEO. Larry Page stated that his goal was to run Google with the pace and with the souls and passion of a startup. Developers attending the Google I/O will surely have a blast at this conference. We’ll keep you updated with the daily happenings.

Watch this space for our entire coverage of Google I/O.

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TaoMee Vs. Tencent: Battle in Kids Social Networking Market

Comparing to more than 10 years’ developing progress of Chinese online game market, kids social networking sites have only taken root for two years. Since Taomee was rumored to go public on Nasdaq in 2Q2011 and Tencent launched its first kids-oriented online community Roco Kingdom to join in the market, this segment gradually received more attention.

Taomee CEO: become children’s favorite entertainment company in China

Founded by Wang Haibing, former head of QQ Pets for Tencent in 2007, Taomee has become a leading social network for children in China. With Mole’s World, Seer, Haqi Town, Little Fairy and many other SNS games for children,Taomee now has 180 million registered users, of which 30 million-50 million are active. This means nearly every primary student who is able to get access to internet has a “Meemee” account number.

Taomee founder and CEO Wang Haibin said, rather than only being a kids networking company, he hopes Taomee can become China’s biggest kids’ entertainment company.

TaoMee has been profitable since Jan.2010, with its main revenue coming from selling virtual pets to users and charging fees RMB10/Month ($1.5) to its VIP clients.  Since 2009, the company also ventured into book publication, toys and clothing fields to promote its game franchise characters.

The revenues of offline business occupied about 10% of the total. Wang said he expected revenue from offline business to surpass 50% of all.

Taomee has built an independent department for its offline businesses, which also make cartoon and films based on the company’s two SNS games  - Mole’s World and Seer. The company will continue to strengthen the expansion of its offline business, and is planning to open up to 40 children’s garments stores by May 2012, according to Wang Haibing.

Tencent: Roco Kingdom achieved PCU of 400,000

Tencent, on the other hand, launched it’s first online social product, Roco Kingdom,in July 2010, with more than 50 million registered users already and peak concurrent users of 400,000.

Using funny magic as its theme, Roco Kingdom is focusing on safety, health, and education for kids. At the same time, Roco Kingdom has also formed partnerships with movie studios, magazine publishing and animation companies. Ren Yuxin, President of Tencent interactive Entertainment Business system states,”Roco Kingdom, if operated merely as a kids’ networking community product, is undoubtedly a waste of its product value. It should be a project with higher entertainment value, while focusing on entertaining, multi-channels and multi-fields.”

Who knows the kids best?

Tencent is dedicated to dig into this new market through partners in the entertainment industry. When talking about former employer’s move into kids’ market, Taomee’s Wang Haibing claims, “this proves exactly the potential of this market. Facing new competitors, Taomee need to focus on its most basic thing: who knows the kids best, who takes the market.” For further development, he believes providing more comprehensive and high quality entertainment services is essential.

Though Kids SNS’s room for growth looks promising, there are still plenty of difficulties need to face. For instance, targeting young kids as online customers is not easy because parents who foot the bill have to agree first. Also, new interesting theme, and a strong in-house development team with quick turnaround are two key factors that kids’ SNS companies could work on.

Related posts:

1. Taomee (61.com ) will go IPO in Nasdaq in a Few Days
2. It Is Not Only For Kids, Tencent Is To Launch Rebate Service
3. Social networking birth control in China?

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IPG’s MediaBrands Ventures, One of Facebook’s Investors, Is Now in China

I am sure that Interpublic Group (IPG), the global provider of advertising and marketing services group has been doing business with Facebook. But I did not know it’s also one of Facebook’s investors. And IPG’s investment company has set up its office for a while in Shanghai too, and it is MediaBrands Ventures led by the CEO, Jimmy Poon who is full of energy and traveling around to meet interesting companies.

I had a brief talk with Jimmy who shared with me their investment strategy in China. He said, “Similarly in China, we are looking to invest in and partner up with new media companies that can add values for our clients.” Unlike other VCs which usually don’t have the Clients, supported by IPG, MediaBrands Venture wants to bring its invested companies not only the money, but also the advertising and marketing solution as well as the global clients. Jimmy also said,

As a STRATEGIC investor and partner, we welcome the idea of partnering up with other VCs. We bring to the table our marketing know-how which assists the creation of new capabilities that will ultimately benefit our clients.

Talking about the plan for China in 2011, Jimmy said, our focus is on building up a cutting edge roster new media capabilities on the ground here in China, for our clients to utilize.

Related posts:

1. Helping the next generation of Entrepreneurs in China, Peng Ong of GSR Ventures
2. It Is More About Clones, Facebooks Made In China
3. Hong Kong Startups Need Investors

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Where Are The Angels in Shanghai?

Where are the angels in Shanghai? Probably that’s one question I should not ask. If you have time to participate any tech event, especially those to do with mobile internet, you will, I mean 100%, meet several people saying they are Angels. The mobile Internet is so hot here, hundreds of small teams are working on different apps which does not need much fund to start with. So the angels seem everywhere as they have a small amount of money to invest.

