This week has been filled with many investments and acquisition news. Earlier today, V-Key Inc, a pioneer in the mobile applications intrusion protection and intelligence space announced that it has secured a total of US$4 million in series A funding from IPV Capital. V-Key Inc is cofounded by Eddie Chau, Benjamin Mah, and Joseph Gan....
The post Singapore based V-Key secures US$4M in series A funding from IPV Capital appeared first on e27.
This week has been filled with many investments and acquisition news. Earlier today, V-Key Inc, a pioneer in the mobile applications intrusion protection and intelligence space announced that it has secured a total of US$4 million in series A funding from IPV Capital. V-Key Inc is cofounded by Eddie Chau, Benjamin Mah, and Joseph Gan....
The post Singapore based V-Key secures US$4M in series A funding from IPV Capital appeared first on e27.
Online has been a buzzword in India for the past few years across industries such as travel, retail and lately in education. In the mean time, insurance is also witnessing good appetite from consumers as they start buying more and more insurance products online. Earlier, Internet was the preferred channel for product research, renewals of policies and paying premiums. However, now consumers are also purchasing policies online as it offers cost savings, transparency and convenience. Currently, around 17,000 policies are purchased online every month, though the given figure only constitutes 2% of overall offline sales. Policybazaar.com has seen a 200 % increase in sales over the last two years. Over 70 % of online insurance sales happen through the website.
Like the journey of online travel and retail industry, insurance began with emergence of comparison and research platforms online. The concept of insurance aggregation took off in 2005 with players like Apnainsurance and Bimadeal entering the market. Soon, around 20 other players such as Policybazaar, Zibika, Fintact, Myinsuranceclub, Insuring India and several others launched their own aggregation sites. After testing the aggregation model, startups extended to selling leads to insurance companies and earned commission on lead conversion.
Over the past 7 years developing a platform for aggregating and selling (leads & policies) online insurance has been a slow ride for startups, often strangulated by multiple regulations. Further, regulatory challenges drove venture capitalists and investors away from this sector. According to Venture Intelligence, a firm that tracks VC funding, only Policybazaar is funded in the insurance aggregation space. Intel Capital and Infoedge collectively invested around $ 9 million (40 crore) in the company.
To understand how startups are faring in this space, we analyzed their Alexa ranking. Policybazaar is the only player which falls in three digit rank (770) in India followed by Apnapaisa that is ranked at 1623. Rest of the players run into four digit ranks in Alexa. While most of the players in aggregation space are still active and competing with each other, some have also shut down. For instance Fintact.com is no more operational.
Policybazaar and Myinsuranceclub have gone beyond the aggregation model and have started selling policies online as they have received approvals from the regulatory body. The approval from Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) was significant milestone for both companies as it now becomes a channel which is recognized and approved as a growth area even by the regulator.
Most of the existing insurers started selling online in 2010-2011 and at present, almost close to 33 insurers are offering more than 1000 products online. Majority of them are currently focused on term insurance but many brands are looking beyond just distributing transaction products like term insurance and car insurance. They are considering Internet as a channel of the future which will make significant contributions to business and growth.
Three insurance companies, which have included Internet and online aggregators as a major focus in their distribution strategy are Aegon Religare, Aviva Life Insurance & HDFC Life Insurance. Over 65 % of insurance based searches are dominated by one player i.e Policybazaar.
The overall growth registered by aggregation startups is not encouraging; however Policybazaar registered 200 % growth over the past two years. Currently, 70 % sale of overall online insurance happens through Policybazaar. Also in online lead generation segment where insurance aggregators sell leads to insurers, Policybazaar dominates the market with 4 out of every 5 leads (via internet) done by them.
Myinsuranceclub, a Mumbai based startup started in late 2009 reports 2 lakh (.2 million) unique visitors every month. However, Myinsuranceclub does not reveal any specific number of leads it is selling to insurance companies. The startup earned IRDA approval to sell leads and policies to insurance companies in July this year.
Until the first half of 2011, majority of the insurance policies were bought by people in metros and tier 1 cities. However, according to Policybazaar data, around 39% of its traffic is beyond the top 8 metros in the country. It has seen a huge demand for customers from mid-level towns like Jaipur, Indore, Surat, Lucknow etc.
Meanwhile, HDFC Life has also seen a significant chunk of its sale coming from tier 2 & 3 cities. As compared to the past where 90% of the online sales came from metro cities, in the last few month it has seen a major shift in sales coming from tier 2 & 3 cities as well.
