Midnight raid and Arrest at Air India employees’ house after Facebook comment: Report

A television channel reports that the cyber cell of Mumbai police arrested two cabin crew members –  Mayank Mohan Sharma and KVJ Rao of Air India in May this year for allegedly sharing  lewd jokes about politicians, making derogatory comments against the Prime Minister and insulting the national flag through their Facebook posts.

According to an NDTV report, police registered a case in March against the duo and arrested the them under the controversial section 66(A) and 67 of the Information Technology Act in May after raiding their house post midnight. Following the arrest, Sharma and Rao spent 12 days in police custody and were suspended by Air India.

Rao and Sharma were quoted as saying that they had shared content easily available on the Internet and the former alleged that the police acted under political pressure from NCP politician Kiran Pawaskar.

The incident which came to light recently, once again raises questions on freedom of expression in India. Just a week back a classical example of political intolerance and Internet censorship played out in the country. The Mumbai police arrested two girls for protesting against a statewide Bandh on their Facebook wall. The girls were arrested after one of them posted a message on Facebook following Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray’s death. The other girl had liked the post.

Soon, workers allegedly belonging the the Shiv Sena also attacked the girls’ residence. The arrest of two girls had been widely condemned by Internet activists. The  Press council Chairman Justice Katju reacted strongly to the incident. He instructed Chief Minister of Maharashtra to initiate criminal proceedings against the police personnel who allegedly arrested a woman in Mumbai for posting a message on Facebook against a state wide bandh.

The appetite of the ruling class or the people in power to control web can be gauged from Google’s sixth transparency report released earlier this month. The report ranked India to #2 position in terms of  government requests to remove/block content. From January to June 2012, Indian government made a total of 2,319 user data requests and 3,467 user account requests and Google complied with 64% of data requests.

A report released by Washington based Internet monitoring group Freedom House, has ranked India (rank- 39) in Internet freedom, down by two places from last year (37). The study conducted by the group covers Internet centric freedom spanning across 47 countries.

Link to full article

Read More

iOS expense trackers compared and reviewed

The author, Anthony Coundouris, is the founder of accounting and analytics firm Futurebooks.

Expensify is the best of the bunch. Read on to find out why.

Compiling expense reports, which track employee’s expenses incurred while performing company duties, are one of the most time consuming bookkeeping tasks. A startup of two employees and one director can spend as much as 12 hours a month keying in personal expense claims.

For this reason, staff dread the task of submitting monthly expense claims, and are often late in presenting expense claims to management.

Enter expense trackers

We road-tested a bunch of mobile apps to see if this tedious task could be improved. The objective of our experiment was to decide if it is quicker to manually key receipts into Excel, or to scan them using a mobile device. To beat Excel, the apps will have to:

1. Scan and process the receipt quickly and accurately;
2. Classify the receipt using a correct expense line item;
3. Tally the receipts in an expense report.

How we tested the apps

We examined two kinds of applications: simple scanners and expense trackers. We measured each app based whether it offered the following features, and how accurately the features performed.

1. Brightness control. Scanning, optimising and storing an image of the receipt.
2. Edge detection. Auto detecting edges and scope for manual adjustment.
3. OCR capability. Conversion of the pixel image to real numbers and words.
4. Tagging. Posting the receipt to the correct expense line item(s).
5. Sharing. Ease of sharing an expense or report with others.
6. Reports. Tallying expenses claims as a single page report.

In each instance, we downloaded an unpaid version of the app to an iPhone 4. While we expected the paid version to offer better functions and volume scanning, the free version would be enough to determine the app’s strengths and weaknesses. Each application was tested using the same conditions.

The test was conducted indoors, flash off and utlilizing natural daylight from nearby windows. Each app was tested using two types of receipts. A large A4 invoice created from a laser printer and a small 1×1 inch taxi receipt created from a thermal printer. The experiment was run twice and the results averaged.

Receipt scanners we tested

We tested DocScan, Page Scanner, ImagetoText, Jotnot, and Genius Scan. No receipt scanner we tested offered reports or tagging of expense claims. The receipt scanners that offered optical character recognition were slow to process the image and were inaccurate.

	Brightness control	Edge detection	OCR capability	Sharing
Jotnot	Excellent	Good. Manual adjustment available	Not available	Low. Could only share via print and fax.
Genuis Scan	Fair	Good. Manual adjustment available	Not available	Excellent. Choice of JPG + PDF clear.
Page Scanner	Fair	Fair	Poor. Slow processing. Inaccurate result.	Limited on free version
DocScan	Fair	Fair	Not available	Not available
Image to Text	Not available	Not available	Poor. Slow processing. Inaccurate result.	Not available

Expense trackers we tested

We tested Xero Touch, Shoeboxed, ReceiptBank, KF QuickSnap, Lemon, Abukai, Expensify and Xpenser. With the exception of Lemon, expense trackers did not feature brightness control and edge detection when scanning a receipt. This may be because the application performs this task so well, the developers decided not to make it part of the feature set.

Half of expense trackers offered reporting and batch processing of receipts. The majority of sharing was via a web-based dashboard. ReceiptBank, Lemon Wallet and Abukai expense reports were delivered after the experiment was concluded. Commercially, these applications performed.

Shoebox could not be tested, as we had to provided credit card details before using the free version. We had to disqualify KF Quick app. All attempts to configure this app for use failed.

Our favourite expense tracker

Expensify won our hearts. Optical character recognition was accurate. Expense reports were built in less than one hour of scanning receipts. Expensify classified and tallied expenses. Expense reports were easy to share and provide to management for approval.