But being an angel, is not just about the amount of money, is about how to find the project, invest the money smartly and more importantly how to mentor the young startup to grow fast. In other words, angels must be professional.

I was talking to Bruno Bensaid, Founder & Partner of Shanghaivest, Angel Investor member of AAMA Angel Group Shanghai (aka AngelVest) and co-founder & organizer of MobileMonday Shanghai. He explained to me how their angel group works. There are around 70 member angels who are high profile people from different industry in the group and around 40 of them are active. Anyone can apply to become a member but there are certain requirements, such as monthly income, experience etc. Each project will be invested by several investors, and the amount from each one is varied, usually $10k and a bit more. Bruno has invested 5 companies in past a few months, including StarryMedia which is co-founded by ex-CTO of MSN China.

Everyone can submit their BP to AngelVest which has full-time staff to take care of the applications, review it and circulate it to the angels. If the project is interesting, they (usually <10 angels) will discuss and invest it together. I asked Bruno as an foreign investor, if it’s easy to find a good project in China. Bruno thinks it’s not a big issue at least for him. ‘I often attend local events and also organize my own, they can always find me if they want to.’ Bruno said. “But it’s true, as a foreign angel investors, first we need find a better way to get the local community to know and trust us, and local investment partners are important too.”

An angel investor need be a mentor. William Bao Bean from Singtel Innov8, is also very active angel investor lives in Shanghai. He said to me once, I am not just investing the money, and I hope I can bring partnership and bring revenue to the company right after the investment too.

Bruno also mentioned to me another angel group in Shanghai, called AngelsShanghai which I realized that I was there in their first meeting. It seems they are doing ok as well, but for me they are not connected with local communities that much.

So angels are flying in Shanghai which is really a good thing. Maybe I should revise that question a bit, where are the professional angels in Shanghai, and even in China?

Related posts:

1. Chinese Angels Going Overseas
2. Calling The Angel, MOBINODE Partners With ChinAccelerator
3. BarCamp Is In Shanghai, Do We Need OpenCoffee Or OpenTea?

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Online Movie Ticketing Banned in Andhra Pradesh – Only For BookMyShow? [Updated]

Update: BookMyShow has declined to comment on the reason for the ban but confirmed that the ban is for all online players.

Due to Statutory reasons (Govt. of AP), online ticketing for movies in Andhra Pradesh has been disallowed. Ticket bookings are now restricted to the Box Office. We are currently not sure about the online ticketing for Plays. As per the Government’s order, they are not allowing all the players to do online ticketing.

So that would mean KyaZoonga is not honoring the ban or probably no one bothered to inform them. We are waiting for comments from KyaZoonga.

How does govt. really keep a track of this?

Earlier: Online movie ticketing portal, BookMyShow is reporting a ban on online ticketing in Andhra Pradesh. The exact reason for ban is unknown but as per BookMyShow’s update the ban seems to be enforced by the Government of AP.

Due to statutory reasons (Govt. of AP), all online ticketing in Andhra Pradesh has been taken off the web till further notice.

The ban seems to be only for Cinema ticket booking and not for travel or any other tickets. All the official sites of cinema chains like PVR, Fame, Big Cinemas and other smaller cinemas have stopped there online bookings. Most of them are managed by BookMyShow’s parent company, Big Tree Entertainment. Surprisingly, KyaZoonga.com is allowing booking for Hyderabad.

It is still not clear whether it is a ban specific to Big Tree Entertainment or a blanket ban. We have contacted BookMyshow and are waiting to hear from them.

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What tennis has taught me about startups, and why you should play a sport if you are an entrepreneur

[As part of Bring Your Own Insights series, we invite Pluggd.in readers to share their insights with the audience. This is a by-invite section and you will get to see insightful posts from our these selected guests.

After Sanket, we have Mukund Mohan sharing his insights with Pluggd.in readers. Mukund Mohan is the Chief Executive Officer of EOVL, a leading social commerce company. He founded and sold BuzzGain, a leader in Do It Yourself PR, to Meltwater in January 2010. He has founded and successfully sold 3 Silicon Valley startups in the Internet & Enterprise software markets.]

I met 25 eager, enthusiastic entrepreneurs last week at Vishakapatnam as part of the NASSCOM workshop on Sales for emerging companies. Besides discussing how to get customers using social media, sales pipeline management and hiring we had a chance to discuss our interests outside of our work.

Not surprisingly most people felt they had no time for sports outside of their startup and their families. Arjun of NASSCOM Hyderabad, plays Ultimate frisbee every weekend, which was an exception not the rule.

Ultimate Sports

I play tennis daily (5 days a week) and have been either running or playing a sport (golf, cricket) for as long as I can remember being in startups. I would highly recommend it to every entrepreneur to get out and play something if they can daily, but if they cannot, at least a competitive sport 2-3 times a week.

There are 3 important things I learned while playing tennis.

1. Follow through is absolutely important, sometimes more than the impact itself. Regardless of whether you are hitting a shot forehand or backhand, having a great follow through is more important to “finish” the shot and get it in the right place. Similarly, follow through on sales appointments, customer service requests is more important than setting up the next meeting in the first place.

