Members receive 4% money back on every booking.

This startup curates vacation hotspots and provides the best deals, promising luxurious service as travelers book and enjoy their getaway.

ImpulseFlyer offers handpicked selections of luxury travels in some of the best locations in the Asia Pacific region.

Their online portal is an exclusive hub for luxury travel enthusiasts whom they say will only get the finest list of hotel offerings that promises their money’s worth.

“Not all luxury & boutique hotels are as you'd expect them to be. We take the homework out of figuring out the best places to stay through our careful curation, and at the same time we offer the best rates guaranteed” according to ImpulseFlyer co-founder Steven Gong.

Their members receive 4% money back on every booking they make which they can credit to future transactions. Their rates are all inclusive with real-time updates which they said ensures that their users get the best rates possible with no hidden charges.

Gong added that their company also has a concierge-like customer service and has additional benefits for VIP members such as complimentary upgrades and spa treatments.

Since its launch in June of 2011, the initially self-funded startup has raised its seed through various investors and has expanded and improved their company’s services. Apart from their online portal, members also can manage their bookings and access ImpulseFlyer through its iPhone app.

With hopes of expanding their current portfolio to a more global audience, Gong said that their eyes are set on adding packages from other parts of the world while still maintaining primary focus on Asia.

ImpulseFlyer seeks to improve their holistic luxury experience down from their booking services up to the minute their members are already spending their vacations. They aim to be hailed as the No. 1 luxury travel destination both on the web and on mobile.

____________________________________________________
Name of the company: ImpulseFlyer Pte Ltd
Founder/Founders: Steven Gong (Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer), Andy Croll (Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer)
Website: https://impulseflyer.com
Major Investors: Neoteny Labs, NRF, angel investors
Total funding at hand: Cannot be disclosed
Target fund: Cannot be disclosed
Source of funding: Initially self-funded, followed by investment from VCs and angel investors
Start of operation: June 2011
What makes the startup promising: Exceptional product with global ambitions

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to [email protected]
 

Search the best talent from over 1000 resumes deposited.

Startup Jobs Asia was “brewing” yet recognizing the challenges of Talent Acquisition that Startups faced within Asia. That's according to its founder Ben Chew who claims that they have identified the in-between gaps and aim to drive through them to bridge the gaps narrower as they move forward.

"We aim to create a better leverage and platform for Startup Hire in Asia and help connect the right talent fit within their growing and emerging business.We want to “sexify jobs at startups and to grow the human capital/employment eco-system for Startup. In short, we want to be the “voice” for Startup Hire within Asia.Building world class companies in Asia, one talent at a time," he said in an interview with Singapore Business Review.

Here's more:

1. What sets Startup Jobs Asia apart from other job hunting site?

Startup Jobs Asia is unique as we created as a platform specifically for Startups to help them in their talent acquisition. No roles from MNC, corporate organization can be found in our site. This also mean that visitor traffic that come to www.startupjobs.asia know what they be expecting and know the roles that they are applying for. We have heard from Startup founders posting their roles in the mainstream job portals and quality was not there as the jobseekers are not inclined to seeking a career with a startup. Not only do they have such experiences from jobseekers, they end up having to pay for the job advertisements. In additional, they are also competing with the MNC, Corporate organisation for candidates's resources.

2. How did your company start? How did you manage to get funds?

We started in mid Dec 2012 on a bootstrapped manner, funded fully by Strategia Ventures which is privately owned.

3. How do startups respond to your 'Search Resume' functions? Are you rolling out new features?

Our recent feature that we improvise of enabling talents to deposit their resumes has since grow more than 1000 resumes being deposited and is still growing at a steady pace. Startup who engaged the “Search Resume” functions have come back with positive feedbacks about this feature.

We have few upcoming features in good timeline for launch. However, we are rushing to roll out the features as we would like to hear from the users (both Startups and Talents) about their experience on every new feature launch. This is to create a better experience and effectiveness of the new feature.

New features like Premium listing will be next to roll out for startup that want better visibilities in their job postings. We are also working to improve on our user experiences as we go along.

Not forgetting our offline engagement, we are looking to start off a mini-job/networking fair which we are working on the venue and the neccessary logistics. We are looking at the time from end Aug to Sep period for this event.

4. What are your future plans?

Our future plans is to continue to grow our visitor traffic on both Unique and Returning visitors. Our short term aim is to further grow our traction across other part of South East Asia with our local partners thus driving up both online and offline engagement.

5. What is your outlook?
We see Talents Acquisition as one of the biggest challenge for any organization/companies. I like to think that there will be more corporate executives leaving their comfy role and high paying job and joining emerging, high-growth startup in the months ahead. We do see that the war for talents will not just the matter of MNC, corporate organization but with Startup as well.

The startup eco-system in Singapore and within Asia is growing well and fast. Without the right talent, there is no way a great product from a startup can scale and be successful. However, as founders continue to look forward to hire the best talent to form the much sought A-team, we believe that the existing talent war will continue to intensify. In short, we will see more "poaching of talents" within the Startup community or out of the eco-system.

