58.com, China’s Craigslist, to go IPO in Nasdaq

Chinese classified site, 58.com, has filed for IPO in Nasdaq, according to local news.

 

The company was founded in late 2005, by Yao Jinbo, who previously founded the largest domain name exchange company in China and sold it. 58.com is modeled after Craigslist in the U.S.. It provides classified ads for flat rental, recruitment, second hand goods, selling car, restaurant, etc. Its services cover over 300 cities in China. Most of the ad are free. But it charges if the advertisers want their posts to appear in front of the listings.

Imitators Poping Up In China
Craigslist imitators started to mushroom in China in 2005, when the original classified site got famous in the U.S. Within a year, there were about 500 such websites in the country. “Many of them are portals for a particular region, such as Beijing, Shanghai, etc. They cover local news and events in their own cities or provinces,” said an industry insider, “As Craigslist proved popular, they started their own classified sections too.”

Apart from the regional portals, major Chinese Internet powerhouses also spotted the opportunity. Sina, Sohu and Netease, the country’s top three online portals, all started their classified sections in 2005. Tencent, which operates the country’s largest online chat platform, QQ, also started its own that year.

Consolidation After Overcompetition
Consolidation came in 2007. Lacking economies of scale to sell ads, many smaller sites had to close or tried to sell themselves to larger competitors. Even Tencent’s classified session did not survive.

“During 2007-2008, many competitors came to us saying that they could not go on anymore. If we wanted to, they could sell their sites to us at a bargain price,” said Baixing.com on its blog. X9898.com, a classified site that was quite famous at the time, switched business to do e-payments with fingerprint verification.

Baixing, started in Shanghai in March 2005, remains one of China’s leading classified sites. Other survivors include Ganji, 58.com, Koubei and eDeng. Of those, Ganji and 58.com are the largest. Ganji had 285 million page views in March 2010, followed by 58.com, with 272 million page views, according to comScore, a global marketing research firm. Baixing ranks third with 137 million page views.

A major difference from the original Craigslist model and its Chinese imitators is in sales. Out of the 500 staff Ganji has hired, about 200-300 work in its call center to cold-call companies to place ads with the site.

“Here it is China. No one will go online and place an ad on his or her own. This is the most effective way of getting sales,” said Mark Yang, CEO of Ganji and a Yale graduate, “Baidu (the country’s biggest Internet search company) is doing the same.”

Compared to Ganji, 58.com is probably even more aggressive. “Although Ganji is more popular, 58.com probably has higher revenue,” said the insider. “It has set up sales offices in 20 cities, while Ganji only has four.”

Besides of its headquarter in Beijing, 58.com has offices in over 20 cities in China.

“The Three Lows”
Most of 58.com and Ganji’s visitors are of the low income group. “We called them, the Three Lows. Low in age, in income and in education level,” said Mark, “They can found everything they want on Ganji. Job, place to live, second hand furnitures, etc.”

There are plenty of ads for house cleaning ladies, security guards, baby sitters, and so on. Ganji has secured a a major deal with US-based Wal-Mart, under which the supermarket chain will hire about 3,000 people per year through the classified site. Wal-Mart as of June 2010 operates in 99 cities in China, and “created over 50,000 job opportunities” across the country, according to the company’s website.

Related posts:

1. More Tencent Puzzle
2. Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom's interview in Asia Times
3. Feature: Jiayuan Founder Haiyan Gong: It’s Not For A NASDAQ Listing, It’s For The One.

Link to full article

Read More

Youth Entrepreneurship Symposium 2011 Networking Dinner – 10 Jun

Started in 2008, the Youth Entrepreneurs Symposium aims to create an exclusive event to reach out to the budding entrepreneurs from various junior colleges in Singapore. Similar to last year, The Youth Entrepreneurship Symposium 2011 (YES11) team would like to invite entrepreneurs to an exquisite dinner reception and networking session at the annual Youth Entrepreneurship Symposium. The symposium is organized by National Trade Union Congress (NTUC), NEBO Entrepreneurship Community. This year, there is an expected 320 participants and over 40 entrepreneurs attending the event including the likes of Mrs Nanz Chong, the founder of the former One-99 Chain store, Mr. Jimmy Wong, the co-founder of JF Lennon and Nicholas Chan, the founder of Azione Capital.

