Startups | Singapore Business Review

This startup created the world's first bed sensor technology

No more patients accidentally falling off hospital beds.

To help busy individuals take care of their loved ones when they are not around, eVida launched its first generation of eBos (Bed Occupancy Sensor) which aims to prevent patients from falling off their beds and from having bedsores.

eBos Generation 1, which also bills itself as the world’s first bed sensor technology, is designed to help nurses keep an eye on fall-prone patients in hospital wards. The nurse call system would be triggered if a fall-prone patient is attempting to leave his/her bed. The same sensor is used to track the duration before a nurse needs to turn over a bed-bound patient to alleviate pressure and prevent bedsore.

Founded by Joyce Chee, 25, Darius Sim, 26 and Edoardo Stazi, 24, the idea of eBos came to them when Joyce’s grandmother suffered a fall at home in the absence of a helper.

eBos works by processing data collected from the sensors. Data collected are broadly categorized into two: environment and people. Environment data includes temperature, humidity and more, whereas people data includes respiratory rate, blood pressure measurement and more. These data are logged for recognising trends to monitor home security and the patient’s health status. Advanced data processing enables learning of the inhabitant’s routine and preferences. If necessary, emergency services, such as ambulance or police alert can be activated when abnormality in sensor readings is detected.

According to Joyce, eVida has secured private funding of SGD48.5K with Ideasinc as their major investor. Consequently, they are expecting a total of SGD660K fundings from another private investor and government investor.

Currently, eVida is working on eBOS Generation 2, with new features that include respiratory and heartbeat monitoring, incontinence detection, and potentially a dashboard and mobile app to reflect meaningful information about its user. Joyce adds that tentatively, eBOS Gen 2 would be ready for hospital trials by July 2015, and commercially ready for sales by December 2015.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Company name: eVida
Website: www.evida.com.sg
Founders: Darius Sim, Joyce Chee and Edoardo Stazi
Total funding at hand: SGD500K
Source of funding: Private Investors and Government
Major investors: Ideasinc
Start of operation: 29 April 2013

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

This startup created the world's first bed sensor technology

No more patients accidentally falling off hospital beds.

Founded by Joyce Chee, 25, Darius Sim, 26 and Edoardo Stazi, 24, the idea of eBos came to them when Joyce’s grandmother suffered a fall at home in the absence of a helper.

_______________________________

COMPANY PROFILE

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

This startup created the world's first bed sensor technology

No more patients accidentally falling off hospital beds.

Founded by Joyce Chee, 25, Darius Sim, 26 and Edoardo Stazi, 24, the idea of eBos came to them when Joyce’s grandmother suffered a fall at home in the absence of a helper.

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COMPANY PROFILE

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

Here’s how migrants can be sure their loved ones back home paid the doctor a visit

This NRI-focused startup also gives migrants monthly feedback from the doctor.

Indian expats rack up an average remittance of USD80B, USD10B of which are allotted for their families’ healthcare back home. But do they get the guarantee that the money actually goes to where it is intended for? Startup OurHealthMate believes that the payer migrants often times have no idea, leaving them helpless. Where does the money go? Preventative healthcare? Chronic care? Did the beneficiary go to the doctor? These are just among the many questions that OurHealthMate aims to answer to make the migrants feel secured about their money.

Being Indian expats themselves, OurHealthMate founders Abhinav Krishna, 28, and Dr. Akash Kumar, 34, have been away from home for more than 15 years. From their experiences, they realized that there is no reliable way to confirm if a family member has indeed gone to visit the doctor. This led to the founding of OurHealthMate in January 2013. Believing that ‘Distance may keep you away from your loved ones, but it shouldn’t keep your loved ones from the doctor’, OurHealthMate reinvents how migrants take care of their family’s health. This non-resident Indian-focused startup ‘connects’ the Payer, Patient and Physicians together. It has built OurHealthMate Booking portal which allows Payers to find, book and pay the Physicians on behalf of their loved ones from any part of the world. Expats also receive monthly feedback from the doctors of their family. In addition, Payers can also monitor their family members’ health status in a simple and secure way. From a humble beginning of 50 doctors when the portal was launched in May 2013, people can now choose from their network of 10,000+ doctors and 1000+ centers in 300+ cities in India.

OurHealthMate also created OurHealthMate ClinicLinc that helps doctors digitalize their patients’ records online and access it anywhere. Records are fully secured and follows all medical data regulations.

The founders injected SGD100,000 to start the company with the idea of Fitness and Health analysis. Before joining JFDI last year, the startup made it to Startup Chile, an accelerator funded by the Chilean government. Eventually, the startup made it to the 2nd batch in JFDI in February 2013. In March 2013, Leo Tech Services invested over SGD150,000 into the company’s development and product. A syndicate of Angel Investors, Post DEMO DAY pushed in SGD560,000 into the company. While Bimal Shah, which heads an international syndicate of business angels, led the seed-funding round, the round was supported by Singapore-based Benjamin Tsai and a second international angel syndicate led by high frequency trader Ben Ball. NUS Ventures also joined the round with the iJAM scheme.

In total, OurHealthMate has raised over SGD800,000 to date. According to Kanu Asthana, sales and marketing manager, their team was able to raise SGD560,000 at the current round.

In the future, Kanu says that OurHealthMate team will continue their efforts to expand their network of clinics and their city coverage. They have already reached 10,000+ doctors. The aim is to reach 1,000+ of these using their EMR (each generating recurring revenue of US$10–200 per month). Furthermore, they plan that upon reaching the milestone of 200,000 patients database through the existing clinics, they would like to analyse the data they’ve gathered to improve their service. OurHealthMate has also entered employee benefits sector. The partnership allows working professionals to use their Flexi Benefit dollars on OurHealthMate portal, using the unique voucher code integration done by OurHealthMate.

OurHealthMate team also aims to move to the Philippines soon. “It is similar to the Indian market in many aspects: lowest insurance penetration rate in the region, similar family ties, large number of OFWs and huge sums being remitted back for healthcare,” says Kanu.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Company Name: OurHealthMate
Founders: Abhinav Krishna and Dr. Akash Kumar
Website: https://www.ourhealthmate.com/
Total Funding at hand: SGD800K
Source of Funding: Leo Tech Services, Post DEMO Day, NUS Ventures, iJam scheme
Major Investors: Leo Tech Services, Post DEMO Day, NUS Ventures, iJam scheme
Start of Operation: January 2013

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

This could be your best pal when no one’s around to help during an emergency

TagBio's ID-Life features accessories with critical info embedded in QR codes.

During a business trip to Thailand, 42-year-old Anch Ong experienced an emergency that made her realize that timing could be the key to saving someone’s life. In the middle of a life-threatening situation, she felt alone and helpless due to the language barrier. Meanwhile, Chew Min Seng, 54, felt a similar sense of helplessness when his elderly mother met with a traffic accident with no medical ID with her. The two then worked together to create ID-Life with the key purpose of providing emergency medical information retrieval in any given emergency situation to save valuable time while enhancing an unresponsive victim's chances of survival.

