Aug 8, 2011 ~ Web 2.0 Asia Blog

Monday, August 8, 2011

Advice to startups: Get out of Singapore ASAP

11:09 PM Tech News No comments

An interesting post from Willis Wee in Penn-Olson today prompted me to provide some perspective on the issue of expansion. The question that most people ask: if I build a start-up from a country with a very small market size (say, Singapore but it can apply from Slovenia to Monaco), where should I expand the company to?

What I agree with Willis in his article, is that expansion to US is not a vanity exercise and his urging to entrepreneurs in a small market like Singapore to think about the Asian market in general. I am going to sketch out a few points which one should consider before expanding:

Where are the entrepreneurs of a small country? I have the chance to meet up with some successful entrepreneurs in Singapore and learned a lot from them. One of the common phrases from them is, “Where are the best and brightest Singaporean or entrepreneurs?” The answer is that they are outside. In fact, in advising a couple of new tech start-ups, I have invoked the following rule for specifically mobile and web start-ups, “You have less than 2 months or 60 days to finish the minimum viable product and get out of Singapore as soon as you can.” Chalkboard went to Kuala Lumpur in the first month after we received our first round of financing. Why is this so? The reason is scale. Singapore lacks the scale and worse, you get clones for already small market.

Where do you go next that you might ask? Contrary to perception, Kuala Lumpur is an interesting market and in some sense, the demographic of users resembled to a certain extent like Singapore. If your company specializes in a web-tech solution for the emerging economy, Jakarta (Indonesia) and Manila (Philippines) are probably your best bet. If your appetite is big and massive, China and India are on the list. However, specifically for markets that demand strong localization, you will need to be there. Of course, you can’t jump into the market so quickly. That comes to my next point.

Expansion is market research + finding the right people on the ground to work with you: You need to work a few things before going into another market. The first is market research. Does your solution solves the needs of another market? You also need to determine the quips and quirks of another market. Once you determine the need and you are likely to spend at least 2 weeks surveying that market, then start setting up meetings with the locals who you might want to work with. Plain execution is what really matters in the end for expansion. Can you move the needle further as far as you can?

Why US? Why Asia?: Some will say, “We should be in the US.” and others will say, “We should look at Asia.” It really depends on what customers your business are dealing with. Here’s a data point for one to think about. If you want to build a US$100mil company, you need to take out at least one of the BRIIC (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia & China) markets. So, you need to work out which market is likely to adopt your business solution in the shortest time so that you can build up revenues and distribution. Working in a massive market is not simple and it requires one to think about the set of processes in replicating and scaling quickly to different markets. But you learn more about the complexities of your business solution if you dip your feet into another market.

So the bottom line is: If you are in a small market, test your product with customers and start scaling, and remember you have 60 days from the time you start.

Image: Justin Cozart

This post was first published on Bernard’s blog. We thank him for letting us republish this.

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A closer look into 100-day accelerator East Ventures Alpha

7:19 PM Tech News No comments

East Ventures, the Singapore-based venture capital firm, has started a 100-day startup accelerator program aptly called East Ventures Alpha. The incubation space will be located in South Jakarta and applications for the program opens in August. The first batch of startups will begin the program in September and graduate in November of this year.

The program is currently supported by Microsoft BizSpark and looking to close more partners. Co-Founder of East Ventures, Batara Eto, said “With this program, we hope that there will be more and more entrepreneur in the Internet scene from Indonesia.”

East Ventures Alpha has formed a team to reach the startups that are spread across Jakarta and Bandung. Headed by Peter Widjaja as VP of Operation together with Joshua Kevin in Jakarta and Iqbal Fahari and Andina Tarina in Bandung.

e27 managed to grab a quick email interview with Peter to find out more about this new program.

What are the criteria for startups to apply?

The criteria is basically very simple. Potential tenants/founders enter our website and summit their ideas/projects through the application form. We will then review their application form and their ideas, and if the ideas met with the East Venture’s requirements then we will call them up for an interview to meet with team. If we find that the team is strong enough then they will be accepted to join our program. Currently we only accept tenants from Indonesia. We are accepting 5 – 8 projects in our first batch.

Are there specific types of companies you are looking for?

We mainly focus projects on web apps, mobile apps and games because that is our strength and the potential market.

