LiveJournal Appoints Tickled Media To Launch Southeast Asia Portals

LiveJournal just announced that they have appointed Singapore-based digital publishing house, Tickled Media to be their official representative in Southeast Asia and India. Tickled Media is behind properties like TheAsianParent, Singapore’s largest online parenting magazine.

Tickled Media’s role will be to create local country homepages for LiveJournal in Southeast Asia just like how there is LiveJournal.com and LiveJournal.ru:

LiveJournal.com

LiveJournal.ru

As part of the agreement, Tickled Media will also create a local sales presence.

Originally a journaling network, LiveJournal morphed into community-driven destination sites. Today, Singapore is LiveJournal’s fifth largest market by audience, attracting over 1M unique visitors a month from Singapore – a fifth of Singapore’s population.

According to Roshni Mahtani, Managing Director of Tickled Media, “Apart from being a popular mainstream blogging platform, LiveJournal is the portal of choice for female blogshop owners”. These Singapore users are using LiveJournal for “sprees” or “flea (markets)”. Such social shopping communities are where users can take part in bulk purchases and mass orders or buy second-hand items.

LiveJournal’s parent company is SUP Media, based in Moscow (Russia) and San Francisco (USA). Annelis Van Den Belt, CEO of SUP Media sees Asia as its “next big market” as social media is “experiencing tremendous growth”. She continues, “Partnering with Tickled Media with their local online expertise and strong advertiser relationships offers LiveJournal the ideal platform to expand our presence and have a competitive edge in the region.”

Running multiple localized sites of a brand is not new to Tickled Media, having seen much success with its flagship Singapore property, that TheAsianParent.com expanded to India and Indonesia more than a year ago. TheAsianParent Philippines also followed.

TheAsianParent Singapore.

TheAsianParent India

Tickled Media is supported by Tigris Capital and also handles online campaigns for both local and multinational companies in the region such as Nestlé, Pfizer and PropertyGuru.

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Computex 2011, Chinese Tablets and the Chicken and the Egg Effect

[This post is written by our guest editor: Tim “Tai-Pan” Brown, the editor in chief of the English language Chinese gadget blog Shanzai.com]

While Android OS based tablet hardware is starting to slowly gain traction in the market place, the apps written specifically for tablets are moving even slower. Theoretically though; as more and more tablets get into consumers hands, developers will have more reasons to create tablet specific apps. Which begs the question: Is China in a “chicken and the egg” stage where developers are waiting for more tablets to hit the market before they start developing their tablet apps?

Well if you’re a Chinese application developer or business I can tell you after roaming the halls of Computex last week in Taipei Taiwan and visiting with over 30 different Chinese tablet manufactures and major ARM processor licensees that the tablets have already arrived.  We’re getting credible reports sizing the Chinese tablet market at around 2 million units per quarter presently with growth up to 11 million units per year over the next couple of years.

Most of the tablets we checked out are running either Android 2.2 or 2.3 now and several venders are claiming as early as July we’ll be seeing Chinese tablets running Android 3.0… although others say this will happen more realistically around the October time frame. Developers take heed.

Related posts:

1. The Falling of (Some of) Chinese Android App Stores
2. Tablet Mania! Opportunity for Developers
3. Only 2.1% of Chinese Mobile Developers Plan Working on Symbian Platform, Says 2011 Chinese Mobile App Developers Report

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TiSiWi, the Hangzhou-based Y-Combinator Announced Its Accelerator Program

Pang Xiaowei, founded the Chinese leading retail business portal Linkshop back in 2001. In 2004, Pang invested Edushi which offers web business solution for enterprise customers; He left Edushi in the year of 2009 and started TiSiWi, the startup incubator (Y Combinator-liker) at the end of 2010 in Hangzhou.

In the email Pang wrote to me, he said, “the accelerator program is inspired by Y Combinator which I really respect. I hope TiSiWi to have the same success in China.” Any startup (with no more than 4 people) can now submit its project to TiSiWi and the deadline is set to 15th July. The project plans will be carefully reviewed by TiSiWi team, and the accepted project owners at this stage will be interviewed by phone for the second round. During the 25th to 30th July, the startups pass the second round (30 startups expected) will be invited to Hangzhou to present their project to the TiSiWi in person. 15 startups are expected to join the accelerator program in the end. They are required to stay in Hangzhou for 3 months fully focusing on their ideas, and there will be a Demo day in the end of October when the startups are given to chance to present their work to investors/VCs.

