Sify has launched Sify videomeet, a Video Conferencing-as-a-Service for Enterprises and Emerging Businesses.
This service, powered by Vidyo, allows users to initiate and experience high-definition (HD), multi-point video collaboration beyond conventional conference rooms, without dedicated networks and on multiple devices – mobile phones, tablets, desktops, laptops and room systems. The adoption of this service does not entail any capital expenditure for the customers.
Videomeet Details
Video collaboration from anywhere – No longer confined to a conference room
Not limited to a dedicated network.
Works on operating system (OS) – Windows/MAC/Linux/Apple IOS/Android.
Can connect multiple devices – Mobile phone (iPhone/Android), tablets (iPads/Android), laptops (Windows/Mac/Linux), desktops (Windows/Mac/Linux), dedicated room systems, real telepresence systems
Cost of call is less than Rs. 3 per minute
Seamless adoption with existing infrastructure reducing infrastructure cost
Zero capex: Video conferencing-as-a-service
Customers could pay a fixed rental for getting unlimited video conferencing access or avail the ‘pay-per-use’ option. This service also eliminates the need for a Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) or any other video conferencing device at the premises of the customer, thereby reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
Mobile is big everywhere, but especially in Indonesia. We know this well as it is preached by Andy Zain whenever we meet him there. Andy is a great friend who has helped us a lot in Indonesia.
But it is his knowledge and connections in the mobile industry in Indonesia that make him standout as one of the leaders to watch. Andy has his fingers in a few interesting pies: he is the director of the Jakarta Founder Institute, the director at Skybee Tbk, the founder and CEO of PT Numedia Global, and also the founder and organizer of MobileMonday Jakarta.
Through his experience, he has helped several prominent companies find their footing in the mobile industry in Indonesia, including mig33, Snaptu, and China’s UC Mobile. He knows the mobile industry inside-out. So for our upcoming Startup Asia Jakarta conference, we got Andy to take some time off to share his thoughts and views about the Indonesian mobile market with us on stage. If you’re looking to understand the Indonesia mobile space better, this is the session for you.
We will try to find out the challenges and opportunities in the Indonesian mobile industry, such as the struggle between building stuff on feature-phones versus smartphones in Indonesia, and also on monetization. Gaming and growth strategy will also be a part of our discussion. Andy is scheduled to be interviewed on stage on Friday, June 8, 12:00 to 12:30pm at Startup Asia Jakarta.
“We’ve given long-distance families something to talk about, something to bond over.” That’s the central part of the pitch for FamilyKo, an interactive video-conferencing platform that will allow families – especially including the kids – to engage with games and storybooks in an online chat. It’ll be like using Skype or Facetime, but with a welcome new twist. Created by a team from the Philippines, it wants to bridge the gulf of distance and communication between overseas Filipino workers and their loved ones back home. Launching later this year, FamilyKo will bring apps for PC, iPhone, iPad, as well as for Android smartphones and tablets.
FamilyKo’s Rafael Oca tells us that there are 13 million such workers among his countrymen and women scattered across the globe, working in fields such as domestic help, nursing, and software development. Of those, he feels that there’s an “addressable market size of over four million” such Filipino families. The key interactive elements come from the virtual books, lessons, and games (pictured above and below) that will be in-app paid purchases, leaving “the basic app free” to download and use. The startup feels it’s especially important to be on iPad and other tablets, where the finger-friendly large screens will make the interactivity feel stronger.
FamilyKo is one of 11 recent graduates from the first-ever JFDI Innov8 2012 Bootcamp, and the same team’s separate Hobbymash concept was the winner at Startup Weekend Manila 2011. The team consists of Liezl Buenaventura, Josh Liao, Mark Co, and Rafael as well. See the full FamilyKo pitch at the closing JDFI Demo Day in the video below.
Of course, there’s scope for international expansion for this interactive video-conferencing app. “Our ultimate goal,” says Rafael, “is to become the go-to application for long distance families all over the world.” That could be among other migrant worker populations, or among the many single parent households in the western hemisphere where more input from the wider family – from aunts, or grandparents – would be welcome engagement for the children. FamilyKo will be up against the likes of Splaype, the Skype-based interactive chat tool from Singapore – but FamilyKo will be different in having its own standalone apps.
Keep an eye on the FamilyKo road to launch on its Facebook page, and check out the startup’s JFDI Demo Day pitch in this seven-minute video:
In the latest crackdown on online identity theft, Beijing police have shut down 13 online platforms that facilitated the buying and selling of stolen personal information. Police also investigated 58 suspected companies and detained more than 160 criminal suspects, of whom more than 90 have been officially arrested.
