S’pore-based rental website Roomorama merges with Lofty, gets US$2.1M seed capital

Lofty's landing page.

Roomorama, a Singapore-based vacations rental site, has merged with Lofty, a similar service, to scale up their business, reported TechCrunch.

They’ve also secured US$2.1M in seed funding from individuals like Jose Marin and venture capital firms PROFounders, Lerer Media, and Thrive Capital.

Lofty will be folded into Roomorama’s existing platform, with their B2B sales and management team transferred over but not their technical side.

Roomorama co-founder Jia En Teo will become co-COO with Brion Olivier, previously Lofty’s CEO.

Both sites have merged because they complement each other. For starters, both sites are focused on the middle to high-end travel market.

And while Roomorama has customers but lacks inventory, Lofty has inventory but lacks customers. Finally, both companies’ businesses focuses on different regions. Roomorama’s activities are primarily concentrated in Asia, while Lofty’s business is concentrated in the West: A third in the United States and another third in Europe.

At the moment, Roomorama’s  average gross booking value is US$1,300, with 80 percent of bookings between eight and 14 days. They have about 50,000 listed properties in about 3,600 locations.

The company aims to double their properties by 2012, while keeping their focus on high quality accommodation, reliability, and closing transactions quickly.

Roomorama was founded in 2009, just five months after Airbnb. Last year, they’ve set up operations in Singapore with the aim of expanding to the rest of Asia.

Unlike Airbnb, Roomorama focuses more on the high-end market, and relies more on rental market professionals to supply accommodations.

They also have a perks program for travelers visiting certain locations, as well as a series of websites called How Not To Be A Tourist that supplies useful local information for tourists.

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ChinaCast Suspended on NASDAQ, Another Chinese Tech Stock in Turmoil

The online learning platform ChinaCast (NASDAQ:CAST) has had its NASDAQ stocks suspended after failing to file its Form 10K for 2011 on time. It has until April 10th, one week from now, to get its paperwork in order – or become yet another tarnished Chinese tech stock to be implicated in accounting irregularities and face being de-listed. Its shares are now halted at $4.24.

But ChinaCast, which listed way back in 2004, looks unlikely to come back from the brink. Paul Gillis on the China Accounting Blog reports that the firm’s former Chairman and CEO, Ron Chan, has gone off with the crucial accounting records, official seals, and local business licenses after being ousted in January. ChinaCast fired Chan after alleged financial irregularities and a failure to cooperate. A recent open letter [1] by the company to its shareholders says that “blatant disregard of [new board] directives by Ron Chan and certain other managers at the Shanghai location has the potential to put our great Company in unnecessary crisis.” It adds:

Ron Chan and his accomplices have refused to provide the necessary financial information so as to allow the Company’s auditors (Deloitte) access to the Shanghai offices in order to complete their field work and enable the Company to issue its 2011 audited financial statements within the time periods required by the SEC. Additionally, this group of uncooperative managers has improperly declined to pay outstanding invoices for the services of Deloitte and various other outside advisors and service providers.

This could prove to be yet another embarrassing failure for Deloitte in China, after being a dupe in the 2011 Longtop scandal and China Media Express mess that so scarred all Chinese stocks for the rest of the year, making it tough for any local companies to list overseas. Now this year’s audit season could could bring a new Deloitte China disgrace.

ChinacCast could avoid de-listing next week if it submits to NASDAQ a viable plan to get back into SEC compliance.

Ron Chan’s actions on holding company property are being branded as “theft” by the company, but it’s not clear if Shanghai police have become involved in this dispute. Mr Chan’s own resignation letter [2] says that he has “serious disagreements […] with the group of directors” put on the board in a recent reshuffle. He then accuses most of the newly-appointed directors of acting “to promote their own interests at the expense of the Company and its other shareholders” and of ignoring him and other executives in key decisions.

Another contentious issue complicating this matter even further is that ChinaCast uses the Chinese VIE structure to allow overseas investors to collect revenue from its local operations. But that’s a legal grey area in the country, and could be one powerful tool for Ron Chan – or any other feuding board member – if they were to seize control of it.

[Source: China Accounting Blog]

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1. Open letter From ChinaCast’s board, dated April 2nd. ↩

2. Ron Chan’s open letter to ChinaCast shareholders, dated April 2nd. ↩

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MIIT Sets Target for China’s Broadband Growth: 50% of Users on 4 Mbps Connections in 2012

Since late last year, broadband speed in China — especially in major cities — has been a hot topic of conversation, and ISPs have been battling to raise connection speeds for lower prices than their competitors. China may still be a long way from meeting the connection speeds of Asian neighbors like South Korea, but at a recent conference in Beijing, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s Miao Wei set a clear goal for Chinese ISPs: to have 50 percent of their users on at least 4 Mbps connections by the end of 2012.