The famous Beijing-based startup incubator Innovation Works also runs its own accelerator program. Pang said in his email,

Y Combinator invests $20,000 to each accepted startup and takes around 7% company share; Innovation Works invests rmb 150k and takes 10% share; TiSiWi is to invest rmb 200k (~$30,000) on each selected startup and takes 8% share which is a better offer for startups.

A number of well-known local entrepreneurs such as the founders of Douban, Baixin etc will be invited as mentors for the startups. At the Demo day, the startups will pitch their product to famous VCs including Matrix Partners, MorningSide Venture, Gobi Venture etc for further fundraising.

China is not lacking of money in the startup ecosystem. What we do need is more startup incubators like TiSiWi which is able to educate the startups in an efficient and professional way.

Related posts:

1. G-Startup Competition Prizes Announced, So Apply Now!
2. Y Combinator Application Questions
3. Dalian-based Startup Accelerator, Chinaccelerator Launches Six Startups in Beijing

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Youtube India To Show Block Buster Movie Every Month [For Free]

Youtube India has launched blockbuster microsite that will show 1 blockbuster movie every month for free . The channel is currently running Band Baaja Baaraat and is sponsored by Intel (i.e. is not ad-free).

Earlier, Youtube showcase live budget reporting and  has dedicated channels for partners like CNBC in India.

Also, Striker was the first Indian movie to debut on Youtube, though 3idiots was announced for a release on Youtube, but the same never happened.

Quite a coincidence that we had an article today that talked about the State of Online Video Industry in India and delved into the need for content network to aggregate content across categories multiple quality content owners.

Will Youtube drive that in India? That is, be the aggregator that brings fresh content (from Bollywood, Events etc) to viewers and monetize by ads (premium pricing)?

Also read: Google Complied to 50% Content Removal Requests from Indian Government

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Third-Party Online Payment Services Got Licenses, Finally

This post was submitted by our contributor Kathy Yang, who was a former project engineer at Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Group. She’s interested in Web and mobile products, with hundreds of articles introducing Silicon Valley products/services published on QQ.com, the Tencent portal. Now she is introducing Chinese technological progress and development to the rest of the world.

The People’s Bank of China（China’s central bank）has finally granted licenses to the first batch of 27 third-party online payment services on May 26, allowing them to continuously run online payment services, while 5 other applicants (including Union Mobile Pay and Fuiou) were rejected.

 

The lucky ones includes Alipay(a unit of Alibaba Group which owns the largest Chinese B2C platform Alibaba.com), Tencent’s Tenpay, 99bill.com and Shenpay(owned by Shanda).

According to Administrative Measures for the Payment Services Provided by Non-Bank Financial Institutions, a local law aiming at consolidates Chinese online payment market, which came into force as of September 1, 2010, all third-party online payment services have to obtain a new business license from the People’s Bank of China by August 31, 2011, otherwise they are not allowed to continue their business.

Granting of licenses transforming markets

99bill CEO Guoguang Guan once commented that the introduction of payment licenses would bring 3 major changes into Chinese online payment area:

1) With central bank officially confirming the legitimacy of non-bank financials, more investment would flow into this sector;

2) Knowing who is the regulator would significantly stimulate innovation and attract more players;

3) Talents would flock into this sector more rapidly.

An analyst from marketing consulting company iResearch agreed that, payment licenses would transform the sector profoundly: fierce competition in high-concentrated online payment market might be broken up and the initial batch of lucky guys could benefit a lot from this preemptive opportunity.

 

But some famous bloggers had different thoughts. They say this sector which has been running for nearly ten years is quite mature and very competitive, granting payment licenses might bring less changes than some people thought. In addition, those 27 companies might not be so lucky, since they would be “dancing with shackles on” from now on.

 

Third-party payment services vs. commercial banks

 

After getting the license, Alipay vice president Zhiming Fan told media that “Alipay will continue to focus on online payments, while invest more in moblie payment service.” He also insisted that  Alipay “will only provide platform. we are infrastructure and platform provider. There is no plan to issue credit card or provide bank services.”

 

Some observers commented that commercial banks and third-party online payment services were complementary to each other over the last decade, but the competition between them might grow, and that was why Zhiming Fan especially emphasized Alipay has no plan to “provide bank service.”

 

China’s online payment market totaled RMB 397.3 billion (US$ 61.3 billion) in Q1 2011, with Alipay owning 45.5 percent of the market, Tenpay’s 20.3 percent and China UnionPay’s 11.7 percent.

