Lonely for the Holidays? Rent a Boyfriend on Taobao!

Spring Festival is fast approaching, and for China’s younger generation, that often means returning home to an extended family that’s ready to spend a full two weeks badgering you about when you’re going to get married and, if you’re not already seeing someone, trying to set you up on blind dates. It’s such a drag, in fact, that some people have turned to renting fake significant others to keep their families off their back for the holidays. And where do you go to rent a fake boyfriend or girlfriend? Taobao, of course! It just goes to show, you really can find anything on Taobao.

Boyfriends and girlfriends available for rent on Taobao

Pricing can vary widely depending on who you’re buying and what you want them to do. If you’d like this guy to come home with you for the holidays, for example, it’s going to cost you 800 RMB ($126) per day, although you can get 10% off if your hometown is in the southern part of the country. During that time, he writes, he’s willing to do all kinds of things, like helping you carry stuff, chatting with your parents, and even (depending on the circumstances) washing your parents’ feet. Drinking with the family costs extra, and don’t expect any hanky-panky beyond handholding, because it’s strictly off limits.

We contacted Taobao parent company Alibaba, but the company declined to comment publicly about whether or not this practice is permitted under Taobao policy.

In practice, it certainly seems as though it’s permitted, because finding rental boyfriends to take home on the site is quite easy. Rental girlfriends seem to be a bit more scarce (though there are still some available), and searches for “rent girlfriend” result in a “in accordance with the relevant laws, search results cannot be shown” error message, although many other similar searches still work.

With the Spring Festival holiday fast approaching, most people inclined to take advantage of this sort of service have likely already booked a significant other. But those of you interested in renting yourselves out now have a full year to prepare your Taobao page for next year. And how long can it be before a Chinese startup comes along to offer a dedicated platform for renting boyfriends and girlfriends? (Of course, there are plenty of traditional dating options like Jiayuan and Momo in China, too).

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TNF Ventures funds Next-5, a web platform that saves companies from bad job candidates

Singapore early stage fund TNF Ventures has invested in local startup Quantine for an undisclosed sum. Quantine’s key product is Next-5, a web platform where employers can post vacancies and screen candidates by watching video job applications posted by prospective employees.

Next-5 is more than just a jobs portal. Once employers shortlist their candidates based on the video introduction, they can conduct a  pre-recorded virtual interview where jobseekers have only one chance to answer. This serves as an additional filtering layer.

The entire process lets employers save time and enables them to easily compare how different candidates respond to the same questions.

The website certainly aids in interviewing candidates based overseas, providing a more comprehensive solution than your usual Skype call.

Finally, the platform acts as a database for employers to save the candidate’s information for future reference. Hiring offices can share this data with one another. The database also has a sorting mechanism that sieves candidates based on a few criteria.

Besides the enterprise market, Next-5 is being pitched as an educational platform for first-time jobseekers. Schools and educational institutes can use the platform to train, manage, and promote their students for job and internship opportunities.

Students can record mock interviews of themselves, show it to a career coach who can review it and provide advice on how to improve their presentation skills.

The post TNF Ventures funds Next-5, a web platform that saves companies from bad job candidates appeared first on SGE.

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Smart energy firm gridComm closes S$689K funding from Get2Volume for more robust power lines

Get2Volume and Singapore’s National Research Foundation have funded smart grid startup gridComm for next-generation product development.

Green energy is a hot topic today, with greenhouse gases on the rise and global warming a threat to the environment. Singapore startup gridComm is addressing the need for more efficient power transmission through improving the reliability of data communications across the power grid.

gridComm and Get2Volume have announced a funding of S$689,000 (US$557,000), in order to better address the need for more efficient smart grid communications. “We are excited to incubate and fund gridComm to address industry in power line communications solutions,” said Get2Volume CEO Mike Holt.

gridComm has recently announced its GC9100 power line communications module and GC9200 DIN rail modem, providing robust and reliable power line communications. “We see significant demand for our power line communications modules for smart grid, street lights and industrial control applications,” said TL Nge, gridComm vice president of marketing and sales, noting that the investment will help the startup meet the growing demand for power line communication devices.

gridComm develops intelligent machine-to-machine communication devices, which leads to greater efficiency and productivity. Smart grid and smart home development are a fast-growing market of about 700 million nodes, which include smart meters, LED street lights and connected appliances. The market for these components in the next five years is projected at US$3 billion.

