WebGeek’s 3rd anniversary meetup (PH) — June 13

Celebrate the third year anniversary of WebGeek Community, a community of geeks ranging from designers, developers to technopreneurs with a specific niche in the web or technology industry. They seek to support, inspire, educate and collaborate.

You’ll have the chance to talk with cloud experts during the meetup, learn best practices on the cloud, get your questions answered by RightScale.

Speakers:

Chua Sher Vin is APAC Director for RightScale, a leading multi-cloud management platform. He started out his career as a software engineer working on geographical information systems, before moving on to join Salesforce.com, and Misys Financial Systems.

Today, he is based in Singapore and has also co-founded his own start up; a bests deals portal. He graduated with a degree in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

Stephen Bylo is Sales Engineer at RightScale with 18+ years of experience in Software Development and Web Operations. He is solution orientated, acts straight forward and points out potential problems clearly.

Event agenda:

6:00pm – 6:30pm Registration
6:30pm – 7:00pm Networking
7:00pm – 7:20pm Keynote Speaker (TBA)
7:20pm – 7:40pm Optimizing Your Cloud Applications – Chua Sher Vin, APAC Director at RightScale
7:40pm – 8:00pm Demo: Best Practices in the Cloud – Stephen Bylo, Sales Engineer at RightScale
8:00pm – 9:00pm Networking

Stick around after the Q&A for our usual brand of socializing and networking! Meet professionals from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds over food and delicious cold beverages.

Event details:

Date: Wednesday, 13th June 2012
Time: 6:00PM – 9:00PM
Venue: Mr. Rockefeller, Greenbelt 3
Enquiries: community [a] webgeek.ph or 0916-669-6063

Register here

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The Sound and the Fury

At Technode We produced a wonderful chart a couple of days ago, detailing the Chinese digital reading market. This is all good, and intrigues a bigger question that lingering: what are they fighting for?

When we look to America, we can see this question is especially relevant at a time like today, when great media properties are folding left and right. The latest victim is The New Orleans Times-Picayune, a daily known for heroically covering its home city during the Katrina Crisis, but is now forced to cut back to three printed issues a week and shift its focus to online news.

People do not need to see Page One, the documentary about The New York Times, to know that the newspaper business has been in trouble. But newspapers are not the only victims disrupted by waves of technological innovations. Magazines, too, have suffered. Two years ago, the venerable Newsweek was first sold for a buck, and then merged with The Daily Beast, a popular online blog.

Of course, the game is not yet over traditional content providers. The death of newspaper has been greatly exaggerated. Perhaps there is no better example than The New York Times, the nation’s newspaper of record. Just two years ago, the Gray Lady was forced to asking a hand out of 250 million dollars from the Mexican billion Carlos Slim, but it appears the Kingdom would be saved by paying customers.

The New York Times’ strategy to charge readers two years ago was hotly debated, both within the company and within the media industry. No one knew whether this time around the strategy would work or not. Now the case appeared to be settled. Yes, people would pay for content, and pay well enough for the Times to make a profit.

But the trouble is far from over, both for the Times and for the media business in general. The Times benefited from a deliberate strategy to build a national brand in the nineties; this is not an alternative for others. Even so, The Times is still losing money on the print side, and along both its stake in the money losing Boston Globe and About.com properties, is worth only 1 billion dollars collectively.

Even if the Times survive, others probably wouldn’t. The legendary investor Warren Buffett, himself a newspaper veteran who owned newspapers in Buffalo and Washington, predict “nearly unending losses” for the papers that haven’t folded yet. In addition, Buffett don’t think newspapers can cut their ways out of the jam. His predictions are corroborated by the recent Times report that when newspapers switch from print to the web, many readers do not follow.

This is partly newspaper’s own fault for buying into the whole “information wants to be free” nonsense. In addition, Newspapers’ shortsightedness and mismanagement have been well documented. Even when newspapers got close, it never quite got it right. Even Buffett himself admitted that a lot of newspapers’ woes are self inflicted: “I think we made a mistake in newspapers when we offered the same product online. I could sit here in Omaha and pay five dollars for the Sunday New York Times, or just read it online. That is not a sustainable business model.”

Buffett apparently still believes there is some residue value left, especially in newspapers that have “more of a feeling of community”. That’s probably why the great Oracle of Omaha still finds newspaper attractive enough to pay 142 million dollars for them.

