Christmas is Coming, But are Entrepreneurs in the Holiday Spirit?

Hmm... that could be Minghao, Rick, Steven, and Charlie. Credit: Smh.com.au

Tencent’s founder, Pony Ma, once said that as an employee you love the weekends and holidays. But once you are an employer, you can’t wait for the holidays to be over because the payroll and overheads keep going regardless.

His words are true, speaking from personal experience. And with so much things at hand with our team right now, especially with Startup Asia, I confess I did fantasize scenes of putting Minghao, Rick, Steven, and Charlie in an endless job factory line with nasty pandas forcing them to work. They know I’m joking of course, otherwise this article wouldn’t be published here!

At my usual meeting/work place at the center of Singapore, it is common to see ladies giggling about what they have bought for their friends and men carrying bagfuls of presents for their children. I admit I do envy this part of their lives. It looks great — filled with laughter and happiness. But most likely that is just one small part of their lives, the tip of an iceberg that includes a lot of hard work as well.

This is the period when most people have fun while the entrepreneurs are still slogging their way through. There isn’t time to waste, and celebrations have to be kept to a minimal. I believe most entrepreneurs would think this way. You don’t have time for Christmas and holidays, and just want to keep working because seeing your startup grow gives you the adrenaline to keep pushing forward.

Of course on the other hand, you recognize that it’s good to keep the mind healthy. Taking some time off might be a good option to reflect and plan your the next move. And Christmas (which is just next week!) looks like a good period for all entrepreneurs to do that. I hope we all can strike the right balance, though personally I’m leaning towards work — with a Skype meeting for Startup Arena lined up next on the sched!

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Bank Of Japan Starts Twitter, Can It Stop Too-High Yen By Tweets?

Bank of Japan, Japan's central bank, announced [J] its immediate start of Twitter on December 16. Two Twitter account in Japanese and in English started tweeting.

Japanese account has tweeted 4 messages, but English one has 2 tweets so far. It seems English account only tweets only when there is an English web page matched with the message.

Japanese Yen has been being in historic high, despite national debt and two decades economical stagnation. Bank of Japan is always pressured by pro-export industries and politicians.

Especially after the Eastern Japan disaster last March 11, many government and government-related organization began Twitter after criticism for not being open, some of them are in English, including Prime Minister’s Office (English one), Tokyo Electric Power Co.(TEPCO) and Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (=army, though they are not allowed to identity themselves so).

All links on the tweets are abbreviated by twme.jp, which is provided by CGM Marketing, a subsidiary of Digital Garage who assists Twitter' localization. It shows Bank of Japan uses Tweetmanager by CGM Marketing, who also manages Twitter guiding portal TwiNavi.

Bank Of Japan Starts Twitter, Can It Stop Too-High Yen By Tweets?

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Eat this: India’s Best Engineers are in Bihar and Delhi

As per National Employability Study 2011, India’s best engineers are in Delhi and Bihar, who champion and provide the best talent pool for IT Product, IT Services, KPO, BPO, Software Testing and Hardware Networking roles. Importantly, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh lag behind in quality of talent.

While in some states over 3 in every 10 engineers are employable in IT Services industry, this falls drastically to less than 1 in every 10 of the engineers in some states. This dramatic fall in employability standards across states is a disturbing situation. Not only is this detrimental to the education standards and economy of the country, but creates social risks of frustration among ‘qualified’ engineers. The strong correlation of poor employability to the number of colleges in a state show how states are concentrating on quantity rather than quality.”Regionally, it is observed that employability in IT services companies is highest among Engineers in the North, followed by East, then West and then South.

- In the North, Delhi, the National winner leads the pack, closely followed by Uttarakhand and Punjab.
- East sees Bihar leading with highest employability followed by West Bengal and Orissa.
- West sees Gujarat setting benchmarks with the highest employability, Madhya Pradesh follows in Central India.
- Kerala emerges with highest employability in the South, followed by Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

In India, there is a concentration of engineering colleges in a few states. The report looked at the ranking of states considered as ‘engineering hubs’ by employability in IT Services sector. It is observed that states with more Governmentt colleges as compared to Private colleges fare better on employability.

