Come on Asia…Take More Risks!

This post was contributed by Mikaal Abdulla, CEO of 8Securities, an innovative and social online trading portal based in Hong Kong. 

I love risk. Not so much the bungy jumping off a bridge or telling a triad I don’t like his tattoo kind of risk, but taking real risks in business. Perhaps it is the potential that compels me as there is a simple & direct correlation between risk and reward. After spending 12 years working for someone else, I decided to take the plunge into entrepreneurship. With three small children in school and a hard to swallow Hong Kong lease, it was not an easy decision. But I took a chance and invested all of my savings in an idea and a business with complete and utter confidence in its future. I told my wife we would either be able to buy an island in the Pacific or we will be financially ruined (and the statistics say we will be financially ruined). Like me, she is a risk taker so we went for it. Check back with me in 3 years and we can judge the gamble a success or failure.I have had the good fortune of living in Silicon Valley, New York, London, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and now Hong Kong. Something that has struck me is Asia’s general intolerance for risk taking compared to the rest of the world.

After all, our Asian parents did not invest so much money and effort in our education for us to turn down a prestigious and well paying job. We have a very high cost of living and our monthly rent for a small apartment is more than a mortgage for a 5 bedroom house in Florida. Culturally, we simply were not raised to take big professional and personal chances. Recruiting individuals to join a startup in Hong Kong was near impossible despite market pay, flexibility and lifestyle it provided. I could see in peoples eyes that their heart wanted to take the risk but their head, with its aversion for risk, generally prevailed.

There are varying degrees of risk and I don’t suggest that leaving your job to start a company is right for everyone. But not taking risks for fear of failure alone must be overcome in Asia. In the US, people wear failure on their sleeve like a badge of honor. It says “I had the guts to try and here I am…stronger and smarter from the experience”.  In Asia, our family, society and companies view failure as the simple converse to success. Asia is no doubt becoming the leading force in the global economy and that will not change. But how much do we leave on the table by not being the innovating force of the global economy. China, in particular, is often cited as being unoriginal. I believe this is largely true. But it is not due to a lack of creativity but due to unseen societal and institutional boundaries. One can not innovate without some degree of risk taking and overcoming the ever present fear of failure.

So my plea to you is to take a risk today. If you are sitting at your desk set free that edgy banner ad or headline you have always wanted to try. Have a coffee with friends about the startup idea that has been lingering in your mind and work on it on the side. Simply, challenge convention in one way or another. You will find it is not only liberating but it will spark a more creative side of your being. We need to get comfortable with being less functional and more creative. Taking chances one by one is the only way we can change. And for all of those out there that don’t tolerate personal failure, don’t judge those that try something different.

Related posts:

1. Do you Poken?
2. Hengzhi – the Real Chinese LinkedIn ??
3. Lessons from Successful Technopreneurs at Echelon Singapore 2011

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The Hatch Launches Start-Up Accelerator Programme, Incubates 7 Startups

We earlier covered launch of ‘The Hatch’ incubator, which provides a combination of startup accelerator plus business incubator.

The Hatch has launched its startup accelerator programme and has incubated 7 startups in the first batch.

The startups are:

EOnline Tutors – A Chandigarh based online tutoring company.

Campus Media – A Delhi based startup creating brand engagement solutions on college campuses.

Go Gobble – Based out of Mumbai, Go Gobble is an Online food ordering and restaurant table booking portal.

Mera Gao Power – A startup doing solar powered micro grids for off-grid villages. MGP provides electricity for 2 bulbs and a mobile charging point for Rs. 25 per week to villages without power.

Start Kart – based out of Gurgaon, Start Kart is an online platform that helps shoppers make better informed decisions on products.

Toy Monk – A Hyderabad based online toy portal.

Tune Patrol –Tune Patrol is a social music discovery platform to promote independent music artists. With Tune Patrol artists will be able to upload their songs onto the site and let listeners explore and buy their songs in an engaging game like experience.

The Hatch has created a mentor panel comprising of over 65 entrepreneurs, investors and senior professionals and plans to incubate 1000 entrepreneurs over the next 5 years.

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Take Your VPN to Cloud with CipherGraph

As the world gets flatter with cloud services, small companies and startups need an affordable virtual private network (VPN) service that allows employees to work from anywhere, at any time and access company’s internal services like they are sitting in the office.