But finding a business attractive for being able to squeeze the last cents out of it is not the same as finding the business to be an opportunity of growth. If we refer to the BCG growth share matrix, newspapers and magazines are “dogs”. While the Chinese content and media business hasn’t been as hard hit as their American counterparts by the digital wave, it is certain that the Day of Judgment will arrive. With no tradition of protecting intellectual property and a consumer base unused to paying for anything on the Internet, one has to ask: would all the jostling for position today turn out to a tale told by an idiot: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?

Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto

Related posts:

1. If You Build It, They Will Come
2. The Bigger Picture
3. Will Chinese Instagrams Work the Magic?

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“Thinking Scale”: Why is it important for startups?

The youth of today is empowered, it doesn’t fear to choose the path less travelled. As more and more youngsters venture into entrepreneurship, it becomes very important to understand the value of scale.

The Art & Science of Scaling

Most of the ambitious college going students are eager to start-up on their own – sometimes just for the sake of it, sometimes they actually are driven by a wild idea that they want to make real. It’s a very nice thing to start-up, in fact the best thing, because no matter what the result is, it makes your personality all-rounded and teaches you the nitti-gritties of surviving, excelling and extracting what you deserve in this highly competitive world. But, when they say they want to start-up, it’s very important to learn that the business that they are putting their flesh and blood into has a scale.

Scale, in its broadest sense, can be explained as the value of market of the business. Generally, it’s measured in terms of money – e.g. if I am planning to open a corporate gifting business, what is the total market of corporate gifting in India and the answer could be 100 crores or something like that. Scale is also measured in the number of users of a website, the time spent on the website etc. When you are starting up, it’s very important to understand that the idea that you are choosing has a potential to be scaled up. I’m a big fan of Steve Jobs philosophy of starting-up to create an ever lasting company, rather than for starting to exit/getting acquired, and when you talk about creating an ever lasting company, scale becomes the most important factor.

A lot of people start up interesting ventures without taking into account the scale and later realize that it’s impossible to sustain. For example, if you are starting up a venture where your revenue model delves around extracting money from Indian authors to promote their books, know that you are bound to remain small. Because, first of all, Indian authors aren’t pretty rich and some of them who are, they would always prefer to hire a prominent PR agency instead of a company, dealing with book promotion.

Many college people start with a t-shirt venture, which is the most competitive and disorganized domain to start from. They don’t realize that in a domain whose overall market is around 3200 crores, with over 10000 scattered player, the maximum piece of cake they can scale to will be around 100 crores. Is it enough? No. Why not? To get to 100 crores, one needs an investment of around 20-30 crores, and if it reaches 100 crores, there is nothing more to scale it up to.

Now consider the case of Flipkart: if I’m a t-shirt venture, I’ll keep on manufacturing tees, will become big – as big as 100 crores someday, and tomorrow, I’ll list my products on Flipkart(as it’s going to start apparel retail soon) and sell it through. Now see, when we are talking about scale, Flipkart has it. It is not only restricted to your apparels, but innumerable other t-shirt ventures. And not only t-shirts, but also all kinds of consumables. It can go on and on and keep on adding more and more things into its mega-store. The scale has no limit.

The inference to draw here is not that we should all start Flipkart. It’s just that the bigger vision should actually be BIG – really big. If you are starting a cafe, make sure you aim to turn into into a chain as big as CCD. If you are starting a software company, make sure it doesn’t stagnate after five years by becoming a mediocre web-development company but instead become Microsoft. Many entrepreneurs end up becoming self-employed and they confuse it with entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is about making your hands dirty, establishing the foundation to make it able to scale, and washing your hands, shaking hands with big investors and then steering its growth.

Remember the movie: The Social Network. ‘A million dollars is not cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.’

What’s your opinion?

[About the author: Harsh Snehanshu is a former entrepreneur and the author of three books. He's currently hitchhiking across India all alone, meeting diverse people for his fifth book, 'Route to Roots - A Hitchhiker's Guide to India'. He can be reached on twitter @harshsnehanshu]

Recommended Read:

• Scaling Up Your Growing Startup [5 Questions]
• Managing Scaling Challenges In Your Startup–Do You Need Professional Managers To Help Expand?

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Modern Red-Light, Historic Edo, Romance Simulations Released For Smartphone

CA Mobile has released smartphone versions of the hostess girl simulation game “Mori Girl” and the late Edo era romance simulation game “Tsuya Girl” for Ameba.