Tonight Thursday 24th May at 730pm, you are invited to come join us for drinks with serial entrepreneur and investor, Leslie Loh of Red Dot Ventures, after his talk on “How the hell can we raise money” co-organized by SGE and Tanguy Lesselin of Cartouche. We’ll be meeting at Harry’s Bar, The Sail, 4 Marina Boulevard, #01-31 The Sail @ Marina Bay [map]. Please register here.
Whether you are an investor or entrepreneur, the book “Venture Deals” by Brad Feld from the Foundry Group and TechStars and Jason Mendelson, also of the Foundry Group, serves as a reference for those who are involved in fundraising.
While venture deals can be complex depending on the context around the players (entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, lawyers, investors syndicate and mentors), the term sheet and other structures which are required, this book serves a good overview of the subject but one has to bear in mind that it’s very US-centric, and not everything is applicable here in Southeast Asia.
Nevertheless, the authors in “Venture Deals” set up the whole book by focusing on two key things which matter in actual term sheet negotiation – Economics & Control. Economics refer to the return the investors ultimately get in a liquidity event, for example acquisition of the company via trade sale or an initial public offering (IPO).
Control refers to the mechanisms which allows the investors to exercise control affirmatively over the business or to veto certain decisions which the company can make that might not favor the investors. The books starts by explaining each player’s perspective and how they view the piece of the fundraising action.
While most of the book is dedicated to the term sheet as a piece of legal documentation that dictates the economics and control of the entire deal, the authors also elaborate on the perspectives of the different stakeholders, particularly the entrepreneur and the investor.
The book explains the economics and control of the term sheet well. On the economics side, the authors discuss the price, liquidation preference, pay to play, vesting, employee pool and anti-dilution in detail.
A significant amount of time is spent on explaining how some of the terms can confuse the different players on the venture deal. In understanding control for the entrepreneur against their investors, they elaborate on control mechanisms such as board of directors, protective provisions, drag-along rights and conversion.
In measuring valuation — how much a company is worth, most entrepreneurs can get caught in deciding whether it is pre-money or post-money valuation. Other side issues involving in the term sheet are also discussed, for example, proprietary information and inventions agreement, founders’ activities, and no-shop agreement.
The most important part of the book, which I often urge startup founders to think about, is the capitalization table where they work out how their ownership of the company would change before and after financing. In Asia, a lot of founders are very reluctant to discuss this because of its sensitivity.
What’s worse is that they don’t have a scientific way to actually determine the implications when they speak to investors. In the book, the question is well-posed — “What will I own if a VC invests X in my company at Y valuation?”
They used an example and guided the reader through the process. Even if the founders are friends, having a capitalization table before negotiating with investors is vital. Otherwise, you end up in a situation which you live to hate: Working for someone with the title of an entrepreneur.
The remaining part of the book explains how venture capital firms and their fund structure work, but it applies strictly to the US. This section is probably important to Asian readers as well, as long as they map the differences in business structures, incorporations and even tax rates within individual countries in Asia. But it’s a good starting point for those involved in the investment side of things.
Brad Feld provides a chapter about negotiating with investors, and he gives the following advice: (a) Achieving a good and fair outcome, (b) not destroying personal relationships and (c) understanding the deal you are making and that includes your ownership, the value of the company and the conditions involved in the term sheet. It helps a lot that the authors did make suggestions to which terms are negotiable and which are not.
At the end of the day, everyone’s experience in fundraising is different, depending on the geographical context you are in. However, this book will offer you basic working knowledge and also help you understand the process. It’s good to learn the ropes because someday you might move from being an entrepreneur to an investor.
Together with professional social network LinkedIn, personal branding expert William Arruda has identified nine minutes as the optimal time needed to manage your career every single day without added stress or pressure.
The length of time was picked because it gives people “complete focus, and educators to psychologists agree that the ability to focus one’s attention on a task is crucial for the achievement of one’s goals.”
Singaporeans, however, overestimate the optimal time needed to be spent on this task.
Over 81 percent of Singaporean professionals believe the ideal amount of daily time spent on progressing their careers should be over 30 minutes, according to a research by IPSOS Mori and Catalyst, which surveyed 3,200 working professionals globally, including 400 in Singapore.
Interestingly, the study also discovered that a gender divide exists where 42% of the population think that men are better than women at networking, versus only 9% believing women were better.
Here’s a suggestion of activities suggested by LinkedIn that constitute career management. It applies to entrepreneurs too:
Build your network – building and maintaining relationships are a major component of a successful career.
