HTC China Head Ray Yam: Cloud Computing Extends Mobile User Experience

Ray Yam, HTC corporate VP and head of HTC Communication China, presented at the Collide: Powering The China Cloud Conference by TechNode, sharing his broad vision for HTC smartphone and profound insights into mobile cloud computing, which already is an integrated part of the unique experience of HTC smartphones that helps the Chinese android market late comer to stand out from the crowd and to catch up with Motorola and Samsung, two of its biggest competitors in China while Motorola holds an astonishing 50% of Chinese android smartphone market.

How could HTC attracts Chinese customers?

To some people’s surprise, there is a disparate array of competitors in many fields in terms of android phone market, computer vendors like Lenovo, telecom equipment manufacturers like HuaWei and ZTE, electrical appliance vendors such as TCL all tapped into the booming area.

According to Ray, HTC’s competitive edge is its perception and understanding of user experience. The company pays close attention to end users in order to understand the way how customers use smartphone which enables the giant mobile device vender to devise intriguing features and combine HTC Sense UI and experience to cater for customer’s tastes.

Limiting factor of cloud: hardware capability

Ray also highlighted that, before cloud computing is prevail, mobile phone has to count on its hardware capability to deliver limited and restricted function and experience. Realized the ubiquitous pitfalls, HTC launched HTCSense.com, its own mobile cloud computing platform and “an extension” of HTC smartphone, to address the concern. With the new hardware, bigger computing power was enabled, including unlimited memory, remote control and management of cellphone, ability to locate your lost phone, remotely upload your secret and important data to HTC cloud server before swiping it off, etc.

All these creative solutions are reliant on HTC’s own cloud computing initiative, which can help HTC stands out and attract more customers.

Strategy in succeeding as a late comer: embracing the e-commerce trends

HTC is well known as the late comer to Chinese smartphone market, which came to China last year, with less distribution capacity compared to Motorola, Samsung and other brands which have been diving into Chinese market for many many years. Ray said that HTC’s solution is embracing e-commerce trends. The company is launching its new official online shop, which is part of its “internet sales” strategy, based on which HTC is going to enhance its online presence with Taobao Mall (to be launch in mid-June), 360buy, Joyo(Amazon China), Gome online shop and Suning online Shop as well. HTC sees internet a more and more important distribution channel for smartphones. Ray told me that we’ll see an increase in HTC’s online marketing efforts as of this June.

On the other hand, HTC is expected to expand its offline sales locations from the currently 500 to 2,000 by the end of this year, in which some 100 of them will be HTC brand store.

HTC comes on stage mostly because of its cooperation with Google over GPhone serials and its aggressive moves in venturing into Android market, but actually, HTC to date is still the biggest partner of Microsoft regarding Windows Mobile system. With the release of brand new Windows Phone 7 mobile OS, Microsoft’s latest effort to take a slice in mobile market, HTC is also releasing Windows Phone 7 phones in Taiwan and Hong Kong area, while in mainland China, an release may rest with whether Windows Phone 7 supports China’s WAPI standard or not.

Related posts:

1. Cloud Nine for China’s Cloud Computing?
2. Microsoft China Director: Windows Phone Has Chance To Win in 3–5 Years in Mobile
3. ZTE Invests Thousands of Human Capital in Cloud Computing

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Hozom, Leaves Your Phone Contacts In The Cloud

Contact, is the key element in your social life; but when you save your contact on your phone, it never becomes ‘social’ again. Think about this, you want to call a friend but forget his number or the number saved on your phone is wrong, luckily you know someone who must have it. So usually what you do is call that guy asking for the number. It’s nothing wrong but it could be more efficient. What if we sync our phone contacts with a cloud system, so automatically the system can build up a huge social graph for everyone as it ‘knows’ who has who’s number.  And the interesting part is that whenever I need a contact, as long as my other friends has it, I can just send a simple request, and the system can even auto push the updated contact info back to me if it identifies there is an update. This is what we call Social Phone Contacts or Contacts in Cloud.  Applications like Kik are working on the similar direction, but obviously there is more you can do around the phone contacts.

