Successful companies that they’ve already invested in include: OZON.ru, an Amazon-like website, BigLion, a daily deals site, and ivi, an online video site.

They also operate a separate fund called RTP Ventures, that focuses on US investments.

In Southeast Asia, they have already funded MJ Group, a Vietnamese e-commerce platform. They are looking at the Indian market next.

The Russian firm hopes to pump in around US$5 to 20M in a single transaction, focusing on startups that have already gone pass the seed round and operate in the areas of online travel, e-commerce, entertainment, and social gaming.

Right now, they have Digital Media Partners, a VC firm in the emerging markets in Southeast Asia, as a regional partner.

Malaysia's digital economy is similar to Singapore and Brunei.

Recently, I was invited to speak on entrepreneurship and consumer Internet trends in a private event hosted by Penn Olson during Startups in Asia, which happened from 2nd to 4th February.

In this article, I will highlight additional perspectives to shed greater light on the ideas presented during my talk, which gave the audience a better grasp on the consumer internet space in Southeast Asia.

Two clusters of economies in Southeast Asia, based on mobile and Internet penetration rates

Glancing at the mobile and internet penetration rates in ASEAN countries, we see two prevailing trends (see slide 4 of the presentation provided below).

But before that, it’s important to note that the internet penetration rate is constructed based on the number of broadband internet subscribers divided by the total population, while the mobile penetration rate is calculated using the number of mobile subscribers (mobile phones are not distinguished as either featured/WAP phones or smartphones). As a result, mobile penetration rates are usually more than 100 percent, which just means that most users own more than one phone.

Taking into consideration the ratio of mobile and internet penetration rates, we see two clusters forming: The digital economies of Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia share very similar behaviour where smartphone ownership is becoming significant in the cities, while the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam represent emerging digital economies where smartphone penetration are relatively low but the consumers uses social media with low mobile rates without knowing that they are accessing the Internet.

Looking at Cambodia, which may represent a potential digital economy of 53 million people, one can conjecture that it is heading in a similar direction as Vietnam or Thailand. As for Myanmar, the infrastructure must be built first before a digital economy can arise.

Missing elements in the Southeast Asia Ecosystem

I have indicated in my talk that there are at least three missing elements (and they may be more). Let’s start from the first issue: the lack of series A funding in the region of US$0.5M to US$2M. The reason why most investors avoid this funding range is because it’s a risky stage where a company can grow into a proper and sustainable entity or go south if they cannot find sustainable revenue streams.

As a result, most companies which can potentially grow will not be considered by investors. However, seed funding is readily available because the quantum of investment is low. To get a better chance of obtaining funding in this range I talked about, the company has to leapfrog and generate significant revenues quickly, otherwise it is very tough to move forward.

The second issue is the dearth of talent to scale the company. If we match founders from Southeast Asia to Silicon Valley, the difference is not that wide apart. The real difference is in the management team with people who are formerly from big companies that can help to scale the company. We read often from tech blogs about the movement of people from one big tech company to another, but this phenomenon is very rare in Southeast Asia. The reason is that most start-ups cannot afford the lifestyle of these executives and the opportunity of exits are very minimal.

The last issue relates to most VCs in Southeast Asia: A lot of them are former financiers and not really business operators by experience. We cannot fault them for their backgrounds, but it does have an impact on how they assess companies.

To be blunt, a former banker constructs a company’s valuation by profit and loss. If Facebook was started in Southeast Asia, they can never survive. The reason is that they did not generate any revenue or profit until their pre-IPO investment round. Of course, Facebook was a bit bet and the odds of finding companies like it are really small.

But I am seeing good signs in Singapore where we have people like Meng Weng Wong (co-founder of JFDI Asia) and Batara Eto from East Ventures who are former entrepreneurs running venture incubators and are investors as well.

Photo: WhizKris

The infusion will fuel its plans to set up an office in the US and expand across various horizontal and vertical sectors that could benefit from its technology.

Sconce also announced the addition of industry veteran Steven C. Walske to its Board of Advisors.

Their search technology, Bingo!, is basically “a search mechanism for identifying and retrieving 3D CAD components from a repository based on 2D/3D shape inputs.” It purports to be more accurate and useful than competitors.