The only drawback of Expensify is Xero does not provide an API at present to make integration with management accounts easy. Receipt Bank was equally a great application, especially because it offers direct integration to Xero accounts.

Application	Price / mnth	Score
Expensify	USD5 per user	9/10
Receipt Bank	£44 (USD70) for 4 users	7/10
Xpenser	USD9 per user	6/10

Conclusions

Receipt scanners are out. Receipt scanners could be used for personal finance, but are not effective for SME finance where speed and accuracy are essential. Users will discover that any efficiency gained using the app is quickly lost double checking and correcting for errors.

Expense trackers are in. Overall this segment is value for money. At USD10 /month, these apps will more than pay themselves back in savings on time and outsourced bookkeeping fees.

A version of this article was first published on the Futurebooks blog.

The post iOS expense trackers compared and reviewed appeared first on SGE.

Link to full article

Read More

Free coupons vs paid coupons : What’s the benefit to user [Part 2]

[A guest post by Anurag Aggarwal, co-founder of coupon site Khojguru on the Free Coupons Vs Paid Coupons debate. This is the second of a three part series]

In the last part of the piece I concluded that the free coupon model is better than the paid coupon model for a merchant and hence has some inherent advantages;

-          Higher density of merchant offers as they can work across the spectrum of offers.

-          Higher merchant retention rates as they can cater to their different requirements at different points of time.

-          Deeper relations with the merchants with short term, medium term and long term analytics.

In this part I will share my take on the free vs paid with data and observations on the user side.

I define coupon users under the following 3 categories:

1. Impulse coupon users : These are impulsive buyers in general. However, their impulse is fuelled by coupons and deals. This set is most likely to take a coupon immediately if they like it. This is the biggest segment for deal a day players or players selling deals. The redemption rate though is on the lower side for this set.
2. Planned coupon users : These are the real deal seeker. The cliché goes that Indian consumers are always on a lookout for discounts. In my opinion, everyone likes a good bargain but very few are actually actively looking for one. This set actively looks for discounts. They search diligently and take an offer which gives highest savings. They do not have much brand loyalty and may switch even for a Re.1 extra. For them free or paid hardly matters. This segment provides the highest redemption rates. Hence, they form the core target for the industry. To capture these users accessibility and availability of offers is very important. A company either should have a very strong brand recall or should be ahead on search (available on major search engines) to capture this set of users.
3. On the move coupon users : This is the most untapped audience though the biggest set. These users will use a coupon if they have easy access to it at the point of purchase. Due to lack of well marketed technology services offering solutions for this set, this set remains untapped and is the next growth driver for the coupon industry.

To give the readers a perspective of the size of each of the above sets, I would plot these sets on an overall market size estimation chart.

Segment 1 the smallest of the 3 has the maximum coupon buyers.

Segment 2 is where there exists tough competition between the free and paid coupon services. It is about reaching the user and with a better deal.

Segment 3 is most suited for free coupon players, since, free coupons is the easiest and most accessible coupon platform when it comes to on the go coupons.

So, if we go by these estimates, the debate tilts further in favour of free coupons. The sheer size of the current market available to be addressed by free coupon services is a significant multiple of the paid coupon service. I also think that COD does not fit well in the deal space (if it does it makes sense only to some users in segment 2).

As was mentioned by the readers on the previous post, I would also like to point out that I am talking about a model where the customer does not have to pay anything upfront. The coupons can be taken for free. The original Groupon model is where the customer pays the full deal amount upfront. I would say in India the model was started by companies like khojguru.com and medals (which is now inmobi) way back in 2007. In 2010 many coupon selling companies in India started charging only their commission from the users to further fuel demand in the segment 1 and also pull some people from segment 2 to segment 1.

Apart from the numbers, the free model has some inherent advantages for the users. I am sure that;

1.  90 out of 100 readers would agree that they would not want to buy a deal if it is also available for free.
2. They would also not want to make 2 transactions (one to buy the deal and then second to buy the product/service).
3. They would love easy and free accessibility to a deal at the point of purchase.

So, I wonder if the free deal model is so good, then why aren’t more companies doing it, why does the revenue model elude so many and why is the paid model a preferred model with the investors? That bit in the next and final post of this series.

Link to full article

Read More

iOS expense trackers compared and reviewed

The author, Anthony Coundouris, is the founder of accounting and analytics firm Futurebooks.

Expensify is the best of the bunch. Read on to find out why.

Compiling expense reports, which track employee’s expenses incurred while performing company duties, are one of the most time consuming bookkeeping tasks. A startup of two employees and one director can spend as much as 12 hours a month keying in personal expense claims.

For this reason, staff dread the task of submitting monthly expense claims, and are often late in presenting expense claims to management.

Enter expense trackers

We road-tested a bunch of mobile apps to see if this tedious task could be improved. The objective of our experiment was to decide if it is quicker to manually key receipts into Excel, or to scan them using a mobile device. To beat Excel, the apps will have to:

1. Scan and process the receipt quickly and accurately;
2. Classify the receipt using a correct expense line item;
3. Tally the receipts in an expense report.

How we tested the apps

We examined two kinds of applications: simple scanners and expense trackers. We measured each app based whether it offered the following features, and how accurately the features performed.

1. Brightness control. Scanning, optimising and storing an image of the receipt.
2. Edge detection. Auto detecting edges and scope for manual adjustment.
3. OCR capability. Conversion of the pixel image to real numbers and words.
4. Tagging. Posting the receipt to the correct expense line item(s).
5. Sharing. Ease of sharing an expense or report with others.
6. Reports. Tallying expenses claims as a single page report.

In each instance, we downloaded an unpaid version of the app to an iPhone 4. While we expected the paid version to offer better functions and volume scanning, the free version would be enough to determine the app’s strengths and weaknesses. Each application was tested using the same conditions.