See also: ConnectedHealth gets US$530K funding from Get2Volume for remote health management system deployment

Get2Volume, headquartered in Singapore, is an incubator and accelerator that mentors and helps innovative early-stage microelectronics-centric startups grow, in partnership with the country’s National Research Foundation.

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Scalpers Exploiting Flaw in China’s Train Ticket Sales System to Scalp Tickets Online

Back by popular demand again, the space train.

With Spring Festival just around the corner, China’s 12306 train ticket sales site seems to be doing at least a little better than it did last year, but things definitely aren’t going perfectly. Among the latest issues is a flaw in the ticket return system that scalpers are exploiting to scalp tickets despite China’s real-name ticket system.

According to the Dongfang Daily‘s report, scalpers have discovered that by buying tickets and then returning them en masse, they can exploit a flaw in the system’s basic design. It apparently works like this: scalpers buy as many tickets as they can in their own names for all of the most popular lines. Then they wait until those lines are sold out. Once the lines are sold out, they connect with passengers who still need tickets for those trains, and arrange to (for a price, of course) return their tickets at a specific time, thus freeing up a spot on the train the customer wants.

It’s not the most precise system in the world — it requires customers to act fast before someone else notices and grabs the empty spot — but it seems to be working well enough that scalpers outside Beijing’s train stations were advertising it to worried travelers looking for a seat on trains that are already sold out. It has also led to record numbers of returned tickets. On its worst single day so far, the Railway Ministry received 224,000 ticket returns from the online system.

Separately, Tech in Asia has continued to receive anecdotal reports that the site isn’t functioning properly for many customers. A weibo poll we conducted attracted only a dozen respondents, but found that the vast majority of them had experienced technical problems with the site, and several readers have left comments on our site to the same effect. Granted, these users are all self-selecting and certainly not a sufficiently large sample to draw any definitive conclusions, but it seems that at least some Chinese users are finding the site to be just as difficult to use as it was last year.

(Dongfang Daily via Sina Tech)

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Baidu’s Mobile Jam

When it comes to a smaller screen, the search giant Baidu seems to be dwarfed by other players. How does it feel to see other tech giant taking the lead with killer products, for example Wechat? For Baidu, It came, it saw, but it hasn’t conquered yet.

At the company’s annual party held lately, Mr. Robin Li made a speech to commit to mobile efforts in 2013. He was confident because the company really had put its heart into this game – has to – and mapped out all kinds of mobile strategies.

Li also laid out the four core businesses of the company: traditional search, mobile cloud, LBS and international businesses. About 25% of its R&D expenditure went towards mobile, with less than 10% of total revenue being yield on mobile end, the company needed to rethink its mobile strategy.

So what is wrong?

 

Channels Jam

Rumors of Baidu buying Sina Weibo, UCWeb and even 91 had been spread since last year as the company was looking to a mobile gateway. Sina Weibo and UCWeb both have huge mobile users. 91 is a great channel of distributing mobile apps. Buying the first could give Baidu instant access to a big user pool, mobile-wise, that’s what the company is dying for. Buying 91 could also put the largest app market in China into Baidu’s hand. A friend told me that Baidu was in talks with 91 about a potential acquisition, the deal fell apart largely due to disagreement over price.

Baidu still need to push harder to either buy or build its own channel in mobile world.

LBS Jam

 On LBS, Baidu now owns a map service which claims 100 million users by the fourth quarter of last year. The latest version is equipped with more location-based products and integrated a life service platform called Baidu Shenbian(see earlier report). However it is not an easy job to change users’ habits from locating positions on maps to searching life services on maps. More challenges are that too many competitors are diving in this pond. Some veterans have rich experience and user base like dianping, and some newly appeared products like Wechat’s platform or Taobao’s new LBS business, can all be threatens to Baidu.