2. Being persistently good beats flashes of brilliance every time. You will get some awesome shots that you will admire for a few seconds after you hit them, but if you are consistent with your game, and still lose some points over good shorts, over the long term you still will win. Similarly in a startup, hiring a good performer who shows up daily, is consistent and delivers on time, beats any number of brilliant but eccentric engineers.

3. You will always get a second, third, fourth and fifth chance. Have a bad first serve, you have a second. Down 15-40, you still have a chance. Down one set, losing 2-4 in the second, there’s still the next game. Startups as they say are like a marathon, having the discipline to meet prospects and customers daily, progressing on your product fit to market, and ensuring customer success will create multiple opportunities for you to succeed. What you do on that second, third or next chance will determine if you do well.

The key is to ensure that “temporarily forget” the setback and start fresh. Although people advice you to “learn from your mistakes”, I advocate the “learning” for a later time, upon reflection at the end of a month or a quarter.

What’s your opinion?

[Image credit: wikipedia]

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YesMyWine Raises US$40 Million In Series C Financing

YesMyWine, a Shanghai based B2C membership site focusing on wines, has just announced raising US$40 miilion in a Series C financing led by Chengwei Capital. The vertical had raised over US$53 million since its launch in late 2008, US$3 million for the Series A by DCM and US$10 million for Series B led by Mandra Capital.

Yuan Jiang, YesMyWine chairman remarked that the funding would be applied to uplift customer experience, enhance warehousing and logistics services, improve online shopping process, as well as widen collections. And Liu Jun, YesMyWine CEO said most part of the funding would be used for stocking up and warehousing since unlike other goods, wine has higher requirements with respect to storage and transportation. YesMyWine had built two constant temperature and humidity warehouse in Beijing and Shanghai, amongst some regular warehouses in Chengdu and Guangzhou. Yuan Jiang once disclosed that cost of warehousing and transportation accounts for 14% of the vertical’s gross margin.

“We are planning to built more constant temp and humidity warehouses, abandon the supply on demand model, increase our stocks by ten times to make sure all orders get delivered in time. Besides, our Hong Kong subsidiary will reinforce overseas sourcing, direct procurements from French wineries, for instance.” Liu Jun, CEO of YesMyWine added. YesMyWine now has nearly 3.5 million customers, with a monthly sales volume of over RMB 10 million (US$ 1.5 million) and forecast sale volume of over RMB 200 million (US$ 30 million) in 2011.

JiuXian, YesMyWine’s competitor which founded in Sep. 2010, has also raised US$ 20 million last month. But differently, JIuXian operates a vertical site offering wine, white spirit, high-grade beer, wine set and so on. JiuXian plans to go public in 2014.

China displaced Japan in 2009 to become the largest Asian wine consumer. According to statistics by China Customs, the total import value of wine increased 70% last year.

Related posts:

1. Dianping raises $100mln at $1bln valuation, postpone IPO plan
2. Russia's DST invested US$500 million in 360buy
3. RenRen Go for IPO in NYSE, Raising US$584 Million

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Bring Interactive Charts to PowerPoint Presentations With oomfo

Always wanted to add interactive and ‘sexy’ charts to your presentation? Well, Microsoft Powerpoint does provide the basic charting tools, but pushing the envelop is what defines startups and Kolkata based, Fusioncharts has launched of oomfo, an interactive charting tool.

oomfo brings all the animation and interactivity from FusionCharts, and also adds advanced charts like Pareto/Waterfall/Marimekko that PowerPoint doesn’t offer. The product offers live data charting and can be customized way more extensively than the PowerPoint charts.

oomfo is built in Microsoft VB6 and the charts are rendered using Adobe Flash. Features offered includes:

- Ability to control data/view: oomfo enables you to show which data set you are talking about in a pie chart during your presentation. Just click on it and it will slice out beautifully. You can even hide a series of data in a combination chart so you can focus on the others.

- Plot live data on your chart: If you are a sales manager and need to present your team’s figures to your boss every month, why create new charts with updated figures every single time? oomfo can can pull live data from any URL. Just get salesforce (or the CRM system you use) to send you this data in XML and let your charts know where the data will be coming from. Set it up once, use it forever without having to go back to your spread sheet. Use it for plotting marketing results, attendance numbers and even financial results.

If you need to talk about USP of the product, plotting live data is the answer. It’s a nifty tool for sales/marketing professionals.

- Portability+Customization: oomfo allows lot more customization options than Powerpoint and is highly portable. The most important part is that you can send the ppt to a colleague, who doesn’t need to have oomfo installed to view the charts (embedded as image). You can also export entire slides as webpages that work across all browsers, unlike PowerPoint’s export which works only on IE.

Watch this demo video of the product:

The product is still in beta, and is available for free download. Fusioncharts is looking at doing a commercial release later in the year.
Do give oomfo a spin and share your feedback with the team.
Recommended Video: Pallav Nadhani, founder of Fusioncharts shares the company journey:

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