Paypal Now Officially Blocks Purchasing Goods From Your Indian Paypal Account

February of 2011, Paypal announced that Paypal users in India will not be allowed to a)receive more than $500 in your Paypal account and b) keep money in Paypal balance for more than 7 days.

“Starting 1 March, 2011, PayPal customers in India will not be able to keep money in their PayPal account balance. Instead, all money received into a PayPal account must be transferred to a customer’s India bank account within 7 days from the receipt of confirmation from the buyer in respect of the good or services. This change is to ensure that we continue to comply with the RBI Guidelines.”

Any balance in and all future payments into your PayPal account may not be used to buy goods or services and must be transferred to your bank account in India within 7 days from the receipt of confirmation from the buyer in respect of the goods or services;

Paypal also announced that Paypal users in India will not be able to transact using the Paypal account balance (i.e. you cannot purchase products/services from the money in your account).  While this wasn’t implemented earlier (was working fine till June 10th), we noticed (today) that Paypal has implemented the rule.

Here is screenshot of payment error we encountered while making a purchase using Paypal account.

So in essence, your Paypal account is a temporary wallet for you to receive money (less than $500 USD) and you MUST transfer the money to your bank account within 7 days (note that you cannot use it to buy any other product/service).

» R.I.P Paypal.

Also see: A look at Paypal alternatives in India?

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India's Largest Startup Event, UnPluggd Is Back (Mindblowing Content + Exiciting Startup Demos » July 9th, Bangalore)

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News Roundup: Yahoo India to tie up with schools for internet education

MapmyIndia puts house numbers & building-level details on Online Maps

MapmyIndia has released house numbers for 18 cities online (http://maps.mapmyindia.com) for public use for free. Getting precise directions to house addresses or buildings is just a click away now! You can simply zoom to the last level on MapmyIndia Maps and see exact locations on the map for residential house numbers, commercial building addresses and names, apartment complexes, businesses and points of interest in 18 major cities.  

Besides house numbers, you can also see building footprints (which shows the built-up area) in Delhi and Mumbai. Just zoom into ‘Greater Kailash 2, New Delhi’ and see footprints and buildings along with their associated house numbers. In the current online release house numbers are viewable on the map; search for house numbers is slated for future release.

Yahoo India to tie up with schools for internet education

Yahoo India is planning to tie up with schools in Tier II and Tier III towns to provide internet education. The collaboration would be aimed at networking with schools with basic computer laboratories and classes till standard VIII.

The module would cover various aspects of internet, including email, search, accessing mobile internet and tips on internet safety to students. [source]

UPFC Partners with FINO For Smart Card Based Payment Disbursal System

UPFC (Uttar Pradesh Forest Corporation) has partnered with FINO (Financial Inclusion Network & Operations) for Tendu leaves collectors at Lalitpur in Uttar Pradesh (UP). The project is supported by ICICI Bank and other banks.

As a first step, FINO along with ICICI Bank will enroll the collectors in the Lalitpur District area and equip them with biometric smart cards. These smart cards are linked to the no-frill accounts that ICICI Bank will open for the enrolled collectors. The photograph and finger prints of the collector are captured on the card bearing a Unique Registration Number (URN). This card is then used to record the number of Tendu patta bundles submitted by the collector and to receive the payment for the same.

The next step is the actual collection of bundles and the disbursement of payments. All the collectors will bring in their collection for an entire day to a phad designated who is registered with the UPFC. Here the collectors will meet the FINO Block Coordinators and Government Officials. [source]

Telecom department, regulator differ on USO fund usage

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the Department of Telecom are at variance on using money from the Universal Services Obligation fund for subsidising broadband rollout in rural areas using wireless technologies.

“The two schemes, i.e. rural wireless broadband scheme and optical fibre up to the village scheme, are neither competitors nor mutually exclusive but will synergise to create a virtuous circle and complement and supplement each other for provisioning broadband. While the wireless scheme will take care of the last mile connectivity, the optical-fibre scheme will facilitate and provide the bandwidth to meet backhaul requirements,” the USO fund stated in an internal note [source]

HTC Sensation Launched in India

HTC Sensation has been launched in India and the price of HTC Sensation in Indian market is Rs. 32,700/.