---

Event Details

---

When: Friday, 10 June 2011
Time: 6:00PM to 9:00PM
Venue: The Mochtar Riady Building Open Area (Level 1), NUS Business School. (Map)
Attire: Formal
For those interested, please RSVP at yes.eleven@gmail.com by 9 June, 5pm
Link to full article

Read More

ThoughtBuzz Raised SGD 500K From Plug and Play Singapore

ThoughtBuzz logo

Social media monitoring firm ThoughtBuzz has raised SGD500K (USD 380K) in funds under the Technology Incubation Scheme (TIS) from Plug and Play Singapore. Specializing in social media intelligence, ThoughtBuzz is able to sift through all the chatter on the world wide web, from Facebook, Twitter to news sites, to compile everything that is relevant to the client, analyse the sentiment of the comments and provide a detailed report on the insights gathered (read an interview with the team from two years ago).

Under the TIS initiative, The National Research Foundation (NRF) together with Plug and Play have come together to co-invest in select Singapore based high-tech start ups. Plug and Play is one of the seven incubators selected by NRF in 2010.

Thoughtbuzz is Plug and Play Singapore’s first investment.

Other players in this space with presence in Singapore include Brandtology (recently acquired by Media Monitors), JamiQ and Attentio.

If you want to learn more about funding (specifically angel funding options) in Singapore, you might want to read an Overview of Angel Investing in Singapore.

Link to full article

Read More

Shanghai Techyizu Announced its Startups Demo Day, June 18–19

The Shanghai-based organization, Techyizu will be hosting its first Demo Day on 18^th – 19^th June in Shanghai to heat up the local startup environment. Seven startups including AiMiFan, Rudy Bike, Tuiping.tk, MamaZuoFan, TraderAnalytics and VXPLO have been pre-selected and are going to present. 

The events will last two days:

Day 1: seven innovative tech start-ups are to present their minimally viable product to refine their demos via a closed session with selected mentors.

Day 2: the start-ups will have 15 minutes to present their demo to a judging panel of investors and entrepreneurs.

At the closed session, the selected start-ups will get to hear first-hand experience on start-up demos and fundraising from mentors as well as have the opportunity to work with all the mentors to improve their presentations.

Taking part in the Demo Day will offer you the opportunity of gaining access to the inspiring presentation of bright ideas and having contact with down-to-earth entrepreneurs. Click here to sign up now.

Related posts:

1. G-Startup Competition Prizes Announced, So Apply Now!
2. iWeekend Beijing Rocked!
3. Social Media Marketing is Hot in Shanghai

Link to full article

Read More

Pinkoi, Taiwan’s Etsy, Sells Local Design to the World

With everything converging towards being social, social-commerce is the new hot thing. Now that Chinese are savvy internet shoppers with cash to serve their lifestyle, social commerce is a great business to be in.

Originally incubated in Taiwanese Government organization, III, Pinkoi.com is a social e-commerce platform for designers and artists to sell their unique products.  While walking around a night market in Taipei sipping my bubble tea, I stumbled across small market stalls selling hand-made designer t-shirts, jewellery and lamp shades. It is these independent artists that Pinkoi aims to support in getting their products out to the world. This week, I talked with one of the co-founders, Peter Yen, to get the story behind Pinkoi.

Starting Pinkoi

Peter started Pinkoi when he was in his 4^th year at Yahoo as a software developer based in the Bay Area of San Franciso. In his spare time he would explore the Bay Area and other cities markets with his wife to scout out great designers. When he discovered Etsy.com, he found that it was the collection of quality designers he was looking for. As a native of Taiwan, Peter thought “there are so many designers in Taiwan, but no website focused on design.”

Launched in October 2010, Pinkoi focuses on two channels to sell designer goods; 1) B2C – designers sell directly to buyers where Pinkoi will take 10% on the sale price and 2) B2B – bigger design brands can sell their own inventory, where Pinkoi will manage the postage and take 35-45% on the sale price

The three pillars to Pinkoi: design, social and ecommerce.

• Design: 90% of the products are sourced locally from Taiwan, with the remaining coming from Taiwanese people based in the UK, US and Japan. Designers like to sell on Pinkoi where quality and uniqueness are the focus, compared to mass market platforms like Yahoo, Taobao compete on price.