 

Related posts:

1. 17 companies apply for Third Party Payment licence
2. Rumor: China To Issue Online Payment License Next Week
3. Chinese Central Bank Announce Details for Third Party Payment Licence

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A Startup Roots Speaker Teaser With Derek Sivers

This Thursday, the Startup Roots Speaker Series will have as speaker Derek Sivers, founder of former president of CD Baby. One of the people behind it, Neoteny Labs’ James Chan, had a chance to interview Derek Sivers by email.

James Chan writes:

Our 3rd speaker for the Startup Roots Speaker Series is Derek Sivers, who is best known for being the founder and former president of CD Baby. RSVP your attendance if you haven’t already.

As usual, the talk will begin this Thursday at 7:00pm at Hackerspace.SG. The Startup Roots Singapore Summer Fellows will be having their own Q&A session with Derek at 6:30pm, but everyone’s welcomed to sit around and listen in. We’ve made the switch from Eventbrite to FlickEvents in support of local startups (thanks @ruiwen for the reminder).

I invited Derek to speak because I believe our Summer Fellows will be equally intrigued as I was about the man – professional musician and clown turned software engineer and philanthropist. Just like Joi Ito and Carl Coryell-Martin, I believe our students will come to learn plenty from Derek’s wisdom and experiences.

And here’s my email conversation with Derek today.

Derek, I first met you when you were contemplating moving to Singapore. How did that come about? What prompted you to decide that Singapore was it?

I’m a Singapore Permanent Resident now. I’m here for good. This is home. So many reasons like location and laws, but really it comes down to the people. I’ve been so impressed with the people here. I love the cultural hybrid. Whenever we’re in a group, you look around the table, and it’s usually 1-2 people each from Singapore, India, Vietnam or Philippines, Malaysia, Europe, and U.S. I love the diversity of perspectives. I love that nobody comes to Singapore to be lazy. Everyone is quite driven and smart. Well, at least in my circles.

If you had to describe Singapore with three words, what would it be?

I don’t really feel qualified to say, yet. I have so much to learn. There’s so much under the surface. But on first impressions: Optimized, Driven, Future-Focused.

What will your talk be about?

The lessons I learned during my 10 years of starting CD Baby, then growing it and selling it. Instead of just telling my tales, I focus on the lessons distilled from this experience. Lessons that anyone can apply to their own business. I learned these the hard way from experience and doing many things wrong. So I share them to help prevent others from making the same mistakes.

Your success with CD Baby is well-known by many. Instead, let me ask you about your trials and tribulations. Can you tell us about the failure that taught you the most?

Well the fact that I had to sell CD Baby is actually a huge failure on my part. I was such a bad manager in the end that I completely destroyed the relationships with my employees. I sold because I had to. So the lesson from my biggest failure is to always guard the culture inside your company. If the culture gets corrupt, it’s almost irreversible.

Last question from a foodie (me), before I let you go. What is your favourite local delicacy?

Salad Stop. Sorry, I know that’s a horrible thing to say. I just prefer fresh sprouts, nuts, fruits, seeds, beans, veggies, etc. A health researcher I really admire has a great rule-of-thumb: ”If man made it, don’t eat it.” Does this mean I lose my Singapore PR status? If so, I’ll just be diplomatic and say Chili Crab, like everyone else.

And there you have it – Derek Sivers himself. Do come up and say hi to him after his talk this Thursday. Be there or be square!

Editor’s Note: This post has been republished with permission.

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Tencent Launched Its Instagram-like Photo-sharing App, Q Pai

Tencent has launched its photo taking and sharing app Q Pai  today. Very similar with Instagram and many other China local products, Q Pai users can snap photos of moments in their life, choose from ten filters to process their images and one-key click to share it. Moreover, it is seamless integrated with Qzone and Tencent Weibo.

Simply login to my QQ account, it takes me no second to publish my photos, then just wait for the comments from QQ friends. Without logging in, users can still take pictures and use  filters, then save the images in their mobile phones. Currently, Q Pai only support iPhone system.

Launched only for a day, Q Pai has already gained positive remarks from QQ users after tried out. “Q pai feels good, another localized product!” “Q Pai bring us together again…” Based on Tencent’s impressive user base, we probably wouldn’t need to worry about its Q Pai users.