The test was conducted indoors, flash off and utlilizing natural daylight from nearby windows. Each app was tested using two types of receipts. A large A4 invoice created from a laser printer and a small 1×1 inch taxi receipt created from a thermal printer. The experiment was run twice and the results averaged.

Receipt scanners we tested

We tested DocScan, Page Scanner, ImagetoText, Jotnot, and Genius Scan. No receipt scanner we tested offered reports or tagging of expense claims. The receipt scanners that offered optical character recognition were slow to process the image and were inaccurate.

	Brightness control	Edge detection	OCR capability	Sharing
Jotnot	Excellent	Good. Manual adjustment available	Not available	Low. Could only share via print and fax.
Genuis Scan	Fair	Good. Manual adjustment available	Not available	Excellent. Choice of JPG + PDF clear.
Page Scanner	Fair	Fair	Poor. Slow processing. Inaccurate result.	Limited on free version
DocScan	Fair	Fair	Not available	Not available
Image to Text	Not available	Not available	Poor. Slow processing. Inaccurate result.	Not available

Expense trackers we tested

We tested Xero Touch, Shoeboxed, ReceiptBank, KF QuickSnap, Lemon, Abukai, Expensify and Xpenser. With the exception of Lemon, expense trackers did not feature brightness control and edge detection when scanning a receipt. This may be because the application performs this task so well, the developers decided not to make it part of the feature set.

Half of expense trackers offered reporting and batch processing of receipts. The majority of sharing was via a web-based dashboard. ReceiptBank, Lemon Wallet and Abukai expense reports were delivered after the experiment was concluded. Commercially, these applications performed.

Shoebox could not be tested, as we had to provided credit card details before using the free version. We had to disqualify KF Quick app. All attempts to configure this app for use failed.

Our favourite expense tracker

Expensify won our hearts. Optical character recognition was accurate. Expense reports were built in less than one hour of scanning receipts. Expensify classified and tallied expenses. Expense reports were easy to share and provide to management for approval.

The only drawback of Expensify is Xero does not provide an API at present to make integration with management accounts easy. Receipt Bank was equally a great application, especially because it offers direct integration to Xero accounts.

Application	Price / mnth	Score
Expensify	USD5 per user	9/10
Receipt Bank	£44 (USD70) for 4 users	7/10
Xpenser	USD9 per user	6/10

Conclusions

Receipt scanners are out. Receipt scanners could be used for personal finance, but are not effective for SME finance where speed and accuracy are essential. Users will discover that any efficiency gained using the app is quickly lost double checking and correcting for errors.

Expense trackers are in. Overall this segment is value for money. At USD10 /month, these apps will more than pay themselves back in savings on time and outsourced bookkeeping fees.

A version of this article was first published on the Futurebooks blog.

The post iOS expense trackers compared and reviewed appeared first on SGE.

Link to full article

Read More

Microsoft organizes Hack Weekend for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8

Microsoft Singapore is organizing a Hack Weekend for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 on the 8th of December.

Hack Weekend is for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 developers to get their apps into the Windows Store. The one day event will start at 10 in the morning and finish at 8 in the evening. During the day, participants will get to pitch their app idea, form teams and work on their respective apps. In between all the hacking, there will also be lightning talks by Microsoft’s technical evangelists for participants to learn more about developing using Typescipt and Azure Mobile Services.

Event Details:

• Date: Saturday, December 8, 2012
• Time: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
• Venue: Microsoft Singapore

Schedule:

• 09:30 Breakfast / Registration
• 10:00 Team Formation
• 10:30 Hacking Begins
• 11:00 Lightning Talk (TypeScript)
• 12:00 Lunch
• 13:00 Hacking continues
• 14:00 Lightning Talk (Azure Mobile Services)
• 19:00 Dinner and Project updates
• 20:00 Demo time

You can register for the event here.

The post Microsoft organizes Hack Weekend for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 appeared first on e27.

Link to full article

Read More

Microsoft organizes Hack Weekend for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8

Microsoft Singapore is organizing a Hack Weekend for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 on the 8th of December.

Hack Weekend is for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 developers to get their apps into the Windows Store. The one day event will start at 10 in the morning and finish at 8 in the evening. During the day, participants will get to pitch their app idea, form teams and work on their respective apps. In between all the hacking, there will also be lightning talks by Microsoft’s technical evangelists for participants to learn more about developing using Typescipt and Azure Mobile Services.

Event Details:

• Date: Saturday, December 8, 2012
• Time: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
• Venue: Microsoft Singapore

Schedule:

• 09:30 Breakfast / Registration
• 10:00 Team Formation
• 10:30 Hacking Begins
• 11:00 Lightning Talk (TypeScript)
• 12:00 Lunch
• 13:00 Hacking continues
• 14:00 Lightning Talk (Azure Mobile Services)
• 19:00 Dinner and Project updates
• 20:00 Demo time

You can register for the event here.

The post Microsoft organizes Hack Weekend for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 appeared first on e27.

Link to full article

Read More

iOS expense trackers compared and reviewed

The author, Anthony Coundouris, is the founder of accounting and analytics firm Futurebooks.

Expensify is the best of the bunch. Read on to find out why.

Compiling expense reports, which track employee’s expenses incurred while performing company duties, are one of the most time consuming bookkeeping tasks. A startup of two employees and one director can spend as much as 12 hours a month keying in personal expense claims.

For this reason, staff dread the task of submitting monthly expense claims, and are often late in presenting expense claims to management.