• Social: “We are more social (with Facebook integration), which helps people make better decisions by following designers or what their friends are buying.” said Peter. Designers can use Facebook as a viral marketing tool, by embedding a link on Facebook to their Pinkoi storefront with one click; 45-50% traffic referred from Facebook.

• E-Commerce: Pinkoi has a standard procedure to review designers based on their engagement and activity on their fan page. “When we do accept a seller, they can go to the management panel and upload items in bulk, which only takes 25 seconds to upload.” To cater to a global audience, Pinkoi uses Paypal.

Art of the start: getting the first stores onto Pinkoi

“It was very challenging to get the first seed designers to join. But we personally went to meet every single designer and called every major design brands in Taiwan. We tried to sell them the story of Pinkoi, that is, supporting Taiwan’s local design talent to reach the world.” Said Peter.

To improve on visibility of the site, Pinkoi launched a design magazine in March to feature Taiwanese designers and get insight from opinion leaders and influential bloggers.

1 million units of transaction a month and growing, 95% from women

Pinkoi has seen impressive growth with over 300 designers and aiming for 700 by the end of the year, 3,100 unique products for sale, 4 million page views per month and 1 million transaction units per month. This is amazing, considering the small team and only launching in beta in October last year.

Women account for 95% and mainly consume shoes, bags, accessories and home décor. However, Peter mentioned that in the future they will steer Pinkoi to become more neutral and male friendly.

The vision to be the Asian market leader. Next stop – China

By the end of Q3 this year, they will release their mobile app which can be used to browse products and interact with the Pinkoi community. By end of Q4 this year, they will launch an English version to be more international.

Currently they are doing due diligence on the opportunity to enter the China market.

Currently closing an angel round of funding

As the growth trajectory of Pinkoi is promising, they have already received two offers for investment in January, but rejected it because it was deemed too early. Now they are at a stage ready to scale, so are now closing an angel round of investment and pursuing another institutional investment in Q3 or Q4.

Pinkoi now has a team of 6, consisting of engineers, designers and marketing and sales.

Related posts:

1. Creativ Culture – China’s Online T-Shirt Design Contest
2. Don’t Discount Taiwan Start-Ups, Here’s 7
3. When Technology Meets Design, It is Life

Link to full article

Read More

Kauffman FastTrac Program Goes Outside The US

As part of the iStart programme, the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) will be bringing the Kauffman FastTrac® entrepreneurial education program to Singapore – the first time it is conducted outside the US.

The FastTrac program includes these modules: Tech Venture and Growth Venture.

TechVenture modules are for technology and life science entrepreneurs. This module aims to teach participants how to bring business principles to technology: how to produce a product, build a company, and fulfill its vision.

Meanwhile the GrowthVenture module aims to help existing entrepreneurs improve their business. It focuses on several issues: critical decisions about business vision and strategy, investigating next-stage growth and opportunity, strategic growth plan, building and maintain a competitive advantage, lead with clarity, maximize cash flow for future profitability.

They target to start the class in July and end in August. These two modules will be executed by US MAC who are certified by Kauffman Foundation. There will be a cost of USD400 (SGD490) for each module.

Interested people should send an email to ida_startup@ida.gov.sg with the following details: Name, Email, Contact, Company (if any), and Module.

Link to full article

Read More

Internet Contributes 3.2% to India’s GDP [Report]

It is no secret that the Internet drives business growth, even for companies that have a mainly offline presence. The Internet has emerged as a major game changer for businesses world wide in the last 15 years. But just how big is this growth story? A recent report published by McKinsey suggests that it may be more important than initially thought and more importantly its still growing. The report focuses on 13 countries ( G8; India, China and Brazil representing the emerging markets ; Sweden and South Korea for their high internet penetration).  With the evolution of ICT world wide, the Internet will become an even stronger and far reaching platform for business.

Here’s why you need to be online.

The contribution of the Internet to GDP:

 

- The Internet has 3.4 % share of total GDP of the 13 countries that were studied. The share of the Internet in India with respect to its GDP is 3.2%, fairly close to the global average but still lower than it.

- Private consumption online is driven by purchase of goods and services by consumers through the Internet. India and China have the lowest Private consumption among the 13 countries.

- Trade Balance is the ( total export of goods, services and internet equipment along with B2C and B2B e-commerce)  minus ( internet related imports). The impact of the internet in India was powered by strong exports and contributed 47% to the Internet’s share in India’s GDP. 