Employability by Metros

Delhi (north) shows highest employability percent followed by Kolkata (East), cities in the West and the lowest employability figures were observed in colleges in Southern cities. The skew in employability is quite high, for instance, the IT product employability in Delhi in as high as 1 in every 9 candidates and as low as 1 in every 200 in Chennai.

Even though Bengaluru has similar IT Services’ employability as compared to other Southern and Western cities, it shows much higher employability for IT product companies. This indicates that candidates in Bengaluru do much better at computer programming and algorithms even though they show similar English and cognitive skills.

The study was done by AspiringMinds, employability measurement company, headquartered in Gurgaon.

Related posts:

1. 3G Auction – Foreign Players Allowed, Only 2 blocks for Delhi
2. 3G Auction – 5 Players per Circle, Auction by Feb 9
3. Indian Entrepreneurial States: Kerala, UP, Maharashtra and TN leads
4. Indian IT Industry: Bangalore Engineers are the Costliest in the Country
5. TN best e-governed State, followed by Himachal, Delhi, Haryana and AP

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And You Thought Email is Dead? Well, $25 Million Funding Injected for Apps Around Email (in 2011)

I have been doing Email Marketing for many years, and before you yawn, let me tell you that this post is not about Email Marketing. I read a post about how one of the VCs is investing in apps around Email, particularly Google Marketplace. That got me thinking of all the apps I have been following that are around Email.
Email is far from being dead. The simple and humble email is the most ubiquitous web application on the Internet. Here are some applications around Email that are interesting to watch:

 Yesware is an Email for sales people. The application is available for Gmail and smart phones and provides email analytics, customizable templates and CRM integration. They secured $1M in funding in September 2011.

Attachments.me overcomes Gmail’s shortcomings in attachment search. Attachments.me allows you to search by file type, email address, or tag. In March 2011 they received a seed funding of $500K.

 Spanning is not strictly an email related app, but it’s a business-class, cloud-to-cloud backup for Google Apps. In April 2011 they reported securing Series A funding of $2M.

Perkville is a loyalty card solution without any plastic card or any phone app. Your email address is your loyalty card. Neat, eh? The company’s profile on CrunchBase mentions a seed funding of $500K in Jan 2011.

Instead of constantly checking your inbox for important messages, AwayFind lets you configure when and how to alert you of urgent emails, SMS, phone calls or smartphone apps running on the iPhone or Android devices. Awayfind reported getting $800K funding in October 2011.

 ShortMail – It’s like Twitter for email. It forces you to cut down your email to 500 characters. They secured $750K Series A funding in July 2011.

FanBridge is a Fan relationship management service. They had secured about $2M in funding in Jan 2011. FanBridge, helps bands, artists, sports teams, and even small businesses and brands manage their fan base through opt-in emails and sophisticated analytics. It manages more than 120 million fans via email alone.

ActivePath has developed a “patent pending” technology that allows Banks to send out emails such that readers can instantly take action on the email – transact immediately via email itself. ActivePath secured Series B funding of $10M in September 2011.

 Rapportive shows you everything about your contacts right inside your Gmail inbox and includes information from sources like LinkedIn, Skype etc. I find this quite a useful add on to Gmail. Last year they received $1M in seed funding. Gmail has introduced its own People widget in May 2011.

CloudMagic has built a browser extension that results in an extra search box in your Gmail interface that allows you to rapidly search for anything in your inbox, with results updating as you type and the ability to preview messages from a thread in a tab or open entire conversations with a single click.

 LiveIntent helps sell and buy email ad inventory. They secured $8M in series B funding in September 2011.

There are a lot more interesting apps around email marketing, Email and CRM integrations, and browser extensions and so on.

Email has still got its mojo.

[Guest article by Geetanjali Dighe, part of Juvlon team.]

- Recommended Read: Coverage of Email Marketing industry.

Data Source: TechCrunch/Crunchbase.