Anch and Min Seng formed startup TagBio, with the former acting as the COO and the other as the CEO. ID-Life is its core product.

TagBio’s ID-Life QR-code accessories include wristbands, necklaces, helmet tags, etc., It provides real-time information in any given emergency situation via its patented retrieval system.

ID-Life works by scanning the QR-code to get an individual's critical medical information such as name, blood type, allergy history and next-of-kin contact information anywhere in the world. This means ID-Life can already be used by at-risk individuals and sports enthusiasts such as cyclists and triathletes. The individual's full medical data can also be accessed by accredited medical professionals worldwide through an app that can be downloaded from the iOS App Store and Google Play app store.

According to Anch, TagBio is focused on the effective use of technology to enhance and safeguard lives. The unique feature of ID-Life’s information retrieval system is that members can make their medical information available for retrieval in real time even when they are travelling overseas. “Our patented retrieval system that not only stores individuals' medical data but also allows us, the service provider, to customise medical/news alerts for them,” Anch adds.

Currently, ID-Life has been embraced by various cycling groups, Singapore Association for the Deaf and Thomson-Toa Payoh RCs. Anch notes that TagBio will also be partnering with medical service providers in the region to provide the personal safety coverage. ID-Life is already connected with one hospital in Vietnam since June and another one is taking up in the last quarter of this year. Anch adds that they are also in discussion with hospitals in Thailand and Indonesia to embrace the technology.

Funding

Currently, TagBio has SGD200,000 total funding on hand. Anch, Min Seng, and two other investors injected a total capital of SGD100,000. They subsequently received SGD100,000 in funding from a private investor. Anch says that another SGD 100,000 is in the pipeline.

According to Anch, for the first 2 years, TagBio spent much of their time pioneering ID-Life team on software and product development. All software and product development were done on basis of time and skill contribution by the ID-Life team which is valued at around $800,000.
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COMPANY PROFILE

Company Name: TagBio
Founders: Anch Ong and Chew Min Seng
Website: https://www.id-life.com/
Total Funding at hand: SGD200,000
Source of funding: Self-funded
Major investors:
Start of operation: April 2013

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

Kungfumath wants to revamp boring e-learning portals

“Play with numbers” in its literal sense.

The market is full of learning portals but do they have a good mixture of fun yet rich educational content? This is what Kungfumath is trying to achieve with its gamified math learning portal, created to enthuse students to deepen their understanding of mathematical concepts and sharpen their mathematics problem solving skills through gameplay. It is billed as the first of its kind in Singapore.

At Kungfumath, children can practice math and have fun at the same time. The founders also claimed that even if teachers in school are too busy to assign them homework online regularly, they can use the portal to assign practices for their students.

Kungfumath is a core product of an educational gaming technology startup Kungfu Education and Technology Group founded by Derrick Koh, 29 and Foo Pau Choo, 46. Kungfu Education and Technology Group focuses on educational gaming technology.

Derrick came up with idea of creating Kungfumath when he was still working with primary school children where they took over the responsibility of guiding them in to do their homework and they would have to subscribe to e-learning portals from time to time. “I realised that they are not interested in the e-learning portals and are very keen to finish their assigned online homework hastily so that they have extra time to play games on their computers. Also having signed up with their learning portals by their teachers, they hardly have the initiative to log on to revise their work and only visited from time to time as their teachers assigned work to them via the online portals,” Derrick added.

To date, Kungfumath has users from 26 local primary schools and 1 Thai school.

Derrick, who also founded Achievia Education Hub, a chain of tuition and student care centers in 2008 during his graduating year in NUS, said that Kungfumath has raised $225,000 from angel investors apart from the $50,000 government grant under the IJAMs scheme administered by the Media Authority of Singapore.

He claims that the portal has a good mix of fun and educational content to engage children without adults prompting them to do so. It solves the problem of "forcing" children to study. Last October, they released an app version of Kungfumath. He added that they also have plans to have a strong footing in SouthEast Asia and then bring it to the US.

“We will also be developing a series of educational games on the mobile platform. Our portal not only is enriching and fun, we also have unlimited questions in the portal with in-house technology. We are now enhancing our analysis feature using big data where we are able to identify strengths and weaknesses in various topics across users,” Derrick said.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Company Name: Kungfu Education and Technology Group
Founders: Derrick Koh and Foo Pau Choo
Website: https://www.kungfumath.sg/
Total Funding at hand: $500,000
Source of funding: Internal Funding, Angel Investors, iJAM Funding
Major investors: Angel Investors
Start of operation: Late 2012

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

Inverted Edge gives spotlight to all independent contemporary fashion designers

The homegrown startup has raised US$1.6M total funding in two years.

Asia Pacific may be home to a lot of independent designers with international training and collections that have global appeal, but startup Inverted Edge sees one particular challenge. It believes that the region is lacking a distribution mechanism for these brands to reach stylish consumers around the world, and filling this gap also provides a way for contemporary designers from outside the region to reach Asia’s rapidly growing (and increasingly stylish) middle class customers.

Apart from recognizing the myriad independent contemporary fashion designers around the world, Inverted Edge at the same time saw the potential to create an online platform that had two prongs. First is that it could be easily and cost-effectively replicated for different languages or for individual brands that want a standalone presence in addition to multi-brand distribution. Secondly, for media owners who want to enhance their content and participate in e-commerce without impacting their advertising relationships.

Founder and CEO Debra Langley shares that since launching Inverted Edge in 2013 with 30 brands, the number of designers who have been invited to join the site has more than doubled. This, she says, does not include the more than 1000 brands that have approached the company for representation, but who may not be quite ready for an international audience, or who may be better suited to a retailer with a different curation point of view.

At Inverted Edge, they evaluate each brand against a score-card where they look at everything from the design inspiration, collection consistency, fabrics and factories, to wearability and size grading (does the designer offer a full international size range, and is it accurate), and the designer's perspective on selling across borders.

According to Debra, one thing that also differentiates them from their competitors is their online + offline (“020”) strategy. “We always felt that it was important to launch online first, with a wider reach than brick and mortar could offer, and that offline would come later – in whatever form would be most appropriate for our business - but it would certainly involve an in-store digital component. As e-commerce forces brick and mortar doors to change, we are cognizant that our version of “offline store” may be something entirely different from what is currently the norm,” notes Debra. The recently announced partnership with new concept store, Manifesto, which opens in the Capitol Piazza development in Singapore, is an example of how Inverted Edge intends to grow an omni-channel presence; they are Manifesto’s e-commerce partner for their 60+ international contemporary brands, and Manifesto is are their brick and mortar and events partner.

Debra claims that they are one of the few places where customers can try products from more than 60 different independent designers from the region that are not readily available in stores. In Singapore, Inverted Edge holds a variety of pop-up stores with partners to test different demographics and neighborhoods. They are also currently offering a real world styling service at their showroom in Lavender, where customers can come alone or in small groups to shop. The styling service will be extended to the Manifesto concept store as well.