As of the end of 2011, 83 percent of Chinese broadband users were on at least 2 Mbps connections, according to MIIT. An Akamai report with data from earlier in 2011 shows a much lower 2Mbps adoption rate though — just 18 percent — so it’s not clear exactly how difficult it will be for operators to hit that 50 percent mark for 4 Mbps this year. But in the longer term, a serious lack of infrastructure stands in the way of China implementing faster connection speeds, many of which require fiber-optic cables. There are also local regulatory issues that operators have complained can make speeding up the internet more difficult.

Chinese users shouldn’t expect speeds that rival Korea’s or Japan’s anytime soon. But any speed increase at all would be appreciated. Here’s hoping Chinese ISPs can exceed MIIT’s goal for this year’s growth.

[21st Century Business Herald via Sina Tech, image via Shutterstock]

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Pursuely wants to make hiring process super easy for startups

Hiring is a challenge, but having a scalable process around hiring is a god-send for small teams. By scalable process, what I mean is having a common infrastructure/single view for all hires, different stages in hiring and importantly, having owners across different hiring stages.

Chennai based Pursuelyaims to make hiring process super easy for startups by offering following features:

• Stages to the job application process. (You can assign certain people into certain stages).
• Different questionnaire to the different stages of job (You can filter a lot of people with just moving them from stage to stage)
• Real-time chat with applicants (You can schedule a chat session and talk to the applicant)
• Reporting on how much time user takes to fill up forms etc
• Facebook/LinkedIn integration to share and find possible applicants for your job position.

Question for media sales candidates

What’s really great about Pursuely is the questionnaire part – i.e. you can set different questionnaires across different stages, which will help you in filtering the candidate (for example, Pluggd.in is hiring media sales professionals, so here is a question, if you are interested). One can compare answers by different candidates too.

Leaving a few jagged edges, the team has surely thought through several use cases (like the company name, by default is not indexed by search engines) and while the lean product is a direct competitor to Recruiterbox, there surely is a need to have multiple players disrupting the hiring process.

The product in its current form is free to use and the team is still working on the monetization plan. My sincere suggestion to them would be to target SMEs (more than 50 employees), as early startups may not be willing to pay for a service like this.

If you are a startup, which is facing challenges in managing the hiring process – do give Pursuely a spin and share your feedback.

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Entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia could be undone by overcrowded airports

Countries in Southeast Asia like Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines may be up-and-coming entrepreneurial hubs, but their efforts may be undone by clogged airports.

An illuminating report by Reuters has revealed that Southeast Asia’s main airports are struggling to keep up with demand, resulting in delays, long lines, and planes being forced to circle overhead or wait at the tarmac.

The situation is likely to get worse.

A main reason for the spike is the emergence of low-cost carriers that have now enabled more people to visit other countries. This drastic increase in demand for budget travel was never foreseen by airport designers.

Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport now serves over 50 million passengers annually, more than twice of what it was designed for in the mid-1980s.

Immigration queues at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport can last about two hours, as it is running over capacity. The same situation can be seen at Kuala Lumpur’s budget terminal, home to AirAsia.

As a result, Southeast Asian airlines may have to cancel or delay their orders of new planes, totalling about US$47 billion, causing further supply crunch. Travelers may eventually find it harder to book a flight to their desired location at an optimal time.

Even Singapore, noted for its efficiency, may not be able to keep up in the future. The Center for Asia Pacific Aviation has said that a third runway and fifth terminal may be needed for Singapore to maintain its status as a leading hub — and they need to be ready by 2020.

It is currently building a fourth air terminal, it will only be completed in 2017.

Even while airports are struggling, the startling fact is that Southeast Asia remains a market that is under served by airlines. Con Korfiatis, vice president of budget airline Citilink, says that in Indonesia, only 300 single-aisle jets serve the country’s 230 million people, compared to 3,000 in the United States, with a population of 310 million.

These problems could dampen the growth of Southeast Asian economies and their entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Airport congestion would drive up the costs of air travel due to higher operating costs resulting from wastage. Starting and doing business becomes more expensive, and startups would feel the brunt of the effects due to their limited cashflow.

Planning a trip would become as complicated as the job of a pilot. This takes time away from customer acquisition and product development.

“You need to check the weather, the traffic warnings on the radio and other things before you leave your home or the hotel,” an Investment bank executive told Reuters.