I recently talked Liu Ziyang, CEO of Hozom, a social contact solution provider founded in 2008. Having been working on the phone contacts for over 3 years, Liu’s opinion on the social contact, I would say, is inspiring.

So what can we do with the contacts:

• contact management – you can sync your phone contacts with the cloud service so whenever you change your phone exporting/importing the contacts would be a big issue. More important, as we mentioned at the beginning of this post, your social graph is built up in the cloud, which enables you get in touch with someone who appears on your friends’ contact.
• messaging service – obviously, with your phone number you can subscribe to some news feeds, weather service etc via sms/mms. And since the contacts are stored in the cloud, of course you can even do group chat, just like Kik. As your phone number is the unique identity, you can even enjoy some add-on services, e.g. cloud storage (save your pictures in the cloud and the account is linked with your number);
• calling service – as the contacts, not just your personal contacts but also the phone numbers of the public service, are now online, your social life could be much easier. Need the number of a restaurant for reservation, no need to spend time on service like Yell or Dianpin, the cloud would be able to tell in second. No need to say that you can still take the advantage of the traditional Internet call service, such as VoIP.
• e-business card – we need others’ business cards because we need their phone number and emails. I would not say the business card business will die, but it has started changing. If I trust you, maybe you can just send a request to the cloud system, I approve it, then my contact info will be pushed to your phone. Location-based check-in service is hot because we love to meet in person, but looking at the virtual avatars is getting boring, you need the real contact, via the cloud.

“When you leave your phone contacts in the cloud, your social life could be much easier and efficient. ” This is what Liu Ziyang believes. Hozom is now available for Java, Symbian and Android system and the iOS version is coming soon. Hozom has been working on the cloud contacts management in past 3 years, and now is ready for the bigger picture. Liu said its Kik service, called Foncr has been quietly launched for a while.

I believe in the cloud contacts idea too. But what I am worried about is that when this concept is accepted by more users, how can Hozom as a startup, to compete with the big companies such as Android phone manufacturers.

Related posts:

1. Mobile, Is Not Just About Location
2. HiQQ, Tencent's Smart Phone Manufactured by Huawei
3. “Why not go to the Cloud?” Says ChinaNetCloud’s COO, James Eron

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CC is Evil, So Is Its First Cousin [Inbox Clutter]

[Notes from Ashish: Climbing Mt. Email has been a constant struggle for me and am in complete agreement with Grexit team, as most of the times I am cc’ed on email which are just meant as FYI and such emails simply add to the clutter. Read this interesting perspective and share your opinion.]

Well not all, but some of it definitely is. To know why we say that, lets dig into why we CC people on emails in the first place:

1) The “You must know this CC” – There is nothing wrong with this one. Example: I direct a question to someone in the To list, and put some people who can answer the question for find the answers immediately helpful in CC. This is done mostly when the people in CC might be able to add to what is being discussed, or might derive immediate benefit from what is being discussed. 

2) The “I just want to cover my back CC” – This is where it starts to get shady.  Example: The support team CCing their Head on every support email they respond to. The Head would probably not look at all the emails unless there is an exception and her attention is required. The people who are receiving the mail because they were in the CC list have nothing to add to the discussion, nor do they derive any direct immediate benefit out of being a part of the discussion.

3) The “You should probably know we talked about this CC” – This is the most evil of all CCs.  Example: In a team of 50 people, every member writing to everyone about what they are working on. People do this because, for good reasons or bad, they want everyone to be on the loop about whats going on. When its a 50 people team, it generates very serious clutter. If you open your work inbox in the morning and go through 50% of the email leaving them unread, you know what we’re talking about here.

CC, and its first cousin mailing lists are the prime culprits for a lot of the email clutter and overload we face today. But at the same time, there are reasons why they continue to exist and be heavily used and abused. We need to figure this out and find a solution to this. This would make a lot of people happy about the time the spend with their inbox.

What’s your opinion?

[Reproduced from Grexit’ blog]

Recommended Read: Communication Tips To Startups [Stop Sending Copy/Paste Emails] | Why Still Do an Email Startup?