Q Pai download address: http://itunes.apple.com/cn/app/id430791218?mt=8

Related posts:

1. Eight Chinese Instagram-like Photosharing Apps
2. Tuding User Statistics – Photo, Weibo, LBS. What’s Next?
3. Dingzai, the Mobile Photo-Sharing Application Raised Another $1.5Millions

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Paypal’s X.com Puts Money in the Cloud

At our recent Collide Conference, Michael Zhao, Director of Paypal China talked about helping people make transactions over the cloud. I asked him specifically about their new aptly named product, X.com which allows developers to define how payments are made.

Of course when we normally think about transactions, it is usually the receiver who asks for money. But Paypal’s X.com initiative aims to make it more open and fledible by allowing developers and merchants to use the library of APIs and SDKs.

Here are some interesting use cases:

• Senders can make payments to receivers, rather than just the receiver asking for the money – useful for when you need to pay someone but you don’t want to use cash or credit card
• Chained payments allow money to go from person A to B to C – useful for when you need to pay people in a supply chain
• Split payments allow you to split a bill between multiple people, handy for those large restaurant dinners or  shared rent

Some examples from their websites show companies like ODesk, a marketplace for freelancers using X.com for crowd-sourcing and disbursements; Indigogo, a platform for fundraising for ideas and projects using it for fundraising and charitable donations and Wooga, a Facebook game developer to sell digital goods.

Although not as popular in China as Alipay, due to their international strength in supporting 191 countries and 24 currencies, “Paypal is focusing on cross-border transactions, especially for Chinese companies to export their goods and software outside China and more recently businesses to import into China” Says Michael.

X.com also supports mobile payments in Android and iOS.

 

Related posts:

1. Highlights From the Collide Speakers Remarks: Cloud Will Be Infrastructure
2. GMIC – The Money Side of Things
3. Taobao's Open Platform Is Unique, It Is For The Real Money

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Impact of Alumni Entrepreneurship: Evidence from MIT and Tsinghua – 21 Jun

This 21st June, the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre will bring Chuck Eesley, faculty member of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program to speak about “The impact of Alumni Entrepreneurship: Evidence from MIT and Tsinghua University”. NUS Entrepreneurship Centre is responsible for NUS Entreprise’s drive to provide opportunities for experiential learning of entrepreneurship within the NUS community. It reaches out to entrepreneurs and business executives by providing continuous learning programmes and courses.

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About The Speaker

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Chuck Eesley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University and a faculty member at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. Before Stanford, he earned his Ph.D. at the MIT Sloan School of Management. While an undergraduate at Duke he cofounded Sun Dance Genetics, and won their business plan competition with a biotech corn start-up, listed on Fortune small business. Since then he has worked in a Duke neuroscience lab, started a biotech consulting firm, worked with numerous pharmaceutical companies and two venture capital firms and mentored startups in the MIT 100K and Clean Energy competitions. His research appears in Strategic Management Journal, Research Policy and the Journal of Economics & Management Strategy. Prior to MIT, he worked at the Duke University Medical Center, publishing in medical journals and in textbooks on cognition in schizophrenia.

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Event Details

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When: Tuesday, 21th June 2011
Time: 615pm-8pm
Where: NUS University Hall auditorium, Lee Kong Chian Wing Level 2, 21 Lower Kent Ridge Rd (Map)
Register here.
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Who Wants A Free Incorporation Service in India? [DealsForStartups]

Raise your hand if you are an entrepreneur and want free incorporation service in India!! (helps in bootstrapping!).

Oh well, Pluggd.in’s deal site is live now and the second deal gets you free incorporation that saves you Rs. 15,000/ (via PaperKlips, a Pluggd.in’s sponsor]

» For more details, hop to our deal site.

Second Deal?

Qn: You mentioned ‘second deal’ and I see only one deal on the site!

Ans: Well, we pushed the first deal last Friday (June 3rd) – it was an introductory deal that gave startups free access to our job site, PiStart.com (Rs. 1000/ worth discount coupon) – that is, we ate our own dog food!

You probably didn’t get to hear about the first deal, as you weren’t subscribed to the email newsletter. Importantly,, the deal was live only for 3 hours (time-bound). Going forward, email subscribers will be the first ones to get access to a deal – so do register with your email id.

In cases where there is limited supply, deals will be shared only with email subscribers – so register now.

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State of Online Video Industry in India [Video Ad Inventory Is Sold As Display Ad Inventory]

[Editorial Notes: Guest article by Subbu Murugan of Ventunotech. Subbu shares his perspective on the state of online video industry in India.]