In aggregation and selling of insurance policies via third party platforms (such as Policybazaar, Myinsuranceclub), the toughest challenge to get IRDA’s approval as it is a strictly regulated space. Till now only Myinsuranceclub and Policybazaar received approval from RDA to sell leads to insurance companies. In April 2011, IRDA had laid down guidelines for insurance aggregators, which eventually made the ecosystem tough for startups to thrive. Some of the guidelines are listed below:
Only IRDA approval to generate leads for insurance companies: Only IRDA approved web aggregators can generate insurance related leads for insurance companies. The IRDA usually grants approval for a period of three years to the web aggregator.
Minimum net worth: The web aggregator shall have a minimum net worth of not less than Rs 50 lakh at any time during the previous three consecutive years.
Payment terms: Web aggregators can’t take advance payments from insurers . Payments can be made to web aggregators only on leads that result in the sale of a policy. The fee for the lead can’t go beyond twenty five percent of the commission payable on the first year premium sold. The insurers are prohibited to pay any fees for renewal and services such as maintenance of the database, development, communication, advertisements, sales promotion, infrastructure, training, entertainment among others.
Financial terms: Insurers have to enter into an agreement with the web aggregator approved by IRDA, which shall necessarily include details such as fee/commission for the leads to be shared. The agreement can only be valid for a period of three years.
Fund raising has been extremely difficult because investors are wary of regulations and scale of business. To sell insurance policies online, one needs to have a strong backend team (call centres) to brief buyers about the nitty gritties. Such skilled support executives are in short supply.
Online insurance is expected to follow the growth trajectory of online travel in the next 2-3 years to come. The markets in UK & Europe have clearly shown the way, where online insurance started with aggregation model and now 70% of auto insurance in most of European countries is sold online. The Indian industry will evolve much in the same fashion, according to industry watchers.
Once the regulations ease in bits and pieces as expected by the markets, the otherwise cash starved space is likely to see higher investor interest.
By 2015, the online insurance industry is expected to grab 25-30% of the overall insurance market, out of which 50-60% of volume would be dominated by third party aggregators. What we have seen so far is the run up. The big leap will come in the coming years.
How often have we caught ourselves in situation when we are inviting friends over for dinner and we hoped that we could have some help to ease the work? Or that time during the festivities when we prayed for a clone to manage all the gift deliveries and packaging?
Chachii is an online service company that helps users to get odd jobs ranging from household chores to office deliveries done. The service is most suitable for those cases when the extra help is required for a few hours to maximum a few days or a temporary basis.
So the process begins when a user logs on to Chachii and posts a task they need help with, adding all the little details ranging from the kind of task to their house address and the preferred time for getting the job done. Chachii admin then sends out a message to all of their work force which fulfill the criteria for the job in question and just like in the case of how radio cabs functions, the first person to reply to the job request is assigned the task.
Why it works?
On the face of it seems there is nothing unique about the service, one could easily get in touch with somebody in the neighbourhood to get the task done. But where Chachii scores is that its listed contacts are far greater in number, perform a variety of tasks and are readily available at odd hours when the neighbour help won’t come.
From the users’ perspective having a centralised location for getting assistance in everything ranging from cleaning, packaging or a temporary driver works. From the workforce side, it makes sense as most of them are part time workers, and they can use the Chachii platform as and when they want to act as temporary workforce without any long term commitments.
Future plans
The team at Chachii understood perfectly well that the system could be misused when the workforce or the end user could entirely circumvent the Chachii platform by directly dealing with each other. They are trying to be as transparent as possible in their approach and are encouraging the users to publish reviews in exchange for Chachii credits, to help get feedback about their workforce and have a patronage of excellent workers.
The only downside to the service could be its geographical limitations. Chachii currently operates only in the Mumbai region and sees maximum traction from the Western and Southern Mumbai. The service is definitely targeted at individual or working professionals for whom the ease of getting the job done far scores over other factors.
Currently seeing around 200 tasks being performed per month, Chachii will expand it portfolio of job offerings by moving into repairing and baby-sitting. They are working upon enlisting students for their planned B2B model, where Chachii would acts as the human resource for enterprises for their market research and event management.
If you are in Mumbai, do give Chachii a call and share the service feedback with us.
