SMS = Social Messaging and Search?

Affle is an international mobile media company headquartered in Singapore with a focus on the Asian market. It was founded five years ago in 2006 by entrepreneur Anuj Khanna Sohum. The name “Affle” is unique and according to Anuj, was a mash-up of the two words “affordable” and “mobile”. However, now it just serves as a company name- a unique word with no attached meaning otherwise. The people at Affle have a whole range of mobile device products on their portfolio, including the latest *Pinch* Messenger, SMS2.0 Live, SMS2.0, Affle Ads, AffNet, Coufon, Affle Youth Xchange and Mobile Magazine.

We had a little chat with Anuj who shared Affle’s story with us.

Anuj started Affle because he was intrigued by the idea of redefining SMS. At that time, he was using both MSN and SMS on his mobile phone and found it counter-intuitive to switch between each. MSN was the more powerful one in terms of features but not everyone owns a smartphone with all that capabilities. It set him thinking. He realised that while phones were improving by leaps and bounds, with new models being released regularly by various mobile phone companies, there was no improvements being made to SMS simply because nobody owns it. It was still 160 characters, plain black and white with punctuations acting as smileys.

Anuj then took on the challenge to change all of that. He wanted to create his own brand of SMS. Everybody that he spoke to said that his idea of redefining SMS was not possible but Anuj had a vision. He said “if everybody is saying it is difficult and if we manage to do it, it will be a real breakthrough”. Affle was started and in 2007, SMS2.0 was available for download.

SMS2.0 offers more functionalities compared to SMS and there is no need to pay more for the service. SMS2.0 messaging was within the SMS protocol, all that is needed is a download. Everything was free. For Anuj and Affle, SMS no longer means Short Message Service, it means “Social Messaging and Search”.

Affle has a unique business model. By providing everything for free, somebody has had to be paying. In Affle’s bid to make media mobile and to create media opportunities on mobile, they adopted advertising as a business model. With the media being subsidised by the advertisers, there is an interaction between the users and the providers, everyone is set to gain. Anuj did note that the advertising business model is not just about putting up advertisments, Affle is careful to consider the level of advertising that consumers would find acceptable.

The latest product that is being offered by Affle is *Pinch* Messenger. It is an extension of SMS2.0 and it aims to make all contacts in our phonebook accessible via one app. If Affle is out to capitalise on the mobile phone screen as a media screen and believes there is big bucks to be made from there, we will keep Affle on our watch and see what other products will be offered in the future.

*Pinch* Messager is available on many platforms including WP7 and e27 would be doing a review on it next week.

Also coming up next week, Anuj shares his experience as a serial entrepreneur and offers some words of advice. Do look out for both articles.

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Beercamp Singapore – 15 Sep

Beercamp is about people and connections. There is no topic, no agenda: the focus is on meeting up and finding common interests. It’s an reason for geeks to get out and socialize. It’s a chilled-out atmosphere where we can talk shop and talk business, and a way to stay in touch with the community and what’s happening.

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Event Details

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When: Thursday, 15th September 2011
Time: 730pm onwards
Where: Cable Car pub in Cuppage Plaza (Map)

Image Credit: LoopZilla

 

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TechLaunch – 24 Sep

Calling all developers, hackers, self-starters and anyone curious about the startup world. TechLaunch will be in town come 24th September, and is hosted by the folks from NUS. Meet new people, build a team and tinker with NUS technologies. By the end of the day, you might find yourself having built a product with the most votes!

 

What to expect?

The opening session will be an unconference day for people to meet and play around with the technology.  A series of NUS technologies would be presented and the audience is rallied to build ideas on top of them.  Participants would then vote for the best idea.

The best part of the program is that at the end of the event, teams are given a period of time to put their ideas together, write a proposal, and have the chance of getting their project funded. For more information and the program schedule, refer to the Facebook page.

 

What are the NUS Technologies?