Today, VPN services are not geared towards SME segment owing to the challenges in setting it up and importantly, the price slab.

Bangalore based CipherGraph has launched its Cloud VPN service (beta) that enables organizations to allow people to work securely from anywhere, as if they are in the office (infrastructure).

Features of CipherGraph VPN

• CipherGraph VPN supports Window 7, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android right out of the box with latest OS/firmware (no jailbreak/root needed)
• Direct integration with Active Directory, LDAP for user authentication and authorization.
• An on-box directory of users/groups that you may use for small/limited deployment in your organization.
• Strong Access Policy: Control exactly who can use which network resource.
• No entry Cost, Subscription Billing: There is no expensive hardware to buy upfront and get locked-in for years, the service is purely subscription based. Pay only for the capacity you use.
• Low Maintenance & Low Investment: No physical maintenance.
• Energy Savings : There is no hardware, your energy savings can be in several hundred dollars per year.
• Low Down Time: Since there is no central device, the service can be managed with minimal down time. Even zero to full deployment time can be as low as five minutes.
• Encryption: CipherGraph VPN uses Industry Standard Encryption to protect your network and resources.

In terms of setup, CipherGraph is completely hardware-free VPN service and offers enterprise class security and role-based access control, a feature SMEs surely would be gung-ho about.

As far as the founding team is concerned, the founder Jitender Sharan brings seven years of prior VPN/network security experience and specializes in enterprise class security (earlier worked at Aventail/SonicWAL).

The service is currently an invite-only and you can request an invite from here.

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Indian Government Announces Mobile Governance Framework [App Store, Mobile Friendly Sites, Payment Gateway and more]

As part of National e-governance plan, Indian government has announced m-Governance framework that aims to utilize the massive reach of mobile phones and harness the potential of mobile applications to enable easy and round-the-clock access to public services, especially in the rural areas.

The following are the main measures laid down by government:

• Web sites  of all  Government Departments  and Agencies shall be made mobile-compliant, using the “One Web” approach.
• Open  standards  shall be adopted  for  mobile applications for  ensuring the interoperability of applications across various operating systems and devices as per the Government Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance.
• Uniform/ single pre-designated numbers (long and short codes) shall be used for mobile-based services to ensure convenience.

All Government Departments and Agencies shall develop and deploy mobile applications for providing all their public services through mobile devices to the extent feasible on the mobile platform. They shall also specify the service levels for such services.

To ensure the  adoption and implementation of the  framework in a time-bound manner, the government will develop Mobile Services Delivery Gateway (MSDG), i.e. the the core infrastructure for enabling the availability of public services through mobile devices. This will be developed and maintained by an appropriate agency within DIT. MSDG is proposed to be used as a shared infrastructure by  the  Central and State Government Departments and Agencies at nominal costs for delivering public services through mobile devices

To ensure successful implementation of the  platform with requisite levels of  security and redundancy, following actions will be taken:

a) End User Interface: End-user devices include landline phones, mobile phones, smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), tablets, and laptops with wireless infrastructure.  Mobile applications developed shall take into consideration appropriately the  wireless-device interface issues,  such as bandwidth limitations, micro-browser and micro-screen restrictions, memory and storage capacities, usability, etc.

b)  Content for Mobile Services:  Due to lower-bandwidth and smaller-screen characteristics of mobile  devices, successful development  and deployment  of mGovernance will require development of separate mobile-ready content. Similarly, to meet the needs of all the potential users, the applications will need to be developed Framework for Mobile Governance in the relevant local languages for the various channels of delivery. Open standards  and open source  software, to the extent possible,  will be used  to ensure  interoperability and affordability of the content and applications developed.

c) Mobile Applications (Apps) Store: A mobile applications (m-apps) store will be created to facilitate the process of  development  and deployment  of suitable applications for delivery of public services through mobile devices. The m-apps store shall be integrated with the MSDG and  it  shall use the MSDG infrastructure for deployment of such applications. It is proposed that the store will be based upon service oriented architecture and cloud based technologies using open standards as far as practicable. The open platform will be developed and deployed in conjunction with the MSDG for making the additional value added services available to the users irrespective of the device or network operator used by them.

d) Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for Value-Added  Services (VAS) providers: MSDG shall offer suitable APIs to VAS providers with appropriate terms and  conditions to ensure interoperability and compliance with standards for development of applications for delivery of public services.

e) Mobile-Based Electronic Authentication of Users:  For electronic authentication of users for mobile-based public services,  MSDG shall incorporate suitable mechanisms including Aadhaar-based authentication. This will also help in ensuring appropriate privacy and confidentiality of data and transactions.

f) Payment Gateway:   MSDG shall also incorporate an integrated mobile payment gateway to enable users to pay for the public services electronically.

g) Participation of Departments:  The  Government Departments and  Agencies both at the Central and State levels will be encouraged to offer their mobile-based public services through the MSDG to avoid duplication of infrastructure.