Travelers who fly regularly from Jakarta to Singapore on Monday mornings find themselves needing to leave home before the break of dawn to catch a 6am flight — and they still get caught in traffic jams on the way to the airport.

Eventually, if the situation worsens to a severe degree, investors and entrepreneurs may be deterred from even coming into the region.

Governments are fighting hard to overcome the problem, although it’s unclear how effective these measures will be.

Malaysia is building another budget terminal that will launch by April 2013.

Jarkarta is overhauling its Soekarno-Hatta airport. A third runway and fourth terminal are in the works, although the plan is being hindered by land acquisition issues. They might be forced to build an entirely new airport.

Photo: Andy_Mitchell_UK

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CtrlWork’s robots to assist doctors in S’pore hospital, gets featured on PopSci

The first time we heard about CtrlWorks and their robots was at DEMO Asia 2012, where they unveiled their prototype. Called the Puppet, the telepresence robot allows a person to interact with a distant environment without being physically there.

The Singapore startup is now preparing for a trial at Khoo Teck Huat Hospital that will start this month. Junior doctors will learn how to operate the Puppet, which will enable them to accompany senior doctors from a remote location.

It is hoped that the robot will lessen the workload of junior doctors by helping them to scribble notes and input data into a medical database, freeing them up to work on other tasks.

The Puppet consists of a touchscreen LCD monitor with a camera, microphone and a speaker to enable two-way communication. The doctors can drive the robot, control the display and adjust its direction. More costly machines come with camera zoom, larger display, wifi and 3G/4G connectivity.

Controlling the robot doesn’t require specialized hardware; all that’s needed is a Windows PC, Mac, or Linux machine.

Beyond acting as a junior doctor, the Puppet could eventually operate alone to check on patients, with the operator controlling it from a different location. This saves traveling time and costs, making it useful for assisted home care and nursing homes.

The startup was recently featured on Popular Science and Singularity Hub. It supported by NTU Ventures and the Singapore government’s Interactive Digital Media Programme Office.

This is not the first time telepresence robots are being used in a medical setting. In Boston, United States, such devices are being used to check on post-operation patients in a children’s hospital.

Telepresence robots have other potential applications, of course. Google co-founder Sergey Brin once attended a conference using a robot that was connected to Skype.

In the future, instead of traveling physically by plane, we could be attending some of our meetings remotely. Freed from the constraints of a teleconferencing room, we could roam around a distant location and interact in ways that wasn’t possible before.

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For The Sake of the Community, Get Qualified Speakers

Indonesia has gotten a lot of attention. And it’s natural that we’re seeing more startups and investors stepping into Indonesia. The community at large welcomes any new member (so to speak). We’re all here to connect, learn, and help each other scale. But not everything shared within the community is helpful. For example: the recent Founders Drinks by e27 on how a startup or investor can “navigate Indonesia.” The speaker was William Henley, who currently runs an investment firm and two startups. Henley likes to promote himself as Dr. Doom, a moniker that aptly explains his skepticism about the Indonesian market.

I hadn’t heard much about Henley before but e27 has been somewhat actively promoting him as a guru of sorts. That got me curious, along with some very negative feedback I heard from people who attended the aforementioned talk, led me to look into his background. Now note that I don’t have a problem with Henley sharing his opinions publicly. Anyone can voice his/her opinion and I have no issues with that.

That said, it becomes a problem if people start buying into what he says without thinking twice about who he is or what his background is. It’s the media magic at work; we trust e27 to do the screening for us. But what if that screening is lacking? From the audience’s point of view, we want to hear from people who have already been there and done that.

So I looked into Henley’s background. I didn’t just go through LinkedIn or Google, I directly sent emails to Henley to ask about his startup credentials and I’m glad – and it’s to his credit – that he was open and answered my questions.

There is no doubt that Henley is a good corporate man. He was even mentioned in Fortune Magazine Indonesia as one of the top 40 executives under 40. But that doesn’t necessarily make him a good entrepreneur or investor. Being an entrepreneur and being a corporate man are two different things. So what’s his background? Here’s what I found out:

(1) What has his company, IndoSterling Sarana Investa, invested in? Answer: No answer from him on this.

(2) How are his startups doing? Answer: Founded in 2009, Otopedia.com, as revealed by Henley, is getting about 2,500 daily visits and he declined to disclose information on Tapestix. There’s no way to know how Tapestix is doing, but 2,500 visits per day seems low for a major site in a nation with more than 30 million internet users.