Also see: Wynncom OGO Phones Pack SmartPhone Features, Though Priced At INR 5K | HTC Salsa (The Phone With A Facebook Button) Launched in India For Rs. 20K

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India's Largest Startup Event, UnPluggd Is Back (Mindblowing Content + Exiciting Startup Demos » July 9th, Bangalore)

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Duitang: Chinese Social Shopping Initiative Focusing on Items Sharing and Discovering

Social Shopping Attracting Attention and Money

Social commerce startups attract over US$ 1.93 billion in funding in the first trimester of 2011(Jan-April), to mention a few, Shopsocial(social shopping/rewards, US$ 1.2m by Metamorphic Ventures, Jan 14), Virtue(facebook commerce, $17m by Scale Venture Partners and Advent Venture Partners, Feb 18), Lockerz(social shopping/rewards, $30m, Apr 12) and StylistPick(social shopping/rewards, $8m by Accel Partners and Index Ventures, Apr 12).

Social shopping initiatives seem on a roll beginning early this year, which explains the reason why more and more entrepreneurs are plunging into the waterfront around the world, and China is of no exception.

As we mentioned before, based around Taobao there’re some social shopping offers which targeting female users (mostly) with online shopping experience sharing, items sharing and recommendations features that facilitate transactions out on Taobao, thus they can take a cut from per buying as referrer. Shanghai-based Duitang, founded late last year by former Alibaba staff is amongst them.

 

Items sharing and Discovering over Shopping Sharing

After four months of private tests, Duitang opened for registration this February. According to Zhang Juan, a Duitang staff, the latest addition to Chinese social commerce arena values highly the quality of early-adopters, hoping to accumulate appropriate community atmosphere before aggressive march.

The concept of social commerce was first raised by Yahoo! in late 2005, according to the American portal, social commerce involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions, to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services, i.e., social commerce is the use of social media in the context of e-commerce, which means first and foremost, social commerce sites utilize or even act as social media.

Duitang seems to have deeper and distinctive insights into social shopping and unique approach to its website offerings. According to Duitang team, although there’re many competitors like Meilishuo, Mogujie out there, but they have different product offerings due to diverse understanding of social shopping.

For Meilishuo and Mogujie, what they advocate is like shopping experience sharing, hence their web products are designed and developed around such concept. While for Duitang, the team told me that they’re focus on items sharing and discovering rather than shopping experience sharing. They started with shopping sharing, but later on switched to the items-sharing model in hopes of facilitating a social network build upon users’ interests.

 

Interested Based Community

When asked about how to compete with other competitors and to rise to the challenge brought up by Taobao’s new offers on social ecommerce given that Taobao itself is sort of like the soil for social ecommerce, Duitang said that in there would be various social shopping sites and communities which are different in terms of orientation, targeted audience and style. Because essentially interests and fashion are personalized and diversified. It’s hard for people to find out the right stuff on websites, that’s when Duitang comes to rescue, to help the right people come across the stuff that fit and that they will in love with.

As for business model and revenue sources, Duitang said that currently they’re more focusing on the product renovation and community operation. And later on they’ll sort out the most appropriate revenue model under the premise that user experience is not interfered. Traditionally Alibaba or Taobao is the widely acknowledged operation-driven company. So for the Duitang team which is mainly formed by ex-Alibaba staff, we think it’s not a question for them to positively cultivate the community to the right direction – interests-based social shopping site with a touch of items sharing and discovering.

Related posts:

1. China Social Commerce Landscape: Fall Of The Giant And Rise Of The Startups
2. Chinese QA Initiative Mifan.me: Users’ Sticky Results From Good Experience
3. Hoju.cn: A Chinese way to make FON with WiFi sharing

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Three Challenges for Brand Marketing on Weibo

Last night, we had our first TweetUp Event in Beijing. A TweetUp is basically a time when people who follow each other virtually on Twitter can meet each other in person and share more than 140 characters at a time.

Held at The Library Cafe in Jianwai SOHO Guomao, it was a very casual setting for  people to come together to chat about startups and interesting things happening in the tech industry.

Jeremy Webb, a Strategist from Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence team gave an entertaining and insider’s perspective of what its like to do social media marketing on Weibo (China’s Twitter).