Also see: A Phone Concept: No Keypad, No Dialing [For Blue Collar Jobs]
It has been such a rough year for Chinese stocks on overseas markets that yesterday the China Mobile Games and Entertainment Group (CMGE) became only the second company from the country to list in the US this year. Yesterday its NASDAQ:CMGE ticker hit the trading floor where the mobile gaming firm took the unusual path of listing ‘by way of introduction’.
This backdoor listing method means that CMGE has hit the market, but isn’t necessarily going for an IPO of its shares. Yet. It also means there’s no price. But as the China Daily notes, the reception that CMGE got wasn’t all that warm:
The company’s American depositary shares (ADS), each representing 14 Class A ordinary shares, began to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol CMGE but failed to settle a price on its debut.
As of Tuesday’s close, investors had put in a high bid price of $3.90 per share, not even close to the ask price of 40 dollars.
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CMGE claims to be China’s biggest mobile gaming developer and publisher, and is a spin-off from VODone, the massive semi-state-owned media company. CMGE’s chariman, Zhang Lijun (pictured center in the image on the right), told state news agency Xinhua yesterday that the firm doesn’t urgently need financing at the moment, and is happy using the listing just to raise its profile at home and overseas. But even without the full IPO, CMGE must now file financial reports to the US SEC.
The company might want to wait for a better economic climate – and warmer attitudes towards Chinese tech stocks, so tarnished by last year’s Longtop financial scandal – before going for the full IPO.
CMGE is NASDAQ’s first Chinese stock this year. The only other US lister from the nation this year was the flash sales site VIPShop (NYSE:VIPS), which is currently slightly up on its $6.50 debut at $6.90 per share.
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Zalora announced that J.P. Morgan Asset Management has agreed to invest in the company, paving the way for further growth and expansion of South East Asia’s leading online fashion and lifestyle retailer. Shortly after JP Morgan invested in Indonesia based Lazada and Australia based The Iconic, they followed up with an investment into another Rocket...
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Zalora announced that J.P. Morgan Asset Management has agreed to invest in the company, paving the way for further growth and expansion of South East Asia’s leading online fashion and lifestyle retailer. Shortly after JP Morgan invested in Indonesia based Lazada and Australia based The Iconic, they followed up with an investment into another Rocket...
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V-Key, a mobile security startup founded by serial entrepreneur Eddie Chau, announced today that it has raised USD 4M in Series A funding from IPV Capital, an early-growth VC fund based in Beijing, Shanghai, and Silicon Valley.
The investment will be used to grow the company’s R&D capabilities and expand its global sales and support operations in the United States and Asia Pacific. It currently has offices in Singapore, China, and the US.
The startup’s solution suite has several key pieces: V-OS, V-Guard, V-Tap and V!VA Secure Communications. V-Guard acts as a mobile app firewall that enables mobile apps to process data and monetary transactions in a secure environment, while V-OS functions as a “secure sandbox” where cryptography and security-critical functions are performed.
V-Tap provides users with seamless advanced authentication for internet banking, social networking, and corporate servers, while V!VA Secure Communications is a Whatsapp-like instant messenger with a “secure briefcase” that lets users send confidential files.
Eddie Chau, chairman and co-founder of V-Key, said: “Demand for mobile app security, data and transaction assurance, and regulatory compliance products is growing faster than anyone has anticipated as organizations worldwide come to terms with the financial, legal, and business responsibilities for sensitive information and transaction data on the mobile devices.”
While relying on native mobile operation systems is a basic level start, Benjamin Mah, CEO and co-founder, believes that “the world needs an advanced security protection and mobile threat analytics to address advanced persistence threats in the mobile apps landscape.”
Terence Tan, Managing Partner at IPV Capital, added that the firm invested in V-Key believes it promises to “address critical security challenges in the enterprise mobility sphere. The growing use of mobile devices at the enterprise and consumer levels form a sizeable market opportunity for advanced mobile apps security solutions.”
The post Eddie Chau’s mobile security startup V-Key raises USD 4M Series A from IPV Capital appeared first on SGE.
click to enlarge
Mobile advertising and publishing platform Tapjoy has some interesting insights into which countries are showing the fastest growth on its network, which gives some insight into mobile adoption in the region.
Looking at Tapjoy’s listings of its top ten Asian countries ranked by unique users (see right), you can see that China is far and away the leader, with 43.9 million total users, 24.3 million of which are on iOS devices. This, says Tapjoy, makes China the second largest country on its network after the US [1].