Currently, the company has raised a total of US$1.6million. Apart from their own investment, incubator, Incuvest Asia, has helped Inverted Asia to raise money from NRF through the Technology Incubation Scheme. The team comprising Inverted Edge also secured investment from Accel-X, and from four private investors.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the Company: Inverted Edge
Founders: Debra Langley
Website: https://invertededge.com/
Total Funding at hand: US$1.6m
Source of Funding: Internal funding, NRF, Incuvest, Accel-X, and four private investors
Major Investors: NRF, Incuvest and Accel-X
Start of Operation: October 15, 2012/Launch date April 2013

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

Want to know a ‘smart’ way to have your clothes washed?

My Laundry Box introduces a smart laundry locker platform that works with an app.

For many busy professionals, carving out time to do the laundry and waiting in line during business hours to drop off or pick up clothes at a laundry shop can be painful. To make laundry matters a bit more problematic, 24/7 laundry and dry cleaning services in Singapore are very hard to find. This is the problem that former investment banker at Macquarie Group Derrick Wu and three other entrepreneurs in their 30s tried to solve in founding a laundry business with a breakthrough locker concept, My Laundry Box.

Aimed at solving laundry woes, My Laundry Box claims it is pioneering several ‘firsts’ in the laundry industry.

Launched in March this year, My Laundry Box bills itself as first of its kind of service in South East Asia. It offers a combination of the use of a smartphone app and a proprietary collection and distribution system.

My Laundry Box harnessing mobile app technology, its app will allow customers to specify or chat with their laundry specialists on their washing preferences and determine the turnaround time. With My Laundry Box app, customers can even pay for the laundry bill directly from their mobile phones without having to make a trip to the laundry shop. Customers can also arrange for pick-up and delivery through the app.

My Laundry Box also takes pride as the first laundry and dry cleaning service that does not feature a physical shopfront, instead, it has a bank of secure lockers. “By eliminating the need for a physical shopfront and front line service staff, My Laundry Box is unlike brick-and-mortar dry cleaners and laundry services. Their lockers are modular in nature and can be installed at any given space at no cost. More lockers can also be added for free to cater to the development’s changing needs and occupants’ demand,” said Derrick.

Prior to founding the business, Derrick spent nearly 6 years at Macquarie Group as an investment banker where he honed his business acumen. Derrick holds a Masters of Management Science from Imperial College. He also graduated with a Bachelor of Law with honours from University of Liverpool.

While the three other co-founders also have backgrounds in investment banking or trading.

How the company started

Inspired by a laundry locker service that founders came across in San Francisco, they started off Lockerfellas in Singapore with a ‘germ of idea’. Lockerfellas is the management firm for My Laundry Box.

According to Derrick, that ‘germ of idea’ led to extensive research and a series of meetings and discussions on how they could deliver a smarter laundry service in Singapore that would provide people with the ‘utmost’ convenience when it comes to doing their laundry.

In pursuit of this venture, one of the co-founders’ partners and Derrick left their successful careers in investment banking and trading, while the other 2 juggled two jobs.

The founders believe that time-strapped professionals and tech-savvy consumers will find My Laundry Box useful as it offers round-the-clock convenience in laundry pick-up and drop-off, allowing them to spend their time more productively and efficiently.

To raise funds for the business, Lockerfellas team went through a competitive pitch process with ACE (part of SPRING Singapore) and finally awarded a start-up grant because of their business’ innovation and potential to scale the business locally and beyond. They also topped it up with a high 5 figure sum each.

Currently, Lockerfellas has a total funding exceeding to $360,000 - a combination of shareholder equity and loans as well as from the founders’ pockets.

“Most of our investment has gone to building a robust, proprietary software system which comprises a customer-facing mobile app as well as a sophisticated system to handle and track orders in real time, analyse sales data and integrate our customer app, driver software and backend systems,” Derrick said.

Today, the number of users continues to grow in tandem with their expansion and increasing awareness of My Laundry Box.

“In the next couple of months, we are planning to roll out a new and proprietary locking system which is controlled via Bluetooth and Near Field Communication (NFC) protocols on the customers’ phones. The system will allow our customers to open or lock the lockers wirelessly through a signal generated by our app,” said Derrick.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the Company: Lockerfellas
Founders: Derrick Wu
Website: https://www.mylaundrybox.com/
Total Funding at hand: >SGD360,000
Source of Funding: ACE and internal funding
Major Investors: ACE
Start of Operation: March 2014

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

Now, hear this: You won't believe what your ears are seeing

Ubersnap lets you upload photos with background music.

To satisfy his desire of creating a potential product aimed at changing the way people communicate with photos, Boon Chin Ng, 28, created Ubersnap with computer programmer Vincent Dupont, 38. Boon is a photographer and designer by profession and a self-confessed hustler.

Ubersnap is a company which is mainly about exploring photography as a medium for creativity and self-expression. Adding sound to photos is done with a sound recorder on Ubersnap. After you upload a photo, you can record a sound which will play when the photo is viewed.

Boon and Vincent both love photography and they wanted to explore the possibilities of not just photo sharing, but photography as a form of communication.

According to Boon, for the first time, people were curious when browsing through photos. They would see a photo and wonder what kind of sound came with it, making them click on the photo. Their findings are backed by research - a study has shown that more than 80% of participants find still images with sound more helpful and entertaining.

“We realised that most people just wanted to add music to their photos, so we are releasing a new and ridiculously simple way for our users to do that. With 1 click, you can add a soundtrack to go with your photo. We are working with a large digital distributor of music, so copyright is fully respected,” explains Boon.

Boon believes that there has been very little innovation in photo sharing, despite the number of applications out there. “100 years ago, sound brought a whole new dimension to silent film. We believe it can do the same for photography, by providing an additional layer of context and interpretation to photos,” says Boon.

Boon shares that the main reason he wanted to start Ubersnap was to ‘scratch his own itch.’ He was already working on Ubersnap for a few months but he was looking for a developer to join him before meeting Vincent. Vincent was really excited about the idea so Boon asked Vincent to come onboard as a co-founder and the rest is history.

“I'm a photographer and all the photo sharing sites and apps just weren't very interesting to me; they were more of the same. Ubersnap, a photo sharing site where photographers create photos that come with sound. We’re going against the conventional wisdom of what a photo is by providing a photo sharing experience that is both visual and aural,” explains Boon.

Ubersnap started out with a beta version of the site, which was built over 3 months and launched in March 2014. The website was launched with a minimal marketing budget, and most of the growth has been organic. The startup, which was initially self-funded, has taken $50,000 from the iJAM scheme under MDA with QuestVC as its key investor.

“We expected resistance to such a new concept, but the response has been incredibly positive. We’re laser focused on providing an incredible user experience and growing our user base organically, through word-of-mouth,” said Boon.