Useful Resource: 101 on Email Marketing [Part 1/Introduction].

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App Stores report for April 2011 : Android market growing but failing to monetize apps

I think i speak for a majority of developers when they say that the Android platform is notoriously difficult to monetize. The growth that the platform’s application store, Android Market, has seen in the recent months has been quite phenomenal. But what the growing size of the market does not show are the volumes of downloads. Distimo published its report focused on the fragmented app stores scene that gives us a better understanding of download volumes for apps across app stores. Here’s what you should take away from the report.

Even though the Android Market is overrun by free apps, apps find visibility to be an issue. The most popular app till date on the Android Market is Google Maps. Interestingly, around 20% of the free apps available in the Android Market have not even clocked 100 downloads, the figures reveal that the majority (51.8%) of free applications have been downloaded less than 1,000 times to date.

The number of downloads for paid apps is worse. 80% of all paid applications have failed to get more than 100 downloads. Distimo speculates that this may be due to Google’s ranking policy for the market. Google gives more emphasis on apps that have been doing better for longer. This reveals why developers on the Android platform are turning towards ad based monetization of apps. Android Market sales have been disappointing for developers, there are 5 games in the Android Market that have been downloaded over 250,000 times worldwide, compare this with the Apple App Store and the Apple App Store emerges a clear favourite for developers with 10 games for iPhone clocking 250,000 downloads in just 2 months!

So what is it that drives downloads on the Apple App Store? Distimo believes its the number of apps that get featured as top apps. Looking at the top charts in April, there have been 843 and 584 distinct applications in the top 300 free and top 300 paid applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone. Comparatively, there have been only 388 and 363 distinct applications in the top 300 in the Google Android Market. These figures show that in the Apple App Store for iPhone, many more applications achieve top application exposure, and therefore generate more downloads.

Google recently announced additional lists to the online Android Market and introduced a bunch of welcome changes hoping to attract more downloads from users. The unchanging top apps list has given way to more lists that show more localised content and are frequently changing. But is this too little too late? With the growing unhappiness around the Android platform, is this the beginning of the end for Android? Next month’s report should shed more light on that.

This month’s report can be downloaded at http://www.distimo.com/publications/

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Nicofarre – Nico Nico Douga To Reincarnate Legendary Roppongi Disco

Nico Nico Douga, Japanese online movie sharing service which differentiates itself against YouTube with comments overlay-display, announced some news [J] at its first user conference in oversea, Taipei, Taiwan [zh].

One of the news is that Nico Nico Douga is planning to open a nightclub with 5 huge LED wallscreens with projecting its movies and user comments, named "Nicofarre" at Roppogi in July.

The name "Nicofarre" easily reminds Japanese people a nightclub "Velfarre", which was the Asian largest when opened in 1994, closed at the end of 2006. The new Nicofarre will use the exact same building where Velfarre was.

The teaser site has a movie. Someone copied onto YouTube,

Nicofarre might be a new tourist place where you can experience latest culture on Japanese web from this summer.

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“Why not go to the Cloud?” Says ChinaNetCloud’s COO, James Eron

At TechNode’s Collide: Powering the China Cloud Conference, I chatted with James Eron, the COO of ChinaNetCloud. The company specializes in server management and cloud Computing  for internet and game companies in China.

The cloud is the limit

The company now has over 50 staff and 150 clients so far with revenue growing 100% YOY,  showing the huge demand for cloud server management services. Although currently privately funded, they are now looking to raise US$3-5 million in a series A investment, according to CEO Steve Mushero.

ChinaNetCloud primarily focuses on Infrastructure as a service where Amazon in America and Alibaba in China are dominant players. “Effectively we give you a virtualized server system to put your application on and you can move it different clouds or providers, so it’s all on  an open platform.” said James.

China businesses should have servers in China

James believes for start-ups, cloud computing is great way to test things. But you should first find out if the servers are where you need them to be. If your users are in China, your cloud server should be in China, “an Amazon server in Singapore or Japan is not going to help you much.”  For companies starting out, James thinks the question has become “why not go to the cloud?”

