Entrepreneur’s Online Shirt Design Business Fits Indonesia to a Tee

For those not aware of it yet, GantiBaju is a website where designers can send their designs to compete in an online competition. The winning designers get money prizes, vouchers, and 10 percent royalty for each shirt design sold at GantiBaju. The website is known for pioneering this strategy in Indonesia, and since its launch in February 2010, there have been other websites who tried to follow its lead, such as Fraiday.com. Aria said that currently GantiBaju has over 30,000 members, most of them designers. Back in April, he shared a bit about the company’s shirt stats:

[Our members] have submitted over 12,000 designs in total for this past two years. Currently we are selling about 1,200 to 1,800 tees each month in our online, offline, and also our affiliate network across Indonesia.

Exploring New Business

After the success of GantiBaju, Aria then also became one of the co-founders of new clothing startup Tees.co.id that was launched just last week.

Unlike GantiBaju, Tees.co.id is a clothing marketplace where users do not have to compete in any competitions to get their designs approved. Users need only to focus on their designs to open an online store there, while the production and administration cost would be handled by Tees for the price of IDR 85,000 ($9) per shirt. Users can then determine their own product price and profit.

Tees has about 30 stores with over a hundred products on launch day, and Aria said that the traditional t-shirt printing services and other offline digital printing services are considered to be the startup’s competitors. GantiBaju and Tees both have one unnamed investor, not related to one another. Aria talks more about Tees to us via email:

Can you tell us a bit about your team at Tees?

Tees has three active stakeholders: Gary Lilardi, Aria Rajasa and Bima Satria Tama. We also have about eight people working on development, production, design and customer relations.

Are Tees and GantiBaju connected one to another? What was the story behind Tees?

Tees.co.id is a separate entity from gantibaju.com with different stakeholders.

The idea behind tees.co.id comes from the discussion me and Gary had about a year ago. We think that it’s quite troublesome to produce a t-shirt because of the long process (about two to four weeks) and the minimum orders that we have to make to make the price reasonable. So Gary came up with a solution of creating an on-demand service where we can create a tees in an instant with no minimum number of production.

This kind of service is often available in the US, where Gary spent his college years in USC. So he decided to research it and bring the technology to Indonesia. I suggested we should open this to everyone so anyone with some design skills can make their own tees and even have their own online store.

Gary did all the hard work, I’m just helping out.

Do you have any future plans you can share with us? When would the “open your own store” feature be launched for example? And what can we expect from it?

We’re releasing features slowly. We are developing widgets so people can put a widget to their own site and sell their products directly there. A mobile site is also coming. We’re planning to open the store creation in August. It’s quite a surprise what our current store partners came up with, they’re very creative with the designs so we’re definitely be hoping to attract more creative store owners to tees.co.id.

[Picture source: Bukik.com]

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Open Data and its use in Open Governance [Part 2]

In part 1 of this series, we looked at what open data is and how progressive governments are seeking citizens to involve themselves in improving the social condition.  In this part we look at some possibilities and some issues.

Most data by itself is inert.  But life is breathed into it when you connect it with people who need it in ways that it can be easily consumed.  For example, does it matter to anybody that the government has heaps upon heaps of data on the spread of infectious diseases during certain seasons including specific areas where it is most harmful?  Or is it more useful that a social services group working in the area is able to view it as charts and flows in addition to specific locations being pinned on Google Maps?  The proliferation of mobile devices in India also signifies that meaning can get into the hands of people – meaning being the transformation of raw data into a coherent, actionable piece – as quickly as data is updated which gives them the power to take the most effective actions appropriate for the time and event.  

One of my greatest quibbles with various Indian cities is its public transportation.  Indeed, India has much investment in public transit, and yet we are overloaded with volumes of personal transport that defy any reasonable intention of getting from one place to another in a reasonable amount of time.  Or effectively.  Riding the public transport in many countries has actually saved me considerable time and is an active part of my life as I read many books, listen to audio books, have conversations with loved ones, or just note down ideas and tasks for myself.  I’ve never been able to do that driving myself anywhere.  Is it that we cannot do it in India?  Is it a lack of incentive?  Even when I want to go somewhere it becomes so much more convenient to take an auto rickshaw rather than the bus because we have no idea of transit timings.  What if people could have an app based on available public data on the routes that the bus takes, lay it out on a map, and have  people find the most convenient ways to get around.  Paris has a very effective application provided by the RATP that integrates their bus, metro, RER, SNCF modes of transport along with walking that charts out within a second the most efficient way to get between places, all the while taking into consideration the state of immediate traffic.  It is such a simple effective application.  If something like that proved useful, could the government automatically report the position via GPS and available capacity in buses that are plying?  And then can we use it to provide more detailed, up to date, and useful info for the passengers.  It is possible.