What is the funding support that the founders can expect?

We will provide all the needs to the founders like hardware, software, servers, monthly salary to each of the founders of the team so they don’t have to worry about their daily needs. We will also finance their research, sales, marketing, product development. So basically during the incubation period we will try our best to help founders with tech support, business support and financial support. We do not want the founders to worry on anything else. We want them to focus 100% on their projects during the incubation period.

How is the mentorship structured? Any difference or similarities with existing accelerators?

Currently the mentors are helping us without any promised incentive. These are great guys who immediately said yes when we asked and willingly contribute back to community without even ask for anything.

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Despite turbulence, economists positive about Asia business outlook

7:19 PM Tech News No comments

With the recent Standard and Poor’s credit rating downgrade and the possibility of a double recession in the US, the global economy is heading into a period of uncertainty, with even Singapore’s finance minister bracing his countrymen for a “tough ride of slow growth and occasional recessions” in the next 3 to 4 years.

Despite the turbulence, both of the economists who spoke at the 51st ACE BlueSky Exchange, held on July 26, remain optimistic about the prospects for business owners in Asia.

According to David Carbon, DBS bank chief economist and managing director for economic and currency research, Asia recovered from the recession in 2008 with little help from the US, which was still just experiencing the beginning of their economic woes. This can be attributed to rising consumption in Asia, whereas the US and Europe have stagnated in that area.

He predicts that the next few years leading up to 2017 will look a lot like the years before the Asian Financial Crisis, with lots of capital inflow and investment from overseas, as well as faster than average inflation and GDP growth.

What this means is that while Asian businesses can expect more consumer dollars to work in their favour, they might also see greater competition as more businesses move to Asia to be part of the growth. Costs of doing business will go up as well, and this might squeeze out enterprises struggling with a low profit margin.

All these will be driven by what David calls a “realization factor”, where business owners ditch the old paradigm that the West are the spenders while the Asians the savers. The situation might actually be reversing. With this change in mindset, businesses and investors start to see the potential in Asia.

Song Seng Wun, CEO & Regional Economist at CIMB-GK Research, trotted out some unconventional signs to show that economies in Asia have long recovered: Auto sales, cargo traffic, and tourist arrivals are “excellent proxies” for economic activity, he says.

“Head down to a car showroom and see how many cars are sold,” he said. “Or see how high the containers at the port stack.”

The economist ended his presentation on an ominous note though, noting the “curse of the skyscraper”, a trend where the great economic recessions of the world seem to follow the construction of tall buildings. These monuments could be taken to be a sign of economic excess and extravagant spending, or a sign of hubris.

According to the Architectural Record, half of the ten world’s tallest buildings under construction are being built in China.

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Baidu Acquires 40% of Digital Distribution Channel Fanshu.com

9:20 AM Tech News No comments

Baidu, the largest Chinese search engine, acquires 40% of Fanshu.com for RMB over 47.6 million (US$ 7.3 million), a digital publishing platform.

Founded in July, 2009 by China’s hardware and IT solution vendor Founder group and search engine Zhongsou.com, Fanshu has been following years of heavy losses with over RMB 21 million in 2010 and over RMB 11 million in first half of 2010. According to an Analysys International analyst, the sale of 40% of equity will do good to the struggling company both in terms of cash flow and traffic.

Fanshu.com’s primary businesses include the sales of digital books and its own e-reader Yambook. People who bought Yambook are supposed to purchase copyrighted digital books from Fanshu.com, the website.

Also, as we know Baidu got into big trouble with its own Baidu Wenku, a Slideshare like service due to its loosening in copyright control since everyone gets to upload stuff, even those copyright infringement ones if they so choose. And then came the class action against and harsh criticism over Baidu.

After being slapped by the contents providers, Chinese Writers Association and media, Baidu launched the Baidu Wenku Cooperation Platform in late March in an aim to ease the copyright owners as well as pitch to them to get authorized contents. It seems that Fanshu is amongst those who get onboard.