Firstly, he said that Weibo is an excellent platform to do social media marketing because of its simplicity, user reach and the fact that it is free versus paying hundreds of thousands of rmb for brand pages on social networking sites RenRen, Kaixin or Douban. For example, RenRen costs 600,000rmb for a brand page and Douban costs 2m rmb per year.

Although Jeremy sees Weibo as a fantastic way to create brand presence and target customers, he revealed some frustrating pitfalls when dealing with Weibo in China:

1. Fake fans and influener’s - some brands or their marketing agencies will fake everything from fans to influencer’s. An influencer is someone who has more than a million followers. This obviously gives people a false impression that a brand is more popular than it really is.
2. Spam fake messages –  brands or agencies in China also often spam fake messages of praise, such ‘Geili/给力’ meaning ‘awesome’ or ‘Ding!/顶’ meaning ‘up’. Jeremy said that if you look at any brand page in China you could pick out a follower and most likely they would be fake, where they are posting ‘Geili’ every few hours for the past few weeks.
3. Meaningless results – often for marketers, it is easy to fall into the trap of being lazy and presenting the biggest and most impressive number to a brand, such as 100m impressions. But Jeremy defies such laziness and believes this does not bring true value or engagement to a brand.

When questioned about how brands can justify the high marketing spend on social media and gauge the ROI, Jeremy said that it is extremely difficult to measure the relationship between investment and sales because there are so many other factors involved. But Jeremy in the future hopes to solve this problem and connect social media marketing spend to sales dollars.  However he mentioned that for his counterparts in Australia where some brands are putting 100% of their marketing budget into social media, it is easier to measure effectiveness.

Finally, thank you to Jeremy for presenting and all those who came to our first TweetUp. Keep posted for future events that we organize!

 

 

Related posts:

1. Social Marketing Marketing Event- Sign Up Now!
2. Fat Face Social Media Marketing
3. Did Viral Marketing Damage the Hasbro Brand?

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Events For The Week – 18-25 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.

Sat 18th June:

(1) Lion City Startup Brekkie
(2) Startup Roots Speaker Series: Saturday With IBM And Digital Garage

Mon 20th June:

(1) Funding++: Cash VS The Rest
(2) iChallenge Training
(3) Mobile Monday

Mon 20th June-Fri 24th June:

(1) eGov Global Exchange

Tue 21st June:

(1) Impact of Alumni Entrepreneurship: Evidence from MIT and Tsinghua

Tue 21st June-Fri 24th June:

(1) CommunicAsia 2011

Thu 23rd June:

(1) Smart Mobility @ SG Seminar 2011

Image courtesy of joyosity.

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Funding++: Cash VS The Rest – 20 Jun

NUS Enterprise and Garag3 will organize an event with title “Funding++: Cash vs the Rest” this upcoming Monday, 20 Jun. Tuff Yen, President of Seraph Group will be the speaker for this event. This event aims to identify founder’s problems in having balance smart $ vs dumb $. Few questions will be elaborated, such as What are the principles involved in making such a decision for an investment around?, How do then value “networks and contacts”?, How do we value mentorship? and many more.

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About The Speaker

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Tuff Yen founded Seraph Group to bring together successful business leaders and entrepreneurs to invest and nurture promising enterprises. Seraph is the only national angel investment fund group in the United States. Prior to Seraph, he was a venture capitalist with Hambrecht and Quist, and Chase Manhattan Bank.

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Event Details

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When: Monday, 20th June
Time: 3pm-5pm
Where: NUS University Hall Auditorium, Lee Kong Chian Wing Level 2 (Map)
Register here.
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Alibaba Internal Mail On Taobao Spin-off

Yesterday we reported about the Taobao spin-off, in which Taobao will be restructured into three companies, including Etao(online shopping search engine), Taobao(C2C) and TMall(B2C). In an email to all Alibaba staff by Jack Ma, the founder and CEO of the Chinese giant ecommerce platform Alibaba which owns Taobao, Ma explained that the spin-off will do great benefits to both the company(or companies after the spin-off) and shareholders.