Cloud computing is cheaper and more scalable

Cloud servers have the advantage of being typically cheaper than buying your own hardware.  Billing is often monthly or quarterly, so helps cash flow for a start-up. The cloud is also very flexible where you “you never have to buy more than you need.”

ChinaNetCloud is also able to create a private cloud by taking physical servers and create a cloud layer on top. The other benefit of cloud computing is its ability to scale at speed, typically from a few minutes for a public cloud to a few hours for a private cloud.

Cloud computing will only get bigger

More and more cloud services are being offered in China. James sees in the future, “it will be difficult to buy physical servers, because nearly everything will be moved to the cloud.” This is great for companies that want to convert hardware costs from a capital expense to more operational value adding expenditure.

Start-ups should consider server management early

When interviewing James, I got a great sense of his passion for start-ups and how willing he is to support them make early but critical decisions about how to set up a cloud management system. He shared some experiences where start-ups didn’t realize how important server management was to the performance of a sites traffic and ultimately the user experience. One case he remembers, led to a start-up losing a major deal because the site outage was too frequent. So if you’re a start-up, think about how this will impact you and plan early.

 

 

 

Related posts:

1. Cloud Nine for China’s Cloud Computing?
2. ZTE Invests Thousands of Human Capital in Cloud Computing
3. Thoughts on Amazon Web Service Expanding To Singapore And Asia

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Manage Your Hiring Process Smooooothly With RecruiterBox

Hiring is not so easy for startups/SMBs and while I certainly believe that recruiting is just like any other sales process, this Bangalore based startup, RecruiterBox is trying to change the game by building a very useful service for startups/SMBs.

Recruiterbox helps startups and small companies manage their hiring process better. Once you sign up, you can choose a site address (that is, http://<yourcompany>.recruiterbox.com) and start posting jobs.  There are quite a few nifty features that the product offers which makes it a super useful product for SMEs.

• The product gives you the ability to collaborate/add colleagues for a specific opening.
• Define Stages/Tracking the Hiring Funnel: Create buckets to track which candidates are at what stage of recruitment. You can also assign people for each stage. This is probably a god-send feature for senior executives who can simply look at the pipeline and can assign budget/track hiring progress. For HR, this helps them manage the entire interview process very well.
• Call to Actions: When you receive a CV, you are shown HTML preview of the CV (supports doc, docx, rtf and pdf format) you can define a ToDo, add relevant labels (php candidate, web designer etc etc) assign stage to the applicant – that is, contextual call-to-actions on the site. Very neatly done, I must say.
• Most importantly, Recruiterbox is a one-stop shop for recruitment process. Very few products really close the loop when it comes to a solution offering, and Recruiterbox surely does a neat job. Once you sign up, you get a site address, a unique email id and any email/CV that is sent to this id will automatically be added to your dashboard (and attachments will be uploaded). Similarly, you get a hosted career page which can be customized – you can customize the domain name (like companyname.com/careers) and even the look and feel. Across all your marketing channels (like Facebook page, blogs, other job boards), you can share the same email id/site address and all resumes/CVs will be hit your dashboard.
• UX – the site has a very simplified user experience (though navigation for managing settings needs to be relooked).

Overall, a neat product that has managed to grab customers like Groupon China and surely is a big story in making. Having said that, the product pricing is a bit startup unfriendly – $30/month for 5 openings, $50/month for 15 openings and $100/month for 40 openings (is number of openings really the right metric against pricing? It’s not, in my opinion).

Also, the Bangalore based startup is solving the process part (of hiring), though startups have a much bigger challenge in hiring (i.e. of reach/discovery) and I am not sure if startups are really the right customer base for this  (maybe, funded startups or SMEs?). That is, recruiterbox needs a better positioning statement vis-à-vis the target segment it is going after.

QnA With The Team

Here is a quick QnA with Raj Sheth, cofounder of RecruiterBox

You are solving the ‘process’ part, so this may not be so relevant to startups (who need more discovery/outreach). What’s your take? Isn’t this a solution for big companies (who struggle to keep up with CVs/tracking updates)?