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What If Your Girlfriend Were a Foreigner? CyberAgent’s English-Study App

7:26 AM Tech News No comments

CyberAgent, [J] which manages “Ameba," has begun to offer the second installation of their English conversation study application series for iPhone, “Moshi Kareshi Ga Gaikokujin Dattara Eikaiwa” (If Your Boyfriend was a Foreigner English Conversation), “Moshi Kanojo Ga Gaikokujin Dattara Eikaiwa” [J] (If your girlfriend was a foreigner English Conversation).

Although the price is set for 250 yen for download, until August 10th it will be on sale for the discount price of 170 yen.

“Moshi Kanojo Ga Gaikokujin Dattara Eikaiwa” (girlfriend) is an application which allows one to strengthen English ability while enjoying a romance drama type of story, based on the question, “what would I do if my lover were a foreigner?” Players select one of three foreigner characters, then follow along the progress of each one’s story. Players talk on the phone with their selected partner once a day, can drill their listening skills by following the conversation, and can learn 300 English idioms by practicing and repeating phrases from the conversation in three types of different quizzes.

Download “If my Girlfriend was a Foreigner” here:

Android version release is planned in September.

Translation licensed by VSMedia [J]

What If Your Girlfriend Were a Foreigner? CyberAgent’s English-Study App

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Entrepreneurship By Design–High Time Indian Startups Focus on User Experience?

6:49 AM Tech News No comments

I recently had to renew my passport and learnt that “everything could be done online”. I then went to the web-site (passport.gov.in) and learnt that for a resident of Bangalore (and some other cities) one had to “refer” to the the home page of the Bangalore passport office (rpobangalore.gov.in) and there was no way to get to this from the home page. Anyway. Filling in the application form is certainly a test of patience requiring intuition, guess work, luck and prayer. And to think that India’s largest IT services company designed this!

Anyone who has filled in forms (and there are more than plenty of those to fill in our great land) will certainly, more often than not,have had experience in micro-calligraphy since the space allotted for entering names and addresses is miniscule, while that for entering say a 6 digit number will be an inch wide.

How many times have we stood in a queue not knowing information might be sought by the clerk on the other side, many times not knowing if one is indeed in the right queue!

There are many thousands of such examples where lack of thinking gets demonstrated from web site designs to application forms to chairs and pens to buildings and cities. Thinking that relates to the context, the ease of use, the need, the clarity and cost. And perhaps it isn’t surprising. In a nascent developing market economy, basic utility and functionality is the dominant requirement as even a small obvious change (such as say, offering the ability to fill an application online) is actually enormous given the starting point. As awareness, aspirations, affordability and expectation of consumers and citizens change, the demand for well designed, affordable products and services will naturally increase.

But is that the way it should be? Shouldn’t there be any effort on the part of suppliers to provide a great experience to their customers – right from the point of interest to the purchase and post purchase service? By not putting in the effort to create new better designed products and services, aren’t suppliers at grave risk of being outflanked by nimbler, customer friendly entrepreneurs? Better design doesn’t mean higher costs. It could mean higher prices though – because customers will always pay for a better overall experience.

That hardy symbol of post independent India’s automobile engineering prowess, the Ambassador, is a case in point.

World class companies spend enormous amounts of time and effort to get their “user-experience” right. They employ experts in human behavior, design, sociologists, technologists, man-machine interface, time-motion studies, scientists, and the like to observe, study, document, measure, take feedback, and prototype as part of the process of designing products and services. How many Indian companies can make that claim?

Design is still a hugely under-appreciated discipline in India. It shows in the way our cities are designed, our buildings are architected, the way everyday goods and services are created and offered. Either they’re crude and terrible copies of designs from the West which are out of place given the differences in usage and context in our country. A look at the glass and steel monstrosities dotting our cities as part of “modern” India is a case in point. Unfortunately, designs have come to mean designer – usually outrageously expensive and over the top – in India!

Given the appalling lack of design aesthetics, surely there’s a great opportunity for entrepreneurs who think in terms of design and user experiences. Who are demanding, innovative and willing to push the envelope.

Many years ago, a young entrepreneur in Silicon Valley decided to make “insanely great” products. He stuck to his core beliefs even as Steve Jobs is acknowledged today as the entrepreneur who’s redefined consumer experience with technology. To him, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”

Surely, there are many equivalents of Steve Jobs all over India. Let us celebrate entrepreneurship by design!

What’s your opinion?