If Baidu ever wants to acquire dianpin to strengthen its LBS arm, it needs at least US$ 1billion (valuation of $900 million 2012).

 

Cloud Jam

Baidu’s personal cloud service was first launched four months ago, and now it has 30million users and 1billion files. So far so good. The company has spent up to RMB 4.7 billion in building its cloud computing center and would open its cloud infrastructure to more hardware manufacturers. What’s noteworthy about this is that Baidu focuses on the personal cloud service rather than the corporate model as Amazon and Alibaba did.

As the shift from PC to mobile is speeding up, Baidu was confronted with serious challenge in diversifying and monetizing its mobile offerings, let alone the up-and-comer search engine launched by Qihoo 360 last year already incurred a dent on Baidu’s market share. If Baidu couldn’t find a solution to fight back Qihoo search and ramp up mobile efforts in the near term, the company’s already tumbled stake would be falling down even further.

 

 

Related posts:

1. Baidu Reorganizes to Set up Mobile Cloud Computing Business
2. Baidu Levels up Cloud Game with New Powerhouse and Partnership
3. Baidu’s Approach to Mobile: Build the Groundwork

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Sogou to Go Public this year?

On Febr.4, Sohu (NASDAQ:SOHU), Sogou’s parent company announced that due to the growing strength of Sogou, Wang XiaoChuan (Sogou CEO and Sohu CTO) would no longer serve as CTO of Sohu anymore.

One insider revealed that Sogou would make big strides on capital end after Chinese New Year, some assumed an IPO planning.

According to Sohu’s financial report, in Q4 of last year, Sogou generated 41 million US dollar in revenue, indicating an increase of 78% yoy and a rise of 10% qoq. As for annual turnover, Sogou generated 131 million US dollar, showing a rise of 108% yoy. The parent company Sohu harvested 1.067 billion US dollar, crossing the 1 billiom mark and up 25% yoy.

Sogou revenue breakdown: 5% was from game, 21% portal site and 74% search engine. By Dec. 2012, Sogou’s user pool has exceeded 400 million, with 188 million daily active users and 285 million weekly active users, only lagging behind Tencent and Qihoo360.

With regard to future, Mr. Wang himself looked forward to mobile search and service like voice assistant. He expected the voice search engine would be the core product in the future combining input method. Wang also predicted the war among Sogou, Baidu and Qihoo360 would continue to this year, even more ferocious. Sogou launched its own voice assistant last year.

Sogou is a hot IPO candidate for this year thought Mr. Wang himself insisted that there’s no exact timetable for that.

sogou launched Siri-like voice assistant

 

Image credit: Sogou

Related posts:

1. Sogou claims to Overrun Google China in a Year
2. Sohu Buys Back 10.88% of Sogou from Alibaba
3. Sogou Outruns Google in China by Usage, for the Time Being?

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Gaming M&A hit $4B in 2012

Digi-Capital investment bank released a research report about global gaming industry recently. The report noted that last year global gaming market recorded an all-time high M&A volume at up to US$ 4 billion, up 18% from 2011′s US$ 3.4 billion. However, transactional volume dropped 27 percent with fewer blockbuster deals being made over the course of last year.

The report also showed that Asian market has become the main source of the acquirers in the gaming market. In 2012, seven out of the ten largest transactions were initiated by the buys from China, Japan or Korea. Besides, the report predicted that Asia and Europe will account for 89% of the online games and mobile games income by 2015, and China’s share will be the largest, accounting for 32%.