- The spending by the government is the Public expenditure in the chart and you will see that the government spending accounts for only 5% of the Internet generated GDP.

The Internet supply ecosystem

- The most positive statistic that we get to see is the growth of the ecosystem in India. Also notable was China’s growth in this report.

- The most disappointing India related statistic is also in the above chart with India scoring a 0 in R&D investment for the future.

What drives the ecosystem?

Of the top 250 IT/Internet related companies in the world, 7  of them are Indian companies. They include Bharti Airtel, Infosys, HCl Technologies, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro Limited, Idea Cellular and Reliance Communications

Not surprisingly, software/services and telecom have the biggest revenue across sectors in India.

Indicators of the rise of India

Bangalore, according to the report, has managed to achieve a growth rate previously unseen anywhere in the world and get almost 200 new Internet industry related patents every year.

The challenge for India is to capitalize on the human resources available in the country. And ofcourse, Investment in infrastructure development is a must for India to fully realise its growth potential.

What’s your take on Internet growth in India? Will mobile drive the growth?

- The report can be found here (warning: it’s a long report).

---

» Are You An Entrepreneur Looking For Discounted Deals To Grow Your Business? Register For Pluggd.in's Deal Site.

---

Link to full article

Read More

Why I Believe “Apply with LinkedIn” Will Be Well Received By Employers

Title and resume inflation are the bane of most recruiters and hiring managers. Although it is an universally accepted fact that most candidates “lie somewhat” or “lie a lot” on their resume, its extremely difficult to sift the “blatant lie” from the “exaggerated lie”.

Which is why I am very positive on LinkedIn’s new announcement (link). They are offering a plug-in for employer websites called “Apply with LinkedIn”, which will allow job candidates to apply for available positions using their LinkedIn profiles as resumes.

Having a public, open profile with correct titles (still sometimes inflated) which your coworkers and HR professionals within your organization can view, leaves little room for misrepresentations.

I dont think this will remove the need for resumes, though since we still need a list of detailed accomplishments, which most people won’t post on LinkedIn. Many of these accomplishments will be company confidential in nature, which company officials will not be comfortable with candidates publishing online.

As an example, if a Marketing manager at a company says on their LinkedIn profile, she improved conversion rates by 23%, with publicly available information any competitor can determine the company’s (private) revenues and customer conversions.

Brings me to a question though:

If these detailed accomplishments are “company confidential” in the first place, why would companies allow for those to be on resumes? Is it only because companies cannot (or are not able to) review all their employee’s resumes?

What’s your take?

[Image credit]

---

» Are You An Entrepreneur Looking For Discounted Deals To Grow Your Business? Register For Pluggd.in's Deal Site.

---

Link to full article

Read More

Airtel Money Goes Live in Delhi NCR, Brings 2,200 Merchants Onboard

Airtel’s ambitious project, Airtel Money is now live in Delhi/NCR region enabling Airtel customers in Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad to pay via Airtel’s mobile wallet service.

In 2010, bharti airtel was granted the license to use the Semi Closed Wallet by the Reserve Bank of India (read: Airtel Gets RBI’s Nod for Mobile Payment Service [First Step to Mobile Currency]) and the company has added 2,200 merchants in Delhi/NCR (right from utility providers like NDPL, BSES Yamuna, BSES Rajdhani, Indraprastha Gas, LIC to organized retailers such as Easy Day, Chalchitra, Yo China, Costa Coffee, Hair n Shanti, DT Cinemas, Fun Cinemas among others as well as local chemists and grocery stores). airtel money customers will also receive exclusive offers (right now offers on the website are mostly from airtel, but do expect airtel to get into ‘deals’ to create awareness of the service).

Essentially, this is not a semi closed wallet service (as allowed by RBI) that enables you to add money, but not withdraw (instead, make payments/buy goods and services).

Where can you use airtel money?

• Load cash: Load cash on your airtel mobile by visiting your nearest airtel retail outlet [Minimum is Rs. 10, Maximum is Rs. 5,000 and monthly limit stands at Rs. 50, 000].
• Pay bills & recharge: You will be able to use this cash in your mobile for making bill payments (electricity, gas, financial services, etc.) and recharge – Limits same as above.
• Shop & make payments: Instead of cash, pay over-the-counter merchants such as your nearest kirana store, chemist, etc using your mobile phone. You can even sit at home and pay for services like booking movie tickets online.