While design reuse is an industry practice that could bring huge cost savings, ineffective search tools like metadata based indexing hamper its adoption.

Recently, they have secured million dollar deals with a leading Formula One Racing group in Europe and a Medical Instruments Multinational based in North America.

The next time you read in the papers about how supermarkets in Singapore are evolving and migrating online, remember that two former investment bankers could very well have played a major role in shaping the landscape.

No, no one’s buying over NTUC Fairprice or Cold Storage.

Meet Roger Egan III and Vikram Rupani, the co-founders of RedMart, a new online supermarket that emerged in the scene last year (see product feature) and received seed funding from Toivo Annus, the co-founder of Skype, in December 2011.

Their mission: To create the “eBay for Consumer Packaged Goods manufacturers” — the makers of of instant noodles and the ever-useful toilet paper.

Roger (top) and Vikram (bottom).

Don’t let their résumés fool you — these two have entrepreneurship in their bones. Vikram, who is the CFO and COO, started the first polyester and alkyd resin manufacturing plant in Bahrain after leaving his cushy job as a research analyst at a hedge fund.

Prior to that, he was an investment banking analyst at JPMorgan.

Roger, meanwhile, displayed an instinct for opportunity and propensity toward entrepreneurship early on. At 10 years old, his first business was shoveling snow off his neighbors’ driveways, even hiring other kids to do it.

But he never saw entrepreneurship as a serious way to make money. After graduation, only two career choices made sense to him.

“I was peer pressured into thinking that investment banking or consulting were the only two respectable  career paths at the time,” he said candidly.

“That was the mentality of our peers before the financial crisis hit,” Vikram chimed in.

In the end, Roger left his position as an Associate at Omega Capital, and started an insurance brokerage company that went on to raise US$320 million in venture capital.

Their paths crossed when they did their Masters at the INSEAD Asia Campus.

Reflecting on his career at JPMorgan, Vikram said that there were many traits he picked up that — while not obvious at first glance — are actually important to starting their business.

“I am primarily responsible for finance, operations, and supply chain at RedMart – and being good at this requires a keen eye for detail, comfort with numbers, and ability to deal with large amounts of data – all skills which I picked up while working in banking and trading” he said.

Roger, meanwhile, had the idea of starting an online supermarket as a simple result of being busy at his banking job.

“I didn’t have time to buy groceries. I viewed the chore as a waste of precious free time. And though I passed the store on the way home every day, I would always forget to get what I needed. Running out of things is a pain — at RedMart we remind you to reorder before you run out,” he said. Roger is now RedMart’s CEO.

While neither Roger nor Vikram have worked extensively in the retail business, they see this as an advantage.

“We go in with fresh eyes,” said Vikram, “the industry we’re in has shown little innovation for decades. being part of the new generation that loves to shop online, we asked ourselves: What kind of shopping experience would we want online? After figuring that out, we started working backwards from there to understand what needed to be done on the backend to deliver this ideal experience.”

But after working out the sums for the run-of-the-mill online retail model, they realized that it didn’t make sense.

“The margins were very low on this business,” said Vikram, “to be successful as a retailer, you need very large volume and extremely efficient logistics. We thought about how we could change the business model to make the idea of competing with large established retailers as a start up sound a little less crazy.”

That’s when the whole “eBay of CPG manufacturers” idea came about.

Think of RedMart not just as an online supermarket, but a platform that allows sellers to bypass retailers.

The co-founders believe it offers several features for sellers that traditional supermarkets cannot rival.

Data analytics is a big one. “With brick and mortar stores, sellers cannot gauge the purchaser’s intent, not unless they checkout. But what about those who don’t checkout? A large data set is lost there,” said Vikram.

By capturing demographic data and layering it on top of purchase  behavior data, RedMart offers manufacturers a better way to market their products.

“Instead of blanket promotions, as a manufacturer, you now have the ability to target specific demographics and shopper behaviors. Then you can measure the ROI on these marketing investments,” he added.

And while large retailers frequently charge listing fees to manufacturers, apply pressure to set product price according to their whims, and frequently use certain products as lost leaders to attract shoppers to buy other goods, RedMart has none of that.

Sellers pay no listing fees to RedMart, and they are free to set their own price.