_____________________________________

Name of the company: Startup Jobs Asia
Founder/Founders: Ben Chew
Website: www.startupjobs.asia
Major Investors: Strategia Ventures Pte Ltd
Total funding at hand: NA
Target fund: NA
Source of funding: Privately owned
Start of operation: Dec 2012
 

For startups wanting to get featured, send your message to [email protected]

It addresses limitation of GPS.

Billed as the first in the world, XimLoc offers a SIM-based cell positioning system which can accurately track any cellular devices in both indoor and outdoor locations regardless of OS.

XimLoc is a proprietary technology, which uses information from the cellular network (2G/2.5G/3G/3.5G/4G) to compute the user’s position.

Singapore startup W-LOcate is the innovator behind this productivity tool for workforce management.

XimLoc uses a residential java applet, which was jointly developed with Morpho Cards (Singapore) Pte Ltd, on the SIM card to sniff the network information and send them to XimLoc server, where the location engine computes the most probable location based on its proprietary algorithm.

According to W-Locate co-founde Stevie OOi, XimLoc has been rigorously tested and has been proven to be a practical solution that addresses the limitation of GPS i.e. the inability to track indoor and heavy power consumption.

XimLoc comes with a full-feature web-based dashboard.

XimLoc is currently offered via major SIM card manufacturers (Gemalto, Morpho & BlueFish) to their Global Customers.

XimLoc has already secured 2 major telecommunications companies in Singapore & Thailand to provide location-based services.

W- Locate is also currently in concluding talks with other telcos in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

W-Locate is also the innovator behind the FIND which is another productivity tool for vehicle fleet management.

FIND combines tracking and telematics technologies with business analytics to empower fleet and assets owners to remotely track, manage and protect their assets.

Most importantly, they can leverage on the business intelligence features in FIND to maximize the productivity of their fleet.

FIND is currently adopted by regional large fleet owners from different industries in the ASEAN region, including Holcim (S) Pte Ltd and Samwoh Corporation Pte Ltd.

________

COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the company: W-Locate Pte Ltd
Founder/Founders: Stevie Ooi & Sam Tan
Website: www.w-locate.com
Major Investors: NRF + TNF Ventures
Total funding at hand: S$589K + S$250 (paid-up)
Target fund: TBC
Source of funding: Local
Start of operation: Mid 2011

For startups wanting to be featured, send your company profile to  [email protected] 

Alert conditions are sent via SMS.

ConnectedHealth is a wireless health innovator committed to developing health monitoring connectivity solutions that drive down healthcare costs by improving patient compliance.

Among its latest product offerings include eHealth flatform, nursing manager applictaion and secure medical tablet.

ConnectedHealth claims that its eHealth Platform product is the first to provide an end to end connected solution for remote health management.

ConnectedHealth's home diabetes kit, incorporated in the e-health platform, for instance can simplify the collection,analysis and tracking of key medical information for Diabetic and Pre-diabetic patients.

Here is how it works: 

The Diabetes Kit consists of two key components: 1) A Health Manager Application , running on an Android mobile phones, that captures data from medical devices and transfers the data via the internet to the Connected Health Portal 2) The Connected Health Portal, which securely stores and selectively shares Patient Personal Health Records with authorized Caregivers.

Using the Home Diabetes Kit, Patients can:

Automatically capture data from medical devices, such as Glucose Meters, Weighing Scales, Blood Pressure Monitors
Automatically transfer the data to the ConnectedHealth portal. Patient can review historical data
Selectively and securely share information with Caregivers.
Receive automated alerts based on conditions set by the Caregiver.
Purchase low cost consumables and medication through Connected- Health's Online portal.
Through the Connected Health Portal, the Caregiver can:

Track the status of multiple patients, without the need for the patient to visit.
Set Alert conditions on a patient by patient basis.
Receive email or SMS notification if Alert conditions for a specific patient are met.
The Home Diabetes Kit consists of the following items:

An Entra™ FDA Approved Bluetooth Glucose Meter and measurement strips
A Nexus S phone, preconfigured with an the ConnectedHealth Android Health Manager application.
Login/account details to access the ConnectedHealth portal.

According to ConnectedHealth's CEO Mike Holt, it's eHealth Platform is deployed into two large US health care groups and has demonstrated a per patient annual savings of $33,000.

Holt is positive with the future of wireless home health market amidst increasing recognition of wireless medical monitoring systems including remote patient monitoring and management to reduce resource challenges.

"According to Juniper research, Global Cumulative Healthcare Cost-savings Opportunity from mHealth Monitoring 2013-2018: $36 Billion. ConnectedHealth is well positioned to help hospitals realize this costs saving via our proven deployment, lowest cost per patient approach and most scalable mHealth platform,he said.