Enter expense trackers

We road-tested a bunch of mobile apps to see if this tedious task could be improved. The objective of our experiment was to decide if it is quicker to manually key receipts into Excel, or to scan them using a mobile device. To beat Excel, the apps will have to:

1. Scan and process the receipt quickly and accurately;
2. Classify the receipt using a correct expense line item;
3. Tally the receipts in an expense report.

How we tested the apps

We examined two kinds of applications: simple scanners and expense trackers. We measured each app based whether it offered the following features, and how accurately the features performed.

1. Brightness control. Scanning, optimising and storing an image of the receipt.
2. Edge detection. Auto detecting edges and scope for manual adjustment.
3. OCR capability. Conversion of the pixel image to real numbers and words.
4. Tagging. Posting the receipt to the correct expense line item(s).
5. Sharing. Ease of sharing an expense or report with others.
6. Reports. Tallying expenses claims as a single page report.

In each instance, we downloaded an unpaid version of the app to an iPhone 4. While we expected the paid version to offer better functions and volume scanning, the free version would be enough to determine the app’s strengths and weaknesses. Each application was tested using the same conditions.

The test was conducted indoors, flash off and utlilizing natural daylight from nearby windows. Each app was tested using two types of receipts. A large A4 invoice created from a laser printer and a small 1×1 inch taxi receipt created from a thermal printer. The experiment was run twice and the results averaged.

Receipt scanners we tested

We tested DocScan, Page Scanner, ImagetoText, Jotnot, and Genius Scan. No receipt scanner we tested offered reports or tagging of expense claims. The receipt scanners that offered optical character recognition were slow to process the image and were inaccurate.

	Brightness control	Edge detection	OCR capability	Sharing
Jotnot	Excellent	Good. Manual adjustment available	Not available	Low. Could only share via print and fax.
Genuis Scan	Fair	Good. Manual adjustment available	Not available	Excellent. Choice of JPG + PDF clear.
Page Scanner	Fair	Fair	Poor. Slow processing. Inaccurate result.	Limited on free version
DocScan	Fair	Fair	Not available	Not available
Image to Text	Not available	Not available	Poor. Slow processing. Inaccurate result.	Not available

Expense trackers we tested

We tested Xero Touch, Shoeboxed, ReceiptBank, KF QuickSnap, Lemon, Abukai, Expensify and Xpenser. With the exception of Lemon, expense trackers did not feature brightness control and edge detection when scanning a receipt. This may be because the application performs this task so well, the developers decided not to make it part of the feature set.

Half of expense trackers offered reporting and batch processing of receipts. The majority of sharing was via a web-based dashboard. ReceiptBank, Lemon Wallet and Abukai expense reports were delivered after the experiment was concluded. Commercially, these applications performed.

Shoebox could not be tested, as we had to provided credit card details before using the free version. We had to disqualify KF Quick app. All attempts to configure this app for use failed.

Our favourite expense tracker

Expensify won our hearts. Optical character recognition was accurate. Expense reports were built in less than one hour of scanning receipts. Expensify classified and tallied expenses. Expense reports were easy to share and provide to management for approval.

The only drawback of Expensify is Xero does not provide an API at present to make integration with management accounts easy. Receipt Bank was equally a great application, especially because it offers direct integration to Xero accounts.

Application	Price / mnth	Score
Expensify	USD5 per user	9/10
Receipt Bank	£44 (USD70) for 4 users	7/10
Xpenser	USD9 per user	6/10

Conclusions

Receipt scanners are out. Receipt scanners could be used for personal finance, but are not effective for SME finance where speed and accuracy are essential. Users will discover that any efficiency gained using the app is quickly lost double checking and correcting for errors.

Expense trackers are in. Overall this segment is value for money. At USD10 /month, these apps will more than pay themselves back in savings on time and outsourced bookkeeping fees.

A version of this article was first published on the Futurebooks blog.

The post iOS expense trackers compared and reviewed appeared first on SGE.

Link to full article

Read More

Thoughts on the Thailand Startup Ecosystem by Golden Gate Ventures’ Jeffrey Paine

Last week, e27 organized our first ever Echelon Ignite in Bangkok. We learned and took away a lot from the vibrant startup community there. Here are a few thoughts from Jeffrey Paine of Golden Gate Ventures.

Jeffrey Paine, founding partner of Golden Gate Ventures and Managing Director of Founders Institute Singapore was part of a discussion panel at Echelon Ignite. Recently, Jeffrey was also awarded the Director with the Greatest Ecosystem Impact by the Founders Institute Director Awards 2012.

After the trip, Jeffrey shared his thoughts about the Thailand (Bangkok) startup ecosystem. Read on because you will definitely take away a few key things about the startup community in the country.

Thailand (Bangkok) Startup Ecosystem by Jeffrey Paine

I was recently invited to be in a panel discussion at Echelon Ignite 2012 in Bangkok organized by e27 and Hubba Thailand. The discussion was about sharing the insights of investing in the region (Southeast Asia), particularly what investors look for and to share our individual experiences. The other panelists include Kuan Hsu from Gree Ventures, Adrian Vanzyl from Ardent Capital, Danny Wirianto from Mindtalk, and Nic Lim from 8Capita.

It was my first serious trip to Bangkok for business (looking to invest in technology startups in Southeast Asia) as part of Golden Gate Ventures. We are actively looking to invest in Southeast Asia and Thailand as one of our key countries of focus in 2013. Although Thailand is only a few hours by flight away from Singapore, I always feel a sense of mystery about the country, people, and culture, and I always learn a ton every trip. This time it was no different. One major reason is the language and the people are not something we cross paths with early on in our lives in Singapore. We are more familiar with Malaysia and Indonesia (Malay as one of our four main languages in Singapore plus encountering them since we are kids from school or as neighbors), India (Tamil as the other of the four main language in Singapore), and Philippines to some extent because of the history of domestic helpers in Singapore who are from the Philippines. To all my new friends in Bangkok, thank you for making my trip a fruitful one! ขอบคุณมาก!