“Mori Girl” is a red light district style game where the user becomes a hostess girl and can enjoy after parties and dates along with serving handsome regular customers.  By purchasing virtual items for things like hairstyle, makeup, and clothing, you can customize your own avatar.  Accessories, hairstyle, and costumes in collaboration with the K-Pop girls group AFTERSCHOOL are in development.  (Sales period until May 18th)

In “Tsuya Girl,” the user time slips into the late Edo period of Japan and can engage in romance with representative figures from that age.  Set in late Edo Kyoto, the player can experience romance that crosses over the barriers of time with such historical gentlemen as Sakamoto Ryouma, Takasugi Shinsaku, and Okita Souji.

Translation authorized by VSMedia

Modern Red-Light, Historic Edo, Romance Simulations Released For Smartphone

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Here is how you can access Hulu, Pandora, Turntable and others from India (actually from any non-US geography)

Services like Pandora, Spotify, Turntable aren’t accessible in India and here is an amazing product that gets you access to these blocked services.

UnoHelper Setup

UnoDNS is a DNS-based system created by Unotelly that allows to its customers to watch their favorite TV channels wherever they are, with any device they have, without restrictions. UnoDNS works with all the devices. PC, Mac, linux,PS3, XBOX360, Wii, iphone, ipad, itouch, androids, playbook, WD TV Live, Roku, boxee box, OpenElec, XBMC, Apple TV, Google TV, LG smart TV, Sony TV and players, Panasonic VIERA, Samsung TV and players and all rooters including DD- WRT.

The service gets you access to services like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, Spotify, Crackle, Disney TV, Turntable, Vudu (and a whole lot of other channels).

What’s amazing about the service is that it’s super fast and is damn easy to setup – and importantly is available across all the devices.

Accessing Spotify from India

What about bandwidth cap? Well, there is none. UnoDNS offers a flat-rate with unlimited streaming. There is no bandwidth cap so you can stream as much as you want and importantly, the service is super fast (sans  middle-men, i.e. the company uses advanced algorithm to allow high-speed Direct Connection to media providers in US).

As far as pricing is concerned, the service comes in different pricing slabs (from $7.95/month to $59.95/year), but Pluggd.in readers get the Gold package for free!

We have 25 coupons to giveaway and will share the details on Monday. Stay tuned. Stay Pluggd.in.

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TaxiMonger, Malaysian Echelon startup, will head to Dubai for SeedStartup accelerator

TaxiMonger, an exhibiting startup at Echelon 2012, is one of the four startups accepted into SeedStartup, a TechStar affiliated accelerator program

We just received exciting news from the TaxiMonger team, who pitched at the Indonesia Satellite in April, that they are the only Southeast Asia startup accepted into the SeedStartup Accelerator program based in Dubai. A total of four startups were accepted into the program, out of which two are from the United States and another one from the UK, and of course, TaxiMonger.

SeedStartup is a Y-Combinator style accelerator, focuses on digital media startups, selecting 5 to 10 companies to participate in its three-month program. Those selected receive US$20,000 to US$25,000 in exchange for 10 percent equity, access to a global list of mentors, as well as networking, and introductions to investors.

Commencing on 14 June, SeedStartup is an affiliate of TechStars. Nizran Noordin, co-founder of TaxiMonger and SecQ.me shared, “we’re thrilled by the validation and it is a motivation for us to attempt to scale this outside of our home-country Malaysia to regionally and eventually, the Middle-East too. Not a bad achievement for a four-month old startup which launched its public trial for taxi booking on 6 April 2012 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.”

When asked about how it all started, Nizran recalled that he met SeedStartup’s Managing Partnenr, Rony El-Nashar in Abu Dhabi when he represented SecQ.me for the GIST Business Plan competition. “After I came back, we saw that SecQ.me was already beyond seed stage and personally thought that this was a good opportunity to position TaxiMonger in the international markets. After all, our value proposition has always been TaxiMonger as your virtual taxi call-centre that runs on the cloud, whether you are a taxi company or independent taxi driver. The application was done online and pretty straightforward. But the group Skype interview was quite tough. Interviewers really wanted to know whether we understood our business and its prospects. So, there was a lot of slice and dice,” said Nizran.

For e27, it’s exciting to see how Echelon has been helping startups, like TaxiMonger, in various ways. According to Nizran, ” the Satellite event for Echelon 2012 provided me the confidence to pitch in front of an international audience. It also gave me the perspective that to scale beyond our home-ground was not that easy. Looking at it, it helped to make us decide to go for the accelerator program.”