_____

COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the company: ConnectedHealth
Founder/Founders: Mike Holt and Hari Ramachandran
Website: www.connhealth.com
Major Investors: Koh Boon Hwee, Get2Volume, National research Foundation
Total funding at hand: $1.1M (equity) $300K grants
Target fund: $2M
Source of funding: In discussion with Series A investors and strategics
Start of operation: March, 2010 

This startup just closed $900,000 USD seed fund.

Waygo is an app that bills itself as changing the way expats, tourists, and business travelers experience foreign countries by breaking down language barriers.

Utilizing a combination of both Optical Character Recognition and a translation piece, Waygo currently translates Chinese characters into English text by seeing images, finding the relevant text, and finally creating sensible phrases.

Waygo does not require an internet connection to operate.

How it started?

According to Ryan Rogowski, CEO of Waygo, The idea for Waygo came about two years ago as Ryan was working in China building mobile games. He was in the process of learning Chinese and found it extremely difficult, especially for someone used to romance languages.

If only there were a tool that he could look up characters by simply pointing a phone camera at the text, his--and many others-- lives would become much easier. At first the idea was an educational tool, but eventually it grew in Ryan's head that this could help any traveler in any country see with new eyes.

"We decided to first focus on China and the East Asian market because that's where our team had the most experience and it was also the most difficult batch of languages to solve and we were up for the challenge! Our roots have provided a solid foundation and we are excited for what we have in the works--improvements and future app versions," he said.

What are recent developments?

WaygoApp.com has closed $900,000 USD in its seed
round of funding with 500 Startups, Goldengate Ventures, AngelVest, Gengo, Niket Desai, and Maneesh Arora participating in the round.

The funding will allow Waygo Translator to improve it’s Chinese to English translation app as well as expand to Japanese and Korean to English and release an Android version.

Ryan said: “I am excited about the opportunity ahead of us. We have an amazing team on board and a solid time frame to prove out our OCR and translation technology and build a tool that can change the world as we know it.”

"Companies that enter the field of OCR spend many years getting their solution to work, let alone be any good. We are no different, our team has been working on our inhouse, proprietary algorithms for close to a year and a half and it has paid off. When benchmarked against ABBYY (the top commercial OCR) our software is five times faster, two times more accurate, and a tenth of the file size."

_____

Name of the company: Waygo Translator
Founder/Founders: Ryan Rogowski (CEO), Kevin Clark (Director of Product) and
Huan-Yu Wu (Director of Technology)
Website: www.WaygoApp.com
Major Investors: 500 Startups, Goldengate Ventures, AngelVest, Gengo, Niket
Desai, and Maneesh Arora
Total funding at hand: $900,000 USD
Target fund: Seed round closed at $900,000 USD
Source of funding: Angel investors
Start of operation: June 2011 

This Australian startup is expanding to Singapore.

Brands are increasingly looking for opportunities to create meaningful conversations with large audiences in more unique ways, and Vimily is billing itself as an affordable and simple app that allows businesses to create personally relevant content without having to invest in costly camera crews.

Vimily puts online video creation in the hands of businesses by providing users with an easy way to create, manage and share video content with consumers. Brands can also use Vimily to gain insightful market research about their target market. For example, brands can arm their promotional staff with smartphones to conduct brief interviews with potential customers at an event. The videos can then be instantly uploaded to a secure platform that is hosted on Amazon Web Services.

It only takes three simple steps to use Vimily:

1. Brands can use pre-defined questions to host interviews of up to three minutes
2. Demographic information of an interviewee can be easily gathered and uploaded onto Vimily’s platform.
3. After a video has been approved for publication, brands can add their company logo and a website link to each video. Brands can also repost videos on their own social platforms and websites and send a link of the video to theinterviewee so they can share it across their own accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube.

According to Katrin Suess, CTO and co-founder, brands can also use Vimily to embed a ‘call to action’ in each video where users can be prompted to make a donation, enter their personal details for a video competition or click to visit a website for further information.

“For example, we recently created a record 1,281 videos at Australia’s largest business technology event CeBIT, where only six student volunteers interviewed exhibitors who pitched their businesses to delegates over three days. We’ve also equipped brands with a tool to easily conduct market research in a more engaging and personal way,which is a huge leap from the traditional surveys and questionnaires,” she said.

Suess shared that the company has a lot of exciting product developments in the pipeline to build out both the market research functions of the platform, and the branding opportunities available in the videos. For example, the company aims to open our API to support customised app developments using Vimily’s technology. They are also looking at how they can incorporate pre-roll video advertisement in each video to enhance brand recognition with audiences.

Vimily is an Australian startup but is looking to expand market in Singapore. “Our plans for the business are to expand operations in Asia and Europe. The Asian market, in particular Singapore, is of great interest to us due to the market’s early adoption and high levels of engagement with user generated video content. I would say in many ways Singapore is ahead of the curve here, so as a company that is looking to disrupt the video landscape and be at the forefront of video content creation, this market really excites us.”