My Bangkok Startup Metrics: In three days, 10 companies intrigued me, seven are from Thailand. If the conversion rates are good, you will see us do deals sooner than you think

The Plot:

• The market size is large in itself, but because it is still a developing country, many startups are inclined to look outside of Thailand but most will start local and will stay local. Personally, I think the market is large enough to generate a sizable profitable business in the consumer or enterprise space.
• Startups in the mobile space, brand marketing, e-commerce and anything social seem to be the most popular. People in Thailand are social online/mobile in an interesting way. By far, they are one of the top users of LINE (chat app from Korea) and also Foursquare. They rival Indonesia and Philippines in that respect. Very interesting to see how it will evolve.
• There were mixed views on the availability of technical talent in Bangkok. I think it depends on what skill sets you are looking for and whether or not you are willing to train them on the job. There are good technical schools/universities and design talent up north I was told. You do have to put in effort to track the best talent down.
• The design talent in Thailand has also been much talked about. The top practitioners are really good at what they do (I met a couple of them who are rock stars! Impressed!), am optimistic that this area of development will be very strong in Thailand going forward. If you look at the film industry in Thailand especially in post production, creative talent has always been a strong foot hold and will likely continue to be, spilling over to the technology side.
• The funding landscape is similar to Korea and Singapore a few years ago (some angels, 1-2 early stage funds, most venture funds focus on growth to late stage investments, AIS has a venture fund, and Japanese investors are looking in, etc. And now us at GGV). Mobile operators need to slowly immerse themselves into the ecosystem. It will take time but it will be an overall positive. Large families who run conglomerates should also start to look into investing and being part of the support system. Maybe the next generation leaders of these families will be the new drivers.
• Legal/regulatory concerns seem to be the talk of the town, sometimes in hushed tones, but good entrepreneurs will eventually figure out the right direction to take. This area could be the most sticky point if Thailand wants to improve, but it is nothing new in emerging markets: it is never smooth sailing. Company incorporation alone can take a few months with a high paid up capital to start.
• Both traditional and online media like Thumbsup are covering startups and celebrating the founders who did well.
• University administrators I met (at least three) are setting up or have set up entrepreneurship programs and have asked some speakers at Echelon for advice. This is definitely a good sign.
• My overall feel of Bangkok startup scene is that it is six to nine months behind Jakarta, Indonesia (initial reaction). The classic founder mistakes are prevalent (not enough research done on go to market strategies, market sizing, the need to raise money to build X or finish Y). This is pretty common in the early days of a new and growing ecosystem.

The Cast:

• There are lot more foreigners building companies in Bangkok than any other city in Southeast Asia (aside from Singapore). I worry about the plight of Singapore the more I speak to them. [EXPLETIVE, DOUBLE EXPLETIVE]. The high cost of living and operational cost in Singapore (not forgetting the talent crunch with unreliable immigration policy for new hires) is no laughing matter. Great entrepreneurs are not fully sold on Singapore as before, there are moving parts that irks them. When you bootstrap and just want to get things done, Singapore is not the place on the top of your mind. Not until later. Maybe. Maybe not.
• The core participants of the ecosystem seem to know each other extremely well, supporting one another (Thai social culture). Very encouraging to see. Feels like a family.
• Local serial entrepreneurs are starting funds and programs to teach and give back. It is interesting to see Thailand’s version of IdeaLab, Science, Betaworks like Ardent Capital and lean programs like Disrupt University. Wherein Singapore does not have either yet, except maybe FI, or JFDI.
• Finally, I feel it in my bones that Bangkok is now definitely ready for Founder Institute in 2013. More information to come soon.

Some media takeaways:

• We were interviewed by Chatpatwee! Woot woot! (Link to interview later)
• Boyband stars spotted
• Speaker dinner photo at Bottoms Up.
• First movie called Soob Kuu Ku Lok after touching down (recommended by my hotel bell hop ). It was hilarious!
• Will end this post with Potato’s song (dedicated to Gabriel, Mohan and the e27 & Hubba crew and all the Echelon Ignite speakers and ecosystem participants and new friends made – once again thanks for everything!). Disclaimer: Potato is my favorite Thai band since 4 years ago. Check them out.

Source: Thailand (Bangkok) Startup Ecosystem by Jeffrey Paine.

The post Thoughts on the Thailand Startup Ecosystem by Golden Gate Ventures’ Jeffrey Paine appeared first on e27.

Link to full article

Read More

Thoughts on the Thailand Startup Ecosystem by Golden Gate Ventures’ Jeffrey Paine

Last week, e27 organized our first ever Echelon Ignite in Bangkok. We learned and took away a lot from the vibrant startup community there. Here are a few thoughts from Jeffrey Paine of Golden Gate Ventures.

Jeffrey Paine, founding partner of Golden Gate Ventures and Managing Director of Founders Institute Singapore was part of a discussion panel at Echelon Ignite. Recently, Jeffrey was also awarded the Director with the Greatest Ecosystem Impact by the Founders Institute Director Awards 2012.

After the trip, Jeffrey shared his thoughts about the Thailand (Bangkok) startup ecosystem. Read on because you will definitely take away a few key things about the startup community in the country.