TaxiMonger is an alumni of StartupMalaysia.org and drew a lot of inspiration from it. They will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched their product at the Indonesia Satellite in April. Check out our recent coverage on TaxiMonger here.

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TaxiMonger, Malaysian Echelon startup, will head to Dubai for SeedStartup accelerator

TaxiMonger, an exhibiting startup at Echelon 2012, is one of the four startups accepted into SeedStartup, a TechStar affiliated accelerator program

We just received exciting news from the TaxiMonger team, who pitched at the Indonesia Satellite in April, that they are the only Southeast Asia startup accepted into the SeedStartup Accelerator program based in Dubai. A total of four startups were accepted into the program, out of which two are from the United States and another one from the UK, and of course, TaxiMonger.

SeedStartup is a Y-Combinator style accelerator, focuses on digital media startups, selecting 5 to 10 companies to participate in its three-month program. Those selected receive US$20,000 to US$25,000 in exchange for 10 percent equity, access to a global list of mentors, as well as networking, and introductions to investors.

Commencing on 14 June, SeedStartup is an affiliate of TechStars. Nizran Noordin, co-founder of TaxiMonger and SecQ.me shared, “we’re thrilled by the validation and it is a motivation for us to attempt to scale this outside of our home-country Malaysia to regionally and eventually, the Middle-East too. Not a bad achievement for a four-month old startup which launched its public trial for taxi booking on 6 April 2012 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.”

When asked about how it all started, Nizran recalled that he met SeedStartup’s Managing Partnenr, Rony El-Nashar in Abu Dhabi when he represented SecQ.me for the GIST Business Plan competition. “After I came back, we saw that SecQ.me was already beyond seed stage and personally thought that this was a good opportunity to position TaxiMonger in the international markets. After all, our value proposition has always been TaxiMonger as your virtual taxi call-centre that runs on the cloud, whether you are a taxi company or independent taxi driver. The application was done online and pretty straightforward. But the group Skype interview was quite tough. Interviewers really wanted to know whether we understood our business and its prospects. So, there was a lot of slice and dice,” said Nizran.

For e27, it’s exciting to see how Echelon has been helping startups, like TaxiMonger, in various ways. According to Nizran, ” the Satellite event for Echelon 2012 provided me the confidence to pitch in front of an international audience. It also gave me the perspective that to scale beyond our home-ground was not that easy. Looking at it, it helped to make us decide to go for the accelerator program.”

TaxiMonger is an alumni of StartupMalaysia.org and drew a lot of inspiration from it. They will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched their product at the Indonesia Satellite in April. Check out our recent coverage on TaxiMonger here.

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SquareCrumbs Helps Teachers Conduct Outdoor Learning Trails with Students

Prior to developing The Remember App, the three-man team we wrote about last week has also developed another application called SquareCrumbs. In short, SquareCrubs is a mobile HTML 5 app which facilitates outdoor learning between teachers and their students.

The mobile learning trail app, in essence, aims to provide an interactive learning experience for students, allowing both parties to communicate real-time while being on an outdoor mobile trail. On top of which, students can also embed multimedia and location-based elements, which adds visual and audio experience instead of mere scribbling on pen and paper. Teachers are no longer restricted to the traditional methods of gathering feedback from students only after they return to the classroom. What’s more, SquareCrumbs is a web-based app, which also implies that users are able to access the app anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

The team at SquareCrumbs is pretty passionate about education, and they’re hoping to revolutionise the way we learn through technology. They’re aiming to help students learn better, and to date, they have already served over 1000 users, and already worked with some secondary schools within Singapore

And especially in a country like Singapore where a lot of money is invested in education, how the Singapore-based startup monetize is through payment from schools using its platform on a per-trail basis, which also includes data retention for a period of three months. The company is also bootstrapped at the moment with no investors.

So what is SquareCrumb’s future plans? Co-founder Chua Ruiwen tells us:

We believe that a cross-platform strategy will make SquareCrumbs be more accessible to students and teachers as compared to a solution that locks users into one platform or another.

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UP Singapore presents Urban Prototyping (UP) Weekend, a hackathon like no other

Featuring a series of exhibition, lectures and workshops, UP Singapore, is a two-weekend long nation-wide entreprenurial event taking place in Singapore from the 15^th of June to the 4^th of July.