RedMart also includes tools for sellers to complete the entire process of order fulfillment, from point of sales inquiry to the delivery of the product to the customer.

While manufacturers are certainly free to set up their own online stores to push goods to consumers, that may not be effective since shopper prefer to have as much variety of brands as possible under one platform.

From an income standpoint, their business model is more financially sustainable than the usual online retail model, since it incorporates more revenue streams from its data analytics and marketing services. As a result of cost savings, the prices of their goods are cheaper than Cold Storage and on par or slightly above NTUC Fairprice.

The concept makes sense for consumers too, since the traditional advantages of online retailing apply — lower overheads means cost savings, and unlimited shelf space means the ability to cater to the long tail of consumer needs. Ultimately, RedMart’s ambition is to have the largest variety of household essentials and personal care items of all supermarkets in Singapore, providing even niche products that are usually located in disparate places.

Fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats are out for now, since delivering these items to customers would be too difficult a logistical challenge. Ultimately, it’s about doing something well rather than being too ambitious but failing to meet customer standards.

Their decision to serve the Singapore market was also an interesting decision, since it is a small market.

But Roger counters that the market is actually not small for the goods they sell, which amounts to US$4.2B in sales annually.

There are other factors: A busy and tech savvy population, the lack of sites doing e-commerce for household essentials well by their standards, the fact that the headquarters for many CPG manufacturers are located in Southeast Asia and Asia, and the fact that Singapore is small and densely populated, which makes logistics simpler.

In its short two months of existence, RedMart’s novel approach has already received validation. It received seed funding from INSEAD professors Patrick Turner, Serguei Netessine, and Neil Bearden, in the form of a convertible note. Family and friends helped out too.

But what they did not expect was that Skype co-founder Toivo Annus, who founded and runs venture firm ASI, would be interested to chip in.

“The power of social networking stepped in — our classmate and Skype’s first employee, Taavet Hinrikus, tweeted about RedMart when we launched Beta. His former colleague, Toivo Annus, saw his tweet and asked us for a call to find out more about what we’re doing,” said Roger.

“After a lot of due diligence, he told us that he’d like to invest immediately. We were floored. We didn’t actually need the money at that point, but when the co-founder of Skype says he’d like to give you money — you take it every time.”

RedMart is offering customers 15% off the first order. Enter code: NOMORESTORE at checkout.

With China and India hogging the limelight when it comes to entrepreneurship, it’s easy to forget that something is brewing in Southeast Asia.

Quietly but steadily, geek culture within the region is maturing, creating a suitable environment to nurture the next generation of technology entrepreneurs. A key indicator of this trend is the rise of permanent spaces which provide a comfortable environment for entrepreneurs and geeks to experiment and develop their ideas.

The first of these spaces to emerge is Hackerspace.sg, which was set up as an entirely community funded and supported initiative in 2009.

Photo: Guests interacting with Sheel (center-left) and Abhijeet (center-right) from Bessemer Venture Partners.

It is located within the Arab Street area, which contains an eclectic mix of shisha smoking joints, Indian restaurants, carpet merchants, and hip bars. A Hackerspace sign leads visitors through a door and up a staircase, into a cosy place many geeks call home.

Since then, Hackerspaces have been started all over Southeast Asia, in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Philippines. These venues, and the events and people that center around and emanate from them, is creating a new buzz that has caused investors to sit up and take notice.

On a Tuesday night towards the end of November, about 50 eager entrepreneuers packed Singapore’s Hackerspace, hoping to make an impression on a couple of special guests from Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), probably the oldest venture capital firm in the world.

The event, called Chillin’ With, is a regular, intimate mixer organized by SGE for entrepreneurs, investors, and the tech community in Singapore. Chillin’ With has played host to Dr Tony Tan, now the president of Singapore.

Mingling with the entrepreneurs were Sheel Tyle, a BVP analyst based in the New York office, and Abhijeet Muzumdar, a senior associate with BVP India. They were on a trip to Singapore as part of their tour around Southeast Asia seeking investment opportunities, having also visited Malaysia and Indonesia.

Bessemer is over a century old, and has invested in major companies like Skype, LinkedIn, Yelp, VeriSign, Staples, Hunch (acquired by eBay) and many others. Embracing failure is a part of their culture, and this can be seen in their “anti-portfolio”, which lists their missed opportunities over the years (does Google sound familiar?).