Link (pdf)

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China Has No Innovation? Look Closer

I gave a sharing session at the National University of Singapore last Wednesday about my experience living in China for a year. I am currently in my last semester at NUS majoring in Communications and New Media, with a very fun minor in ‘Technopreneurship.’ In order to obtain my Technopreneurship minor, I opted for a global immersion project called the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) program. In my case, I was attached to an Innovation Works’ invested startup called XingCloud, and took courses at Tsinghua University.

Before I could even share any thoughts about my experience there, some students already left the lecture theater. Even though I was following perhaps more popular talks from people from Silicon Valley, Bio Valley, and Stockholm, I couldn’t help but feel a little down about this.

A few cloned apples shouldn’t spoil the bunch

But after I gave my talk, many of the reactions I heard asserted that China has no innovation and creativity. Really? Some of them tell me that Chinese rip entires idea from the West and replicate them in the East. While this is indeed the conventional wisdom, it proves less-than-wise in that it often overlooks the fact that such entrepreneurs tweak and adopt the idea to suit to the local culture.

Regarding the oft-cited example of Sina Weibo — a micro-blogging tool which has surpassed it’s western counterpart, Twitter — it has adopted a number of innovations, tweaking the entire microblogging idea to suit local markets. In my opinion, it’s wayyyyyyy better than Twitter in terms of the user experience, value added services, and even the interface.

I attended one of the mobiTalk sessions organized by the Great Wall Club and recall 500 Startups founder Dave McClure saying that it would be foolish not to replicate business ideas into markets which no one have tapped into. I mean it makes sense right? If you see an opportunity to serve a huge market (such as, China), it would be silly to miss on the potential big bucks.

Should you let it get to you?

Cloning is when people replicate ideas, and it’s often associated with China. But what makes you think that it does not happen in the west? Take for example Zynga’s FarmVille. Wasn’t this replicated from Farm Town? Farm Town was the ‘first mover,’ but who’s doing better now?

People will try to learn what makes others successful, and try to follow in their steps, right down to the tiniest details such as the button placement, color, layout etc. If your product is being copied, you might feel a strange mix of anger and flattery.

I’m not saying that copying is cool, but I just wanted to illustrate that we live in an ecosystem which follows very Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest rules. But if you play the game, it’s dwelling on those who don’t play fair will only distract you from the ultimate prize. Instead try to think, how can I surpass them? How do I tweak and localize to suit to regional markets? How do I adopt innovations to stay ahead of competitors and clones? If you already have the first mover advantage, you should be leveraging on it, putting in an effort to stay out front. If you’re the leader, then act like it.

If you have a chance and are interested in tech startup scene, I encourage you to visit China (Beijing in particular). You might be surprised with the talent and innovation you find there. It really isn’t just cloning over there. You will believe me when you see it.

Photo: Andrewwolk.com

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Are Chinese More Willing to Pay for Online Video Content Now?

China is a fascinating place since it develops and changes so rapidly. Last June I wrote an article saying “Why it’s Difficult to Make Money from Chinese Users – Online Video Example” and I posed the question at the end “Will Chinese consumers ever be prepared to pay for software or online service? When and Why?

The conclusion of the article was that it is difficult because Chinese consumers like cheap things and like free things better. Willingness to pay in China is much lower than in Western countries such as America or in Europe. This was demonstrated in my analysis of online video streaming sites, where based on revenue vs. user base ratios, American users are much more willing to pay for service compared to Chinese. Hulu makes US$8 per user but its Chinese equivalents can’t even make US0.5 per user. But things are starting to change.