Here’s the excerpt of the internal letter:

Significance of the spin-off –

• Great changes have been emerging in the global internet and ecommerce landscape. Search, SNS and ecommerce areas are seeing many fundamental transform. The group decides to upgrade the previous “Grand Taobao” strategy to “Grand Alibaba” strategy, through which Taobao can integrate information, logistics, payment solutions, mobile initiatives and cloud computing service as well as share with all the ecommerce players in China with customers, merchants and even upstream industries such as manufacturers. The very core of “Grand Alibaba” is to build an open, collaborative, and prosperous ecommerce ecosystem.

• User needs have changed a lot, that’s why Alibaba has to transform the current Taobao-based consumer platform into some sort of “ubiquitous” consumer platform which achieves win-win between both supplier and consumer. The new platform will be consisted of Alibaba B2B offer and the three new Taobao offers.

• Alibaba has to be creative in enterprise structure to figure out the innovative management thinking and pattern. It’s a tradition at Alibaba to operate the big company as small ones to bring out innovation and help the young grow.

• Alibaba believes that the spin-off can better serve the companies and shareholders in terms of profits. Incorporating Taobao into the “Grand Alibaba” strategy will create massive value for the company itself and also the whole industry, provide the ecommerce players with more opportunities. Alibaba will seek for holistic listing in the future.

Related posts:

1. Alibaba Spins off Taobao into 3 Companies
2. Alibaba and Taobao To Launch Its 2nd B2C E-Commerce Platform, Named WuMingLiangPin
3. Alibaba’s US$4.5 billion investment in logistic – just a plan only!

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Smart Mobility @ SG Seminar 2011 – 23 Jun

Organized by Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), Smart Mobility @ SG Seminar 2011 is a unique gathering of global device manufacturers, application developers, content publishers and enterprise users of mobile business solutions. Industry thought leaders will share about the latest trends and ideas that are shaping the local mobile landscape, and the opportunities these developments hold for enterprises in Singapore and beyond. It will be held on 23 Jun and there are 2 sessions, morning and afternoon, that can be joined in.

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Programme Details

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8.15am: Registration
9.00am: Opening Remarks by Mr Andrew Khaw, Senior Director, Industry Development Group, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA)

Track 1: Mobile Marketing (Morning Session)
9.05am: “Consumers Are Mobile, Are You?” by Mr Rohit Dadwal, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Mobile Marketing Association
9.25am: “Delivering Critical Mobile Marketing Metrics and Measurements for Operators” by Mr Suresh Ramalingam, Managing Director, Telecom Practice Group – APIMEA and Greater China, Nielson
9.45am: “The Future of Location-Based Advertising Technology” by Dr Bernard Leong, CTO and Co-founder, Chalkboard
10.05am: Tea Break

Track 2: Smart Devices (Morning Session)
10.30am: “Business Value Chain & Challenges in Machine to Machine (M2M) Real-Time Monitoring & Alert Systems ” by Dr Tan Guan Hong, Chairman, Singapore Industrial Automation Association
10.50am: “Operator Strategies for M2M” by Mr Winston Yeo, Director, TSM Asia (Hong Kong & Singapore), Gemalto
11.10am: “The Value of M2M for B2B and B2C” by Mr Evert Ong, General Manager, iWOW Pte Ltd

Track 3: Mobile Payments (Morning Session)
11.30am: “M-Commerce Trends In Singapore and Asia-Pacific” by Mr Elias Ghanem, Managing Director, Southeast Asia and India, PayPal
11.50am: “The Future of Mobile and Digital Payment” by Ms Meranda Chan, Country Manager, Singapore and Brunei, Visa Worldwide
12.10pm: “The Future of Mobile Payments in Asia” by Mr Aung Kyaw Moe, CEO, 2C2P
12.30pm: Lunch

Track 4 : Innovate With Mobility For The Retail, F&B, Hotels & Attractions Sectors (Afternoon Session)
2.00pm: Welcome Remarks by Ms Samantha Fok, Director, SME Infocomm Enabler, IDA
2.05pm: Mobility for Productivity – A Joint Initiative by IDA, SPRING Singapore, Singapore Tourism Board, NTUC’s Employment and Employability Institute (e2i) by Ms Catherine Chong, Deputy Director, SME Infocomm Enabler, IDA
2.30pm: Case Study 1 : Wireless Ordering For Restaurant Operator by Mr Nicholas Yap, President (Overseas Division), Genki Sushi (S) Ltd
3.00pm: Case Study 2 : Mobile App For Tourist Attractions by Mr Eu Kwang Chin, Divisional Director, Information Technology, Sentosa Development Corporation
3.30pm: Panel Discussion : Changing The Game With Mobility Strategies – Hear from Business Users on How To Get Started & Get Going