Maintain relationships by recommending and congratulating others in their careers.
Request recommendations from your network as credibility is critical.
Document achievements and wins on your LinkedIn profile to stay current and relevant.
Update your status every day and make sure your profile and photo is current.
Expand on your thought leadership; lead a discussion on social networks; publish an article; start a blog; speak publicly or recommend books.
Use the power of video and create a video bio of yourself.
Source staff – one of a manager’s hardest jobs. If you build your brand community, you’ll create fans who want to work for you.
Research — Make an effort to get to know more about your clients or partners and competitors.
For more findings on Singaporeans’ work attitudes, check out this infographic:
GREE today announced that the GREE platform, a mobile social gaming network that will help to build a worldwide developer and player community is officially in Open Beta.
With a focus on helping developers master free-to-play game development, GREE, a mobile social gaming network, has launched its developers platform’s robust API suite aiming to help developers build in the social viral tools they need to reach high-engagement players, drive installs and decrease cost per acquisition.
This all-new, lighter SDK will offer developers access to a series of social features – including an Invite Service, a Request Service and a Share Service, as well as casual API’s, including Leaderboards and Achievements — all with the goal in mind of building a strong developer and player community. Developers can leverage GREE’s existing infrastructure and spend their time focusing on creating innovative, new, high-quality games. With the new developers platform, it promises a global distribution for increased revenue opportunities, a cross-platform software development kit (SDK) which is compatible with Java (Android), Objective C (iOS), and Unity, a casual API such as the Leaderboard API which enables developers to post game score rankings to configurable leaderboards, without setting up servers on their end, and a whole range of other engagement features.
As part of its initial launch, the GREE platform will be available in both English and Japanese with plans to launch over 60 titles and localize into 14 other languages by September 2012. This new GREE platform will bring together the best assets from both OpenFeint and the existing GREE platform, including their over 230 million players worldwide, to offer the best tools and support to developers around the world.
GREE has been focused on expanding its global business — most recently announcing its acquisition of North American mobile game developer, Funzio. The new GREE platform will enhance GREE’s commitment to create the world’s leading mobile social games ecosystem and is a major step toward its goal of reaching one billion users worldwide. GREE will continue to focus on building relationships with third party game developers and publishers.
Developers are invited to download the new platform SDK (3.0.0ß) as of today.
GREE today announced that the GREE platform, a mobile social gaming network that will help to build a worldwide developer and player community is officially in Open Beta.
With a focus on helping developers master free-to-play game development, GREE, a mobile social gaming network, has launched its developers platform’s robust API suite aiming to help developers build in the social viral tools they need to reach high-engagement players, drive installs and decrease cost per acquisition.
This all-new, lighter SDK will offer developers access to a series of social features – including an Invite Service, a Request Service and a Share Service, as well as casual API’s, including Leaderboards and Achievements — all with the goal in mind of building a strong developer and player community. Developers can leverage GREE’s existing infrastructure and spend their time focusing on creating innovative, new, high-quality games. With the new developers platform, it promises a global distribution for increased revenue opportunities, a cross-platform software development kit (SDK) which is compatible with Java (Android), Objective C (iOS), and Unity, a casual API such as the Leaderboard API which enables developers to post game score rankings to configurable leaderboards, without setting up servers on their end, and a whole range of other engagement features.
As part of its initial launch, the GREE platform will be available in both English and Japanese with plans to launch over 60 titles and localize into 14 other languages by September 2012. This new GREE platform will bring together the best assets from both OpenFeint and the existing GREE platform, including their over 230 million players worldwide, to offer the best tools and support to developers around the world.
GREE has been focused on expanding its global business — most recently announcing its acquisition of North American mobile game developer, Funzio. The new GREE platform will enhance GREE’s commitment to create the world’s leading mobile social games ecosystem and is a major step toward its goal of reaching one billion users worldwide. GREE will continue to focus on building relationships with third party game developers and publishers.
Developers are invited to download the new platform SDK (3.0.0ß) as of today.
Danny Tan, Founder & CEO of Found. Photo: Facebook
Updates: The post mentioned that Danny has closed Found. Danny has gotten in touch with us in the comments below and verified that Found is, instead, still functioning and that only he has left as the CEO but still leads the company as founder. The headline has been corrected to reflect the information more accurately.
Founder of Foound, Danny Tan, has closed left the company and joins Rocket Internet as Senior Product Manager for Southeast Asia.