Organized by Newton Circus, a sustainability and innovations company, the event aims to bring together the brightest thinkers, entrepreneurs, researchers, government employees and engaged Singaporeans through two main highlights of the event: City Camp and Urban Prototyping (UP) Weekend.

Happening from the 22nd to 24^th of June, a three-day intensive hackathon for urban innovation will see 250 of Singapore’s brightest engineers, designers and developers work together on projects such as translating inspirational ideas into solutions to solving some of Singapore’s most pressing challenges.

Unlike the usual hackathons, where participants suggests ideas, assume background information of the problem and form teams on the spot, UP Singapore is a hackathon like no other:

1: Ideas for UP Singapore are crowd-sourced

Burning problems in Singapore, known as City’s Challenges, are contributed by online citizens, corporates, non-profits, and government under the five key themes: Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS), Education, Tourism, Creative Arts and Community Engagement. These challenges will form the basis of  a speaker series at City Camp and UP Weekend hackathon.

2: Participants sign up for the three-day intensive hackathon

If you are a web and app developer, computer programmer, data analyst, hacker, designer, artist, corporate professional, government employee, tertiary faculty and student, social entrepreneur or NGO and NPO employee, sign up for UP Weekend hackathon, form teams and come up with solutions to reinvent Singapore. Only 250 spaces will be available, sign up here.

3: Previously unreleased government and corporate data will be provided to UP Weekend hackathon teams

This is the ultimate highlight of the event. Unlike other hackathons that does not provide real data and statistics due to limited distribution and confidentiality of company information, UP Singapore has collaborated with various government agencies, private companies, and educational institutions, to create the largest digital data sandbox.  Confidential exact data from government and  big corporates under the above mentioned five themes and also in areas of transportation and ez-link will be exclusively available during UP Weekend.

For instance, one of the participating companies, SingTel, will be providing the following information:

• Location and description of business, such as restaurants
• Events happening around Singapore
• Information on deals, e.g. what  and where are the deals
• Mobile data, a sense of where the crowd is

At the press briefing earlier this week, inSing COO Wong Yu Hsiang, also mentioned that SingTel is open to collaborating with startups needing access to data that the telco giant possesses. Startups interested can either contact the team directly or be at the Up Weekend hackathon. Yu Hsian also noted that the data provided during the hackathon will be anonymized for security and privacy reasons.

Slideshow:

Fullscreen:

CITY CAMP, 15 & 16 JUNE 2012

A series of interactive and inspiring speaking sessions on practical knowledge around big data, open data, and ground up innovation useful to MNCs, government agencies, non-profits and social enterprises, as well as interested citizens. City Camp speakers include Laurence Lien, CEO of the National Volunteer & Philantrophy Centre and the Community Foundation of Singapore, Michael Yap, Deputy CEO of Media Development Authority (MDA), and Executive Director of the Interactive Digital Media (IDM) and many more experts in the field of social enterprise, big data, design, etc.

For a full list of speakers, visit here.

UP Singapore  Launch Party

Date: 15 June 2012

Time: 7pm- 9pm

By invitation-only.

The Citizen, The Cloud  & The Smart City

Date: 16 June 2012

Time: 9am- 4pm

Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium, NUS University Town

Pre-registration required.

URBAN PROTOTYPING WEEKEND, 22- 24 JUNE 2012

Venue: Plug-In@Blk71 & Fusionopolis, Symbiosis Tower, Level 11

More information on the event can be found here.

Slideshow:

Fullscreen:

Link to full article

Read More

UP Singapore presents Urban Prototyping (UP) Weekend, a hackathon like no other

Featuring a series of exhibition, lectures and workshops, UP Singapore, is a two-weekend long nation-wide entreprenurial event taking place in Singapore from the 15^th of June to the 4^th of July.

Organized by Newton Circus, a sustainability and innovations company, the event aims to bring together the brightest thinkers, entrepreneurs, researchers, government employees and engaged Singaporeans through two main highlights of the event: City Camp and Urban Prototyping (UP) Weekend.

Happening from the 22nd to 24^th of June, a three-day intensive hackathon for urban innovation will see 250 of Singapore’s brightest engineers, designers and developers work together on projects such as translating inspirational ideas into solutions to solving some of Singapore’s most pressing challenges.