The technologies would be in the fields of augmented reality, media search, image processing/editing, gaming, language processing, web analysis, web search, video editing/processing, and so on.

 

Event Details

When: 24th September 2011

Time: 10.00am – 6.30pm

Where: NUS Engineering Auditorium 9, Engineering Dr 1, Singapore

Register here

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Vembu Acquires CloudNucleus,Virtualization Based Data Protection Firm

Chennai based Vembu Technologies which provides cloud based data backup and recovery solution to SMBs has acquired CloudNucleus, a Chennai based company.

The deal is a mix of equity and cash and the acquisition will help Vembu strengthen its offerings in the areas of business continuity/disaster recovery, Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and Bare Metal Recovery (BMR).

CloudNucleus delivers Virtualization based Data Protection and Disaster Recovery Products and helps companies implement virtualized backups and disaster recovery for a fraction of the cost of traditional backup solution.

The acquisition will accelerate Vembu’s ability to deliver the industry’s most complete data protection and recovery solutions targeted at small and medium businesses (SMB) and sold exclusively through MSPs and MHPs, helping partners get the maximum value from their service with the lowest risk and the highest customer satisfaction. Further, CloudNucleus’ deep technical capability, and strong service delivery will complement Vembu’s established channel and enhance its ability to serve partners and their customers around the globe.

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China Digest: eBay targets China, Govt embraces Weibo, and more

Here are some interesting startup news from China, not only in its capital, Beijing, but also other startup hubs such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Hangzhou, and many more.

(1) Techweb reported that eBay is eyeing acquisition targets in China to expand its market share. eBay expects 2011 sales from Greater China to increase by 30-40% from last year’s US$4 billion.

(2) China Daily reported that Chinese government officials are increasingly embracing the micro-blogging site Weibo. A Tencent study found that, as of 1st August, there were more than 10,000 government departments and officials in China with Weibo accounts, 266 of which are owned by senior ranked officials at the deputy-city level. There were only 2,400 accounts opened by authorities and officials on 20th March.

(3) Douban, the most original SNS in China, has launched their most innovative project yet, Alpha Town. It’s a virtual township with streets, commercial spaces, and residential areas up for rent.

(4) mknote is a pretty close Chinese copy of Evernote. It has a similar color scheme for its logo, but missing the iconic elephant. To differentiate itself from Evernote, mknote places more emphasis on its sharing features.

(5) Sogou, the search engine curated by Sohu.com, launched its image-based search solution where users can search images based on the pictures they uploaded.

(6) Doodle Mobile, an Innovation Works’ (IW) incubatee and mobile-based game company has closed a US$10 million series A round of funding, led by KPCB and in conjunction with Zero2IPO.

(7) Sohu.com announced on 29th August that its Board of Directors has authorized the company’s plan to buy back up to US$100 million of the outstanding American Depositary Shares (ADS) of Changyou.com, Sohu’s online gaming subsidiary, and/or outstanding shares of common stock of Sohu over a one-year period from 1st September 2011 to 31st August 2012.

(8) According to Wang Xin, CEO of group buying service Meituan, the company generated record sales in this July of over RMB 100 million (US$ 15.67 million), up 20% month-on-month. It also topped the list of Chinese group-buying sites in terms of customer satisfaction, according to report by DCCI, Data Center of the China Internet.

(9) Qihoo 360, the Nasdaq listed internet security software vendor, delivered its own solution to mobile messaging with the debut of a Kik-like service: Kouxin, which means “oral message” in Chinese.

(10) The Central Bank announced the second batch of 13 licenses to online payment solution providers, bringing the total up to 40. The original batch included major players such as Alibaba’s Alipay, Tencent’s Tenpay and Yeepay for vertical industry based transactions. The new batch includes CUP Shanghai, Hangzhou JETCO and Chengdu Mount Bao.

(11) NewEgg China CEO Gu Jianxin announced that he’ll step down from his post, about 10 months after he took the realm in November 2010. An anonymous NewEgg China executive said that “the company’s hesitation in new strategies triggered Gu’s resignation.”