According to the report, multiplayer online games made up the largest portion of gaming M&A activity value at 38%, followed by mobile at 27%, social and casual games at 18%. In comparison, transaction volume was led by mobile at 28%, followed by multiplayer online games at 20%. Gaming investments, however, had a difficult year, tumbling 57% to $853 million from the $2 billion in 2011. Multiplayer online games accounted for 18% of last year’s gaming investments while and the share of social networking, console and advertisement are relatively low. The $1 billion decrease in social game investments is mainly because many venture capital firms sense the social gaming bubble burst and turned away from the sector.

As was expected online games and mobile games will be maintaining strong growth and returns in the future.

 Image credit: Bing 

Related posts:

1. Report: China Online Gaming Market to Reach $ 8.84B in 2012
2. China Online Gaming Roundup: FunPlus, RMB57.7B, Consolidation
3. China Game Market Hit $9.67B in 2012, Up 35% YOY

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A Best-selling Writer on Chinese Digital Book Market:Growth Rate Higher than 60%

image credit:lanshizi.com

Wu Xiaobo, a best-selling business writer and publisher of Blue Lion, a financial publishing company, talked about digital publishing in China in an interview lately. As he is also a scholar studying emerging businesses in China, he knows exactly what’s going on in the digital book market here.

Wu compares establishing the digital book industry in China is to reconstructing a new world after a disaster — the piracy disaster. He believes when reconstruction is completed, publishers with specialties on vertical subjects will have occupied certain territories.

The total digital reading market in mainland China in 2012, he estimated, was no more than 3.5 billion yuan ($560mn) – very small. 2.6 billion, 74%, is generated from China Mobile’s reading platform. Wu sees the market grow at a rate higher than 60%.

In 2012, the total digital sales of Blue Lion were 6-7 million yuan, over thirty times of that in the previous year. He hopes the number to jump to forty million in 2013.

Wu agrees with most people that widely adopted smartphones shorten the distribution chain and help boost digital reading.

No Dominant Platform

Workers by Mr. Wu are on more than ten digital reading platforms, including the three telecom operators’, major e-commerce retailers’, Taobao’s, Tencent’s, Doukan, Xianguo, Douban’s and so on.

China wont’ see, Wu estimates, a dominant platform like Amazon but several with similar sizes. Hence middlemen are needed to do marketing tailored to different platforms. The existing publishing organizations, who are only responsible for managing book numbers and printing, will become agents for authors.

Low prices in mainland China

Prices of the digital in mainland China are about 15% – 20% of the print, way lower than that, 50%-60%, in the West and Taiwan — even though the print books have been much lower-priced in mainland China.

Wu’s latest book is sold for from one cent – as a group-buying offer – to twelve yuan, 27% of that for the print, on different digital platforms. Those are of reasons that Taiwanese publishers are hesitate to enter the mainland China market.

Different Sales Models

Selling models in China are different; for instance, China Mobile sells digital reading content in bulk. He estimates that subscription-based or enterprise-facing models will work better. Blue Lion is working on customized digital reading products for enterprises.

The company also plans to help authors produce videos. Not only can they sell videos, but also they can make money from offline lectures the publishing company would organize.

China Mobile brings most revenues to authors, so far.

Wu’s latest book, debuting on China Mobile, generated over 200 thousand yuan in sales and he received a half as revenue share.

Other platforms bring authors way less income. They often pre-pay a certain amount of money as kind of licensing fee. It is unknown how much more they can make, or whether they can make any profit at all.

Business writers with Blue Lion can only earn one tenth the print book sales revenue from digital sales. Only a small number of best-selling writers have benefited from digital sales so far, according to Wu.

Digital First

Wu is considering launching the digital version of his new book, going to debut in the coming March, before sending the finished manuscript to the printing company. Videos, images or charts will be included in the book. He believes more and more books will go digital first.

Problems & Concerns

The biggest problem Wu thinks is still piracy, although he doesn’t think piracy would have impact on his income. Only when a book has potential to sell more than 500 thousand copies, should the writer worry that some readers would buy pirated copies.

Another concern is regulatory restrictions. It takes one or two months to go through a regulatory process for a digital title that business books could miss timing. To add more formats of content like video, publishing companies need to apply for respective licenses. It takes more than one year for Mr. Wu’s company to obtain all the licenses needed.