Boon graduated with an Engineering degree from NUS. He is an alumni of the prestigious NUS Overseas Colleges program, where he worked as business developer for a year in Stockholm. Vincent is a superstar programmer from France, who has worked in organisations like NYSE-EURONEXT. He has a Master’s degree in Computer Science, and brings with him vast experience and knowledge in building software. He quitted his job and moved to Singapore for the startup.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the Company: Ubersnap
Founders: Boon Chin Ng and Vincent Dupont
Website: https://www.ubersnap.com/
Total Funding at hand: $50,000
Source of Funding: iJAM
Major Investors: iJAM and QuestVC
Start of Operation: March 2014

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

This device is making a statement that hand-waving gestures are not usable

It's a creation by 3 young computer wizards from Singapore.

Ractiv, which focuses on how people interact with technology, are founded by three young computer wizards in their 20s. Darren Lim, 21 and Lai Xue, 22, met in high school, and together with Hyun Ki Lee, they performed a research in computer interaction that earned them the title of youngest awardees of Most Influential Chinese 2009-2010, hosted by Phoenix TV and with co-awardees such as Nobel laureate Gao Kun and Mission Impossible director John Woo.

Darren, the first Singaporean to clinch this award, also became the first Singaporean Thiel Fellow in 2013. Lai joined Intel right after high school, becoming their youngest ever full-time engineer.

In late 2012/early 2013, they started brainstorming how interaction today should evolve, and decided to found Ractiv to explore the possibilities of innovative interaction methods. Their goal is simple: to explore and innovate the current methods by pushing the boundaries of how people use computers. Touch+, its first product, is billed as the first affordable 3D tracking device that makes any surface multitouch and more.

According to Darren, Ractiv and its flagship product Touch+, are both unique in the market. Ractiv, he said, is a hardware startup that has managed all production on its own, which is rare in the startup world. Meanwhile, a key focus for Touch+, he said is to explore innovation in laptops, which he believes is an area that has seen little development over the years. “Instead of following market trends in 3D sensing, Touch+ makes a statement that the market trends are wrong, i.e. hand-waving gestures are not usable,” Darren said.

Ractiv, short for ‘interactive’ is proud to hold the title of being the first Singaporean company to join The Iron Yard startup accelerator in the US.

Ractiv founders wanted to create a platform that they could develop interactive technology and also to allow them share with others. Slowly, they built a great team with a single goal: to push the boundaries of interaction.

Darren said that Touch+ was born from a bus ride. While working on the bus, Lai found that moving away from the keyboard and to the trackpad was a hassle in the confined space, and wondered if it was possible to have the trackpad on the keyboard instead. After a long process of evolution, it eventually became Touch+.

According to Darren, Touch+ is designed to be a solution to multiple problems. First, he said, is the problem relating to the fact that users have to constantly shuffle from their keyboard to the mouse/trackpad. With Touch+, Darren explains that users can just rest their hands on the keyboard all the time.

Secondly, interaction is completely different for various devices, such as remote controls for TVs, which makes innovation with TVs difficult as users cannot easily interact with smart TVs. With Touch+, Darren notes that using any device is the same - touching what you see from any surface, just like the multitouch we know and love on tablets and phones.
Lastly, while the trend in interaction is towards a future of hand-waving gestures, Darren believes that is tiring and imprecise. Hence Touch+ goes against the market trend with the statement that multitouch is better than hand-waving gestures.

Currently, the total amount of funding of Ractiv is undisclosed, but the seed round from Red Dot Ventures was definitely more than USD200,000.

Darren also shared that they are in discussions with OEMs as to integration of Touch+ into other devices, potentially enabling a single interface for all the devices we use today -- multitouch -- which would make interaction a lot simpler.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the Company: Ractiv
Founders: Darren Lim, Lai Xue and Hyun Ki Lee
Website: https://www.ractiv.com/
Total Funding at hand: Undisclosed
Source of Funding: Red Dot Ventures and crowdfunding
Major Investors: Red Dot Ventures
Start of Operation: Early 2013

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

CreoPop 3D pen with cool inks raised US$185K in crowdfunding

It is so safe that even your children can use it.

3D printing pens have been making waves in the market and a Singapore-based startup is keeping up with the race.

Meet CreoPop which bills itself as the world’s first 3D pen with cool ink.

According to co-founder Andreas Birnik, 42, CreoPop has no hot parts, no melting plastic and no unpleasant smell. Instead, it uses photopolymers that are solidified using UV light to let users create amazing 3D designs. Since no heating is required, Andreas added that CreoPop is safe in a home environment with children and pets around.

“In comparison, other 3D pens typically rely on heating ABS and PLA plastic to temperatures of around 250 degrees Celsius / 480 degrees Fahrenheit. This is clearly a safety risk for users and Engadget has previously referred to such pens as “sort of like a hot glue gun that melts plastic.”

“Based on proprietary IP and in-house R&D, CreoPop uses the world’s first photopolymer paste with controllable viscosity. The technology enables the inclusion of various nano-additives to change the properties of the different CreoPop inks.There is ongoing R&D to create inks that are elastic, magnetic, aromatic, conductive, glittering and body paint inks,” Andreas explained.

According to Andreas, CreoPop uses light sensitive ink that is cured by ultraviolet light from diodes surrounding the nozzle. Within the additive manufacturing / 3D printing industry this process is known as stereolithography and the light-sensitive ink is called photopolymers. While this has previously been used in industrial 3D printing applications, CreoPop claims that it is the first time stereolithography is used for a portable consumer device.

Andreas, a Swedish, teamed up with Russian Dmitry Starodubstev, 30 to work on inventing the world’s first photopolymer paste where the viscosity can be controlled. The CreoPop 3D pen is the first they came up with. They believe that photopolymer has several advantages including the ability to easily add a variety of nano-additives to modify the properties of the ink.

“The most innovative feature of CreoPop is the large selection of cool inks available including different colors, elastic ink, magnetic ink, glow-in-the-dark ink, temperature sensitive ink and body paint ink,” said Andreas.

The founders hope that their inks will make a major impact on the entire 3D printing industry

The funding

This startup has now 500,000USD total funding at hand. Some of which includes the founders contribution as an initial funding before securing an investment from HAX Asia, a Singapore based hardware accelerator, MDA’s iJam programme and have raised 185,000USD during the INDIEGOGO campaign.

“We are currently in advanced stage discussions with several investors about further funding. And following our crowdfunding campaign, we will begin to take pre-orders on www.creopop.com. We have also received requests from 80 distributors in 30 countries about selling CreoPop so we will initiate discussions with them,” Andreas added.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the Company: CreoPop
Founders: Andreas Birnik & Dmitry Starodubtsev
Website: https://www.creopop.com/
Total Funding at hand: USD 500,000
Source of Funding: Internal funding, HAX Asia, iJam, crowdfunding campaign
Major Investors: HAX Asia
Start of Operation: R&D in 2013 with company incorporated in April 2014

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

Discover how BeMyGuest empowers small tour package operators

Former Wego execs joined this $2m worth travel startup.