Thailand (Bangkok) Startup Ecosystem by Jeffrey Paine

I was recently invited to be in a panel discussion at Echelon Ignite 2012 in Bangkok organized by e27 and Hubba Thailand. The discussion was about sharing the insights of investing in the region (Southeast Asia), particularly what investors look for and to share our individual experiences. The other panelists include Kuan Hsu from Gree Ventures, Adrian Vanzyl from Ardent Capital, Danny Wirianto from Mindtalk, and Nic Lim from 8Capita.

It was my first serious trip to Bangkok for business (looking to invest in technology startups in Southeast Asia) as part of Golden Gate Ventures. We are actively looking to invest in Southeast Asia and Thailand as one of our key countries of focus in 2013. Although Thailand is only a few hours by flight away from Singapore, I always feel a sense of mystery about the country, people, and culture, and I always learn a ton every trip. This time it was no different. One major reason is the language and the people are not something we cross paths with early on in our lives in Singapore. We are more familiar with Malaysia and Indonesia (Malay as one of our four main languages in Singapore plus encountering them since we are kids from school or as neighbors), India (Tamil as the other of the four main language in Singapore), and Philippines to some extent because of the history of domestic helpers in Singapore who are from the Philippines. To all my new friends in Bangkok, thank you for making my trip a fruitful one! ขอบคุณมาก!

My Bangkok Startup Metrics: In three days, 10 companies intrigued me, seven are from Thailand. If the conversion rates are good, you will see us do deals sooner than you think

The Plot:

• The market size is large in itself, but because it is still a developing country, many startups are inclined to look outside of Thailand but most will start local and will stay local. Personally, I think the market is large enough to generate a sizable profitable business in the consumer or enterprise space.
• Startups in the mobile space, brand marketing, e-commerce and anything social seem to be the most popular. People in Thailand are social online/mobile in an interesting way. By far, they are one of the top users of LINE (chat app from Korea) and also Foursquare. They rival Indonesia and Philippines in that respect. Very interesting to see how it will evolve.
• There were mixed views on the availability of technical talent in Bangkok. I think it depends on what skill sets you are looking for and whether or not you are willing to train them on the job. There are good technical schools/universities and design talent up north I was told. You do have to put in effort to track the best talent down.
• The design talent in Thailand has also been much talked about. The top practitioners are really good at what they do (I met a couple of them who are rock stars! Impressed!), am optimistic that this area of development will be very strong in Thailand going forward. If you look at the film industry in Thailand especially in post production, creative talent has always been a strong foot hold and will likely continue to be, spilling over to the technology side.
• The funding landscape is similar to Korea and Singapore a few years ago (some angels, 1-2 early stage funds, most venture funds focus on growth to late stage investments, AIS has a venture fund, and Japanese investors are looking in, etc. And now us at GGV). Mobile operators need to slowly immerse themselves into the ecosystem. It will take time but it will be an overall positive. Large families who run conglomerates should also start to look into investing and being part of the support system. Maybe the next generation leaders of these families will be the new drivers.
• Legal/regulatory concerns seem to be the talk of the town, sometimes in hushed tones, but good entrepreneurs will eventually figure out the right direction to take. This area could be the most sticky point if Thailand wants to improve, but it is nothing new in emerging markets: it is never smooth sailing. Company incorporation alone can take a few months with a high paid up capital to start.
• Both traditional and online media like Thumbsup are covering startups and celebrating the founders who did well.
• University administrators I met (at least three) are setting up or have set up entrepreneurship programs and have asked some speakers at Echelon for advice. This is definitely a good sign.
• My overall feel of Bangkok startup scene is that it is six to nine months behind Jakarta, Indonesia (initial reaction). The classic founder mistakes are prevalent (not enough research done on go to market strategies, market sizing, the need to raise money to build X or finish Y). This is pretty common in the early days of a new and growing ecosystem.

The Cast:

• There are lot more foreigners building companies in Bangkok than any other city in Southeast Asia (aside from Singapore). I worry about the plight of Singapore the more I speak to them. [EXPLETIVE, DOUBLE EXPLETIVE]. The high cost of living and operational cost in Singapore (not forgetting the talent crunch with unreliable immigration policy for new hires) is no laughing matter. Great entrepreneurs are not fully sold on Singapore as before, there are moving parts that irks them. When you bootstrap and just want to get things done, Singapore is not the place on the top of your mind. Not until later. Maybe. Maybe not.
• The core participants of the ecosystem seem to know each other extremely well, supporting one another (Thai social culture). Very encouraging to see. Feels like a family.
• Local serial entrepreneurs are starting funds and programs to teach and give back. It is interesting to see Thailand’s version of IdeaLab, Science, Betaworks like Ardent Capital and lean programs like Disrupt University. Wherein Singapore does not have either yet, except maybe FI, or JFDI.
• Finally, I feel it in my bones that Bangkok is now definitely ready for Founder Institute in 2013. More information to come soon.

Some media takeaways:

• We were interviewed by Chatpatwee! Woot woot! (Link to interview later)
• Boyband stars spotted
• Speaker dinner photo at Bottoms Up.
• First movie called Soob Kuu Ku Lok after touching down (recommended by my hotel bell hop ). It was hilarious!
• Will end this post with Potato’s song (dedicated to Gabriel, Mohan and the e27 & Hubba crew and all the Echelon Ignite speakers and ecosystem participants and new friends made – once again thanks for everything!). Disclaimer: Potato is my favorite Thai band since 4 years ago. Check them out.

Source: Thailand (Bangkok) Startup Ecosystem by Jeffrey Paine.

The post Thoughts on the Thailand Startup Ecosystem by Golden Gate Ventures’ Jeffrey Paine appeared first on e27.