Unlike the usual hackathons, where participants suggests ideas, assume background information of the problem and form teams on the spot, UP Singapore is a hackathon like no other:

1: Ideas for UP Singapore are crowd-sourced

Burning problems in Singapore, known as City’s Challenges, are contributed by online citizens, corporates, non-profits, and government under the five key themes: Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS), Education, Tourism, Creative Arts and Community Engagement. These challenges will form the basis of  a speaker series at City Camp and UP Weekend hackathon.

2: Participants sign up for the three-day intensive hackathon

If you are a web and app developer, computer programmer, data analyst, hacker, designer, artist, corporate professional, government employee, tertiary faculty and student, social entrepreneur or NGO and NPO employee, sign up for UP Weekend hackathon, form teams and come up with solutions to reinvent Singapore. Only 250 spaces will be available, sign up here.

3: Previously unreleased government and corporate data will be provided to UP Weekend hackathon teams

This is the ultimate highlight of the event. Unlike other hackathons that does not provide real data and statistics due to limited distribution and confidentiality of company information, UP Singapore has collaborated with various government agencies, private companies, and educational institutions, to create the largest digital data sandbox.  Confidential exact data from government and  big corporates under the above mentioned five themes and also in areas of transportation and ez-link will be exclusively available during UP Weekend.

For instance, one of the participating companies, SingTel, will be providing the following information:

• Location and description of business, such as restaurants
• Events happening around Singapore
• Information on deals, e.g. what  and where are the deals
• Mobile data, a sense of where the crowd is

At the press briefing earlier this week, inSing COO Wong Yu Hsiang, also mentioned that SingTel is open to collaborating with startups needing access to data that the telco giant possesses. Startups interested can either contact the team directly or be at the Up Weekend hackathon. Yu Hsian also noted that the data provided during the hackathon will be anonymized for security and privacy reasons.

Slideshow:

Fullscreen:

CITY CAMP, 15 & 16 JUNE 2012

A series of interactive and inspiring speaking sessions on practical knowledge around big data, open data, and ground up innovation useful to MNCs, government agencies, non-profits and social enterprises, as well as interested citizens. City Camp speakers include Laurence Lien, CEO of the National Volunteer & Philantrophy Centre and the Community Foundation of Singapore, Michael Yap, Deputy CEO of Media Development Authority (MDA), and Executive Director of the Interactive Digital Media (IDM) and many more experts in the field of social enterprise, big data, design, etc.

For a full list of speakers, visit here.

UP Singapore  Launch Party

Date: 15 June 2012

Time: 7pm- 9pm

By invitation-only.

The Citizen, The Cloud  & The Smart City

Date: 16 June 2012

Time: 9am- 4pm

Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium, NUS University Town

Pre-registration required.

URBAN PROTOTYPING WEEKEND, 22- 24 JUNE 2012

Venue: Plug-In@Blk71 & Fusionopolis, Symbiosis Tower, Level 11

More information on the event can be found here.

Slideshow:

Fullscreen:

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Pub Mania helps you decide where to watch Euro 2012 matches

 

Euro 2012 fever is on, but picking the right pub to watch your favorite matches can be a pickle.

To make life easier, the creators of Buffet Mania have just launched a new app, called Pub Mania, that shows you where the drinking holes are in Singapore.

Specifically for Euro 2012, you will be able to find out which establishments will show matches and have promotions to attract football fans. To redeem an offer, simply press on the redemption button in the app and show it to the pub staff.

A “Tonight” feature lists out all the happenings at pubs around the island for the night, including live music, events, and sports screenings.

The app was developed after Ravesquare, the company behind Buffet Mania, found that many of their clients own pubs and would like to see them expand into the vertical, said Chua Meng Kiat, the startup’s co-founder.

Some of the key anchor pubs that have signed on include: 1 Altitude, Fullerton Prelude Bar, 282 & Citigolf, Swissotel’s Crossroad bar, Beer Market, Fry Bistro, HQ Karaoke, and the Bungy bar.

The app is available on the iPhone only for now, but an Android or Windows 8 equivalent is possible.

Ravesquare’s first app, Buffet Mania, has generated 30,000 downloads within the first 10 days of launch. It was ranked as the #1 Lifestyle app and #2 in the Top 25 category.

Currently, it has 2,000 monthly active users that are connected via Facebook — a fraction of the total figure.

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Builk walks where few tech startups dare tread: Changing the construction industry

Ten years of experience in the construction business and enterprise solutions for the industry — this formed the foundation of the Builk team that today, aims to bring the traditional industry into the Information Age.