Related posts:

1. At a Glance: China’s digital reading market
2. Rumor: Xiaomi to Tap into Digital Reading Market
3. TaoBao to Launch the First iOS-based Chinese Digital Publication Platform

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G-Startup Competition 2013 by GMIC is Back on May 7-8 in Beijing

Every year, G-Startup pits top startups and app developers against each other for the chance to win investment, distribution, incubation and exposure. In 2012, G-Startup attracted applicants from 30 countries overall.

Participants can expect to gain significant exposure to new opportunities. Case in point, last year’s winner Beiz from Finland raised $1 million USD investment and increased their user-base by 1 million after the competition!

This year’s event includes two tracks: the Startup Competition, and appAttack. The Startup Competition pitches startups against each other for investment, while appAttack finds the “Most Innovative App” and provides distribution avenues for the winner.

Startup Competition

This is a great stage for startups to promote their idea and pitch for funding. 20 Startups will be selected to pitch an esteemed panel  international  judges such as Ajay Chopra, General Partner, Trinity Ventures; Ken Gullicksen, COO, Evernote; Kui Zhou, Partner Sequoia Capital and many more.

Each selected team will get 10 minutes to pitch, made up of 6 minutes presenting and 4 minutes for Q&A. As a bonus, they will also get a free exhibition booth to promote their product and meet interested people. I walked along the alley last year and found some very cool ideas like Phewtick from Japan.

The Grand Prize winner, announced on May 8th, receives:

• Free incubation with a G-Startup partner
• 5 minute demo on the GMIC Main Stage
• Free service prize from G-Startup partner
• Global PR and media promotions
• Free iPad and other tech gear
• G-Startup trophy and certificate

Important Dates for Startup Competition:

Application Opening Date: January 7th 2013

Application Closing Date: April 8th 2013

Announcing result of Top 20 Startup on Website:  April 15th 2013

Apply here

appAttack

appAttack is an international competition for the mobile industry’s most innovative apps. Every year in April the “Top Innovative Apps” will be selected in different categories to compete for the “Most Innovative App” award.

Prior to GMIC 2013, all apps are welcome to apply. Each app will be judged by a committee of top Judges from app platform companies, app stores, app distributors, and mobile app analysts worldwide.

appAttack takes place online before the events of GMIC. The winning startup of appAttack will present their app on the GMIC Mainstage during the conference.

appAttack takes place as an online competition before the GMIC.

 Here are some guidelines before you think about entering:

• Must be a mobile Internet based service/product
• Can be from any country in the world
• Must not be more than 1 year old
• Presentations must be given in English [or] Chinese; translations in both languages will be provided
• Must have the potential to grow globally

There are some great prizes up for grabs including:

•  Opportunity to Pitch/Demo on the GMIC Mainstage to hundreds of mobile investors, entrepreneurs and executives.
•  Free 2 Day Exhibition Space in the GMIC Exhibition Area

Important Dates:

Application Opening Date: January 7^th, 2013

Application Closing Date: April 8^th, 2013
Announcing result of Top 20 Apps on Website: April 15^th, 2013

Apply here

Related posts:

1. Live Blog: GMIC G-Startup Competition 2011
2. G-Startup Competition Prizes Announced, So Apply Now!
3. Introducing GMIC2012 G-Startup Competition: Let the Games Begin!

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China Made 1.2 Billion Mobile Phones Last Year

If you needed any more proof that almost everything everywhere is made in China, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) just released some statistics that will help you out: in 2012, China produced more than 1.18 billion mobile phones.That means that Chinese-made phones accounted for more than half of all the mobile phones sold worldwide in 2012.

According to MIIT, the sale of mobiles and other electronics manufactured in China brought in more than 8.5 trillion RMB ($1.3 trillion) for the domestic electronics manufacturing industry. And in addition to all those mobile phones, China also produced 350 million computers, 130 million TVs, and more than 82 billion integrated circuits.