Link to full article

Read More

Freak Show: Samsung Launches a Quad-Core, Dual-Screen Android Flip Phone in China

If China’s shanzhai phone-makers have taught big companies anything, it’s that you’ve got to give your customers what they want, even if what they want is absolutely mental. That brings us to Samsung’s new W2013 (pictured right), a charmingly-named quad-core dual-screen Android flip phone made only for the Chinese market.

The Samsung W2013 runs Android 4.0, and Engadget reckons that it’s probably rocking one of Samsung’s own Exynos 4412 processors. It also has a whopping 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera, making it great for video calls. Perhaps it’s not so nuts after all.

The post Freak Show: Samsung Launches a Quad-Core, Dual-Screen Android Flip Phone in China appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Link to full article

Read More

Indonesia’s Tiket Wins AICTA 2012 Startup Award, Shares Latest Stats

Indonesian ticket booking platform Tiket has made some interesting progress since we last talked with them in August. Tiket has bagged a hat trick of first prize awards (pictured above) over the last couple of months. The company won at Sparxup in the e-commerce category, and at the Telkom Indigo Fellowship Awards in the travel and retail category. The latest award the startup has won was at the ASEAN ICT Awards (AICTA) held in Seibu, Philippines, a couple of weeks ago.

We caught up with the team again to talk about the company’s adventure in startup competitions and about its progress in general. Tiket.com seems to enjoy competing in these kinds of contests, and the team is looking to join more of them as early as next month. In December, Tiket will be competing in two events, the Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA) and the GIST-Initiative, the latter of which was initiated by the US Department of State.

Tiket’s Stats

Tiket also shared its latest statistics with us. The company said that it has seen stable growth of 20 to 50 percent every month. So far, Tiket has partnered with 1,000 hotels, six airlines, 30 concert events, and 300 travel agents for its ticketing sales. The startup’s total user-base has reached the 100,000 mark, with more than 50 percent of them being repeat customers.

The team has also handled some amazingly quick concert sell-outs – the site sold 5,000 concert tickets for Japanese rock band L’arc~en~Ciel in only two minutes in January this year. And its allotment of 5,000 concert tickets for Korean pop group Big Bang were sold in the space of 15 minutes, with 46,000 users simultaneously hunting for the tickets on Tiket.

Currently, Tiket supports various online payment methods, such as credit cards, KlikBCA, BCA KlikPay, and bank transfers. The team is looking to add another payment option in the near future, which is cash-on-delivery (COD), to open up the service to people who don’t have cards, or those who think that doing a cash transfer at an ATM is a pain.

The post Indonesia’s Tiket Wins AICTA 2012 Startup Award, Shares Latest Stats appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Link to full article

Read More

iOS expense trackers compared and reviewed

The author, Anthony Coundouris, is the founder of accounting and analytics firm Futurebooks.

Expensify is the best of the bunch. Read on to find out why.

Compiling expense reports, which track employee’s expenses incurred while performing company duties, are one of the most time consuming bookkeeping tasks. A startup of two employees and one director can spend as much as 12 hours a month keying in personal expense claims.

For this reason, staff dread the task of submitting monthly expense claims, and are often late in presenting expense claims to management.

Enter expense trackers

We road-tested a bunch of mobile apps to see if this tedious task could be improved. The objective of our experiment was to decide if it is quicker to manually key receipts into Excel, or to scan them using a mobile device. To beat Excel, the apps will have to:

1. Scan and process the receipt quickly and accurately;
2. Classify the receipt using a correct expense line item;
3. Tally the receipts in an expense report.

How we tested the apps

We examined two kinds of applications: simple scanners and expense trackers. We measured each app based whether it offered the following features, and how accurately the features performed.

1. Brightness control. Scanning, optimising and storing an image of the receipt.
2. Edge detection. Auto detecting edges and scope for manual adjustment.
3. OCR capability. Conversion of the pixel image to real numbers and words.
4. Tagging. Posting the receipt to the correct expense line item(s).
5. Sharing. Ease of sharing an expense or report with others.
6. Reports. Tallying expenses claims as a single page report.

In each instance, we downloaded an unpaid version of the app to an iPhone 4. While we expected the paid version to offer better functions and volume scanning, the free version would be enough to determine the app’s strengths and weaknesses. Each application was tested using the same conditions.

The test was conducted indoors, flash off and utlilizing natural daylight from nearby windows. Each app was tested using two types of receipts. A large A4 invoice created from a laser printer and a small 1×1 inch taxi receipt created from a thermal printer. The experiment was run twice and the results averaged.

Receipt scanners we tested

We tested DocScan, Page Scanner, ImagetoText, Jotnot, and Genius Scan. No receipt scanner we tested offered reports or tagging of expense claims. The receipt scanners that offered optical character recognition were slow to process the image and were inaccurate.

	Brightness control	Edge detection	OCR capability	Sharing
Jotnot	Excellent	Good. Manual adjustment available	Not available	Low. Could only share via print and fax.
Genuis Scan	Fair	Good. Manual adjustment available	Not available	Excellent. Choice of JPG + PDF clear.
Page Scanner	Fair	Fair	Poor. Slow processing. Inaccurate result.	Limited on free version
DocScan	Fair	Fair	Not available	Not available
Image to Text	Not available	Not available	Poor. Slow processing. Inaccurate result.	Not available

Expense trackers we tested

We tested Xero Touch, Shoeboxed, ReceiptBank, KF QuickSnap, Lemon, Abukai, Expensify and Xpenser. With the exception of Lemon, expense trackers did not feature brightness control and edge detection when scanning a receipt. This may be because the application performs this task so well, the developers decided not to make it part of the feature set.