What about ballooning over Bagan, Myanmar, Safari Tour in Phuket, Thailand, and White Water Rafting, Elephant Ride and Spa Package in Bali? Those are just some quirky adventure that BeMyGuest has to offer.

Inspired by his business trip in Kenya and realized that he wanted to help local communities to truly benefit from tourism, Clement Wong put up BeMyGuest. BeMyGuest which bills itself as the current market leader in Southeast Asia in terms of inventory and traffic, empowers tours and activities providers with its free multi award winning content and booking management technology. Through this technology, tours and activities providers are able to digitalise and distribute their travel content to the entire travel industry (airlines, hotels, online travel agencies etc).

"A few years back I was in Kenya on a business trip. I extended my stay over the weekend to go on a safari. While at the Maasai Mara Reserve, I asked my driver if he could take me to a Maasai village. He told me it would cost $20, and I thought, sure, let’s help the local community. Once there, I was curious to find out how far the $20 would go in sustaining them and what they would spend it on. Sadly, a Maasai responded, ‘Sir, we do not get the $20. We only get $2. All the rest goes to the driver.’ Apparently, if he did not do so, the driver would simply take tourists to another village.” That inspired me to do something about it, to help local communities to truly benefit from tourism.”

Guided with their knowledge and networks in the travel industry, BeMyGuest started in March 2012 with the founder’s own funds and completed the first prototype in June 2012, while they received their first angel funding in July 2012.

Clement said that most tours and activities providers do not have the resources to invest into travel distribution technology. With BeMyGuest, they empower these tour and activity businesses (SMEs and individual operators) with their free content management technology for them to digitalize their products and grow their business online. Suppliers can organize their products, accept payments, track and respond to bookings, keep track of their customer information, and have access to tools tailored to the Asian market (SMS booking confirmation, comparison tools), all in one simple to use system.

“The main problem we are trying to solve is to aggregate the final frontier in travel distribution – tours and activities. All other segments of the travel industry have been aggregated, standardised, digitalized and distributed - airlines, hotels, car hire, local accommodation, trains, buses and taxis,” Clement added.

As they have began to expand to North Asia, BeMyGuest assured that by partnering with them, the travel industry gets free ancillary revenues post booking (flight, room, etc). By syndicating their content to the travel industry, BeMyGuest taps on the audience and traffic of its travel industry partners, thus getting free traffic and additional bookings.

Founder Clement, 36, serves as the CEO of the company while his business partner Blanca Menchaca, 32, serves as the CMO. Both of them are travel industry veterans and are from the travel technology space. Clement has done strategies and market research for the top travel companies of the world, and Blanca was the ex Global Head of Online Marketing at wego.com.

Their team also includes their CFO, Sandra Ho, an ex-head of Finance at Wego. But at BeMyGuest, Sandra establishes and maintains the company-wide financial objectives, controls, and practices. Holger Jehle, CTO, has PHD in Computer Science (Magna cum Laude) from Technical University of Munich. While Olalla Rey, is BeMyGuest’s head of content which is ex-head of Latin America Content, Expedia.com.

Clement said that in total they have received SGD1.935M of funding. “When we came in 2nd at Webintravel Startup of 2013, we received our first institutional investment from Tidesquare Korea. When we won the ChannelNewsAsia Startup Asia 2014 competition, we closed our seed round with TNF Ventures, and Tidesquare reinvested.”

According to Clement, new investors include strategic investors such as Adrian Ong, Head of Customer Experience, Match.com, and Woon Shung Toon, founder, The Analytics Company and CEO of Cornerstone Asia, acquired by NTT Data.

Coming onboard as investor and advisor through TNF Ventures is Foo Jixun, who is widely recognised as one of the top travel industry investors in Asia.Jixun is a partner at GGV Capital, and serves on the board of directors of Qunar (NASDAQ: QUNR), Youku-Tudou (NYSE: YOKU), Tujia, Grabtaxi, MediaV and Douguo. Jixun also actively participates in the businesses of HotelTonight, E Dian Bao and Meilishuo.com, UCWeb, AAC Technologies, Chaoli and Meihua (600873.SS). Historically Jixun helped to incubate Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) and Longcheer (SGX:L28) during their early pre-listed stages.

With this seed round of investment, BeMyGuest has opened a second office in Manila, and have been hiring across Asia. They have also closed distribution partnerships with some of the largest travel companies in the world.

Clement also shared that they aim to close their Series A round within the next 6 months so that they can cement themselves as market leader in the whole of Asia in the tours and activities space.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the Company: BeMyGuest
Founder: Clement Wong
Website: https://bemyguest.com.sg/
Total Funding at hand: S$1.935M
Source of Funding: Angel and Seed Funding
Major Investors: Tidesquare Korea, TNF Ventures
Start of Operation: March 2012

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

ShopandBox allows you to shop anytime, anywhere around the globe without limits

The service will be extended to small businesses soon.

The online marketplace has witnessed innovations to bring consumers anything but convenience. And making its way to the e-commerce world is ShopandBox, which claims to solve all your pains and problems in shopping online.

ShopandBox provides a service enabling shoppers to shop on the Internet in a new, fun and socially engaging way. Shoppers can choose to shop from Online and/or Brick and Mortar stores in other countries around the world where they pair them with trusted Boxers or personal shoppers, who will do all the shopping for them from item purchasing all the way to delivery of items to the shopper doorstep.

Xin-lungTai, CEO and co-founder of ShopandBox, has a global upbringing that allowed him to spend considerable time in the UK, Malaysia, Australia, Singapore, and Asia. He spent over half a decade travelling for work. But being based primarily out of Australia and Asia with time in the USA, it became very apparent to him that there is definitely a need for a new way in which Shoppers shop on the Internet to address certain problems such as price discrimination and item availability. Identical items are priced significantly differently around the world and certain items simply don’t become available in certain countries.

What is ShopandBox?

ShopandBox is essentially a peer to peer shopping service that is driven on-demand by shoppers who are given the opportunity to shop ‘just like a local’ vicariously through a Boxer from overseas.

“Peer to peer shopping, in other words that is social in its user experience as all communication is transparent and occurs on one order page where the Message Board is the central feature. All this under a global umbrella, meaning you as a Shopper in say Singapore can literally purchase anything (legal) from the UK, USA, France, S.Korea, Malaysia, Japan, HK as ShopandBox has Boxers there ready to go!,” said Xin.

With ShopandBox, every customer will have an assigned boxer to them, a Boxer will act as the customers personal shopper from start to finish. You tell them what you want, from where (if you know) and they do all the purchasing, consolidating, packaging and shipping of items right to your door step.

ShopandBox claims of putting the power back into the hands of the Shopper as Shoppers decide where to buy the item from, for how much, and how they want their item(s) packaged so that they can save on international shipping fees. Xin said that ShopandBox has partnered with DHL EXPRESS 3 day shipping to provide stunning rates where savings are passed onto the Shopper – rates that are not only much faster, but cheaper by up to 70% than if the Boxer were to walk into a local post office.