Tapjoy’s user total in Korea on the Android platform seems to be surprisingly high as well at 8.49 million, in contrast with just 2 million on iOS. India is also skewed to the Android side with 2.4 million Android users outnumbering 0.8 million iOS users.
In terms of which countries have the most room for growth, China also has “extreme upside” as Tapjoy’s unique user penetration was only at around 3 percent. At just 0.26 percent penetration, India also shows huge growth potential.
You can check out the full Tapjoy Insights report here (pdf) if you’d like to learn more. There is also an informative panel discussion entitled “Publishing 2.0: How Mobile Apps Changed the Game Publishing Model,” featuring representatives from 6Waves, Kongregate, DDM, and GREE.
You can also check out our discussion with Tapjoy’s managing director in China, David Chun, from earlier this summer.
The data was sampled from January to July of 2012. ↩
The post Tapjoy Provides Insights Into Asia’s Mobile Potential appeared first on Tech in Asia.
The iPhone 5 isn’t officially available in the Philippines yet — but Globe Telecom, one of the mobile carriers in the country announced yesterday that its first subscriber is (wait for it, wait for it) Zac Efron. Surprised?
Efron is currently in the country for an event on September 29.
Yugatech.com noted:
This is the first time that Globe has made any promotional move on an iPhone before they’ve officially announced it. Apple is usually very secretive about announcing telco/country availability.
Last year, Globe’s first subscriber of the iPhone 4s was the president of the Philippines, Noynoy Aquino.
The post Globe Telecom in the Philippines names its First iPhone 5 Subscriber appeared first on Tech in Asia.
Singapore-based short-term rental marketplace Travelmob announced yesterday that it has raised USD1M in seed funding. The round is led by Jungle Ventures with participation from private investors around the region.
Founded in July 2012, Travelmob allows hosts to list their place on the website as travel accommodation for tourists. It is similar to sites such as Airbnb, 9flats, and Roomorama.
The startup is founded by Turochas “T” Fuad and Prashant Kirtane. Turochas was the managing director for Skype Asia while Prashant was the senior director of engineering at Yahoo!.
“Our mission is to lead the social stay market in Asia Pacific and since launch, we’ve been making tremendous progress towards that goal,” said Turochas. He told e27 that about 50% of site visitors come from Asia-Pacific while the remaining comes from places like the US, Europe, and Middle East. Intra-APAC travelers are on the rise, due to the rising middle income bracket in India and China.
Travelmob also announced a new feature called “experience tags”. It allows travelers to filter their desired accommodation by selecting the tag that best describes the kind of holiday experience they want. Hosts too can use the tags to better target tourists.
How Travelmob works:
Anurag Srivastava, founder and managing partner of Jungle Ventures, said: “Asia Pacific is the fastest growing region for tourism and the region’s online vacation rental market is set to soar over the next few years. travelmob is in the right place, at the right time. Coupled with a solid business plan and a seasoned team with strong regional experience, travelmob has the right ingredients to be successful and is well poised to be a market leader.”
Jungle Ventures is a VC firm that invests in early-stage startups and business-building infrastructure in Singapore, India, Southeast Asia, and other regional hotbeds of innovation.
Since Jungle Ventures is a participant in the Singapore government’s NRF TIS and SPRING SEEDS programs, it can receive co-investments from the government to boost startups under its wings.
Last year, the firm led a US$780k investment in mobile media solutions provider Cinemacraft. Earlier this year, it led a USD1.7M round in Mobikon, a Singapore and India-based startup that offers a suite of services for businesses to make customer feedback, engagement, and analysis more efficient. (see Jungle’s full portfolio).
And most recently, at the Ideas.Inc grand finals, it pledged to invest SGD100k (USD81k) in Schmeiden, which has developed a prototype device that converts a smartphone into a tablet. The investment terms are subject to negotiations.
The post Short-term rental site Travelmob raises USD1M seed funding from Jungle Ventures, others appeared first on SGE.
GSF Accelerator, a 7-week startup accelerator involving 12 companies, will launch in October 2012. The program, which will be held concurrently in 3 cities — Mumbai, New Delhi, and Bangalore, will provide startups with mentorship, seed funding, and networks.
GSF Accelerator is started by Rajesh Sawhney, founder of GSF Superangels, a network of 30 digital entrepreneurs and investors. By the end of the program, several of the 12 startups will be picked for additional funding from GSF Superangels.