(12) Innovation Works, the most powerful early-stage high tech investment incubator in China has raised a new US$180 million fund. Some of the heavyweight investors include Yuri Milner and Ron Conway.

(13) According to the latest data by market research firm IDC, HP has a PC market share of only 8.5% in China and dropped out of the top three, down to fourth in rankings.

(14) In Chengdu, at the same place the APEC SME Summit 2011 was held, 360buy and UnionPay, the national bankcard association in China, announced their strategic partnership on online payment and mobile payment solutions.

(15) At the Baidu World 2011 annual conference, Robin Li, founder and CEO of China’s largest search engine, announced that the internet powerhouse is releasing a revamped homepage with customization features that let users personalize their Baidu homepage by adding modules like ‘Bookmarks’, ‘Apps’, ‘Feeds’, and ‘Search Trends’.

(16) 99Bill, a popular online payment gateway service provider revealed its new mobile payment solution, Kuaishua (meaning ‘quick swipe’ in Chinese). The service enables everyone to pay with credit cards anywhere just using his/her mobile device.

(17) The crowded real-time texting market is seeing fiercer competition as China Mobile, the largest operator in the world in terms of revenue and subscribers, announced on Weibo its own free text messaging product Feiliao, which is Chinese for ‘Fly Chat’.

(18) Tencent just released its own Android App Store. As always, Tencent is very good at its products. Its app store, named Tencent App Center has a nice UI and the user experience is good too.

(19) ZDNet reported that Beiwa Network, a children’s learning and entertainment site, has secured nearly US$10 million in funding from Qiming Ventures.

(20) The online payment affiliate of Alibaba, Alipay, is extending its reach with an acquisition of online payment company OnCard, a wholly owned subsidiary of Australian Stock Exchange listed OnCard International. OnCard provides online payment services to airlines.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.

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Angry Birds Releases Moon Festival Theme

To add to the moon cake frenzy of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Rovio, maker of Angry Birds has released a Moon Festival theme game. When the Mighty Eagle himself, Peter Verstabacka came to China for GMIC, he openly said their China entry strategy was high on the agenda.

With ambitious goals of 100 million downloads in China, the leading entertainment brand in China and uncommonly to become the most copied brand in China, Rovio knows it needs to adapt to the Chinese culture to truly be embraced and consequentially achieve its goal.

The Moon festival themed game gets players to chase the pigs through 30 brand new levels filled with pagodas, rabbits, and red lanterns, lit by a dazzling harvest moon. Players can also in-app purchase the Mighty Eagle to destroy difficult levels and collect special achievements.

Also, if you have not had enough moon cake, you can play the game to collect 8 hidden pieces of moon cake!

 

 

 

Related posts:

1. Angry birds Flocks to China Both Online and Offline
2. Angry Birds Taking Off in China, with First Partner MadHouse for Mobile Ads
3. Angry Birds Wants To Beat Disney in China Within 2 Years

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Tech Briefings: HTC Considering Buying WebOS; 360buy Goes Public Due To Short On Money?

1. HTC Considering Buying WebOS

HTC chairman Wang Xuehong disclosed that the smartphone vendor is considering buying WebOS. HP announced discontinuing its WebOS business couple weeks ago.

“We had internal deliberation over the potential buyout, but we’re in no hurry to do that.” said Wang.

As the “patent wars” are affecting more and more companies including Apple, Google and Samsung, HTC needs its own mobile operating system to avoid such pitfall. Currently, HTC bases its devices on Android and Windows smartphone, and the company has been involved in patent infringement suits with Apple.

 

2. Chinese Group Buying Market Seeing Imminent Shake-up?

With more than 3000 new daily deal sites sprang up in H1 of this year and an aggregate of over 5500 similar services in China, everyone is speculating a market shake-up will come sooner or later, it’s just a matter of time.