We have just learn that Danny Tan, who started what CNET called the “Foursquare of the future“, has since wrapped up his venture is also now working at Rocket Internet, handling product management for Southeast Asia. Launched as Foound at Echelon 2010, Danny’s pitch was captivating enough to make Silicon Valley prominent angel investor, Dave McClure, comment, “Singapore, you have hope!”
Danny went on to raise US$500,000 in funding from East Ventures, Neoteny Labs and an unnamed angel investor and launched their public phone app at DEMO in the States. Post-launch, the team faced some trouble gaining traction for the app and had to shut down the first version. They later released the second version, renamed as Found. After that, there was little or no news about new development on the app until the switch in Danny’s role.
Whatever the reasons behind Danny’s new move, it would be safe to say that he will be able to put the experiences from Found well into his new role. We at e27 look forward to see what’s developing over at Danny’s new position.
Danny Tan, Founder & CEO of Found. Photo: Facebook
Updates: The post mentioned that Danny has closed Found. Danny has gotten in touch with us in the comments below and verified that Found is, instead, still functioning and that only he has left as the CEO but still leads the company as founder. The headline has been corrected to reflect the information more accurately.
Founder of Foound, Danny Tan, has closed left the company and joins Rocket Internet as Senior Product Manager for Southeast Asia.
We have just learn that Danny Tan, who started what CNET called the “Foursquare of the future“, has since wrapped up his venture is also now working at Rocket Internet, handling product management for Southeast Asia. Launched as Foound at Echelon 2010, Danny’s pitch was captivating enough to make Silicon Valley prominent angel investor, Dave McClure, comment, “Singapore, you have hope!”
Danny went on to raise US$500,000 in funding from East Ventures, Neoteny Labs and an unnamed angel investor and launched their public phone app at DEMO in the States. Post-launch, the team faced some trouble gaining traction for the app and had to shut down the first version. They later released the second version, renamed as Found. After that, there was little or no news about new development on the app until the switch in Danny’s role.
Whatever the reasons behind Danny’s new move, it would be safe to say that he will be able to put the experiences from Found well into his new role. We at e27 look forward to see what’s developing over at Danny’s new position.
In the second BizSpark startup competition held in Beijing by Microsoft andEntrepreneur China (Chuangyebang), three teams stood up to the challenge and ranked top three with RMB 80,000 award and ongoing supports from Microsoft including free development tools, Windows Azure cloud service and so on.
BizSpark is aiming at uncovering startups with potential through a product-pitch competition and then helping them grow the business. All the winners are entitled to a bunch of Microsoft’s resources and support, like have access to Windows Azure for free which will save nascent companies a lot of hassles and being granted with free Microsoft softwares such as Visual Studio, Expression Studio, SQL Server, Windows 7 and even Windows 8 which will save them a lot of money. Better yet, BizSpark fellows will have the chance to grab top-notch VC’s attention.
The top three winners, which are HotelVP, QFPay and OpenXLive, all stood out from the fierce competition with their imaginative thinking and the courage to rival the market.
HotelVPwas co-founded by three ex-Newegger. They took a like to the converge of mobile Internet and online travel booking for mobile is the next big thing and the business of online travel agency is set to grow at light speed as proven by the maturer markets. So HotelVP’s idea is very simple yet beautiful, it adopted the popular “last minute” model to play a win-win game between supplier (hotels) and consumers. Every day after 6 PM, you can use the app to locate hotel rooms at cheaper prices (sometimes 50% off).
The service now covers 14 cities with more than 800,000 users, it raised RMB 20 million in investment.
QFPay has a stellar team consisting of former execs and employees from Mastercard, IBM, Motorola, Baidu and Tencent, and all three of its co-founders used to work in the payment industry.
There’re between 60 million and 70 million small and medium-sized local merchants in China while only 3 million of them have POS system installed. Working with the banks to have a POS terminal installed could cause a dent in their turnover which isn’t quite fruitful in the first place. So QFPay worked out an app and a card reader that worked together could turn smartphone into a ‘POS’ terminal. Firstly, you need to install and then start the app on a smartphone, then connect the phone to QFPay’s proprietary card reader. Now you’re ready to go. It works exactly like how you charge your credit card with a POS terminal.
They also developed a backend system that those shopkeepers can log in and check out their transactions.
OpenXLive is a Windows Phone 7-centered social platform for mobile games. You can think it as the Windows Phone 7’s Game Center. It’s the first of its kind on Windows Phone platform. For players, you get to see your achievements and how it looks like among your friends, and you can see the leaderboard to get a better idea of your ranking in the game. As for game developers, you can use the service to gain more insights into the demographic and user behaviors of your game, those analysis could be used to improve the next version of the game.