Half of expense trackers offered reporting and batch processing of receipts. The majority of sharing was via a web-based dashboard. ReceiptBank, Lemon Wallet and Abukai expense reports were delivered after the experiment was concluded. Commercially, these applications performed.

Shoebox could not be tested, as we had to provided credit card details before using the free version. We had to disqualify KF Quick app. All attempts to configure this app for use failed.

Our favourite expense tracker

Expensify won our hearts. Optical character recognition was accurate. Expense reports were built in less than one hour of scanning receipts. Expensify classified and tallied expenses. Expense reports were easy to share and provide to management for approval.

The only drawback of Expensify is Xero does not provide an API at present to make integration with management accounts easy. Receipt Bank was equally a great application, especially because it offers direct integration to Xero accounts.

Application	Price / mnth	Score
Expensify	USD5 per user	9/10
Receipt Bank	£44 (USD70) for 4 users	7/10
Xpenser	USD9 per user	6/10

Conclusions

Receipt scanners are out. Receipt scanners could be used for personal finance, but are not effective for SME finance where speed and accuracy are essential. Users will discover that any efficiency gained using the app is quickly lost double checking and correcting for errors.

Expense trackers are in. Overall this segment is value for money. At USD10 /month, these apps will more than pay themselves back in savings on time and outsourced bookkeeping fees.

A version of this article was first published on the Futurebooks blog.

The post iOS expense trackers compared and reviewed appeared first on SGE.

Link to full article

Read More

3 things to know about using Twitter for e-commerce [End of "social media is free"]

Lux Narayanan, CEO & Co-Founder, Unmetric Inc

Last week Twitter came out with a study which said that nearly all of the Twitter users go to retail websites and that people who have seen tweets from a retailer are more likely to buy than people who haven’t. The microblogging site was clearly making a case for advertisers to spend more on Twitter. We got in touch with Lakshmanan (Lux) Narayanan, the CEO & Co- Founder of UnMetric Inc, the Social Media benchmarking company to get some more insights.  “We’re seeing the end of the phrase ‘social media is free’ which is sure to send shivers down the spines of social media managers in India where this belief is still widely held,” says Narayanan told NBW in an e-mail interview. Edited Excerpts:

E-commerce companies mostly use Twitter as support channel (and Facebook as marketing) – will they change their outlook [after reading such Twitter oriented report] towards this?

Just looking at the top 5 Indian e-commerce brands (Flipkart, Jabong, Junglee, Myntra & Yebhi), we can see that 24% of the tweets have been pro-active and 71% have been replies. Looking at raw numbers, this means that on average, these brands are sending around 3 pro-active tweets per day. What we might see is that e-commerce brands follow the US convention of starting a dedicated Twitter support account while keeping the main account for marketing and campaign purposes. That said, at the current rate of pro-active tweets, the Indian e-commerce brands are about on par with their US peers.

To what extent can Twitter be used as effective marketing tool and how do you see the present Twitter campaigns used by e-commerce players in India?

Some brands are being really innovative with their use of Twitter, for example, Homeshop18 is constantly running successful hashtag campaigns and getting people involved. Myntra also did something interesting where they combined Twitter with Pinterest to get people uploading pictures to win prizes. Of course, you are talking to a smaller subset of socially engaged people when compared to Facebook, but as the Compete report illustrates, these people seem to be more targeted.

What’s your take on Twitter’s growing ambition to become more of a marketing tool?

I think we’re seeing the end of the phrase “social media is free” which is sure to send shivers down the spines of social media managers in India where this belief is still widely held. These platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and soon, Pinterest) all need to have a revenue stream and since they are not going to charge their users, they need to make money from brands. Facebook has started it by asking brands to pay to reach more fans via sponsored posts and Twitter is continuing it with their Sponsored Tweets and Sponsored Hashtags.

Just like any other mass media, TV, print, radio etc. Social Media is the the new mass media, and if brands want to reach an audience, they’ll have to pay for it. Twitter is well placed to enable brands to literally buy extended visibility on these platforms – and if the brands don’t, they risk being lost in all the noise.

Recommended read

Nearly all Twitter users visit retail websites, it helps retailers to optimize purchase rate by 39%: Study

How Indian ecommerce companies are performing in social media [Hint: Junglee is better than Flipkart]

Link to full article

Read More

PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’ is the Top Viewed YouTube Video of All Time

Google’s Eric Schmidt and PSY at Google Korea

A new post over on the Youtube Trends blog points out that over the weekend PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’ video became the new most-viewed video of all time. Currently the catchy Korean video has over 820 million views in total.

So who did PSY take down from the top spot? None other than my countryman Justin Bieber, and to be honest, I’m ok with that [1]. Bieber’s song ‘Baby’ now falls to second place on YouTube’s all-time charts with 805 million views.

Perhaps what’s most amazing about PSY’s accomplishment is that rate at which it was accomplished. As you can see in the chart provided by Youtube below, Bieber’s rise up the charts was more gradual, spread out over a couple of years.

But PSY’s hit has literally been rocket-like in trajectory, and after it first gained traction in South Korea it later spiked thanks to popularity in the US and around the world.

It will be interesting to see if this pace is sustained, and how long it will take for ‘Gangnam Style’ to reach one billion views. PSY’s channel overall has already broken the one billion views mark, although it still trails behind Bieber’s channel which has over 3 billion.

YouTube and the folks at Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) are clearly delighted that PSY has ridden their platform to fame. Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt even asked PSY to teach him the famous ‘horse dance’ from the video during a visit to Google Korea.

---

1. And I would also like to say, on behalf of Canada, that we’re sorry that we let his music escape to the rest of the world.  ↩

The post PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’ is the Top Viewed YouTube Video of All Time appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Link to full article

Read More