Along with the possibilities that open data presents is also the inclusive suspicion about what and how much is opened out.  Understandably, none of us want our personal information out for public scrutiny – like our personal taxes, our personal health records, our family tree, etc.  These, of course, are not the kind of data that is opened out to the public.  Governments that have open data initiatives usually scrutinize the personal sensitivity of such data before making it publicly accessible.  In many cases such as this metadata is what is made available – like the total number of people who are affected by malaria by district as opposed to the list of people affected by malaria.  Another example would be the large amount of census data that is available to the government which could give much aggregated demographic information without giving us any personal details about the individual.  Apart from transportation, geography, business, sociology, ecology, environment, economy, and legal data, government also has access to a lot of research data from either government research institutions or government funded research.  This wealth of information could be invaluable for the enterprising as much as for the curious.

If knowledge is power we only need reflect a moment to realize that each person today is many times more powerful than the most powerful kings and emperors that graced a throne or traveled continents.  Whereas it took them many days to obtain information in their kingdom we can now have it almost instantly.  It is for us then to make best use of such open data to serve the public and drive positive progress.

[The author, Sathish VJ is an independent technology enthusiast with a keen interest in everything technology. He is currently rediscovering the web, mobile, newer programming languages, and businesses around it. You can discover more about him at sathishvj.com.]

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MOL Global Invests in Ocash, Launches in Australia and New Zealand

Online payment service provider, MOL, has recently announced that it has made a major investment in Ocash Pty Ltd, an Australian payment service provider, that specializes in online game credits. With this round of investment, apart from reaching out to existing and potential partners, it also aims to strengthen its position in the online games and payment industry within the Asia Pacific region.

According to an announcement from MOL, we’re looking at a whopping $1 billion online game industry in Australia by 2014. Here’s what Craig White, President of MOL Global, has to say on the investment:

Our growth in the region with the establishment of MOL Australia and the strategic investment in Ocash is a further step of our initiative to provide a premium payment eco-system that is highly efficient in terms of convenience, security and cost. With the support of ocash’s experienced team, we are able to offer more valued-added services and products to our customers in Australia and New Zealand. At the same time, this alliance will also provide more business opportunities for our region’s game developers and publishers as they will be able to extend their reach via MOL to consumers outside the Asian region.

And just some background information about Ocash: It is a payment service provider specializing in online game credits for Australia and New Zealand. More recently, it has also acquired OnlineGamez Australia, an online game credit distributor, to aid in the sales and distribution channels.

Looks like things are looking really sunny bright for entrepreneurs in Australia these days, especially with the announcement of new funds that would help in the bleak absence of capital in the startup scene. With tools like MOL, more game developers in Australia can now rejoice and tap into such resources to help them monetize better.

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Electronic Signature startup, EasySign rebrands to SignEasy, is part of Box.net OneCloud program

Since the last time we featured EasySign Mobile on Pluggd.in they have come a long way, and their new and improved branding in the form of “SignEasy” is a part of their attempt in becoming a global brand.

Brainchild of Sunil Patro, SignEasy is an app that seeks to do away with all the hassles associated with signing of the documents. Even in today’s digital age, the most common approach for signature tends to involve printing, faxing and shipping of documents. Not only is it inefficient in terms of money, it is also time consuming. SignEasy puts an end to all this.

The way the app functions is by letting users pull their documents from mail, cloud storage or any other services compatible with the app for digital signing, by using either a finger or a stylus for scribbling their names. The app also allows the ability to change the color of the ink, adding a time stamp to the document and a passcode to the service to prevent misuse. The final document is saved as a PDF, ready to be shared or stored in the cloud.

The SignEasy app is currently available for iOS and Android devices and in the long term company would be looking at adding new mobile platforms and creating a desktop version for the service. In terms of sheer numbers, SignEasy is doing really well to say the least. They have reached the milestone of 1 million signature events and they are expecting to reach 500,000 downloads for their app very shortly.

The service follows a freemium model, under which the app is free to download along with the free signing of the first 3 documents. After that the user can make use of the in-app purchases, and buy credits for 5 documents at $1.99 or they can upgrade to the unlimited package for $10.99. The pricing remains the same for both the platforms.

SignEasy is also one of the 50 companies selected to be a part of Box.net’s OneCloud program. The initiative provides a suite of productivity apps for Box users to bring enterprise level productivity to mobile devices by providing the users centralized cloud storage for all of their data. Which is then accessible via these apps (including SignEasy) for use. Currently SignEasy is also competing in Evernote’s Developer Cup, and coincidentally their Evernote integration is also in place.