After a year in operation, the service now has north of 360,000 users.
LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network with over 161 million members, revealed that over 81 percent of Singaporean professionals believe that the ideal amount of time spent daily on progressing your career should be in excess of 30 minutes, according to research by IPSOS Mori and Catalyst, involving 3,200 working professionals globally, including 400 in Singapore.
Summary of the findings:
81% of Singaporean professionals believe that the ideal amount of time spent daily on progressing your career should be in excess of 30 minutes
95% of respondents would place equal importance on making teas for their boss as spending the time updating their job profile or CV
42% of the population think that men are better than women at networking, versus only 9% believing women were better.
Marketing and PRs professionals deemed to be the most effective networkers (46%), professionals in sales came next (17%) followed by bankers and stockbrokers (15%). Nurse, teachers, legal, and retail professionals came in at the bottom, with only 1-2% of the population seeing them as effective networkers.
World leading personal branding expert William Arruda instead presents a far more appealing and realistic time commitment– he advocates that by spending just 9 minutes a day one will be able to maintain a healthy and successful career. The public perception of more than 3.5 hours per week is a stark contrast to Arruda’s recommendation of 63 minutes per week.
Despite this workplace confusion, Arruda says the 9 Minutes is easy to adopt. The below are suggestions of activities professionals can do during their 9 minutes:
1. Build your network – building and maintaining relationships are a major component of a successful career.
2. Maintain relationships by recommending and congratulating others in their careers – everyone enjoys being recognised and LinkedIn provides an easy way to do this.
3. Request recommendations from your network as credibility is critical.
4. Document achievements and wins on your LinkedIn profile to stay current and relevant.
5. Update your status every day and make sure your profile and photo is current.
6. Expand on your thought leadership; lead a forum or LinkedIn group; publish an article; start a blog; speak publicly or recommend books on the Amazon LinkedIn app.
7. Use the power of video and create a video bio of yourself for your LinkedIn profile.
8. Source staff – one of a manager’s hardest jobs. If you build your brand community, you’ll create fans who want to work for you.
9. Research – Make an effort to get to know more about your clients or partners and competitors. LinkedIn is a great place to start.
LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network with over 161 million members, revealed that over 81 percent of Singaporean professionals believe that the ideal amount of time spent daily on progressing your career should be in excess of 30 minutes, according to research by IPSOS Mori and Catalyst, involving 3,200 working professionals globally, including 400 in Singapore.
Summary of the findings:
81% of Singaporean professionals believe that the ideal amount of time spent daily on progressing your career should be in excess of 30 minutes
95% of respondents would place equal importance on making teas for their boss as spending the time updating their job profile or CV
42% of the population think that men are better than women at networking, versus only 9% believing women were better.
Marketing and PRs professionals deemed to be the most effective networkers (46%), professionals in sales came next (17%) followed by bankers and stockbrokers (15%). Nurse, teachers, legal, and retail professionals came in at the bottom, with only 1-2% of the population seeing them as effective networkers.
World leading personal branding expert William Arruda instead presents a far more appealing and realistic time commitment– he advocates that by spending just 9 minutes a day one will be able to maintain a healthy and successful career. The public perception of more than 3.5 hours per week is a stark contrast to Arruda’s recommendation of 63 minutes per week.
Despite this workplace confusion, Arruda says the 9 Minutes is easy to adopt. The below are suggestions of activities professionals can do during their 9 minutes:
1. Build your network – building and maintaining relationships are a major component of a successful career.
2. Maintain relationships by recommending and congratulating others in their careers – everyone enjoys being recognised and LinkedIn provides an easy way to do this.
3. Request recommendations from your network as credibility is critical.
4. Document achievements and wins on your LinkedIn profile to stay current and relevant.
5. Update your status every day and make sure your profile and photo is current.
6. Expand on your thought leadership; lead a forum or LinkedIn group; publish an article; start a blog; speak publicly or recommend books on the Amazon LinkedIn app.
7. Use the power of video and create a video bio of yourself for your LinkedIn profile.
8. Source staff – one of a manager’s hardest jobs. If you build your brand community, you’ll create fans who want to work for you.
9. Research – Make an effort to get to know more about your clients or partners and competitors. LinkedIn is a great place to start.
Tonight Thursday 24th May at 730pm, you are invited to come join us for drinks with serial entrepreneur and investor, Leslie Loh of Red Dot Ventures, after his talk on 