____

COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the company: Vimily
Founder/Founders: Matthew Barnett and Katrin Suess
Website:https://www.vimily.com/
Major Investors:Five private investors in a “pre-seed” round $230k AUD(investors not disclosed)
Total funding at hand: $230k in a “pre-seed” round.
Target fund:Vimily is targeting to raise A$1M to fund our global growth.
Source of funding: Angels (private investors)
Start of operation: Business incorporated in April 2012; launched inAustraliaand Singapore in June 2013
 

Find great services only from handpicked providers.

There are many marketplaces where people can sell products such as Ebay, Amazon, Qoo10 but where is the marketplace for people to sell services?

FlagAHero bills itself as one of the first marketplaces in the region built and designed dedicatedly for people in the profession of selling services.

FlagAHero (Pte Ltd) is a technology company that specializes in building ecommerce marketplace solutions for various industries verticals.

People can now have a great platform to discover interesting local services such as magicians, pet groomers, photographers, makeup artists and all kinds of niche skill providers in the community.

One of ideas.Inc Business Challenge 2012's Top Incubation Award Winner, FlagAHero is supported by Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) and received funding through the ACE Start-ups Grant.

FlagAHero, founded by Ken Toh and Yumi Wong, is also supported by Youth Business Singapore under their YBS Entrepreneurship Programme.

In June 2012, FlagAHero launched an alpha prototype and for the next 9 months, underwent various iterations to study and validate market needs

In May 2013, FlagAHero re-launched into beta phase with enhanced marketplace features and optimized business processes.
___

Company Profile:

Name of the company: FlagAHero Pte Ltd
Founder/Founders: Ken Toh & Yumi Wong
Website: www.flagahero.com
Major Investors: Private Angels
Total funding at hand: 100K to 200K
Target fund: 1M
Source of funding: Private Angels & ACE Grant
Start of operation: April 2012
 

It draws real-time data from 14 stock exchanges.

Participating in stock trading may be intimidating for most casual investors and deciding on the right trades to make can be an impossible task. Experienced traders have the knowledge and expertise, but without any incentive there is no reason to share information with other investors.

TradeHero aims to bridge the gap by providing a platform where anyone can make money from the financial markets, by subscribing to the expert trade feeds of top traders as guidelines for your real-life trades, or becoming a top trader and earning monthly subscription fees from other users who follow your trade feeds.

TradeHero is a stock market simulation mobile app that draws real-time data from 14 stock exchanges, 45,000 global securities and 1,300 currency pairs. Users are credited with a $100,000 starting portfolio and can make trades to create their own virtual portfolio.

The app’s Leaderboards identify the most successful traders (known as ‘Heroes’) by their returns, and they are ranked by Exchange, Sector, Monthly or Quarterly returns, as well as overall returns.

Followers can subscribe, for a small monthly fee, to follow and receive trade feeds from their chosen Heroes via push notifications on their mobile device. These push notifications detail each Buy and Sell action of the Hero, allowing followers to receive expert trading tips and personal insight into successful investment strategies. TradeHero will share subscription revenue from followers equally with Heroes, thus allowing Heroes to monetize their trading expertise.

"TradeHero makes learning about the stock market much less intimidating for novice investors, by making the whole process of buying and selling stocks fun and intuitive. The app has won many positive user reviews, with users praising the user interface and how much they enjoy learning about stocks by playing TradeHero," said TradeHero CEO Dinesh Bhatia.

TradeHero is also billed as the first social investment network, where users can make market comments and give advice on stock selection.

How TradeHero started
According to Bhatia, the idea of TradeHero came about after he suffered a significant loss on the stock market while working on a startup in the US in 2010. "I thought to myself, why is it that we (the man on the street) is always the greater fool and started researching more into the subject and realised that the odds were very much stacked against the retail investor in equities markets or anywhere institutions partook as well. I decided that the only way things would and could change is to harness a crowd-sourced effect in terms of tipping the scale and helping retail investors make much more informed decisions."

TradeHero plans to push out an Android version of the app, as well as expand to other markets such as Hong Kong and China. According to Bhatia, partnerships with large financial institutions and brokerages are being discussed as well. He added that multiple pivot points based on the basic premise of information brokerage will be developed, utilizing much of the current platform to accelerate development efforts.

"We are very optimistic about the future of TradeHero. Revenue and user growth is currently exceeding our initial targets and estimates and we hit our 12 month user target in just 2 months. We have processed over 400,000 stock transactions, with about US$50million worth of shares being transacted daily," he said.

___

Company Profile:

Name of company: TradeHero (My Manisku Pte Ltd)
Founders: Dinesh Bhatia (CEO), Dominic Morris (CTO)
Website: www.tradehero.mobi <https://www.tradehero.mobi&gt;
Major investors: TNF Ventures through the Technology Incubation Scheme under Singapore’s National Research Foundation
Total funding at hand: USD $600,000
Target fund: -
Source of funding: -
Start of operation: Mid Dec 2012  

Simply, it's tourist magazine in a TV format.