Moderator: Mr Alfred Siew, Founder of Techgoondu and UNWIRED
Panel Members:

Mr Nicholas Yap, President (Overseas Division), Genki Sushi (S) Ltd
Mr Eu Kwang Chin, Divisional Director, Information Technology, Sentosa Development Corporation
Mr Jason Lee, MIS Manager, The Fullerton Hotel Singapore
Mr Felix Li Fu, IT and Operation Manager, Seng Hua Hng Foodstuff Pte Ltd

4.15pm: Networking Session
5.30pm: Close

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Event Details

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When: Thursday, 23rd June
Time: 8.15am-5.30pm
Where: Marina Bay Sands, Level 4, Orchid Ballroom (Rm 4311 & 4312) (Map)
Register here by 17th June.
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Translating Japanese ideas for a global market by Lisa Katayama

e27’s Echelon 2011 kicked off Day 2 with a talk by Lisa Katayama of TokyoMango. The Japan born journalist currently lives in San Francisco and is focusing on The Tofu Project.

Lisa’s keynote starts with some background on herself before heading off to how she started off TokyoMango which brought her around the world while still being able to study the Japanese culture. Her travels and experiences made her realize how the different culture of Japanese allows for creative ideas which, however, do not translate outside of the Japanese market. Hence, the idea of The Tofu Project which draws experience from people familiar with both Silicon Valley and Japan which aims to help Japanese startups go global through equipping them with necessary soft skills. The project is currently run by volunteers while actively seeking sponsorship.

To quote Lisa on her idea of what The Tofu Project aims to do for the Japanese startup community,“….the best way to save Japan, if Japan needs saving, is to empower them with the ability to create the best ideas..”

This post is a live update of Echelon 2011.

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YouRen.me, Your One Stop Social Service to Follow Up With Friends’ Online Activities

In some sense, our digital life is really messed up by tens and hundreds of online services these days. We have been talking about an unified online identity for years but seems no solution to it, and now, with the fast growing mobile internet industry (mobile apps, smart phones, 3g/4g networks), the situation is even worse: we have a couple of LBS check-in services to try, quite a few of  mobile photo-sharing service and so on. It is getting more and more difficult to follow our friends online simply because we have no ideas how many online identities he/she has and which services he/she are using more often. No need to say, in the era of mobile web, it’s all about what is happening now, we have to be sure that we can follow our friends’ interests and activities in no time.

So we still need something like FriendFeed, especially in Chinese web where we often see a few sites/apps offering the very similar service.

YouRen.me, founded by mobile internet veteran Stan Chu who also co-founded iNezha and 30Miao and Liu Gangqiang, is in private test aiming to be the one Stop social service to follow up with your friends’ online activities. Launched in May, YouRen has integrated with 18 popular online service including Sina weibo, Tencent weibo, Xiami, Tumblr, Instagram, QZone, Flickr, Diandian etc. Like FriendFeed, user can follow others on Youren so that their updates/activities on those services will appear in his/her news stream. You can then comment on those updates or share the ones you like to your friends. YouRen is to build One online identity for every one, so that every YouRen will be given one unique url (mine is here) which is like an About.me page on which all the social services you use and link to YouRen are listed.

I like YouRen and am more expecting its mobile apps which would be even more convenient for users to follow up and communicate with their friends’ digital life. If you want an invite code to test it out, please just drop a comment with your email address.

Related posts:

1. SocialOyster Searches For Your Friends’ Online Life
2. Sina Launched Check-in Service, Follow Celebrities' Whereabout
3. Chinese Social Networks Charges Users if They Have Over 1,000 Friends – What?!

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Lion City Startup Brekkie – 18 Jun

Before going to the session of Speaker Roots Series this Saturday, consider going for this morning event. Lion City Startup Brekkie brings together early morning startup folks on a bright Saturday morning. It promises to revive the kindred spirit over a hearty breakfast, a nice cuppa and healthy conversations. This is organized by Mike Fong and Jason Ong.