All participants will also get to attend The Second Global Superangels Forum on 26-27 November, where 400 investors are expected to turn up.
The Techstars-style accelerator has Dave McClure, founder of 500 startups, as an advisor. It has also partnered with Ruvento, an iJam-supported Russian seed fund based in Singapore.
“India is booming with innovation, and 500 startups is excited to be partnering with GSF Accelerator in one of the world’s most exciting entrepreneurial ecosystems. 500 has already made several several investments in India and we plan to do more in the future,” said Dave.
Said Slava Solonitsyn, CEO of Ruvento: “We see the synergies to match start ups graduating from GSF’s Accelerator with our networks and portfolios from Russia and Singapore.”
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Bomanbridge, a Singapore-based distributor of television content, has sold the multimedia format for Angel’s Gate to Finland’s Intervisio, a crossmedia production company, reported TBI Vision.
Intervisio has stated that it hopes to produce the show next year. It did not, however, announce a local broadcaster or platform for the program.
Antti Seppänen, CEO of Intervisio, told TBI Vision: “In these economically hard times, entrepreneurship is dire to breaking through the gloom and doom of this terrible global recession. Amazingly, AG manages to capture that spirit in an entertaining way which will bring positive feelings and strong start up motivation to the larger public.”
Bomanbridge is looking to bring the format to more broadcasters and producers at MIPCOM, an exhibition for the world’s entertainment content market. The company will join the MDA-backed Singapore Pavilion.
Since making its debut on Channel NewsAsia last year, Angel’s Gate Singapore has sparked rigorous debate within the startup community regarding its value in promoting entrepreneurship.
Nonetheless, the interest is strong enough that the news broadcaster will be screening the show’s second season. Interactive.SG, the company behind the format, has also mentioned that broadcasters in other parts of Asia and Europe have expressed “a high level of interest” in producing localized versions of the show.
The post Angel’s Gate Finland edition one step closer to reality appeared first on SGE.
Morces is a platform that helps build mobile websites. The service features a simple drag and drop function, and since it requires no additional technical knowledge, one can easily create a mobile website in just less than five minutes.
The post Morces helps you put your existing website on mobile for free appeared first on e27.
Morces is a platform that helps build mobile websites. The service features a simple drag and drop function, and since it requires no additional technical knowledge, one can easily create a mobile website in just less than five minutes.
The post Morces helps you put your existing website on mobile for free appeared first on e27.
Youku and Tudou may have merged financially, but it seems Youku’s management is not planning to merge the two platforms anytime soon. Yesterday, Youku Tudou launched what it is calling the “True Dou” campaign, a 100-day push to improve and differentiate the Tudou platform from Youku. The Tudou.com site has been revamped for the occasion, and now boasts some new features and content.
CEO Victor Koo explained the reason for the differentiation campaign thusly:
The Chinese online video industry has been characterized by fierce competition for the past several years. Now that Youku and Tudou are no longer competing with one another, it’s time to let both sites be themselves. Tudou’s new design and identity position it to appeal to younger, more independent audiences than the more general audience served by Youku.
Tudou's new frontpage look: slicker presentation, much bigger video player.
So what does the new Tudou look like? The design is cleaner, and features a larger video player. It also features a new discussion feature — called “Doupao” — that supposedly makes video more social by making real-time comments pop up while you’re watching a video so you see what other people are saying. I wasn’t able to see this in action on the couple videos I checked, but frankly, I’m not sure what this really adds to the experience, as (like any video website) most of the comments on Tudou are inane and a decent percentage of them are gibberish. But a Pop-up Video approach to web commenting could work with the right commenters; perhaps Tudou users will take to the new system.
Tudou will also be featuring new content, including Animation and Entertainment channels with Tudou-only programs as well as a Tudou Originals channel that will feature Tudou original programming. Youku has had quite a bit of success with its own Youku Originals programs, and is presumably looking to repeat that with Tudou. The channel will launch with the show Yif Magic (an entertainment program) and soon after add Tudou Surfin’ and Tudou Groovin’ (newsmagazine-style pop culture news shows)
Not everything about Youku and Tudou has stayed separate since the merger, though. Searches on Tudou are now being run through Youku’s Soku video search platform, albeit with an orange-colored Soku logo to match the Tudou color scheme.
Full disclosure: For a brief period of time in the past, I worked for Youku. Now I don’t, and I have no interests in the company (or any of its competitors, or any other Chinese tech company at all.)
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