According to Sheel and Abhijeet, Asia is a goldmine for angel and venture capital investment, especially in the emerging markets. While Western countries have a mature, high-income market, it is also highly competitive. On the other hand, many gaps still exist in Asia in the e-commerce and mobile space.

As such, developing countries have a tremendous upside, despite infrastructural problems and lack of talent which are major hurdles hindering entrepreneurial growth.

“Many parts of Asia are experiencing high growth in Internet penetration, which presents huge opportunities for Internet companies,” noted Abhijeet, speaking in his personal capacity. For example, Indonesians are well-known for being prolific Internet users, which is made possible by the availability of low-cost smartphones. E-commerce and social networking are some of the popular activities they engage in.

“While infrastructural challenges are present, your role as the entrepreneur is to figure out a way to solve these problems,” he told the crowd — a mixture of locals and expats.

Sheel added that while Southeast Asia is often perceived as a collection of disparate markets, we should start seeing them as one.

This “many countries, one market” approach is more applicable to Internet companies than traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. While tremendous cultural differences exist between countries within Southeast Asia, a product may not need to be tweaked too much (except language) to cater to different nationalities.

An example would be Facebook, which is essentially the same across all countries, just that it’s translated into different languages.

In addition, Internet businesses generally contend less with the varied regulatory and legal environments found in different countries as compared to brick-and-mortar business.

But cultural differences must not be entirely dismissed, since there are cases where tweaks have to be made to the business model to cater to different markets. Abhijeet brought up the example of a regional group buying site, which could adopt the strategy of having more Muslim-friend deals in Indonesia and Malaysia but less in Singapore.

Singapore’s emergence as a budding center of technological innovation has been rapid. Just five years ago, such a gathering would not have been possible. A startup ecosystem, and also angel and venture capital funding, were virtually non-existent then. The government had to build everything from scratch with the belief that entrepreneurship is necessary to keep Singapore a vibrant and progressive economy.

Through a multi-pronged approach of public sector investment in startups, a relaxed immigration policy, and a friendly regulatory environment, Singapore now has a young and vibrant entrepreneurial scene that is among the best in Southeast Asia.

While Abhijeet and Sheel praised the Singapore government for what it has done, they said that the country needs to see more exits so that startups can better attract the best and the brightest.

“Right now, the best people are still drawn to attractive jobs in big companies like Google and Facebook,” said Abhijeet.

While giving employees large stock options is a good way of retaining talent, Singapore lacks the backdrop in the tech space to make this measure effective.

“People need to see one good example of a large exit or IPO to be convinced that joining a startup is the right career move, and that stock options are worth something,” he added.

Nonetheless, Singapore is the perfect place to set up a company to reach the Southeast Asian and regional market due to its talented workforce, top-notch infrastructure, and efficient regulatory system.

A full house listening to Sheel and Abhijeet share about their insights on Asia.

Entrepreneurs in Singapore seem to be cognizant of the potential that exists in the region. Abhijeet has seen many bright entrepreneurs move to the country to set up their companies.

Examples that SGE have featured in the past include Steven Goh of mig33, who was born in Australia, then moved to Silicon Valley before finally shifting his company headquarters to Singapore.

ViKi is a startup founded by an international team in Singapore. Razmig Hovaghimian hails from Egypt while Changseong Ho and Ji-Won Moon are Koreans. They received US$4.3M in series A funding from VC firms and individuals, followed by a series B funding of about US$20M.

Singapore-born entrepreneurs are also spreading their wings far and wide. Tan Min-Liang, formerly a technology lawyer, moved to California to set up Razer in 1998, a gaming hardware company. It recently received US$50M in funding to expand into the China market.

Teo Jia-En started short-term rental site Roomorama in New York after a working stint at Bloomberg. She recently moved back to Singapore to set up an office here with the goal of expanding their presence in the region.

Chalkboard‘s co-founders Saumil Nanvati and Bernard Leong have also done well. The location-based web and mobile platform, which enables businesses to communicate with nearby customers, have expanded beyond Singapore to Malaysia and the US. They now serve close to 5,000 businesses.