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Event Details

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When: Sat 18th June
Time: 10am
Where: Joe & Dough, Suntec City Tower 4 (outside Carrefour), 3 Temasek Boulevard #01-156/158 (Map)
Register here.
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SiTF Awards 2011

SiTF Awards 2011 nomination application is already open and will close by 17th June 2011. SiTF Awards is an annual recognition programme that rewards local innovations in the national information, communication & digital media technology (ICT) scene. This industry-driven award aims to engage and promote emerging technologies, innovations and new developments of Singapore infocomm industry. This award is an important platform for Singapore infocomm companies to gain exposure, exchange knowledge, and benchmark innovations in international arena.

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Categories

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Cloud Technology (NEW)
Digital Media
E-Enterprise
E-Government
ICT Team Excellence (Marketing / CRM / Technical Support) (NEW)
Interactive Ideas (NEW)
Emerging Technology
Green IT (NEW)
Mobile Application
Start-Up
Student (Primary / Secondary / Tertiary)

There are 3 types of application forms that can be chosen, view details here.

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China’s Classified Websites “Never Short of Money”

Classified websites are nothing new in China. The first one emerged in 2004, and around 2005 there were already dozens in local market. Besides independent sites, many portals have added classified sections to tap into the trend. But by now only several websites, Ganji, 58.com and Baixing survived and got bigger, which means these services collectively have a user base of 200 million and a market size of RMB 60 billion (approximately US$ 9.26 billion). Classified website is regarded as one of the fastest-growing internet business sector.

Different than C2C

When asked about what is the difference between classified website and C2C services such as Taobao ( China’s largest C2C website), Ganji vice president Xu Chen claimed that there was no essential difference between them, but classified sites users enjoy more fun. “At present Taobao’s seller rating system is much better than those of classified sites. But second-hand trading is quite different from the transactions on Taobao. On classified sites, many buyers and sellers trade second-hand items for fun, not just for making some money, and trading process is simple. If you want to sell an item you don’t need anymore at Taobao, you have to apply for an account first, and then follow certain procedures. For those who are not regular sellers, that sounds quite complicated. So why not just come to our website, publish a post without even signing in? ”

Xu also mentioned that many people like the “one-stop” service on classified websites. For example, a college student can look for a flat to rent, sell his used textbooks and check job opportunities at Ganji.

Revenue Model

You may think China’s classified websites are similar to Craigslist. Well, in some way it is, but the revenue model is quite different. An analyst claims that China’s classified websites make big money with ad sales, paid placement (if you want your post to appear at the top of the page, you need to pay) and franchise fee (allow franchisees to operate in different cities). Actually, Ganji is expected to hit US$ 100 million revenue in 2012.

Ganji spent rmb 400 millions on its TV ads this year, and 58.com CEO Jingbo Yao once said “we have never been short of money.”

Related posts:

1. More Tencent Puzzle
2. 58.com, China’s Craigslist, to go IPO in Nasdaq
3. Online Goes Offline And Mobile, How Can Internet Generate Real Money

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Tianji CEO Says It Is the Best Professional Social Network in China – Interview Part II

In the last part of our interview with Derek Ling, CEO of Tianji, he said professional SNS grows slowly in China because the Linkedin model does not fit China’s environment.

In Linkedin, people frequently get requests like ‘I need this and this,” or “I need to hire such and such”. However, in China, it will be “uncool” to state those requests directly, said Derek.  ”People in China have to be friend first before they can do business together.”

They have to be familiar with  each other on other matters first, for example, through discussion of social issues, their common interests, etc. Afterwards, discussion of business can follow suit.  They cannot do business with each other the first day they meet.  This is very different from the social norm in the U.S.

“That is why Tianji have a lot of discuss forum, groups and events, for the member to socialize with each other,” said Derek.  In short, comparing the US and the China model for professional SNS, the value proposition is the same – it is for people to search and contact business partners, but the way is different, said Derek.

The phenomenon, however, is changing.  In the next few years, Derek believe the growth of professional SNS in China will speed up. ” In the next 2-3 year, there will be explosive growth in professional SNS,” said Derek.