(3) So how would he describe his experience as an entrepreneur? Here is his word-for-word reply:

I left my last corporate post in December 2010. It hasn’t been that long since I call myself an entrepreneur. Maybe you can cut me some slack and give me more time to prove my entrepreneurial capabilities.

If you know his background, it might make you think twice about the things he said. So for the sake of the community, please double-check speakers’ backgrounds before accepting them. Individuals, be careful not to overstep your expertise and be sure you’ve really got something good to offer the community. You can listen to Henley, by all means. But I will be taking his opinions with a grain of salt from now on since he isn’t really an experienced entrepreneur. Perhaps he should just focus on building a good product, rather than wasting his time speaking and “educating” all of us.

[Image credit: Marvel]

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April Fools Pranks You May Have Missed from Google’s Asia Offices

I’m not a big fan of April Fools Day on the internet [1]. There were more than a few online pranks that were less than impressive this year. But perhaps no one put more effort into their pranks more than Google this year. There was full run-down over one of the Google blogs on March 31, perhaps a warning for anyone who might take them too seriously on the following day [2]. Besides the 8-bit Google Maps, there were a couple of other gems from Google’s Asian offices that you might not have seen.

Complementing the Gmail tap morse code prank, the folks at Google Japan created a video showing a morse code version of the Japanese IME. The idea is that it lets you input Japanese characters using a corresponding sequence of dots and dashes. You can check out the video below for more info on how it works. Or rather, how it would work if it were real. It’s in Japanese, but it has English captions:

As for Google China (yes, they’re still there), they created a very unusual underwater image search page which is pretty amusing. Upon visiting their shuixia page (google.cn/landing/shuixia/), you get a warning that the following page is just an April Fool’s joke, and to click through if you’d like to continue. The Google search bar then falls into the water to swim with the fishes [3]. And even though the tide sweeps the search bar away, you can still search for images on there.

I Googled ‘life preserver’ which prompted some images to drop from the sky, but regrettably they sank to the bottom.

Google looks to be staying afloat though. But I could have sworn I saw a Baidu logo on one of those sharks…

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1. This is a #firstworldproblem if there ever was one. But I should point out that real-life pranks are far more fun. Soap on the toothbrush, salt in the sugar bowl rank up there with my favorite gags. If you’re in an office, the voice-controlled printer is a classic.  ↩

2. I’m assuming here that the blog post time stamp is accurate.  ↩

3. An odd choice of imagery. Truth in humor?  ↩

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Hoiio releases Hoiio Live, sets eyes on the US

Photo: Hoiio Devblog

After winning the People’s Choice at Demo Asia recently, Hoiio has sinced released its new app, Hoiio Live, giving you an alternative to your native contact app. A look at their website reveals some neat features that Hoiio Live provides: live updates of your friend’s contacts, social and location based discovery as well as cloud backup of your contacts.

We at e27 spoke to Ong Junda, the API lead of Hoiio as well as Ruprecht Robertson, product manager of Hoiio Live, about their plans with Hoiio Live.

Could you introduce Hoiio Live and what problem is it trying to solve?
Hoiio Live is a mobile app which was built to ease the pain of having to update your phonebook, keying in the fields one by one repetitively. It is just plainly tedious. Hoiio Live takes away all that and revolutionize the way you treat your phonebook contacts. Our Hoiio Live tagline says it all, it breathes life into your phonebook.

I notice that Hoiio Live tries to address contacts syncing and social discovery. What is the focus on Hoiio Live?

Phonebook is a tool made for you to answer this question “How can I reach John?” yet its not really being utilized properly. Today, a majority of us only key in our contact’s name and number in our phone book. With the rise of internet technology and social media, we are increasingly using email and our social media profiles to communicate with one another. Hoiio Live aims to integrate all these into the underutilized phonebook, and with Hoiio, you can discover the various channels to reach your contacts.

Photo: Hoiio Team

Recently there is an abundance of apps moving towards social discovery, and from the looks of it, this is what Hoiio Live is doing as well. Do you think iOS/Apple will integrate social discovery into their native address book or come out with their own native app?

We won’t really know what Apple is cooking. Even if they come out with something similar, Hoiio Live will be running on both iOS and Android (soon) and this will give us the cross-platform advantage.

How is Hoiio Live doing in terms of traction since launch?
We have reached number one under the productivity category in Singapore’s and Kuwait’s appstore during the first few days since launch. We are also in the new and noteworthy for Singapore, US, Philippines appstore. There are a few thousand users who came on-board since two weeks ago, March 19th to be exact when we first launched. There are lots of feedbacks coming in and the team is trying its best to improve and to make Hoiio Live “The Live Phonebook” for you.