Until around June last year, many of the large video and music sites were still using unlicensed content. However, they came under fire by large American production companies and the Chinese government for not respecting copyright .This then pushed sites like Tencent Video, Youku, Tudou, Xunlei, Sohu etc. and Baidu Music to stop using pirated content and start paying hundreds of millions of RMB for it. They all realized that the only way to differentiate was to have the best and most popular content, as the ‘content is king’ philosophy says.  Copyrighted content has now become the valuable asset which companies are fighting for, even pushing Tudou and Youku to go to court over who has the rights to what. Ben wrote a great article last month, on” Is Hulu Model the Right and Only Path for China Video Sites?” It explains that right now, China needs high quality and increasingly expensive licensed overseas content, because China doesn’t have a user generated content culture plus Chinese TV and movies are not of a consistently high quality.

A recent Wall Street Journal article, “Web Takes Star Turn in China” explains that since Chinese video sites are starting to give viewers quality content, advertisers are now willing to invest a lot of money. This has driven online video advertising revenue to 1.48 billion yuan ($235 million) in the third quarter, up 48% from the second quarter, according to market-data firm Analysys International. To support rising costs and not just rely on advertising revenue, many sites are looking to charging viewers for watching premium content, “People are getting used to paying for content,” said Gary Wang, chief executive of Tudou, which has about 12 million paying mobile subscribers. This is an encouraging sign that users now value high quality content, are willing to pay for it.

Although factors such as increasing wealth and higher quality content are driving higher willingness to pay for premium content in China, there are some artificial opposing forces. The WSJ, points out that the full potential of quality content has not been released because of Chinese media restrictions, censored content, limiting channels and capping foreign programming. Moreover, the government has cracked down on “excessively casual” entertainment shows, especially dating shows because they don’t respect history, despite their popularity.

So to answer the question I posed last June, I believe Chinese consumers are now more willing to pay. This doesn’t reflect the majority of viewers, but represents a small percentage of people. However this percentage will grow as more quality content is released and fewer restrictions are imposed. The short to mid-term reality for online video sites, is that competition will be fierce and monetizing beyond ad revenue will be difficult.

 

Related posts:

1. Sohu's online video business gain market share
2. Youku Launches Video Searching Engine Soku.com
3. With Soku, Youku Wants the Video Search Market Competing with Baidu

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Build to Serve, Build to Earn, Don’t Build to Sell

Image: playupl.com

From time to time people would say that here in Singapore or Southeast Asia we needed a big money exit – you know, like X acquires Y for $100 million. That would inspire folks to step out and build businesses, because let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to get out with bags of money.

But the idea of building a business to sell kind of sucks [1]. While there’s nothing wrong selling a business, the mentality of starting a business and gearing it up to get acquired one day isn’t quite right. There’s no way to guess who your acquirers might be and there’s no tried and true way to ensure you’ll get acquired. You can’t force your potential acquirers to sign any cheque. Instead, your time should really be spent thinking about building a solid product that serves a real need, and at the same time able to pay your bills.

Entrepreneurs in the tech circle can probably pick up one good lesson from the traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. Entrepreneurs who are running cafes, eateries, or milkshake stalls are very focused on making their milkshake taste right and very focused on breaking even as soon as possible. There isn’t any hint of thought that one day their businesses would get acquired. I had a rough ride building a educational center for five years so I understand what it is like to run a traditional business. The fixed costs are unbearable, especially for businesses which are constrained by space. Just the rental fee alone would probably dominate up to 40 percent of your total cost. So everyday our team was trying our best to make full use of the rental space to drive revenue, and at the same time provide great value to the customers.

On the other hand, entrepreneurs building digital products often don’t incur such lofty fixed costs. It is also relatively easier to receive investment which allows entrepreneurs more time to get their product right and spend less time wondering how to make money. We all read the headlines that say this startup gets acquired or that gets acquired which make young entrepreneurs millionaires in a matter of years or sometimes even months.

Such external influence might have led some people to have a sort of misguided motivation to build a business. Perhaps we all can pick up a lesson or two from entrepreneurs who run traditional business. They may not be cool in your eyes but their focus on getting the product right and the urgency of reaching their break-even point as soon as possible is admirable. At the end of the day, revenue and profit is the common standard people use to judge your business. And to generate profits, entrepreneurs have to build something that people want to use and are willing to pay for. Your customers pay your bills, not your potential acquirers (I mean they could but what are the chances?). So the mindset should be to solve a problem with your product, serve your customers well, and build a sustainable business. Only then will your company have value and you can be in a more comfortable position to decide whether to continue building your empire or cash in and move on to your next venture.