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Guest article by Sanjay Anandaram, a passionate advocate of entrepreneurship in India; He brings close to two decades of experience as an entrepreneur, corporate executive, venture investor, faculty member, advisor and mentor. He’s involved with Nasscom, TiE, IIM-Bangalore, and INSEAD business school in driving entrepreneurship. The views expressed here are his own.

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Malaysia Digest – 8 Aug

6:49 AM Tech News No comments

Here you can find some interesting startup news around Malaysia, not only in its capital, Kuala Lumpur, but also other their startup hubs such as Penang, Malacca, and many more.

(1) Malaysia’s second largest car maker, Perodua, is heavily leveraging Twitter in its ongoing initiative Tweckbot, which is Malaysia’s first tweet-based car check service. The service is free for all Perodua car owners.

(2) Vast business and investment opportunities await Malaysian entrepreneurs in Myanmar, especially in construction and infrastructure, utilities, consultancy services and property development. Tan Sri Soong Siew Hoong, executive adviser to the Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia (ACCCIM), said Myanmar, although a rich country in terms of arable land and natural resources, was one of the least developed in the world.

(3) In the vein of reality TV shows like Dragon’s Den, Shark Tank, and the upcoming The Angel’s Gate, Malaysia will have Make The Pitch, its own homegrown entrepreneurial reality show which will screen on television channel NTV7 in October 2011.

(4) The Thailand Trade Show 2011 (TTS 2011) is expected to record a 10 per cent increase in business deals. Thai Trade Centre Kuala Lumpur’s organiser and director, Nannatee Wiboonchutikula, said the projection is based on the higher number of exhibitors taking part in the event this year. The trade show is principally aimed at Malaysian entrepreneurs and industrialists who are eager to explore business opportunities and collaboration with their Thai counterparts, Nannantee said.

(5) Held for the second year running, The Star Outstanding Business Awards aims to recognize the achievements of startups and SMEs. The initiative is in line with the government’s drive to promote entrepreneurship in Malaysia and raise the profile of Malaysian businesses globally.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.

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Fake Apple Stores Face Logo Ban. Really?

4:22 AM Tech News No comments

By now you’ve already heard the stories of fake Apple stores in Kunming and Chongqing. Although many criticized such copyright infringements, equally as many were impressed by the ability to shanzhai or copy not just a product but a whole store!

But following on from the discovery, unauthorized sellers of Apple products in Beijing’s Zhonnguancun have been ordered to cover up Apple logos, as the city’s ‘quality’ watchdog ‘attempts’ to tighten control over the massive electronics distribution centre. It is ‘strange’ however that they would only stop at forcing stores to cover up a logo, instead of closing the whole store. But of course that would put revenue making in jeopardy for everyone.

It has been reported that officials from Beijing’s quality and technical supervision bureau will prohibit unauthorized retailers from using the Apple logo or using any brand name associated with Apple, such as ”Apple authorized reseller” or ”Apple direct retailer”. But more likely, the drill will be a public scare tactic with temporary frequent inspections with weak enforcement. Already, some unauthorized Apple shop owners have merely covered logos up with blank sheets of paper while they wear fake Apple t-shirts. One owner has even admitted, “If you come back a few days later, everything will be back as it was.”

It is estimated that there are 50 Apple product vendors, many of them suspected of being unauthorized. But Apple China has shown little response to the obvious copyright infringements. Perhaps they are too busy trying to manage the overflowing amount of customers fighting to buy legitimate products from the Sanlitun Village Apple store.

Unauthorized re-sellers have a clear advantage over authorized ones because they offer smuggled real products called ‘shui huo’, at cheaper prices. These products come from across international borders illegally, by ship to avoid customs tax.

I would suggest enforcing a new rule for unauthorized Apple resellers to change all logos to a new fruit. I like mangos.

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Alipay Will Go Public, within Ten Years

2:30 AM Tech News No comments

According to the deal Alibaba reached with Yahoo and Softbank on July 29, Alibaba will receive a sum of between US$2 billion and $6 billion for an IPO of Alipay or any other type of Alipay liquidation, which means Yahoo could secure an amount of between US$860 million and 2.58 billion, and Softbank will land between US$660 and 1.98 billion. But where and when will Alipay go public？

In a recent interview, Alibaba CFO Cai Chongxin told an analyst that Alipay is a Chinese company, hence it will go public in China. “Alipay needs some time to build its business outside of Taobao, and it is too early to talk about the IPO right now. ” Cai said, “Given the size of Chinese market, although Taobao has the chance to dominate the market, it faces the challenges from other Chinese ecommerce companies. Alipay hopes to become these companies’ partner.”