And according to Xu Maodong, founder and CEO of 55Tuan, one Groupon-clone in China, even in the first half when the market was still seeing strong growth there have been signs for the sooner-or-later upheaval.

And it seems to some analysts, group buying services’ founder including Xu and Meituan CEO Wang Xin, and some venture capitalists, the Chinese Groupons are facing both unsolved problems and mounting competitions. As compared to Groupon, its Chinese counterparts lack behind in terms of gross margin, quality assurance and so on. That’s one of the reasons why there’re a whole lot more complaints over group buying deals in China.

 

3. Rumor Says 360buy Has To Go Public For Running Low On Money

360buy was scheduled to go public in H1 of 2012, the recent rumor about its impending IPO means the company will go public (if it’s true) a year ahead of time. How come?

Observers speculated that the giant online retailer is running low on cash because it hasn’t received the whole sum of the latest round of funding while it has been splashing out money to ramp up its services.

Now that 360buy is about to run out of the former fundings, there isn’t much choice for 360buy except for going public to raise more money.

Related posts:

1. Tech Briefings: Top 10 Daily Deal Sites Still Bleeding Money; Perfect World To Establish TMT Fund
2. Tech Briefings:Mecox Lane Loses $ 3.4 M; Tencent Launches Mobile app Center With Money Incentive
3. 2011 of Chinese Group Buying Market, the Year of Burning-Money

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“Being An Entrepreneur Isn’t Sexy. It’s Awful”

Being an entrepreneur isn’t sexy and while it does look rosy from the other side, it’s a lonely journey full of struggle and economic roller coaster ride.

Watch this video where Mark Suster (entrepreneur turned VC) talks about some of the myths surrounding entrepreneurship.

 

Recommended Read: Entrepreneurship Myth– It Needs A Lot of Courage To Start Up | Myths About Entrepreneurship – I will be my Boss

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Facebook – China is Number 1 Priority

Although Facebook is blocked in China, there is still deep interest in how Facebook managed to become what it is today. The closest the general public has come to learning about the Facebook story, was through the Social Network movie. The movie portrayed Zuckerberg as an obnoxious genius, who would not let anything, including his best friend, get in the way of building the biggest social network in the world. However, few of us really know the true story and what Zuckerberg is really like. Someone who does is David Kirkpatrick, journalist and author of the Facebook Effect, a biography of Zuckerberg and Facebook. Kirkpatrick was in Beijing last week to share his knowledge and thoughts.

Aptly held in Beta Café, inside the Tencent and Innovation Works building, Kirkpatrick joined a panel of social media company heads such as Zynga, Kaixin001 and Happy Elements. The Chinese social media companies were eager to pick Kirkpatrick’s brains about how Facebook became so dominant and sustainable.

Parker set up the pieces

Kirkpatrick explained that Sean Parker, the founder of Napster played a pivotal role in Facebook’s success, “Parker knew much earlier than Mark, that Facebook could go everywhere.” Parker, having experienced being ousted as founder himself, set up Facebook finances so that Mark could not be pushed out as well.

Destiny to impact the world

Only 27 years old, Zuckerberg is at the helm of a US$5 billion revenue company which Kirkpatrick exclaims is “just bizarre” and deservedly commands huge respect. Kirkpatrick also reveals that Mark has no self doubt about himself but still does not come across as arrogant. There were many times when investors wanted him to sell the company so they could make a big profitable return, but Mark was “headstrong and refused to sell. He knew his destiny to impact the world.”

Kirkpatrick also said that Mark has changed little from when Facebook was a US$9 million revenue company till today. He still thinks about things the same way and doesn’t really care about the money, but he still likes the idea of beating Bill Gates in terms of wealth. A long way to go though, since Gates is still the world’s second richest with US$54 billion and Zuckerberg is the 52^nd richest with US$13.5 billion, although Gates is 55 and Zuckerberg is 27 years old according to Forbes.