Tourist TV creates a dedicated tv show for cities which plays in four and five star properties. "A bit like a tourist magazine but in a tv format. We also broadcast the show in both its entirety as well as segments on our web site as well as our dedicated YouTube channel," said co-founder Steven Hopkinson.

According to Hopkinson, the show is updated monthly thereby making it relevant and timely. Already has over 360 leading 4 & 5 Star Hotels carrying the service across the cities in which it operates.

The team is also creating an Eco system where they bring the show, online ad apps all together to help a visitor either to the city or thinking of visiting the city understand the inner workings of the city.

The company started in Shanghai in late 2009 and have expanded to six cities in Asia including Singapore. Founders have bank rolled the business personally to-date.

Hokinson said that team have built a tourism content platform for the STB and that they are using this to house and aggregate tourism content. "This will allow us to better serve the tourism marketplace and to feed specialised apps we are currently building."

Hopkinson said tha Tourist TV will continue to expand into more cities. "We have identified an additional 10 cities we are looking to expand into."

____
Name of the company: Tourist TV
Founder/Founders: Daniel Barry, Steven Hopkinson and Andrew Jeffery
Website: www.ttvinsider.com
Major Investors: Founders
Total funding at hand: US$1m+
Target fund: US$5m
Source of funding: Founders to-date
Start of operation:2009
 

Management believes it's a $100 million business idea.

Lightfoot Travel is a luxury tour operator specialising in tailor-made holidays, honeymoons, corporate incentives, boutique accommodation and private villas around the world.

Lightfoot Travel has offices in Singapore and Hong Kong offering bespoke travel solutions to individuals and corporates.

According to Simon Cameron, Lightfoot Travel's founder and managing director, the company was launched in Singapore early 2010 and Hong Kong in 2011 and has grown rapidly since conception, with 85% YOY growth in 2012.

Cameron highlighted that unlike many online travel portals, Lightfoot only uses properties the management team has personally experienced and would wish to stay in themselves, so they can recommend something, and clients can rest assured that it is absolutely first-rate. "Our team are very well travelled and specialise in unusual holidays such as African Safaris, Latin America and trekking in Bhutan."

Moving forward, it's optimistic to maintain high revenues as it boasts of having huge addressable market and limited competition in the high-end bespoke travel market.

The company aims to achieve revenues of US$ 25 million by 2017 and US$ 75 to $100 million by 2020.

"We identified a lack of tailor-made travel companies in Asia, whereas in the UK this is a $1.5 billion dollar industry served by around 50 luxury travel companies. It is very underdeveloped market in Asia which offers a huge opportunity."

Cameron identified that Hong Kong and Singapore are both dominant luxury outbound travel markets in the Asia-Pacific region, after Japan, Australia, China and India, mainly because both countries have a large population of high earning households and buoyant outbound tourism markets.

The UK is Lightfoot’s third largest source market. Cameron said that the UK luxury tailor-made travel market (defined as tailor-made trips worth >$3,000 per pax) was worth an estimated $1.5bn in 2011.

Cameron also noted that The Middle East, Australia and China are large, high growth luxury travel markets that Lightfoot Travel plans to target, starting with a Dubai office opening in 2013 and Shanghai in 2014.

Other potential offices, Cameron said are Sydney and Melbourne.

Cameron cited key demand drivers for luxury tailor-made travel. First is the growing number of High Net Worth Individuals across Lightfoot Travel’s key source markets of Asia Pacific (+1.6% in 2011) and Western Europe (+1.1% in 2011) Secondly, travel he said, is a consumer spending priority where holidays are increasingly regarded as a non-discretionary spending item. Lastly, Cameron believes that experience is valued above status. "Luxury consumption trends favour rare and rewarding travel experiences over ‘vanilla’ travel itineraries."

______

Name of the company: Lightfoot Travel
Founder/Founders: Simon Cameron, Nico Heath and Lucy Jackson
Website: www.lightfoottravel.com
Major Investors: Founders and Angel Investor
Total funding at hand: US$500,000
Target fund: Just closed $250,000
Source of funding: Angel Investor
Start of operation: 2010
 

See what happens when 77 technology companies throw an open house.

Walkabout.sg was back for its second year and for tech lovers it was a chance to visit any one of 77 participating companies and literally walkabout their offices meeting with company executives.

The event is organized by Kristine Lauria from Mission Street Media and an interactive map showed which offices were throwing open their doors for all comers to walk into and meet with company execs and take a peek around the office.

Major companies like Microsoft and Amazon participated, with Amazon even doing walk-in job interviews and people who were looking for funding could also chat and leave post it notes on the wall.

Some came seeking jobs or internships, some because they were curious, and some just for the Pizza and snacks. But behind the frivolity of a city-wide office party, there was some serious networking to be done.

This year more than 1200 people signed up to the event, a kind of amazing race around Singapore’s tech corridors, from 12.00 pm to 5 pm, said Mission Street Media’s Kristine Lauria. About the only two big companies not present were Google and Facebook , who were invited but did not participate.