Builk Asia is a free management software and professional network for the construction business. With this bold ambition for a traditional industry, coupled with an interesting business model, we had to chat with Patai Padungtin, the company’s principal and co-founder.

SGE: What led you and your co-founders to start Builk?

We are serial entrepreneurs who come from the construction business and enterprise solutions for the construction industry. We have  experience in developing construction-specific enterprise resource planning (ERPs) for leading contractors in Thailand and overseas.

Builk initially came from our passion to help local SMEs in the construction industry access better management tools online. These small and medium contractors have not much budget spending on ERP, but they do need professional Time-Cost-Quality control software rather than a blank spreadsheet.

Doing business with the “Bottom Of the Pyramid” segments becomes our challenge and opportunity. We want to change the construction industry landscape.

SGE: In the media, we seldom hear of IT startups tackling the niche construction industry. Care to share Builk’s experience on gaining users?

Unfortunately, we are in one of the most obsolete industry — people and businesses in the Thai construction industry are not IT-familiar and slow in adopting the technology. Our user acquisition strategy is to educate them with a series of offline activities.

During the first year, we had bi-weekly open house events that offer free training at our office during weekends and went out to meet the contractors on site to hear from them directly. It was tough but worked out well.

After gaining sponsorships, we could manage better and bigger offline activities with their support. Some of these were bundled with the sponsors’ marketing campaign.

We plan to put more effort online into user acquisition after launching the next version of Builk that will include more social features later this year.

SGE: How has Builk’s revenue model (free SaaS model and ad-supported) been working out so far?

Free SaaS with an ad-supported revenue model sounds a little crazy for B2B applications in a niche domain. Also, there is no obvious successful example for us to follow.

But we realize that we cannot survive on freemium model in the early stage as well. We are in very niche segment that hasn’t become global yet. Theoretically, less than five percent paid user rate of this niche market would not be enough for our business.

Hence, we chose the “Free-service” method, and focused on creating a community of users and businesses in the industry instead. We’re shifting our offerings to construction material manufacturers and service providers who have marketing budgets. Honestly, it was painful to gradually acquire users in our first year after launch our launch in 2010. We had no revenue.

In early 2011, our community became bigger, and Builk had proved that a number of SMEs contractor (AKA innovators) in construction industry have changed the way they work to adopt our SaaS. Then, we got sponsored officially from the major construction materials brands in Thailand.

Things are much better now in terms of business. We have solid revenue from sponsorships as well as from industry-specific (B2B) digital media. With the industry information we have, we have also become the go-to-company in the construction industry. Some portion of our revenue is channeled from market research reports.

Throughout the years, we have never sold ourselves in terms of pageviews and unique visitors like other web businesses. Instead, we offer higher user engagement, and position ourselves to be the digital media with a right target audience and at the right timing (for example, contractors are working when using Builk). Our growth scale is measured by the value of the construction project started and the amount of purchase order on Builk. These two reflect the real purchasing power of our users.

SGE: What is the team’s vision for Builk for the next five years?

We want to connect the dots in the construction industry in Asia, creating a social network that leverages the industry knowledge we have. With the coming of AEC 2015, the construction industry will become more free as the region moves into a single market and construction products and services can easily flow across ASEAN countries. We hope our industry knowledge will be of benefit then.

–

With an experienced team and strong vision for the construction industry, Builk Asia is an example for other enterprise software businesses in Asia. Come 11th June at Echelon, the company is seeking for partnerships and VCs who are familiar with enterprise products to expand Builk to other Asian countries. On a side note, being avid learners, the team hopes to also learn from other startups in the region.

Builk is a top ten finalist at Echelon 2012 and was a participant of the Vietnam Satellite event at Echelon 2012. Organized by tech blog e27 for the third year running, Echelon 2012 is a key startup launchpad in Asia with over 1,100 delegates in attendance and 50 startups exhibiting in the Marketplace. Check out SGE’s coverage of Echelon 2012.

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From spreadsheets to the cloud, Ragic is an easier way to better manage your database

Unlike quick calculations, data managemanent were never designed to work well on Spreadsheets. Therefore, Taiwan-based startup, Ragic, had decided to create an easier alternative to upgrade spreadsheets into cloud-based databases in order to help collaboroate, manage and analyze your data better.

e27 talks to Ragic team to find out  more about this product and their plans for the upcoming Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace.

What is the problem that Ragic is solving and how specifically is Ragic solving that problem?