Biggest challenge is being too big

When asked what Facebook’s biggest challenge is, Kirkpatrick believes it is being too big and bureaucratic, where it reaches the point like Google where it can’t make decisions and makes big mistakes. “Facebook can’t stop innovating, otherwise its dead.” Said Kirkpatrick.

To understand if it is possible, Zynga’s Andy Tian asked if any company has met the challenge of being able to scale up but stay nimble. Kirkpatrick believes the obvious examples are Apple, Microsoft and Oracle. The reason is because all were lead by autocratic leaders which aggressively fulfil their vision.

Kirkpatrick says that Mark himself is too obsessed with product and doesn’t want to get involved in other things, therefore he delegates responsibilities to people like Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. This could be dangerous, if Zuckerberg only makes decisions based on product and not other issues like policy or privacy.

China – #1 Strategic Priority

This is where the Chinese social media heads became anxious, the entry threat of Facebook into China. Already many Chinese social networks are losing power. RenRen and Kaixin001 are on the decline but Sina Weibo is on the rise.

Kirkpatrick says that Mark himself has declared figuring out China and how to get in, his number one strategic priority. He has visited the mainland a couple of times and had some noteworthy company visits and is studying Chinese. In order to break through the barriers, Mark will compromise and partner with a strong local player like Baidu or Tencent.

Is Facebook worth US$200 billion?

Of course going public means less control and more scrutiny, but it is inevitable that Facebook will go IPO and is speculated to in the first half of 2012. The only thing to put out the IPO fuse will be an SEC ruling to allow more than 500 owners of a privately held company. Zuckerberg is hoping for this.  Recent private market share trades have valued that company at between US$70 billion to US$84 billion.

Of course Kirkpatrick is a little biased, but Facebook is one of the most anticipated IPO’s in history. Kirkpatrick believes that there is enough pent up demand that will put Facebook’s value at least at US$100-$125 billion and possibly US$200 billion by the end of the year. Given the uncertain global economic climate, Facebook may be better off holding off the IPO.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related posts:

1. Localisation Sometimes just Sucks, For Facebook in China 2011
2. Chinese Netizen Commented on Facebook Mark Zuckerberg's Visit Baidu
3. Facebook Mark Day 4 in China, It Is About E-Commerce With Jack Ma

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Google Japan Launches Minna no Business Online, Free Website Hosting For Small-Mid Business

Minna no Business Online (=business for everyone online) is a newly released web hosting service by Google in Japan, today on September 13 2011.

The site is, very different from typical Google web services, not under google domains but have its own jp domain (minbiz.jp), designed with vivid red, like the color which is used by the nation's largest e-commerce mall Rakuten [J].

Features they post on the top page are:

• Easy for everyone to build
• Free for 1 year
• Specialized designs for many industry categories
• Your own domain

On your registration, you will be asked a new domain name you want to use, from the selection of ".jp", ".com", ".net", ".org", ".biz" and ".info", which covers most top level domains Japanese companies usually choose.

You may choose about 100 different designs from 14 categories of industry. At the end of registration process, you need to receive an automatic phone call to get authenticated (that you are a real shop owner).

Google's motivations for the service seem on 2 points. Firstly, this service will start charging after 1 year, for example with ".jp" domain, 1,470 yen (US$19) per month. The other part is the site guides the new website owners to its advertising platform, AdWords.

Google's commercial film is up on YouTube,

"Free website building in 15 minutes"

The partner page shows that Google Japan is collaborating with some others. KDDI, 2nd largest cellphone carrier, and its subsidiary KDDI Communications who has been running website builder/hosting Jimdo in Japan. Actually, design choosing form on the Minbiz's registration process is on Jimdo site.

Extra-governmental Organization for Small & Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation and NPO IT Coordinators Association [J] are also on the partners list.

The first case studies are introduced on the site. There Google took a small island Kouzusima, and let some small business owners make their first websites.

via Google Japan Blog

Google Japan Launches Minna no Business Online, Free Website Hosting For Small-Mid Business

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