These trailblazers have the ambition that goes beyond the small confines of an island — a good sign for Singapore’s young startup ecosystem, and an indication to investors that talented and ambitious entrepreneurs can arise from this country.

“It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years,” Sheel said.

Following the launch of their office in Indonesia last year, they kickstarted their new fund, CyberAgent Asia Internet Fund I. The fund capital will be increased, possibly up to US$15M, which will be proportionately split between Indonesia and Vietnam.

Should CyberAgent fail to find adequate startups to invest in, they will instead set up an incubation office.

Previously, they had set up two offices in Vietnam in 2009, investing in a total of seven Internet service companies.

These moves highlight CyberAgent’s recent focus on Southeast Asia. They already have offices in Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Taipei.

On the challenges of starting a VC fund in Indonesia,  Tahahiro Suzuki, general manager of the Jakarta office, told e27: “We think that they don’t have adequate number of companies to be the role model and sharing their success stories.”

The article also pointed out that technopreneurs there tend to focus too much on their product and ignore other aspects of their business. Failing to create a solid business plan, underestimating the market, lack of innovation and differentiation are other weaknesses.

Which is why they are holding Net-Impact, a conference that updates attendees on the latest internet trends and provides networking opportunities. Net-Impact has already been held in Vietnam, Japan, China, and Taiwan.

CyberAgent Ventures is a subsidiary of CyberAgent, a leading Internet group in Japan.

If you can't smile after signing a deal, chances are that you've been screwed over. Photo: Candie_N

Here’s a situation which some entrepreneurs would go through. They decide to take in an investor or join an incubator program. In front of them, an investor asks for “x” % of equity. The entrepreneurs then speak to different people in the community to get some advice. The opinions will be diverse. They turn to US tech blogs, which give them a totally different picture. All this adds up to a lot of frustration.

Any entrepreneur has to deal with this potential scenario and negotiate in good faith with investors. To help you, here’s a checklist of things to do before getting an investment deal.

Sit down with your co-founders to decide the value of your company.

A lot of entrepreneurs are stuck with this problem. They evade the question subconsciously because it’s one of the hardest questions for any entrepreneur to answer. How do you assign a valuation to your company? Nobody, including you and your co-founders, can decide that value so you need to have an honest and no-feelings-hurt type of discussion with your co-founders.

If you don’t have that value in your mind, don’t sign anything because chances are, no matter what you are going to do, you will regret it.

Here’s how you can do some math for you and your team: First, read and understand how dilution affects you and your startup. Then work out all the scenarios that are associated with rounds of funding that your company will need in order to be sustainable. It is an indicator to have an estimate on how much your ownership of the company (together with your co-founders) will be diluted at the end point before exit.

Yes, a lot of you want to build empires but reality is a bitch. What it comes down to is that you need to assign a value. This article teaches you how investors thinks of their shareholding differently from you and the market capitalization will help you work out the value of your company. Note that you have to do this calculation if you want money from others. Don’t expect others to calculate your valuation for you. If you can’t even do this, you should not be asking for money.

Work out a percentage equity for the investor where you will a) close the deal, b) accept the deal without feeling that you are suckered or c) walk away from the deal

Never walk into a negotiation with one value for your company and only one set amount of equity you’re willing to give away. Let’s do some math here: Say, you get $50K from an investor for 10% of your company. According to your investor, the value of your company is $500K.

For you and your co-founders, you want to give only 5%, i.e you think the company is worth $1M. Now, it is likely that both the investors and you are going to meet halfway (and halfway is not 7.5%). The halfway point is when both your co-founders, your investors, and you are happy.

A potential major roadblock would be that one of the stakeholders in the negotiations feel that they have been short-changed and it is inevitable that there will be tension and conflict in a few months when things go south. To minimize that, make a spreadsheet with a range of equity you are willing to concede to the investor to one decimal point, starting from 5 to 10% (on the x-axis) and associate the valuation of the company. Then carve out & highlight three regions: (a) the region you close the deal and you are happy, (b) the midway point where your team and you don’t feel suckered, and (c) the region that you will walk away.