Our target market is companies less than 200 employees (hiring startups included) that currently use email and excel sheets to manage their hiring. Startups can save time by first publishing their opening on social media through recruiterbox, and then receiving all applications directly into our system (from their career page, job boards and other places). This is one of our main features – the auto-forwarding of “by opening” applications to the system. Startups would usually not go for any solution at all, but our price and simplicity is leading to traction within this base (examples – hashcube and beevolve (India), Cloudscaling and Blue Mountain Labs (US), Groupon China are all customers).

Big companies use enterprise solutions which have other HR functions in it (like approvals etc). So we are not pitching to companies with 200+ employees.

The target market is surely not India (alone). How do you plan to reach out?

Yes, target market is US and Europe in addition to India. 70% of our current user base is international. We are currently reaching out to these folks through listings/advertising on Google App Marketplace, Capterra.com, Getapp.com and a few other app stores. In addition, we are actively writing blogs and publishing to HR sites, we have an adwords campaign, and participate in startup events. We are currently trying to gain more press in the US and tie up with certain sites/partners. There are 3MM small businesses on google apps alone which are potential customers.

Integration with existing HRMS products? Is that on your roadmap?

Recruiterbox is a stand-alone application (works well with all current processes at small companies), but no other integration planned yet.

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Do give Recruiterbox a spin and share your comments/feedback with the team.

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30th May, Augmented Reality Coming to Shanghai

We are happy to announce that TechNode partners with MobileMonday Shanghai to hold the first Augmented Reality event in Shanghai at Monday 30th May, 7-10pm, at Kathleen’s 5 restaurant and Bar.

Four cool AR companies from Japan, Singapore and China will come to present their AR technology and discuss the business opportunities behind the AR:

- Allen Lu | President | Senscape
Senscape targets the Chinese market with their AR platform and rich local business information.

- Philippe Depassorio | VP of APAC | Total Immersion
Total Immersion is the earliest mover in the industry. VC-backed provider of Augmented Reality solutions for brands and developers.

Total Immersion will be accompanied by Open-Groupe, represented by their China MD and President, Laurent Levy. Open-Groupe is a Partner of Total Immersion. Open-Groupe

- Kazumasa Morikawa | Co-Founder and CEO | Qoncept
Qoncept is advancing in vision-based AR and markerless AR technologies and brought to us with impressive service demonstrations.

- Takasak Hiroki | Producer @ Communication Design Center | Dentsu
As the producer of iButterfly, DENTSU INC. maintains the top share in the Japanese advertising market, which accounts for 10.1% of the global market.

MoMo Cost: 100 RMB payable at the door includes 2 beverages and canapes. All attendees MUST pre-register.

Location: Kathleen’s 5 – Shanghai
5th Floor Shanghai Art Museum
 325 Nanjing West Road (opposite the JW Marriott hotel, cross street Huangpi Nan Lu).
Tel: 63272221 Map: http://www.kathleens5.com.cn/map.php

Related posts:

1. Announce the First Augmented Reality Demo Event in China
2. China is Catching Up With Augmented Reality
3. BreezeLiving Is Now the Best Augmented Reality Application in China

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Events For The Week – 28 May-4 Jun

For a one-stop to all events related to or concerning entrepreneurship, certain industry-meets-business forums and seminars in Singapore, check out our Calendar. If not, you can also follow our bite-size updated posts for upcoming events for the week.

Events range from simple get-togethers to full-blown conferences. Get to meet fellow developers, entrepreneurs, startup CEOs & founders, and meet & learn from CEOs of established companies who have seen it all.

Our aim here at SGE is to make it easy for you to pick & choose from the event buffet. Enjoy.

Here are the events for this week. Events are mostly in Singapore (generally 30 minutes drive from anywhere), but we also include key events from around Southeast Asia and beyond.

Mon 30th May-Thurs 2nd June:

(1) Cloud Asia 2011

Mon 30th May:

(1) Twittamentary Singapore Beta Screening

Wed 1st Jun:

(1) Network at Entrepreneurs’ Corner

Fri 3rd Jun:

(1) AWS 101 Cloud Computing Seminar
(2) Entrepreneur Mastermind
(3) BuzzCity Developer Garage

Image courtesy of joyosity.