The biggest problems of managing your data with spreadsheets (or online spreadsheets) are:

1. It’s very hard to enforce data access control when working with multiple users and user groups. You always work as a team in enterprises.
2. It cannot handle any complex data. You have to represent your data as a row if you would like to search and sort. Enterprise data is always complex.
3. It’s really hard to specify any relations between data in different worksheets or Excel files. Relations are extremely important to enterprises.

But all these are not a problem with databases. And Ragic is the bridge that carries you from your spreadsheet data to the world of databases.

Photo: Jeff Kuo of Ragic

Which target group is Ragic focusing on and why?

Ragic is targeting companies with limited IT resources, is currently using spreadsheets for data management who would really benefit from getting a cloud database solution.

It’s been a known fact and joke that Excel is the most widely used “database”, even though it gets really hard to manage when you have more than a few people and forms. We believe by leveraging the fact that business users love spreadsheets so much, Ragic can provide a brand new way for business to manage information and implement solutions like CRM systems.

Tell me more about the Developers Programme.

Ragic partner program (developer program) is for IT consulting and system integration companies to use Ragic as a part of their enterprise application solution for their clients. There are two major benefits for service companies to use Ragic as a part of their solution:

1. They can create prototypes of their solution within a day to show to their clients during project engagement. Having a running demo that clients can see and try out is a major advantage in getting a deal.
2. Dramatically reduce application development time by creating most database forms and reports with Ragic Builder.

Photo: Ragic exhibiting at an event

Could you share with us some traction you have in terms of user growth and number of databases generated?

We have around 4K registered accounts so far. Each account represents one database.

What is Ragic mainly looking for at Echelon?

We would be interested in meeting VC who is interested in enterprise software startups, and distribution channels in Singapore like big software / internet service providers in Singapore who may be interested in promoting this type of business application to transform traditional Excel data into cloud database.

Ragic  will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched and won the Judges’ Choice award at our Taiwan Satellite.

Link to full article

Read More

From spreadsheets to the cloud, Ragic is an easier way to better manage your database

Unlike quick calculations, data managemanent were never designed to work well on Spreadsheets. Therefore, Taiwan-based startup, Ragic, had decided to create an easier alternative to upgrade spreadsheets into cloud-based databases in order to help collaboroate, manage and analyze your data better.

e27 talks to Ragic team to find out  more about this product and their plans for the upcoming Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace.

What is the problem that Ragic is solving and how specifically is Ragic solving that problem?

The biggest problems of managing your data with spreadsheets (or online spreadsheets) are:

1. It’s very hard to enforce data access control when working with multiple users and user groups. You always work as a team in enterprises.
2. It cannot handle any complex data. You have to represent your data as a row if you would like to search and sort. Enterprise data is always complex.
3. It’s really hard to specify any relations between data in different worksheets or Excel files. Relations are extremely important to enterprises.

But all these are not a problem with databases. And Ragic is the bridge that carries you from your spreadsheet data to the world of databases.

Photo: Jeff Kuo of Ragic

Which target group is Ragic focusing on and why?

Ragic is targeting companies with limited IT resources, is currently using spreadsheets for data management who would really benefit from getting a cloud database solution.

It’s been a known fact and joke that Excel is the most widely used “database”, even though it gets really hard to manage when you have more than a few people and forms. We believe by leveraging the fact that business users love spreadsheets so much, Ragic can provide a brand new way for business to manage information and implement solutions like CRM systems.

Tell me more about the Developers Programme.

Ragic partner program (developer program) is for IT consulting and system integration companies to use Ragic as a part of their enterprise application solution for their clients. There are two major benefits for service companies to use Ragic as a part of their solution:

1. They can create prototypes of their solution within a day to show to their clients during project engagement. Having a running demo that clients can see and try out is a major advantage in getting a deal.
2. Dramatically reduce application development time by creating most database forms and reports with Ragic Builder.

Photo: Ragic exhibiting at an event

Could you share with us some traction you have in terms of user growth and number of databases generated?

We have around 4K registered accounts so far. Each account represents one database.

What is Ragic mainly looking for at Echelon?

We would be interested in meeting VC who is interested in enterprise software startups, and distribution channels in Singapore like big software / internet service providers in Singapore who may be interested in promoting this type of business application to transform traditional Excel data into cloud database.

Ragic  will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched and won the Judges’ Choice award at our Taiwan Satellite.

Link to full article

Read More