Cai also said that the relationship between Taobao and Alipay would not change.

According to the 8-K file Yahoo submitted to SEC, Alipay will be listed within 10 years. In addition, a separate company needs to be set up. This company will be held by Alibaba CEO Jack Ma and Cai. If Alipay doesn’t go public in seven years, this company will pre-pay Yahoo and Softbank $500 million, and the rest will be paid when Alipay gets listed. If it fails to pay $500 million to Yahoo and Softbank in the seventh year, these two companies will get 50 million shares of Alibaba Group common stock held by Ma and Cai right now.

Alibaba CFO Cai Chongxin

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Venturi–A Powerful Speech Codec With 50-1 Compression Ratio [From An Indian Startup]

12:57 AM Tech News No comments

Venturi is a speech codec (from an Indian startup, currently in stealth mode) specifically developed for VoIP applications and offers a compression ratio of 50 to 1 as against the industry standard of (max) 10 to 1.

Any voice data transmitted over the internet, which is where the future is headed, presently comprises of comparably huge file sizes. Globally, research in lossy compression has been stagnating and has not seen significant changes in spite of the volume of voice data transmission growing exponentially.

Venturi speech codec reduces the bandwidth needed by any voice transmission, specifically VoIP, by as much as a 6th (allowing one to pack +6 times more data than presently possible). This will mean lesser capital investment to cope with demand, reduced operational costs and better profits.

Venturi X50: Features/Benefits

Because of its low processing delay (frame size of 10ms), VENTURI is well designed to offer telephone-quality voice over systems.

The codec is easily adaptable for communications over packet communications systems, such as frame relay or asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), that are designed to deliver the lowest practicable transport delay
As networks are becoming more efficient and latency is diminishing, delay is an increasingly critical issue for competing with traditional service providers and for offering toll-quality speech over existing networks.
Upgrading a network to add bandwidth is a costly investment.
VENTURI offers a pleasant, near original (minimal loss) speech stream at the lowest possible constant bitrate of 0.036 kbps.
VENTURI defines a voice quality equivalent to the Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) while consuming only 0.036 kb/s, thus multiplying by 70+ the actual network capacity while maintaining / improving telephone service provider call quality

Bangalore based Chazz Studios, the company behind Venturi claims a powerful compression technology (5 minute MP3 of 5Mb size can be compressed to 75 Kb keeping the quality intact). The startup is also testing video compression technology and here is a quick QnA with founder, Chetan Prasad.

QN: In general, the market for this service is in US, esp media companies who create a lot of video/audio content. Do you agree? If yes, how do you plan to monetize this?

Sorry. But this perception is entirely wrong. Primarily we are a technology Product company and not a service oriented business.

As mentioned on the site we are into “Lossy compression technologies of media files” called “codecs”. This includes Audio, Image and Video.
Codecs control media. In general terms, what this means is, any audio/image/video which is digitized and compressed depends on codecs to define the file size wrt fidelity/clarity. But unfortunately the present codec technology is 50 years old and entirely incapable of catering to the boom in demand. Even though several global giants have spent millions chasing billions to develop better codecs, we are proud to be the first Indian pure tech company, a bootstrapped stealth startup at that, to have broken the ‘compression barrier’.

We already have 4 products (codecs) in the audio compression sector and these offer HD fidelity audio at the lowest bitrates in the world. MP3 is one such codec for music.

Our compression techniques are so powerful that if a 5 minute MP3 song is 5Mb, our “Venturi” codec can compress this to 75 Kb, thereby reducing file size by over 70 times. So you would need that much lesser space to store your songs and that much lesser bandwidth to transmit it.

Venturi codecs also find application in all and every area where audio is used. For example, in VoIP and Mobile telephony where Bandwidth / spectrum is an expensive & finite commodity globally. Venturi codecs will allow VoIP providers and Cellular operators to pack 70 – 130 times more speech in a given bandwidth – all at HD fidelity. This will literally end the demand for bandwidth and spectrum and make technologies like 3G, 4G redundant.