It’s apparent from the picture below that one of the main issues with the state of online video in India is that Indians don’t consume as much content as their counterparts in the US. The reason usually attributed to this is that the internet penetration is very low. India has 100 million internet connections and is the 3^rd largest internet population in the world next to China and US! However, out of this 100 million, 40 million come from mobile and within the 60 million online, actives are only 30 million. The main reasons for lower consumption of videos are also because

• Availability of quality video content
• Few sites in India provide video content

The reasons for lack of quality content online, both short and long form, is due to fact that there are limited monetization avenues and distribution/syndication mechanisms for video content are very limited today in India.

Although there are many video ad networks, their ability to give good inventory fills and yields are suspect. The main reasons for the same are

• They are trying to get ad budgets allocated from digital spends as opposed to TV spends
• Because of the above mentioned reason they end up selling video ad inventory like a display ad inventory
• They are limited to getting ads to one geography today i.e., if it’s an Indian ad network you would get ads only for India.

This monetization limitation makes content development, specific to this medium, very challenging for publishers and independent content creators. Also for the traditional content owner have not found the right set of service providers who would make their content ready for mobile and internet consumption and distribute them across the web and mobile access points. There are content networks like TAN, Rajshri, & Star TV out there in the market; however, they are limited in providing content only from their library which makes their reach very limited.

The solution for this problem is mainly a content network that can aggregate content across categories from multiple quality content owners from the traditional world and push it to publishers with content/audience matching and monetization. This clearly creates not only large scale audience across categories but also creates reach and targeting for advertisers like they are used to in the TV world.

What’s your take?

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Why it makes sense for entrepreneurs and VC’s to be ethical

[Editorial Notes: This article published under series called “Bring Your Own Insights”, where we bring selected guests (invite-only) to share their insights with Pluggd.in audience on a regular basis.

We have always believed that our readers bring a lot of insights, so why not enable a direct channel for them to share their insights/experience with the audience? These guests will come from different industries and will share their insights on a very frequent basis. Here is presenting an insightful article written by Deepak Srinath, who is cofounder of Viedea Capital Advisors.]

Recently, I was talking to a partner in a top VC fund about why the fund had passed a particular investment opportunity. The startup we were discussing had created a lot of buzz, revenues were growing faster than their competitors and the founding team was aggressive and impressive. The partner replied that the fund had decided not to invest because they were not comfortable with the ‘moral compass’ of the founders. Investors often find themselves in a dilemma about the ‘moral compass’ of founders, i.e, the innate sense of ethical right or wrong on the basis of which an individual makes business decisions.

As an I-banker I’ve encountered plenty of entrepreneurs with dodgy moral compasses. The misdemeanors range from showing inflated sales numbers to shortchanging customers intentionally. There are times when I’ve even had serious doubts about an entrepreneur’s intention of using VC money for the right purpose. With some entrepreneurs its just a gut feel that something is amiss even if you can’t put a finger on it.  

Conversely, I’ve been in situations that have exposed the moral compass of funds. A couple of years ago, we were in the process of raising funds for an internet firm.  A VC showed great interest in our client and we shared all the data on the business with them. A couple of weeks later, we found out that the VC had issued a term sheet to a close competitor of our client. One can argue that this situation is normal- A VC will evaluate all the players in a space and make a decision on whom to invest in. This is perfectly fine and part of the VC game.  However, a few days later when our client happened to meet the CEO of the firm the VC had decided invest in, he was shocked to discover that his competitor seemed to know everything about his numbers and growth strategy. Clearly, the data we had shared with the VC had found its way to the firm’s competitor. 

In an industry that is more often than not on thin ice when it comes to ethics, why is it so important to possess the right moral compass? I think its not just about taking a moral high ground; it actually makes solid business sense to do so. The world of Entrepreneurship and Venture capital is a relatively close-knit and well informed group, especially with social media and blogs disseminating stories instantly. The best entrepreneurs will never want to raise money from an investor with a dodgy track record. Similarly, an entrepreneur who cuts corners will get caught out sooner rather than later and will never be able to raise a follow on round or attract the best talent, leave alone build a scalable and sustainable business.

I hope the anti corruption fervor in Indian society spills over to the entrepreneurial and investing world too. What do you think? 

Previous article by Deepak : Is Cash on Delivery THE catalyst for E-tailing in India?

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