Social networks such as Renren and Kaxin start to change people’s behaviour, making them willing to put their real information and real friends online – a very important step for building a professional SNS.

“Currently, most social networks are for entertainment.  Soon, people will ask what else they can do with SNS.  And professional SNS, such as Tianji, which help them to do business, will be the answer,” said Derek.

He expected Tianji’s members to reach 10 million by the end of this year, up from 6 million at the moment.  About 15% of its members visit it twice a month. Once, Tianji has over 20 million members, it will reach the critical mass.  (Linkedin reached its critical mass when it has 30-40 million member, but Linkedin is multiple country.)

As of competitors, Derek believe US-based Linkedin is the real competitor.  Linkedin is the only major global SNS that can be used in China.  Currently, there are about 1 million Linkedin users in China, according to industry expert.  That is more than some local professional SNS, for example, Beijing based Hengzhi has only 600,000 members and Shanghai-based Ushi has 200,000.

“Linkedin is the largest in English Speaking countries.  But, our group [Viadeo] believe in multi-local strategy.  Viadeo is the largest SNS for French speaking countries.  Our group’s strategy is Europe , plus emerging market,” said Derek.

Regarding to Linkedin, Derek said he is “watching them carefully”.  Also, although Linkedin can be used in China right now, Derek warned “it does not mean it always can”.

As of the local competitors, Shanghai based Wealink, which started about the same time as Tianji, is one of the largest. It has more users than Tianji.  But, Derek believe a lot of their users are fresh graduated or low-end users, which offers little value to other users.

In the last couple years, there are a few late comers, such as Ushi and Hengzhi, which focus on users of better quality.  One of the co-founder of Ushi was from Tianji (ref our interview with UShi founders).  His reason for doing so is that there are too much spamming on Tianji.

In response, Derek thought there are a lot of spam on Ushi, too.

Related posts:

1. Tianji, the 6 Million-Users Professional Social Network In China – Part I
2. How to Run the Professional Social Network in China, Interview with Co-founders of UShi.cn
3. RenRen's Professional Social Network Launched, At The Same Day When Linkedin Reaches 100Millions Users

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Japonizer – Japanese Traditional Background Image Generator

Japonizer is an web generator for background image, which generates images of traditional Japanese patterns.

You choose one out of around 30 provided traditional patterns, set a size and change colours if you want. You may download and use it for your blog, twitter or so.

The service is a part of Wanokoto.net [J], a social community site for sharing all Japanese-style things. The old monochrome photo generator which we covered in 2008 is also a part of the site.

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Flipkart Raises $20mn From Tiger Global [Guess The Valuation]

Flipkart has raised $20mn from Tiger Global LLC in its Series C round and this takes the total amount raised to $31 million.

The funding will be used for marketing initiatives and the company earlier raised $10mn from Tiger Global (and Accel Capital). Essentially, Flipkart needs to go beyond the tier-1 cities and penetrate deeply into tier-2 and tier-3 cities (which is where they need to get the next generation of buyer/sellers hooked onto the service).

ECommerce Website Traffic in India

We earlier shared the traffic of ecommerce sites in India and eBay clearly leads the race, followed by Homeshop18.

Traffic of Ecommerce Websites In India

Having said that, Flipkart is making way for a niche startup to come and dethrone it’s (earlier) positioning from being a ‘great site for book lovers’ (circle of life, anyone?).

Flipkart Valuation

Is Flipkart an IPO story in making? Or a sweet deal for Amazon to enter India (they have been testing Indian waters) and acquire Flipkart (whose IP lies in backend support system)?
Given that Flipkart isn’t yet profitable (far from being one), the only game is to either hit the public market (so that VCs can exit) or get acquired by a giant like Amazon (so that VCs can exit).
At total fund of $31mn, how much do you think is the Flipkart valuation? Do share ‘your guess’ in the comment section.

The Flipkart Story

At the first UnPluggd event, Sachin Bansal (Flipkart cofounder) shared the Flipkart story on how they didn’t plan to really build a business of this scale (and instead, an affiliate business of sorts).

Do watch the video

Recommended Discussion: Stale Internet Growth in India -Is Offline Promotion the Way to Market Internet Business?

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