“Twitter is a one person shop and the person managing it is in Japan. Google and Facebook were invited this year hopefully we can get them next year,” said Ms Lauria. So what is in it for the participating companies? 

“Last year non stop games found an engineer, it’s a great way to spread ideas and find talent. There are VC’s and accelerators involved. The benefit is like a community participation and to say we are not in banking and the typical Singaporean company. Globally we want to make a point that Asia has a point on the global the scene.”

“There is such a massive turnout has been pretty surprising and it makes you feel like we are here for a reason and we are not dreaming that tech will take off in Asia; we are here already. If you look at most offices in Asia they are sales and marketing, they are not development teams. What you are seeing with Walkabout.sg is you are seeing the scene growing deep roots not just sales and marketing, but all types of people working including marketing, HR. It’s not just a bunch of developers coding away. 

The most liked video to-date won at 3rd Singapore Short Film Awards.

Viddsee is a targeted content platform where discovery of award winning and quality short films are made accessible.

Viddsee’s vision is to create a wide and accessible market for short films. Co-founder Ho Jia Jian says,"We are bridging the online content gap between user generated content (UGC) and premium theatrical films. We are offering an avenue for professionally made content to be accessible and discoverable rather than sitting in a sea of noise of content."

According to Ho, the company started with launching a social web platform around short films from Southeast Asia through support from Spring ACE.

"We started this company when we were deciding on pushing our own short films up online and were finding a targeted platform to do so. Having our background in the Pay TV business also did help kickstart the company. We approached our alma mater and obtained our funds through their incubator. We are currently also looking for our next round of investment."

Moving forward, Ho said that the team is launching a mobile version of Viddsee soon and constantly looking at tools to empower content creators. "With the increasing growth of content creators in the market, we see having a targeted and sizeable audience key for the content creators' distribution. We want to empower content creators to reach their audience directly. Having being content creators ourselves, we see a big market potential within this space."

“We believe that short films are the new movies for the internet,” added Ho.

___

Name of the company: Viddsee
Founder/Founders: Ho Jia Jian, Derek Tan
Website: www.viddsee.com
Major Investors: None
Total funding at hand: $50k
Target fund: $500k
Source of funding: Spring ACE grant recipient
Start of operation: September 2012
 

Playware introduces 3DHive, a play-enabled virtual classroom.

In today’s world, teachers find it difficult to actively engage students. Not only do students have shorter attention spans, but they also find it mundane to engage with traditional non-interactive media. While research has convinced teachers of the effectiveness of using games in the classroom, games are currently too expensive and cumbersome for schools to adopt wholesale.

Playware Studios wants to bring ‘play’ into every classroom in the world. Built on top of the cutting edge Unity3D technology, Playware introduces 3DHive, a cloud based, social, play-enabled virtual classroom platform that allows schools to embrace ‘games in learning’ on-the-go.

Playware Studios is an organisation with a focus on the development of engaging learning environments that enable and enhance learning through play.

According to the company's strategy head Akshay Maliwal, the company started as a serious games developer but have expanded its portfolio with immersive virtual laboratories, interactive galleries and a game creation tool for teachers and students.

Developed in a 4-year collaboration with Singapore teachers and schools, Maliwal boasts that the platform has everything a school needs to create, play, manage, and share games. It even has in-built tools for assessment of the students’ performance through the playing and making of games.

"We are bringing an educational games platform to classrooms. Teachers and students can create their own games through our point-and-click game editor software and within minutes create 3D virtual worlds. The more engaging part is the User-Generated-Content that educators can put onto their games which allows users to learn whilst playing a serious game," he said.

Maliwal said that the platform is cloud-hosted which means “anytime” availability without any setup or overhead costs. It has built-in tools for collaboration, classroom management and assessment.

How did the company start?

According to Maliwal, the company started with the aid of private angels in Singapore. It started in 2005 as a serious games company but in 2008 it swiftly moved to the education technology space because of the founders' involvement in "FutureSchools@Singapore" program.

"Our founders, Siddharth Jain (Chief Creative Officer) and Srividya Maliwal (Chief Producer) have been instrumental in the serious games space in Singapore and South-East Asia over the last 5-7 years. Their changed focus on education technology, and more specifically game-design and game-literacy as a new medium in education is monumental and there is much success to come from this new form technology in classrooms worldwide." said Maliwal.

COMPANY PROFILE:

Name of the company: Playware Studios Asia Private Limited
Founder/Founders: Siddharth Jain (Chief Creative Officer) and Srividya Maliwal (Chief Producer)
Website: www.learningthefuture.com, www.playwarestudios.com
Major Investors: Private Angels
Total funding at hand: Can't disclose
Target fund: Can't disclose
Source of funding: Venture Capital firms and private investors
Start of operation: 2008 

Meet Moneythor which started operation this year.

According to the company’s primarty founder Olivier Berthier, Moneythor is a financial technology company operating an online personal finance service and developing banking software components designed to help consumers monitor and improve their financial performance straight into their banks’ existing online services.