Although the manufacturing of other products like textiles may be slowly moving to Southeast Asia, it’s clear that when it comes to making electronics, the world is still looking to China. All of the 2012 numbers represent growth of at least 4 percent compared to 2011 (computers and circuits grew much faster), and I’d hazard to guess that in 2013 all of those numbers will be higher still.

(via Sina Tech, image source)

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10+ Inspiring SAAS Landing Pages

At NextBigWhat, we use a lot of SAAS services – right from Google docs to Freshdesk to Do and as we continue with our research on apps to use, we came across some of the most amazing well designed SAAS pages.

By ‘well designed’, we don’t just mean pages that convert visitors to users/customers, but also instances of great messaging and pricing, which we believe are attributes or great product design.

In no particular order, here is our list of 10 Amazing SAAS pages that all product entrepreneurs should look at.

helpshift

helpshift is a Pune/US based startup (recently raised funding  from Nexus Venture Partners and True Ventures).

The beauty of their home page is the way it starts

TG : “Attention Mobile App Developers”

Problem Statement: “Do you know what users do when they have a problem?”

Not just the section above the fold, but the page itself has a life of its own. Thanks to great choice of colors, you end up reading each and every text.

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Asana’s Pricing section

What’s beautiful? Simplified pricing (did you notice that there is only 1 row while others have a minimum of 10 different pricing options?), and importantly, FREE is mentioned separately.

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JotForm

Probably the most amazing example of a product page, JotForm‘s homepage is the product page itself. You start creating the form and pricing etc details follow.

Isn’t this a powerful way to get started with your visitors and convert them to users (and customers later)?

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Force.com

Come what may, Salesforce will always take a jab at its competitor and unlock the value with partners (i.e. SAP) :)

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Basecamp

Beautifully, Basecamp  tells you how many companies signed up for the product last week. In fact, this is a great way to tell the visitor on adoption of the product (builds trust, isn’t it?).

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Dropbox

Probably the simplest interface, Dropbox’s home page represents the product attributes – i.e. of simplicity.

The homepage just tells you that the product is free for different OSes/platforms, carries a smaller ‘Sign in‘ link on the top for registered users. The intent is to get new users to register ASAP.

Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics clearly stays away from the technology jargons of the product and claims that it starts where Google Analytics ends.

Plus, color combination gives you a great sense of CTAs and metrics which Kissmetrics is following.

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Mailchimp

One of the most amazingly done product, Mailchimp nicely runs the product demo in the homepage.

VisualWebsiteOptimizer

How will you sell a A/B testing product? Well, you sell the benefit and not the product!

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Freshdesk

Look at Freshdesk’s pricing page  - most of the other players use ‘starters’, ‘pro’ etc pricing, but Freshdesk’s messaging visually uses flowers (and garden) to depict a company’s growth path.

Fresh thinking, for sure!

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WebEngage

In SaaS business, everybody is a potential customer and you need a plug in each and every company. Mumbai (India) based WebEngage makes it easy for one to pitch the product to boss.

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Got more such examples to share? Please share in the comment section or simply email me (ashish@). We will be happy to add the same.

Related posts:

1. Defining SAAS : What it is and What it is NOT
2. SAAS Startup Grexit Skips Freemium Model [SAAS Pricing]
3. What’s Common Between Groupon and LivingSocial in India? [Hint: Ads Without Landing Pages]

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Indonesia’s President Will No Longer Use Hacked Website

The website of the Indonesian president, PresidenSBY.info, got hacked a few weeks ago, and is no longer used as the president’s official site. There were actually two official presidential sites, which served the same content, and so now the government will only use the other domain, PresidenRI.go.id. The former website now only shows a link to the sole official homepage.

While I’ve spoken my mind about the hacker’s disproportionate punishment, today Detik cited the ICT minister as saying that the hacker will “only” be facing around seven to eight years of imprisonment, contrary to the reported charge of that entailed 12 years of imprisonment. I still think that’s too much.

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