In addition to the actual cost of item(s) purchased by the Shopper, the Shopper also pays for international shipping and a small service fee of 10-14% which is how ShopandBox and the Boxers make their money.

Xin said that their number one philosophy is a transparent shopping experience, and everything (from pricing of items, shipping and any verbal chat discussions) is visible to both Boxer and Shopper and in fact, anybody on one centralised order page.That allows for Shoppers to actually see how ShopandBox works, by looking into the orders of others, and perhaps even purchasing what other Shoppers are purchasing too.

Currently, Xin shared that they are developing a new venture called ShopandBusiness whereby they work with small businesses to assist them in the purchasing of whatever their company may need from overseas to lower their costs, or if a portion of their business is looking to either extend their supply chain globally and use them as a freight provider.

Startup funding

According to Xin, ShopandBox, has been 100% bootstrapped to date between the partners and a family angel, using resources such as industry expertise from friends, family and their own savings. A lot of sweat and time have been put in and that includes giving up on their corporate careers, but Xin said they run a very tight ship with minimal/no wages as they continue to improve on their Beta product in anticipation of funding that will allow sizeable paid marketing to commence.

“Funding is a requirement in order to boost the business, and early signs of spending small paid marketing money ($500-$1000) is very promising. We’re seeking to seal funding by the end of the year, currently in advanced negotiations with an incubator investor of sorts that’s just listed in the ASX and a couple of angel investors with experience in this industry. For an early stage low margin, high volume start-up, we’re seeking to partner up with the right people who have both the risk appetite and e-commerce area expertise not afraid to try something different and most importantly truly believe in ShopandBox as a scalable, global e-commerce marketplace,” Xin revealed.

ShopandBox Team

Xin-Lung Tai, 29, leads the whole ShopandBox team. Xin spent over half a decade as a management consultant focusing on complex technology solutions for some of the largest Australian companies across telecommunications, banking and resources working pre-dominantly in Australia, but he has also spent 2 years in Asia based out of Singapore in between.

Xin founded the company along with Lily Lin, 33, also a management consultant from Washington DC. Lily, has over a decade worth of consulting experience with clients in Australia and America, across telecommunications, media and most education industries. She also has an MBA from Madrid Business School.

The rest of their team includes, Louis Tan, 29. He was trained in the Silicon Valley and worked in the start-up scene for 2 years there before returning back to Malaysia to set up Red Ape Solutions, a consumer facing web and mobile agency with a wide clients from Jatomi Fitness to large ones like Astro and Samsung.

Rebecca Chia, 29, has spent in Research and Statistics working for nearly 5 years in Singapore, before moving over to Australia to work for Mr and Mrs Smith, a boutique luxury travel agency. She holds a Masters in Commerce (International Business) from Melbourne University.

ShopandBox team firmly believes that what they offer is a service that is fresh, engaging and most importantly one that is different from everything else that is out there in the e-commerce world looking to shake the way people shop online!

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COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the company: ShopandBox
Founders: Xin-lung Tai, Rebecca Chia, Louis Tan, and Lily Lin
Website: https://www.shopandbox.com/
Total funding at hand: $40,000
Target Funding: $600,000 to $1.2million
Source of funding: Self-funded
Start of operation: Nov 2013

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

Have money but don’t know what to do? Call DrWealth

It creates Asia’s first online financial planning platform for the masses.

Realizing the lack of cost effective and high-quality financial planning and tracking solutions for the masses in Singapore, three men in their 30s founded DrWealth.com. The online financial planning platform, which started its operation in October 2013, bills itself as the first in Asia to provide full fledged financial tools based on Certified Financial Planning standards. The tools allows users to assess their own financial health and provides recommendations on how to achieve their financial goals.

According to Calvin Yeo, Dr Wealth’s CEO, the platform covers areas such as net worth, income statement, financial health assessment, investments, retirement planning, insurance and more.

“There is also generally a lack of personal financial knowledge among Singaporeans. Many financial planners are in fact insurance agents or bank sales representatives who get commission from selling products, which in the end may not even be aligned with the needs of the customers. While there are independent financial advisers who are fee based, they are costly to hire and generally only available to the high net worth,” said Calvin.

With $150,000 total funding at hand, Calvin shared that they plan to build a mobile app to enable people to use Dr Wealth platform on the go. They also intend to boost the investments module further by allowing automatic tracking of stock transactions. Another section they intend to build is automatic expenses and income tracking.

The Founders

Calvin Yeo, 32, is the CEO of Dr Wealth. He is also a Certified Financial Analyst and Certified Financial Planner.

Calvin worked as an Investment Banker in Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in New York where he analysed, structured and executed mergers and acquisitions as well as leveraged buyouts (LBO) with total deal sizes exceeding US$2 billion.

Lim Der Shing, 38, investor and director of Dr Wealth. He is the CEO and founder of JobsCentral Group. In 2011, he negotiated the sale of JobsCentral to CareerBuilder in the largest digital media deal that year. An active angel investor in other digital media startups. His experience covers all the topics required to startup, build and scale an internet business in South East Asia.

Ryan Ho, 38, is Dr Wealth’s chief technology officer. In technical leadership, he has an over 14 years experience. Ryan's key achievements include the development of a business intelligence system deployed into billion-dollar companies, online game platforms powering international award winning games with properties such as Star Wars and Street Fighter, and an online portal with more than a million users.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the Company: Dr Wealth
Founders: Calvin Yeo, Lim Der Shing and Ryan Ho
Website: https://drwealth.com/
Total Funding at hand: $150,000
Source of Funding: Self-funded
Start of Operation: October 2013

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

See how smart this lighter is: It could help you quit smoking

It bills itself as the world's first internet connected lighter that tracks smoking.

Many people who are trying to quit smoking while reducing find it difficult to keep on pace to losing weight. This startup named ‘Quitbit’, helps people on the right track by keeping them aware of their habits. In that sense, it acts similar to a scale for people trying to lose weight.

Founded by Ata Ghofrani and Takuji Nakano, Quitbit tries to improve the way people change their behaviors using connected devices, big data, and predictive analytics. The first market they are tackling is smoking, because it's a space they’re very passionate about.

According to Ata, he and Takuji first got the idea behind Quitbit while they were trying to quit smoking together in college. They were frustrated with existed solutions in the marketplace to track smoking because they all required manual data entry. They quickly hacked together some prototypes of lighters that can be used to track smoking and found them useful. After they graduated, they decided to share the product with other smokers with a hope that it could help them change.

“Tracking health behaviors is not new to the connected device space, but we are the only company who is taking that approach and applying it to a massive worldwide problem - smoking. Additionally, we are among the few health companies who are actively tracking ‘bad’ data in a sense. We track the amount of cigarettes you smoke and try to help users reduce, while most activity trackers (Jawbone - Up, Misfit Shine, etc..) are tracking positive behaviors like steps taken during the day and are trying to increase that amount.”