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1. After writing this, my colleagues pointed me towards Sarah Lacy’s recent post in which she explores some of these ideas as well. Readers might drop over and check out her post as well.  ↩

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Chalkboard launches Facebook app, lets users see deals near their location

With Chinese New Year approaching and families making the rounds visiting relatives, it can be a pickle to decide where to shop and dine, especially with so many options available.

Chalkboard, a Singapore and US-based location-based ad network that has mostly been focused on reaching out to businesses, is now targeting consumers with the recent launch of its new Facebook app that allows people to find out what offers are nearby, all at one glance.

The app (try it out on Facebook) is created by UI designer Serge Baluyot and software engineer Anuj Bheda.

According to Anuj, the app “acts as a one-stop shop for our users to find out what are today’s specials that are around them and what their friends have been viewing.”

He added: “One of the things we have never had at Chalkboard is a consumer-facing dashboard to let users interact and engage with small and medium businesses. We created the Chalkboard Facebook App to act as a one stop shop for our users to find out today’s specials that are around them, what their friends have been viewing, examples being freshly brewed coffee or newly imported beer and accordingly decide where the best place to hang out would be.”

So if I am heading to the Joo Chiat area, I can fire up the Facebook app, indicate the location on the map, and instantly see a list of offers from merchants around the area, and even how far the particular restaurant or shop is away from the selected location.

The app is designed to take advantage of the virality of social networks, which benefits both businesses and consumers on the Chalkboard network. “We hope to increase the sharing and discovery of specials coming from our merchant partners and induce a form of virality that will help them attract more customers,” said Anuj.

If I like a particular cafe, I can “follow” it within the app, which will alert me to any future updates the merchant posts on Chalkboard. And if I have Facebook friends who is also using the app, they will know that I’ve followed that particular cafe. All this is happening within the “Activity” page of the app, which acts as a hub of social activity.

Of course, the app allows me to recommend a merchant to my entire social network on Facebook too.

“Our design philosophy while building the app was to create something that lets users view, share and access content in as few steps as possible,” said Anuj.

The company has been introducing a slew of improvements to its product, but so far they have been business-facing. Late last year, they enhanced their merchant dashboard, allowing it to sync with the merchant’s Facebook Page. Any updates that they make on Chalkboard will now show up on their Facebook Page.

They also introduced a heat map that lets merchants see which areas around them has the most interactions.

From the looks of it, I’ll speculate that Chalkboard is heading towards becoming an end-to-end e-commerce platform that aims to connect businesses seamlessly with consumers. There certainly is room to integrate an e-commerce feature into the Facebook app, allowing consumers to make transactions more directly.

I certainly won’t be surprised if they come up with a standalone offering on the App Store.

This is where you and your friend's activities appear.

 

Users can see detailed information about their favorite merchants.

 

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Douban Launches Ebook Store, Reading is the New Rock ‘n’ Roll

Douban.com, the Chinese social media site that’s focused around hobbies such as music, movies and reading, has today launched an ebook store and an accompanying set of apps for iPad (pictured above), Kindle, and desktop PC reading within a web app. To keep the experience social, the Douban Reader app allows users to leave comments and reviews on the ebooks they’re reading.

Local media reports that about 60 percent of its current range of ebook titles are free, and that all the content is licensed. Plus, there’s already a self-publishing platform on Douban, so that amateur novels will soon appear in the store as well. It’s an approach similar to that of Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), which makes the Kindle e-reader.

Douban started up in 2005 and has been a still yet deep river of social activity in China, not attracting the same kind of media attention as Renren (NYSE:RENN) or Kaixin. It has innovated in other areas too, such as with its Alphatown social game and its social check-in service Duijiao.

As nice as this is, Douban’s effort isn’t quite a challenger to existing ebook stores from the likes of Shanda (NASDAQ:SNDA) or Dangdang (NYSE:DANG). The latter’s ebook platform launched just last month but was greeted with a lukewarm reception after consumers found that many of its 50,000 titles were not recently-published books. But later this year Dangdang will go one step further than the rest with a Kindle-like e-reader device coming to market in time for this summer.

Get the Douban Reader apps for iPad, Kindle, and the web from its new store homepage.

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