Photo: Hoiio API Team

What has Hoiio been up to since DEMO?

After winning DEMO, there are many positive after effects. The first being the number of sign up for Hoiio API has increased five folds (from one new developer a day, to the current five). Publicity has been our top objective at DEMO, and the launchpad event has helped us tremendously in that. Secondly, we have been approached by many venture capitalist and partners, and we have been engaged in good discussions. Hopefully, these discussions would bear fruit soon and make our products better, and more widespread. No good news for now, but when we do, I will definitely let you know :)

What is the future moving forward for Hoiio?

Hoiio will be pitching at DEMO Spring in April, and that is where we will launch our service to the US. After US, we will launch our products in more Asia countries.

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J-Seed Ventures launches international business incubator to help companies enter Japanese market

J-Seed Ventures launches Venture Generation, an incubator to help companies enter the Japanese market.

Interested to enter the Japanese market? J-Seed Ventures is looking for you. With its recent launch of a new international business incubator based in Central Tokyo, Venture Generation, aims to provide a coworking space complemented by a solid team of venture advisors who have already agreed to provide assistance free of charge to Venture Generation member companies.

Venture Generation offers four different kind of pricings for anyone who are interested in joining the business incubator: Fixed desk, open seating, virtual office, as well as professional price, and each comes with different perks.

According to the website, “being an early-stage venture is not the only criterion for membership. We also look for people who are able to benefit from the help that our advisors offer. This rare resource might mean the difference between success and failure for some new ventures. Furthermore, we look for people who can benefit from and appreciate the value that is being made available to them.”

To sign up, fill in this form and send it to J-Seed Ventures.

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Hoiio releases Hoiio Live, sets eyes on the US

Photo: Hoiio Devblog

After winning the People’s Choice at Demo Asia recently, Hoiio has sinced released its new app, Hoiio Live, giving you an alternative to your native contact app. A look at their website reveals some neat features that Hoiio Live provides: live updates of your friend’s contacts, social and location based discovery as well as cloud backup of your contacts.

We at e27 spoke to Ong Junda, the API lead of Hoiio as well as Ruprecht Robertson, product manager of Hoiio Live, about their plans with Hoiio Live.

Could you introduce Hoiio Live and what problem is it trying to solve?
Hoiio Live is a mobile app which was built to ease the pain of having to update your phonebook, keying in the fields one by one repetitively. It is just plainly tedious. Hoiio Live takes away all that and revolutionize the way you treat your phonebook contacts. Our Hoiio Live tagline says it all, it breathes life into your phonebook.

I notice that Hoiio Live tries to address contacts syncing and social discovery. What is the focus on Hoiio Live?

Phonebook is a tool made for you to answer this question “How can I reach John?” yet its not really being utilized properly. Today, a majority of us only key in our contact’s name and number in our phone book. With the rise of internet technology and social media, we are increasingly using email and our social media profiles to communicate with one another. Hoiio Live aims to integrate all these into the underutilized phonebook, and with Hoiio, you can discover the various channels to reach your contacts.

Photo: Hoiio Team

Recently there is an abundance of apps moving towards social discovery, and from the looks of it, this is what Hoiio Live is doing as well. Do you think iOS/Apple will integrate social discovery into their native address book or come out with their own native app?

We won’t really know what Apple is cooking. Even if they come out with something similar, Hoiio Live will be running on both iOS and Android (soon) and this will give us the cross-platform advantage.

How is Hoiio Live doing in terms of traction since launch?
We have reached number one under the productivity category in Singapore’s and Kuwait’s appstore during the first few days since launch. We are also in the new and noteworthy for Singapore, US, Philippines appstore. There are a few thousand users who came on-board since two weeks ago, March 19th to be exact when we first launched. There are lots of feedbacks coming in and the team is trying its best to improve and to make Hoiio Live “The Live Phonebook” for you.

Photo: Hoiio API Team

What has Hoiio been up to since DEMO?

After winning DEMO, there are many positive after effects. The first being the number of sign up for Hoiio API has increased five folds (from one new developer a day, to the current five). Publicity has been our top objective at DEMO, and the launchpad event has helped us tremendously in that. Secondly, we have been approached by many venture capitalist and partners, and we have been engaged in good discussions. Hopefully, these discussions would bear fruit soon and make our products better, and more widespread. No good news for now, but when we do, I will definitely let you know :)

What is the future moving forward for Hoiio?

Hoiio will be pitching at DEMO Spring in April, and that is where we will launch our service to the US. After US, we will launch our products in more Asia countries.

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