“ The focus of the solution on offering pro-active tailor-made and value-add financial advisory to consumers and do this right in the existing online services of their banks is unique on the marketplace today. We have also developed proprietary technology including a bank statements categorisation and recommendation engine which offers a new way to enhance financial transaction data,” he said.

 As many ventures, Berthier said that the company started out of a couple of frustrations.

First  as users themselves and relatively budget averse consumers, Berthier said that they have always been annoyed by the limited value of the online services exposed by our banks, with little more than transaction capabilities like reviewing limited transaction details, paying a bill or doing a fund transfer.” Despite the rich information in our bank statements, no financial advice tailored to our profile was delivered to us by our banks, with nothing to help us cut back on expenses or invest without needing to work outside, with dedicated money management tools.”

As banking software providers themselves meanwhile, Berthier said that they have experienced first hand the difficulties faced by banks to upgrade their existing and too often basic online banking service and capitalise on this relationship to drum up some much needed customer loyalty.
“Moneythor's objective is to tackle these pain points, experienced with online banking by both consumers and banks.”

 The service which started this year is currently live in close beta dedicated to consumers in Singapore but founders said that they are planning to open the service to the wider public in a 3-4 months timeframe.

 The next phase of development includes the engagement with additional financial institutions, countries and other players such as merchants.

“The focus on increasing customer satisfaction, enhancing the digital experience, and revenues have become the most important objectives impacting banks’ IT investment strategy and we believe that we are well placed to capitalise on this trend. It is particularly strong in Asia where IT spending by banks in the region is forecasted by industry analysts to grow between 5% and 11% this year,” said Berthier.

COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the company: Moneythor
Founder: Olivier Berthier
Website: https://www.moneythor.com
Major investors: founding team
Total funding at hand: undisclosed
Target fund: early stage
 Start of operation: 2013

Here’s why $3M worth RedMart is attracting big investors.

RedMart bills itself as disrupting traditional grocery retail by enabling customers to restock their pantry with non-perishable home essentials without going to the store. “You no longer need wait in line and lug home heavy, bulky everyday essentials such as diapers, bottled water, toilet paper, and snacks. We deliver to your door for free within the 2 hour delivery slot you choose,” said RedMart co-founder Roger Egan.

Egan shared that he and Vikram Rupani started working on RedMart during their INSEAD MBA program in SG in 2010. “As busy students,we wanted to save time and avoid the hassle of going to the store and lugging home heavy, bulky home essentials and groceries. We both put a bit of money in, took no salaries (sweat equity), and raised funds from INSEAD professors, friends and family.”

In December 2011, Skype co-founder, Toivo Annus invested. “He heard about us from our INSEAD classmate and advisor, Taavet Hinrikus, who was Skype's first employee and Director of Strategy.”

More recently, Egan said that Golden Gate Ventures, East Ventures, and PropertyGuru founders, Steve Melhuish and Jani Rautiainen invested.

Boon Ling Yee, former Commercial Director of Tesco China, also invested.

To-date, the company has over $3M funding and Egan shared that they will be raising a bigger round this year, but rather not disclose the amount.

According to Egan, RedMart's online grocery service model has several advantages over traditional grocery stores. First, the high operational costs required to run a store like real estate, utilities, personnel are significantly lowered and some of these savings can be passed along to customers, he said. Second, Egan noted that the physical contraints of the store are removed, so that a wider range of products can be offered, including those that would not be economically viable in a store. And third, the location constraint of the store is removed, he said, as customers can order from anywhere and have their order delivered to their door.

“RedMart is all about empowering our customers and 'Wow'ing them with our service.The result is a better offer to consumers, and better economics for the service,” boasted Egan.

Egan said that the company has been growing over 30% month over month since it started and will be expanding into other product categories and geographies in 2014.

“We plan to expand into other product categories and expand internationally. However, the market for home essentials in Singapore is actually very large - USD 5.2 Billion. So there is huge potential in SG alone. The worldwide trend shows that people are increasingly buying their groceries and home essentials online. The growth is exponential. We believe Singapore will follow and feel that RedMart is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this trend. There is no reason to go to the store, wait in line, and lug these heavy, bulky goods home. There are so many better ways to spend your time. Our mission is to save our customers time and money for the things that really matter in life!”

Moving forward, Egan said that the company will be be launching an iPhone app. “We're all about convenience, and real convenience is being able to shop for your groceries anywhere, any time. We think our app's user experience design is very 'out-of-the-box' and simple to use.”

_____________________________

Name of the company: RedMart.com
Founder/Founders: Roger Egan (Co-founder & CEO), Vikram Rupani (Co-founder & CFO), and Rajesh Lingappa (Co-founder & CTO)
Website: https://redmart.com/
Major Investors: Toivo Annus (Co-founder and former Head of Engineering at Skype), Golden Gate Ventures, East Ventures, and Boon Ling Yee (former Commercial Director of Tesco China).
Total funding at hand: Over SGD 3M raised to date.
Source of funding: Investors mentioned above.
Start of operation: October, 2011

It just raised $9M to develop the technology further.