The founders claim to have made the world's first internet connected lighter that tracks smoking. Quitbit, they say, will motivate users to change their behaviors by keeping them aware of their habits and keeping them on pace to reach their goals.

How it works

Quitbit tracks every cigarette smoked, and keeps users motivated to reach their goals by showing them how much and exactly when they are smoking throughout the day. It also pairs with a mobile phone app that lets users see all their smoking data over time and most importantly customize how Quitbit works. Users can set reduction plans or even limit how and when Quitbit will light cigarettes (e.g. Quitbit will only light 1 cigarette every hour or 10 a day).

According to Ata, Singapore is the single largest country they export Quitbit to with 7% of total preorders from their Kickstarter campaign going to customers in Singapore followed by South Korea with 1.7%.

The founders

Ata Ghofrani, 26, has worked in Medical Devices and as a regulatory consultant at a biotech startups prior to going to graduate school at Brown University to study Innovation Management, where he met Takuji Nakano. He has always been interested by technology at the intersection of health and technology as a way to improve the human condition.

In 2010, he graduated from University of California Davis with B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and in 2013, he graduated MSc in Innovation Mgmt and Entrepreneurship from Brown University.

Takuji Nakano, 30 , is currently a co-founder and CTO of Quitbit where he is responsible for developing and executing the product vision.

Kuji is from Boston, but he has also lived in Eugene OR, Santa Cruz CA, Memphis TN, St Louis MO, and Providence RI. After being under graduated, he joined Zeo, a startup which created products that help consumers measure and manage their sleep. Over the course of six years, his responsibilities evolved widely and frequently - some days he was designing circuits, other days he was concocting synthetic sweat. His primary role was to manage all things related to manufacturing and to ensure quality product was received on time from the factories in China.

Outside of his professional life, he enjoys snowboarding, cycling, ultimate Frisbee, traveling, building/modifying anything, and socializing.

In 2006, Kuji graduated from University of Massachusetts Dartmouth with B.S. in Computer Engineering and in 2013 he graduated from Brown University with MSc in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship.

The funding

According to Ata, two startup accelerators helped them along the way when building Quitbit. The first is Betaspring, a local providence accelerator that they attended after they graduated college. They then moved to Shenzhen, China to join the 4th cohort of Haxlr8r, billed as the world's premier hardware only accelerator.

After which, the founders decided to do crowdfunding for Quitbit on Kickstarter, where they were able to clear their goal of 50,000 dollars with over 600 people pre-ordering Quitbit.

Quitbit’s major investors which include Haxlr8r, Delta Dental of RI, Betaspring, Kickstarter helped them reach a total funding of $200,000.

Moving forward, Ata shares that they are planning to work with major retailers in the US who like to expand Quitbit's reach pharmacy and big box retail shelves. They also hope to partner up with international distributors as well. Ata also said that they will be putting together a larger seed round to cover the upfront costs of engaging with retailers at a much sooner pace.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the Company: Quitbit
Founders: Ata Ghofrani and Takuji Nakano
Website: https://quitbitlighter.com/
Total Funding at hand: $200,000
Major Investors: Haxlr8r - $25k; Delta Dental of RI - $100k; Betaspring - $20k; Kickstarter - $55k
Start of Operation: May 2013

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

23-year-old designs aircraft seat on actual 3D scanning data of human body

Economy class will never be the same again.

A 2014 survey shows that nearly 90% of passengers want a more comfortable seat and 45% said they would pay extra. However, the gap between economy and business makes it an unreasonable upgrade that not many can afford. This is what AirGo team want to revolutionize.

23-year old Alireza Yaghoubi with friends Mikko Alanko and Ali Jahanshahi, founded in mid-2013 AirGo Design based on an award-winning concept that is all about a better travel experience for the other 99%.

Alireza argues that the airline industry in the past few decades has spent billions of dollars on improving the business and first class seats, but that he says is too much emphasis on too few customers which leads to a lack of scalability in the industry. “This approach is the main reason behind the low profitability of airlines. On average, airlines have a projected net profit margin of 2.6% internationally ($5.94 per passenger) for 2014 and in more competitive markets like the US, only a profit of 0.1% or 21 cents per passenger. While more airlines go bankrupt year by year due to lack of profitability, air travelers are not happy either.”

In the 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), airlines ranked last among 47 different industries and surveys continue to be mostly negative to date. At AirGo, the founders believe that 60 years of using the same technology in aircraft interiors is the main cause of profitability problems among airliners and they aimed at changing that in 2016 with their new seat. “Overall, the airline industry and in fact, the travel industry, in general, have not changed for more half a century now and this inevitable change is impending. The industry today lacks identity.”

AirGo thinks it is time for a major change in the travel industry and this change, whatever it is, can be a cradle for a new era in which ICT services become a major part of our travel experience.

“Services and products are not associated with brands and experiences. Since the providers have nothing to compete on other than a lower price, the profit margin has been constantly dropping. To keep up with the expenses, the airlines in turn had to limit the quality of air travel for the 99% of passengers. In a way, what we have today is a lot like the telecom industry before the arrival of the new generation of smart phones, especially Apple's iPhone. The 1%, that is those who used smart phones before 2007 were businessmen and government officials. Now everybody has one. Travel industry has so much room to grow and AirGo as a platform can be central to that new ecosystem,” said Alireza.

According to Alireza, AirGo as a platform, is a good example to start achieve any association with international presence. AirGo, he claims can push the smaller companies and give them the same type of exposure. “We all have heard about the recent news that Apple and Google are moving into cars with their platforms and most certainly, the next big thing would be the long-haul transportation, e.g. airplanes, trains, etc. This is especially important for Singapore considering that one of its major strengths is in the field of ICT. Unfortunately, right now except for a few smaller brands, Singapore is not associated with any international presence in the same way for example that we all know iPhone as a Californian brand even though it is made in China. Singapore can achieve that same status through platform development programs. This has to be a strong initiative which can pull smaller companies under one umbrella and create a collaborative environment for them to be a part of something much bigger.”

What is AirGo?

AirGo, eventually meant to serve as a platform for a variety of other services both via the in-flight entertainment system and also airline-specific features to make the competition more dynamic and vibrant.

“AirGo is reimagining the seat design and technology. We believe that it is possible to have a memorable travel experience, something that is a good part of your journey, because now most people prefer to sleep through it, not that they can because the seats are very uncomfortable, said Alireza.

Now that many seat manufacturers are working on new designs which are lighter and slimmer in order to save on fuel consumption and put more people on the same flight. What AirGo do is make the seats lighter by using state of the art composite materials and design technologies, and not by slimming down the same old seats.

According to Alireza, their new seats will be about 50% lighter as compared to the average economy seats today, but there will not be a compromise when it comes to comfort. They make the seats lighter by using state of the art composite materials and design technologies, not by slimming down the same old seats.