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Innovation Works Wang Hua: From Imitation to Innovation

Since its founding, Innovation Works has been entangled with harsh criticisms over its “follow suit strategies”. Wang Hua, co-founder of Innovation Works commented on that and introduced the Chinese incubator’s tastes for projects and entrepreneurs.

At the 7^th ChinICT “Tech Stars in China” Conference, when asked about criticisms from the outside world over its projects DianDian (like Tumblr) and ZhiHu (like Quora) copying their foreign counterparts Tumblr and Quora, Wang said that “I’m not defending” but we chose those projects from the points of investment and user needs. Innovation Works is not going to interfere with the project direction as long as the team has chosen the right one. So it’s up to the team to decide the direction and vision. It there already is something innovative in existence, one can refer to them. If not, one can be innovative then. Many creative and successful companies started their business with imitation before being innovative and outstripped their rivals, including QQ and Google, Wang remarked.

As for how Innovation Works pick up projects, Wang said that actually the famous Chinese concept accelerator doesn’t go through business plan – which would be a big surprise to entrepreneurs who spend lots of time polishing their business plans – rather it put more focus on the main direction and team members. “We’re inclined to invest in teams with 2-3 co-founders.” said Wang Hua. Chinese startup arena is facing more fierce rivalry compared to 10 years ago.

There are three things Innovation Works would pay much attention to before deciding on any deal:

1) Find out whether the founder has clear thinking, knows one’s own strengths and weaknesses.

2) Attach much importance to is executive force.

3) The team members.

According to Wang, Innovation Works has a preference for mobile internet, ecommerce and cloud computing at its founding, while mobile internet attracts most of its attention. Startups with prosperous direction, disruptive products, potential of becoming billion-dollar business are all on its menu.

YCombinator, the American counterpart of Innovation Works, prefer to invest projects which were founded by twentysomething, while Wang said, their hand-picked project founders aged from 20 to 40. Innovation Works to date has invested over 30 startups in China, including Wangdoujia, UMeng and the controversial Diandian and Zhihu.

Related posts:

1. Innovation Works – Revisit
2. Rumor v2: Kaifu Lee Is To Launch Innovation-Works
3. Innovation Works or Shanzhai Works

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DEMO Asia Launch Packages Revealed

When we wrote about DEMO coming to Singapore with DEMO Asia (ex-China), there was a huge buzz. Produced primarily in the US, DEMO is a conference that focuses on launching new technologies and products.

Some of the innovations that were launched at past DEMO events have become well-known brands. These include Adobe Acrobat, Skype Mobile and Sun Microsystems’ Java, among others.

This November 2011, DEMO Asia will happen in Singapore to be co-organized and produced by IDG Enterprise, VentureBeat (the two original producers of DEMO) and Singapore’s
Sphere Exhibits. Singapore is the second country in Asia to host a DEMO event, after China.

Prior to yesterday’s Preview event / press conference at Marina Bay Sands, details regarding launching at DEMO Asia were not firmed up. Fees to demo at DEMO have been famously high such that questions were being thrown around by startups as to whether it would follow the price point of DEMO US or localized. Here we have the details of the launch packages and more information on scholarships:

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OFFERED PACKAGES

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Launch Package

Get the crucial 6 minutes on stage to demonstrate your product. The key here you need to remember is that no powerpoint slides are allowed and when in doubt, opt for a bit of drama. Check out videos of past pitches at the DEMO USA editions.

Demonstrators at DEMO receive the following benefits:

Pre-DEMO: Personal Presentation Coaching, Technical Expertise and Product Rehearsals, PR Training and many more.
During the DEMO Conference: 6 minutes product launch video, Company profile and product descirption in DEMO online program guide, Invitation to CEO and CIO dinner, Behind the scenes interview broadcast on DEMO.com and throughout IDG media network, Chance to win People’s Choice, Million Dollar Media Prize, and many more
Post-DEMO: Unlimited hosting of demonstrator microsite on DEMO.com, Post-event promotion of launch video across IDG global website network, Invitation to all DEMO alumni regional events, and Discount on sponsorships and advertisting across all IDG media properties.