The app is fairly popular in North America and in European countries like UK, Italy and Germany. The users of the service tend to be professionals from Healthcare/Insurance, Legal, Financial services and Consulting. In short any industry heavy on paper work and signature of varied authorities. The app can be used in any part of the world which has policies on digital signature in place, something which is still ambiguous in India. Even then India manages to feature in the top 10 markets for SignEasy owing to those institutions dealing with foreign clients.

SignEasy is a powerful tool for organizations doing a lot of paper work and definitely deserves a try atleast for the free service. If for nothing else, the trees will bless you.

Watch this intro video

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WTO Ruling May Open China’s E-Payment Market to Overseas Players

As of now, the lucrative market in online and electronic payment solutions in China is controlled more or less entirely by Chinese players. While Paypal does function here, it’s not accepted on most e-commerce sites, which tend to prefer Alibaba’s AliPay or UnionPay-linked online banking. Visa, MasterCard, and other international payment brands, are generally not accepted.

But all that could change as the result of the WTO’s ruling today that China discriminates against foreign suppliers of e-payment services. Many see this ruling as an opening for international companies; for example, Bloomberg quotes a Visa spokesman as saying: “We are hopeful that this ruling will pave the way for international payment companies to participate in the domestic payments marketplace in China.”

And it’s definitely a lucrative market. E-payments were worth “several hundred billions of dollars” in 2010, according to the China Daily. It’s unclear, however, how easy it would be for Visa or Mastercard to get a piece of that market at this point. Even with a level playing field, it may not be easy. In e-commerce, for example, Chinese online shoppers nearly all have AliPay accounts or online banking with UnionPay (or often both), and I’m not sure what, if anything, would get them to switch.

Meanwhile, it’s possible that both sides will appeal the ruling, as China doesn’t agree with the WTO’s finding that it has been discriminating against foreign companies, and the US doesn’t agree with the WTO’s dismissal of its claims that state-controlled UnionPay is a monopoly.

If you’re looking for a winner here, though, it’s consumers. More choice is always better, even if foreign companies have trouble making real inroads into China’s e-payments market. Guo Tianyong, director of the Banking Industry Research Institute at China’s Central University of Finance and Economics, explains:

The point of opening an industry up to the outside is to increase the level of service and the efficiency in the industry, and to encourage a competitive market. With increased competition from outside over the past two years, UnionPay’s service has improved quickly, and the efficiency of service has also clearly improved. I don’t think the WTO ruling will lead to immediate changes in the market, the opening up of the e-payments industry will be a process. But the domestic market will move towards becoming more open as the renminbi [China's currency] becomes more internationalized and actively enters the international marketplace.

In other words, even if western companies never really make it in China’s e-payments system, their presence here will force UnionPay to improve itself, which is also a good thing. Hooray!

[Southern Metropolis via Sina Tech]

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The Rajnikanth Phone?

The latest development in the ever surprising world of Indian gadgets is the Rajinikanth phone. No seriously? Manufactured by Karbonn Mobiles, this limited edition Rajinikanth phone (5 lakh) would be timed to match the superstar’s latest release Kochadaiyaan.

The Tamil period film Kochadaiyaan is being directed by Rajini Sir’s daughter Soundarya, and apart from the superstar the cast includes the Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone and yesteryears hero Jackie Shroff.
Little is known about the phone in terms of its features, though it is expected to be affordable and feature rich. The phone would pack loads of exclusive content from the movie, in the form of trailers, behind the scenes videos along with screen savers and wallpapers. The phones will be customized to match the look and the feel of the movie along with having the superstar’s autograph on the front and the rear end of the device and would come preloaded with his famous dialogues.

The phone is expected to launch on 12th December, 2012(12-12-12), which is the date the movie releases and which coincidentally also happens to be Rajinikanth’s birthday.

This has not been the first time, when a major brand has released a device for a very niche audience. Last year T-Series, released the Bhakti Sagar phone which came bundled with religious prayers in different languages and a host of other religious content in the form of apps and games. Going along that path, followers of “The Art of Living” also released their own tablet, which comes bundled with the spiritual leader’s discourse, yoga lessons and books and other content.

What remains to be seen is, how many of these devices are actually sold? and whether this niche category of hardware with bundled content morphs into something viable for both the company and the consumers.

On a not-so-serious note, we invite our readers to share whacky ideas/features that the phone will have (“The phone will carry no SIM card slot. Why? Because, Rajni Saar phone is SIMple enough!”)

Mind it!

[Image credit]

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