“AirGo is the only aircraft seat which is designed based on actual 3D scanning data of human body and therefore is ergonomically superior. A new cushion technology developed with our partners in the US and Italy dynamically conforms to the contour of your body. It is also treated with superamphiphobic materials which make it self-cleaning. At the same time, it is several times more durable than typical cushions. So it always looks new, fresh and clean. The new cushion technology also dampens shock waves during accidents and also the vibration caused by turbulences,” said Alireza.

The founders

AirGo was founded by three people, Alireza Yaghoubi, Mikko Alanko and Ali Jahanshahi.

The youngest is Alireza Yaghoubi who is now 23. Alireza finished his undergraduate studies last year as the Frederic Barnes Waldron student of mechanical engineering. A year before that in 2012, he won the James Dyson Award for designing AirGo. Alireza is also an internationally recognized materials scientist and his contributions in the fields of nanotechnology and biomedical engineering have appeared on the front cover of leading academic journals including those of Royal Society. Since his undergraduate years, Alireza has served as a senior scientist at University of Malaya where he leads several international research collaborations with France, Taiwan and USA.

Mikko Alanko, led the Business Development for Scalado, Qvantel and muvee in Asia prior to AirGo. Mikko was responsible for negotiating and closing global software licensing and distribution deals with multinational companies such as Nokia, Sony, Samsung, Qualcomm and Motorola. Before that, he used to serve as an e-Commerce Product Manager at Saunalahti, a Finnish mobile phone operator. Mikko holds an MBA in International Business from the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) and a BA in Marketing & Communications from Tampere Polytechnic University.

Ali Jahanshahi, holds a PhD in chemistry from Oxford university. He has also worked as a market analyst for GfK and an adviser at Axernutri (Sweden) for technology transfer and joint ventures in bio-fuel and hybrid powertrains.

AirGo board of directors include, Henri Holm who has nearly 20 years of international experience in consumer products, marketing, manufacturing, distribution, retail and brand management. For more than a decade, he served as a CFO, head of Business Operations and Finance Director at Nokia where he successfully led the company's mobile phone and Internet communication market in Asia, Middle East and Africa. In 2011, Henri joined Rovio Entertainment as Senior Vice President. He managed Asia-wide operations by delivering the continued success that the Angry Birds franchise enjoys today.

Jere Tala, with more than 20 years of experience, Jere is an airline and travel industry veteran. He has held various executive positions in the industry with some of the world’s leading airlines such as Qatar Airways and Finnair. As part of his job, Jere has worked and interacted with a wide range of stakeholders from travelers to the aircraft manufacturers. He was also a director of sales at BCD Travel, the world's leading travel management company. Jere has been also awarded the travel consultant diploma by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

And finally, Maziar Jahanshahi who founded Scalado in 2000, a world-leader in the mobile imaging industry with innovative platform-independent imaging solutions on over 1 billion devices. Maziar was the CLO at Scalado until 2012 when it was acquired by Nokia.

The success story

Before becoming the first undergraduate in the world to have published in one of the prestigious scientific journals published by Nature, Alireza has its own success story. After finishing and winning his research projects, he travel back to his home country and visit the family. A long journey of more than 8 hours in the economy cabin was uncomfortable enough to remind Alireza of his forgotten dreams. Unlike other passengers, Alireza did not sleep that night. He instead took the same old sketches and kept working on different elements of his design while he was going through an experience which was both horrible and amazing at the same time. When Alireza arrived at his hometown, although his short vacation had already started, he refused to stop working until late hours of night and sometimes even until dawn.

After a few weeks of intense work, the preliminary design was almost finished, but Alireza was still thinking of a way to share his ideas with many other out there who were looking forward to a big change in the travel industry.

A friend suggested that he should consider taking part in The James Dyson Award, but Alireza had already participated before in the international design competition and his entry was never selected even at the national level. It was the last days of August right before the deadline that Alireza finally decided to anyhow enter the competition with his new concept called AirGo.

Alireza’s design never made into the world’s top 20, but what it won was far more valuable. AirGo won the heart of millions of people out there who had been waiting for decades for someone to finally design a new seat for the other 99%.

The funding

According to Alireza, since April 2013, the company has been internally financed, but as of June 2014 with the commencement of the prototyping project, it is considering a Series A funding.

“Our first year budget was about 1 million dollars from internal funding and we are looking at about 2 million dollars for our Series A. We are closely working with our partners around the world as well as here in Singapore on developing new technologies to make the seats lighter, more comfortable and more durable,” said Alireza.

According to Alireza, their plan is to launch their first product with exclusive partners on certain routes in 2016. At the same time, they are bringing state-of-the-art technologies to Singapore and developing them into an ecosystem that all Singaporean startups can benefit from. They are in talks with CAAS (Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore) and so far the feedback has been very positive, but they are hoping to receive more support from the government because Singapore lacks the technological infrastructure for aerospace and it is difficult for a company to single-handedly bring everything in.

“Expectations from private companies have to be realistic, meaning that government-funded innovation programs should not put all the risks on startups and their investors for creating such an environment. Creating a new industry in a country like Singapore will work only if the risks and benefits are shared reasonably between the stakeholders,” Alireza added.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the Company: AirGo Design
Founders: Alireza Yaghoubi, Mikko Alanko and Ali Jahanshahi
Website: https://www.airgodesign.com/
Total Funding at hand: USD1m
Source of Funding: Internal funding
Target Funding: USD2m - Series A Funding
Start of Operation: 2013

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]

Former civil servants built an app for hassle-free event organizing

Goodbye slow pen-and-paper registration at events.

In pursuit for their passion for technology, YJ Soon, Akmal Abd Rahman and Steven Chan founded in 2012 Tinkertanker which provides software consultancy and programming education service. GuestDay, an app for hassle-free event organizing, is their flagship consumer product.

As they had been asked to help out at the reception table, the three entrepreneurs who are all turning 34 this year created the initial version of GuestDay to help ease the pain of guest registration at a friend's wedding. These three are all former civil servants who took on government scholarships to study overseas.

Over the next year, they refined the product at more events & weddings, including their own with the hope to solve the problems of long queues, flustered receptionists, and slow pen-and-paper registration at events. They started selling it as a professional service shortly after.

“While other companies focus on monetising the signup process for event organisers, GuestDay is focused on making the event registration process smooth and painless for both event organisers and attendees,” said YJ.

YJ claims that GuestDay is the best way for event organisers to register guest attendance on-site. Using an iPad app, they take away the hassle of pen, paper, and manual counting, and present a simple and elegant solution for company functions, wedding dinners, conferences, and other events.

YJ shared that TinkerTanker was initially bootstrapped using their own funds and through software consulting work. They have since tied up most of their software consultancy projects, and are focusing on GuestDay.

With $120,000 total funding at hand, YJ said that they plan to reach out to more professional event organisers and wedding planners, and are also planning to expand their staff.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the Company: Tinkertanker
Founders: Akmal Abd Rahman, Steven Chan, and YJ Soon
Website: guestday.com/
Total Funding at hand: $120,000
Source of Funding: Bootstrapped
Target Funding: N/A (not seeking funding at the moment)
Start of Operation: 2012

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]