Our codecs will also be implemented into hardware like mobile phones, PC’s, laptops, audio recorders/players, TV’s etc.
We are currently in the process of testing codecs for Video files. These will be able to compress a full length HD movie into a few hundred kilobytes. What this means is that the lag (caused by huge files streaming over narrow bandwidths) you see when watching a Youtube video is a thing of the past. This will also alter the business of streaming video, IPTV, DTH etc and they will be incorporated into mobile phones, computers, Digital and video cameras and TV’s etc.

Reduced file sizes also mean lesser storage needs and this will help companies like Google (one of several) which maintain several acres of server farms for storing Youtube videos.
We also promote the fact that our technology is green since the internet is a carbon spewing monster. Any savings in bandwidth and the storage (server farms) of huge media files means a direct green credit.
Our revenue will be from licensing of our technology/products and also the services we will be offering for integration.

QN: Future plans
Our future plans are very ambitious, yet realistic. We are confident of growing to be the worlds biggest tech company. We feel we are positioned at the right time with the right technology, since today’s world is media driven and we are capable of offering a cost effective solution which is the need of the hour and also help our clients to monetize their businesses by slashing running expenses and expensive capacity addition.

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If you have any questions for Chetan, do ask them in the comment section.

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News: Indian Media and Entertainment Businesses To Grow At Over 13%

12:57 AM Tech News No comments

The advancement in technology and the receding price of it is all set to take Indian Media and Entertainment businesses on a pretty impressive growth trajectory. According to the media outlook report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers, media and entertainment industry in India is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 13.2% to reach a size of Rs 1.19 lakh crore by 2015. The economic upturn in 2010 saw advertising revenues rise and PwC says the Indian industry grew by 11.2%, one of the highest growth rates in the world.

“Buoyant advertisement spends will need to supplement subscription growth for a profitable growth in revenues of the entertainment and media sector in the next five years,” said Timmy Kandhari, leader, entertainment & media practice at PwC India[source]

The print media sector and radio sectors are expected to grow at 9.6% and 19.2% respectively, during the period leading up to 2015. As the spending on advertising increases, the internet advertising segment is expected to grow the fastest.

The television industry on the other hand, the biggest contributor to the industry,which is largely advertising dependent and is plagued by low average revenues per consumer, is expected to grow to Rs 60,250 crore, a cumulative growth of 14.5% over the next five years. The television industry currently contributes 47% to the media and entertainment industry and its share is expected to rise to 50% by 2015.

As the technology drive sweeps India, the number of multiplexes in India is projected to be doubled by 2015 and this is expected to drive the film industry that has seen a drastic slowdown in the last 2 years. This huge rise in the number of screens coupled with the introduction of some big budget films is expected to drive the growth of the film business to a Rs 13,650-crore industry by 2015.

“The next five years will see digital technologies increase their influence across the industry and rapid change in technologies and consumer behavior will continue across all media and entertainment segments. However, the pace of change will continue to be slower in India as compared to other territories,” the report stated.

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BlackBerry issue: DoT under fire on delay in solution

“The parliamentary panel/committee expresses unhappiness over the way the extension after extension are being given to resolve such an important issue related to security of the country,” the panel on information technology said in its latest report. Security agencies have expressed concern on highly encrypted communication made through BlackBerry phones and have demanded Research In Motion, maker of BlackBerry phones, to provide them data in readable format[source].

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Telecom firms will pay service tax on sale of SIM cards: SC

The Supreme Court has held that telecom operators will have to pay service tax on the sale of SIM cards as these transactions entail their processing and activation for providing cellphone services. It observed that payments made by subscribers to procure SIM cards are generally processing charges for activating cellphone services and consequently it would necessarily be included in the value of the SIM Card.[source]

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TV audience measurement firm aMap may shut India operations

According to sources closely associated with the firm, it is shutting down its Indian operations, a decision that has been communicated to the staff. Maybe it has something to do with getting more competitive.” While many people in the industry claim to be unaware of this development, a senior executive in a leading media agency says, “Not too many agencies have bought data from aMap. If the channels have, it is at heavily discounted prices [source].

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