COST: SGD 15K (USD 12K)

APPLY HERE.

Showcase Sponsorship Proposal

This package is for companies not launching a product at DEMO but looking for access to the conference and the opportunity to exhibit at the DEMO pavilion. Here are the benefits:

- Supplied kiosk in DEMO pavilion with signage.
- 2 full conference passes (value SGD 1500 each).
- Social media program designed to generate exposure beyond the event. Three – minutes video interview created and posted on DEMO.com.
- Online company profile page, including logo and media assets posted on “showcase sponsorship” page on DEMO.com.
- Logo on digital slideshow in general session.

COST: SGD 6K (USD 4.8K)

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SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM

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The DEMO Scholarship Partner Program will feature a total of 20 full scholarships for bootstrapped companies, of which a minimum of four will be dedicated to women entrepreneurs; 10 partial scholarships for angel-funded companies and 10 full scholarships for the Alpha Pitch for college students. Here is the breakdown from the materials given to us by the DEMO team:

Women Entrepreneurs

DEMO had the pleasure of introducing this scholarship dedicated to women in technology at DEMO Spring, hand-in-hand with the Startup America Partnership, IDG and the Kauffman Foundation to support a scholarship for four companies with female CEO’s.

Bootstrapped Companies

DEMO will offer full scholarships for a limited number of companies ready to launch their product. These companies will have raised no more than USD $500K in funding.

Angel-Funded Companies

Partial scholarships will be provided to 10 companies that have received same angel funding but not in excess of USD $1.5M.

College Alpha Program

DEMO will also award innovation coming out of America’s finest colleges and universities. Full scholarship will be provided to 10 deserving individuals or groups that have meaningful new technologies that are deserving of presentation to the worldwide, elite audience that DEMO brings. Each individual and/or group applying for it must be pre-revenue and have received no more than a seed around of funding (<$500K).

Companies selected to participate will be given:
- Ninety second pitch to the entire DEMO audience in the general session ballroom.
- Kiosk space in the DEMO pavilion
- Two passes to attend DEMO
- One pass to the CEO/Dealmaker’s dinner
- Signage and internet connectivity in the DEMO pavilion
- Extensive promotional support on site and after the event on DEMO.com
- Video of pitch posted on DEMO.com.sg

AARP

AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that helps people 50 and over improve the quality of their lives. DEMO will offer scholarships to two companies that serve the 50+ market.

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SOME DEMO ALUMNI

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Singapore companies which have launched at DEMO include Foound (on SGE) (Fall 2010 alumnus), GoToCamera (on SGE) (Fall 2010 alumnus) and FetchFans (Spring 2011 alumnus).

Check out their 6-minute DEMO pitches:

Foound

GoToCamera

FetchFans

If you need more convincing, IDG Enterprise‘s Neal Silverman and VentureBeat‘s Matt Marshell took us through DEMO’s track record yesterday at Marina Bay Sands:

“During the last 5 years’ of DEMO events held in the United States, 92% of participants secured funding within 9 months of taking part in a DEMO launch; while 62% of participants received more USD 1M in funds from angel investors and venture capitalists. More than 50 companies taking part in DEMO events were either acquired or went into collaborations with some of the biggest technology companies such as Google, Microsoft, Nokia and Symantec, among others.”

For more on DEMO Asia 2011, you could check back at DEMO.com.sg (not yet launched) or here at SGE.

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Exclusively.in Raises $16 Million

Flash sales site, Exclusively.in raised $2.8 million in November, 2010 and the company has now raised $16 million, led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from Accel Partners India and Helion Venture Partners.

The site offers new sales every day featuring unique items such as inspired jewelry and intricately embroidered contemporary clothing for men, women and children, bejeweled accessories like handbags and clutches, in addition to ethnic selections – like saris and luxury Indian bridal wear. Travel deals at top Indian luxury hotels, exquisite home décor pieces and limited edition art collections, photography and collectibles can also be found on Exclusively.In.

The NCR based company has started operations in UK and plans to use the funding for new market expansion/merchandizing mix.

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