Clearbridge BioMedics is a spin-off company from the National University of Singapore. According to co-founder Johson Chen, the company’s proprietary ClearCell System is one of the first non-biomarker based systems that is commercially available to effectively detect, isolate and retrieve circulating circulating tumour cells (CTCs).

These CTCs are cancer cells that slough off from a physical cancer tumour and are circulating in the blood stream. Researchers wish to identify and obtain these CTCs, as they may be used in cancer research.

The ClearCell System was launched in 2012 to the research market following the company’s announcement that Clearbridge BioMedics has achieved ISO13485 certification for the development of cell-based in-vitro diagnostic devices.

“Most of the other systems available for identifying CTCs use biomarkers that tag themselves to the cancer cells. This is ideal for research purposes, as the CTCs can be retrieved in their native state,” said Chen.

Clearbridge recently raised $9 million in March 2013, and the funds will be used to develop the next generation ClearCell System, with clinical applications including cancer screening/ diagnosis, cancer staging, supporting cancer treatment decisions, personalised cancer treatment and post cancer monitoring. .

“Currently the ClearCell System is only available for research markets. However, once the next generation system has been developed, Clearbridge BioMedics will be targeting to use this for a range of clinical applications, including cancer screening/ diagnosis, cancer staging, supporting cancer treatment decisions, personalised cancer treatment and post cancer monitoring.”

How did the company started?

The underlying technology for Clearbridge BioMedics began its life in a laboratory at the National University of Singapore, headed by Prof Lim Chwee Teck.

A spokesperson said that when Johnson Chen, who was a University friend of Prof Lim, heard about the technology, he saw the potential of developing this into a commercial device.

Johnson teamed up with Prof Lim, and a few other founders, to set up the company.

According to Chen, the first round of funds for the company came from Clearbridge Accelerator and the National Research Foundation of Singapore, under its Technology Incubation Scheme. The other investors were found through the management team's extensive networks and contacts.

________________________________

COMPANY PROFILE

Name of the company: Clearbridge BioMedics

Founder/Founders: Johnson Chen, Chong Chee Wah, Tan Swee Jin and Lim Chwee Teck

Website: https://www.clearbridgebiomedics.com

Major Investors: Clearbridge Accelerator, Vertex Venture Holdings, SPRING Seeds Capital,
Clearbridge BSA, BioVeda Capital

Total funding at hand: Undisclosed for Series A, S$ 9 million for Series B

Target fund: Undisclosed

Source of funding: Clearbridge Accelerator, BioVeda Capital, Vertex Venture Holdings Ltd,
SPRING Seeds Capital, Clearbridge BSA Pte Ltd, Mr Lu Yoh Chie.

Start of operation: 2010

It’s coming your way middle of 2013.

AppFusion is a client servicing development business where clients contact them to develop web and mobile apps.

According to founder Ben Dunn, the clients they work with tend to be other small team startups who are strong in domain experience but lack the development resources to get their product developed.

Dunn said that it first major product launch, Snipe - snipetheapp.com, will occur in the middle of 2013 and will be a cross platform app for managing snippets of information, lists and other temporary personal data across all your devices.

AppFusion is entirely self-funded at this point and the business began when the founder, Ben Dunn, decided to make a career change after spending 15 years in the financial markets.

“Revenue earned from the client servicing side of the business helps in funding our own ventures,” said Dunn.

AppFusion current total fund is S$150,000.

Dunn notes that at this stage, the company is not seeking outside investment, but were they to do so, it would be primarily strategic or to gain access to advice or other support for the products they are looking to launch.

Moving forward, Dunn said that the company will continue to grow the client servicing side of their business organically while continuing to develop and launch its own products.

“The first aspect of AppFusion’s business is focused on developing our own apps and web based products. On this front, our approach is to focus on building unique and high quality apps that solve real world problems we experience ourselves and for which there is no adequate solution already available. There are no real boundaries to the types of apps we will consider, the problem just needs to be big enough to justify trying to solve it,” he said.

Dunn said that client servicing development business is only the second aspect to AppFusion.

AppFusion is optimistic that the gold rush of app development in the last few years has meant that it continues to get tougher to dream up genuinely unique product ideas in unchallenged areas.

“That said, many product spaces have been saturated with poor solutions that leave plenty of room for innovative new ideas that challenge the status quo,” he said.

Asked what makes the company unique to many other startups, Dunn pointed to the culture and work environment at AppFusion. “All staff work on an equal footing when it comes to all aspects of developing products. There is no distinction between project managers, developers and analysts and all staff are required to play all of these roles interchangeably.” Dunn said that while it is difficult to find people who are capable and willing to work in this way, for those that can, it can be a ‘very liberating’ and ‘empowering’ experience. It also removes many of the frictions that occur in larger more structured teams, he said.