Related posts:

1. How To Ensure Email Delivery in Your Email Marketing Campaign
2. Opportunities for Email Marketing Business in India
3. Zoho Project Brings Contextual Widgets to Google Apps
4. How to Handle Email Overload? Clever Tips that Works
5. Do More with Email – Track Issue, Tasks, Support Tickets and much more [IssueBurner]

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The Tudou vs Youku Copyright Clash Continues, as Tudou Wields Evidence

Today’s quickly escalating war of words between the two Chinese video-streaming sites Tudou (NASDAQ:TUDO) and Youku (NYSE:YOKU) – which centers on alleged TV show piracy, with both sides accusing the other of it – is still rumbling on. And now Tudou has provided notarized proof that Youku pirated seven episodes of one Taiwanese chat show and included those in its series catalog. Here’s the first claim from last night, and then the counter-claim this morning.

A Tudou representative told PO that:

The lawsuit against Tudou is Youku’s trick to distract the media’s attention. Youku has been spreading false information, accusing Tudou of copyright infringement of its content. After Tudou carefully checked its own inventory, it has been proved that Youku’s accusations are fabricated. The so-called ‘pirated’ content, including both Tudou copyrighted content which has been accused as infringing content by Youku, has already been promptly removed by Tudou as soon as it has been notified.

The release images include a notarized document that verifies its screenshots:

Partial views of Tudou's notarized evidence, released today? Will Youku make the same move soon?

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Copyright Clash

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Youku earlier today pointed out that it too has licensed the TV show from the Taiwanese broadcaster, Cti TV. Tudou’s first press release said it has “exclusive” rights to web-stream that popular chat show – but that can’t be true since both Youku and Baidu’s (NASDAQ:BIDU) Qiyi have purchased access to it as well. There might well be different access granted in each case, and perhaps one website has bought the rights to stream the most recent shows without any delay. Whatever the intricacies of their respective contracts, seven episodes remain at the heart of the battle, and Tudou suggests that it could claim as much as 150 million in compensation.

In Youku’s initial response, it alleges that Tudou has infringed on the copyright of at least 60 of its other licensed TV drama series.

It’s not clear if Tudou has actually filed a lawsuit against Youku yet, or just threatened to. Either way, a further response from Youku seems likely, and perhaps legal action of their own will be put into action next week – probably accompanied by evidence of its own – as was suggested this morning.

The whole tussle could become tiresome very quickly, and the two companies need to be wary of boring the populace with the ins-and-outs of all this now that it has been picked up by the Chinese press. Perhaps best for both sites to do a bit of early ‘spring cleaning’ – i.e. deleting a whole bunch of TV shows that shouldn’t be up – and then drop this whole thing before it becomes tedious. Or expensive.

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South China Morning Post is Jumping Into Group Buying, With Help From Lokaly

Yesterday we told you about how Hong Kong-based Lokaly Network Limited (which operates Lokaly) was acquired by group buying service platform Dealised. And today we’re hearing more news about the company, as the South China Morning Post (also Hong Kong-based) just unveiled plans for a new luxury discount site, developed by — you guessed it — the folks over at Lokaly.

The new SCMP service will be called RedeeME (redeeme.com.hk) and will specialize in discounts on services like higher-end hotels, spas, and restaurants — all under the initial slogan “Live the high life at a reduced price.” The site is online, but is currently in ‘coming soon’ mode, with ‘soon’ being January 4th according to today’s announcement. One the service is up and running, it will offer discounts deals for one week, and coupons will be emailed to customers which they can then redeem with the merchant.

Of course, the South China Morning Post is a subscription only newspaper/service, so and its director of advertising and marketing services, Sophia Yu, thinks that this bodes well for the company’s venture into the group buy space:

What our new service brings our advertisers is the unique target of known quality affluent shoppers. Our audiences are willing to spend for the finer things in life [and by] offering RedeeME to our advertisers, we enable them to get prominent exposure to a guaranteed and profiled audience, while showcasing their products in a brand-enhancing premium environment… We have the added advantage of being able to market RedeeME not only via social channels but also through the South China Morning Post, our magazines and publications, scmp.com and through our many partner channels, ensuring we reach quantity as well as quality audiences.

It remains to be seen whether this is a worthwhile endeavor for SCMP. The newspaper is joining the group buy party a little late, in a time when merchants’ trust in such services may be fading. If neighboring China is any indication, it’s a space best avoided.

But for companies like Lokaly/Dealised whose purpose is to help others crack that difficult group buy nut, well, that area just might be a little more promising.

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