How To use airtel money

• Register by filling in the application form and submitting KYC documents (2 photocopies of proof-of-identity, 1 copy of proof-of-address and a passport size photograph).
• After the above, your existing airtel SIM will be upgraded to the new 64K airtel SIM with airtel money
• Activate your airtel money account by choosing your MPIN.
• Load cash into your airtel money account by visiting your nearest airtel retailer
• You are now ready to send commands through the airtel money application on your phone!

Pricing/Charges

Airtel will charge a month subscription fee of Rs. 5/month and charges Rs. 5/payment.

Question to ponder: What happened to mChek partnership?

Also see: Nokia Launches Mobile Money Service in Chandigarh

---

» Are You An Entrepreneur Looking For Discounted Deals To Grow Your Business? Register For Pluggd.in's Deal Site.

---

Link to full article

Read More

Komli Media Acquires Aktiv Digital, Singapore Based Digital Media Company

Komli Media has announced the acquisition of Aktiv Digital, one of the largest and fastest growing digital media companies in Asia. The acquisition will enable Komli Media to get access to the leading advertisers and publishers in one of the fastest growing digital markets in the world and be the only ad network that can offer marketers and publishers a single marketing and monetization window across three of the largest and fastest growing markets in the region –India, South East Asia (SEA) and Australia.

Aktiv Digital has a consolidated platform for buying online media across its Premier, Target and Performance product suite that delivers single-site buys, content channels and a CPC and CPA performance based offering with re-targeting capabilities. Aktiv has been working with over 500 brands in the last 3 years across this platform.

The company plans to leverage its strength and expand into more markets in SEA and bring new product offerings to the market.

Komli recently raised $15mn (led by NVP) and acquired Indoor Media (UK based ethnic marketing company) and earlier, Australia basd PostClick.

---

» Are You An Entrepreneur Looking For Discounted Deals To Grow Your Business? Register For Pluggd.in's Deal Site.

---

Link to full article

Read More

Internet Contributes 3.2% to India’s GDP [Report]

It is no secret that the Internet drives business growth, even for companies that have a mainly offline presence. The Internet has emerged as a major game changer for businesses world wide in the last 15 years. But just how big is this growth story? A recent report published by McKinsey suggests that it may be more important than initially thought and more importantly its still growing. The report focuses on 13 countries ( G8; India, China and Brazil representing the emerging markets ; Sweden and South Korea for their high internet penetration).  With the evolution of ICT world wide, the Internet will become an even stronger and far reaching platform for business.

Here’s why you need to be online.

The contribution of the Internet to GDP:

 

- The Internet has 3.4 % share of total GDP of the 13 countries that were studied. The share of the Internet in India with respect to its GDP is 3.2%, fairly close to the global average but still lower than it.

- Private consumption online is driven by purchase of goods and services by consumers through the Internet. India and China have the lowest Private consumption among the 13 countries.

- Trade Balance is the ( total export of goods, services and internet equipment along with B2C and B2B e-commerce)  minus ( internet related imports). The impact of the internet in India was powered by strong exports and contributed 47% to the Internet’s share in India’s GDP. 

- The spending by the government is the Public expenditure in the chart and you will see that the government spending accounts for only 5% of the Internet generated GDP.

The Internet supply ecosystem

- The most positive statistic that we get to see is the growth of the ecosystem in India. Also notable was China’s growth in this report.

- The most disappointing India related statistic is also in the above chart with India scoring a 0 in R&D investment for the future.

What drives the ecosystem?

Of the top 250 IT/Internet related companies in the world, 7  of them are Indian companies. They include Bharti Airtel, Infosys, HCl Technologies, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro Limited, Idea Cellular and Reliance Communications

Not surprisingly, software/services and telecom have the biggest revenue across sectors in India.

Indicators of the rise of India

Bangalore, according to the report, has managed to achieve a growth rate previously unseen anywhere in the world and get almost 200 new Internet industry related patents every year.

The challenge for India is to capitalize on the human resources available in the country. And ofcourse, Investment in infrastructure development is a must for India to fully realise its growth potential.

What’s your take on Internet growth in India? Will mobile drive the growth?

- The report can be found here (warning: it’s a long report).

---

» Are You An Entrepreneur Looking For Discounted Deals To Grow Your Business? Register For Pluggd.in's Deal Site.

---

Link to full article

Read More