Decide on the ROI you are setting for your investor

If your investors ask for more equity, the checklist that you want to have is what they can do for you. What are acceptable ROIs? First rule of thumb: do not give anything away if there is no money transaction i.e. if your investor values silly things like introducing you to big corporations as equity exchange, tell him or her to fly kite.

There must be money transaction and the next steps in how he or she will help you. A key difference between Singapore and US is the following: some investors in the US provide real value like setting up your next round of funding, helping you to scale the company with proper hires and closing deals with other companies. In Singapore, as very few investors are entrepreneurs in their past lives, you might be dealing with many investors who are previously bankers, i.e. they are totally clueless and bring no value.

Here’s a takeaway that summarizes what this article is all about: Negotiate in good faith, know your value and close a deal with investors that makes your whole team of founders happy. People will always come and offer you something. If what they offer doesn’t mean anything to you, just walk away.

In a future article, I will address what early-stage investors should look out for in deciding whether to fund a startup.

Professor Dr. Wong Poh Kam here provides an overview of role of Venture Capital and Angel Investors in teh-startups scene in Singapore. It has been republished here with permission. A more detailed version of this will be published in the Annual SVCA Directory 2011/12

High-technology entrepreneurship has been identified as an important driver of Singapore’s knowledge-based economy, and increased policy attention has been given to encouraging the formation and nurturing of high-tech start-ups, especially those with significant intellectual property (IP). To this end, in 2010 the National Research Foundation (NRF) engaged me, as director of the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre, to conduct a study of high-tech start-ups in Singapore. While the survey covers many aspects of the high tech start-up dynamics, including characteristics of the founders, their sources of technology and funding, growth strategies, performance and challenges, this blog highlights some salient findings on only one aspect of the survey: the performance of start-ups that have received funding from venture capitalists or angel investors versus those that did not.

The survey focused on young ventures that started-up or began operations no earlier than 2004 (i.e. companies that were at most five years old in 2009), and that fall within sectors classified as high-technology using a definition adopted by the United States Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), which includes all sectors with proportion of employment in R&D exceeding the average for all sectors. Based on this definition, nine manufacturing sectors and three service sectors categorized at the 2-digit Singapore Standard Industry Classification (SSIC) level are included as high-tech sectors in Singapore.

Based on over 300 responding firms covered by the survey, we estimated that less than 10% of high-tech start-ups in Singapore have received investment from VCs or business angel investors (VCA). The majority of high tech start-ups that did not receive VCA funding reported that they faced two hurdles when attempting to raise funding from VCA. Firstly, they reported that VCA investors tend to impose harsh terms or offer valuations that are too low. Secondly, they reported difficulties in attracting the interest of such investors.

While firms receiving VC/Angel (VCA) investment represent only a small share of tech start-ups in Singapore, the survey results show that VCA-funded firms outperform other start-ups on a number of key indicators.

a) High-tech start-ups that have received VCA investment tend to be more innovative and IP-intensive

Start-ups that have received VCA investment are more likely to conduct in-house R&D (83.3% vs 51.7% for other firms). Correspondingly, they have a higher propensity to develop their own core technologies (88.9% vs 70.5%). They are also more likely to have introduced significant product or process innovations over the preceding three years[1] (76.5% vs 62.5%) and have a greater tendency to possess Intellectual Property (IP) assets (52.9% own/have applied for IP assets vs 11.5% for other firms).

b) High-tech start-ups that have received VCA investment have higher employment growth…

Start-ups that have received VCA investment experienced much higher employment growth rates since their first year of founding (329.8% p.a.) as compared to other start-ups (175.0% p.a.).

c) High-tech start-ups that have received VCA investment had greater growth ambitions

High-tech start-ups receiving VCA investment have a higher propensity to expand their operations to overseas locations (52.9% have overseas-based operations, as compared to 27% of other firms). They also have more ambitious growth targets for the future. Almost three-quarters of VCA-funded firms project growth rates in excess of 20% per annum over the next three years (versus 61.3% of other start-ups).

In summary, our survey of young high tech firms in Singapore show that while less than one in ten of them received VCA investment, those that did get funded by VCA showed higher average employment growth, greater growth ambitions, and tend to be more innovative and IP-intensive. This difference is likely to be due to a combination of the selectivity of VCA investors who chose to invest in more scalable ventures, as well as possibly the value add provided by the VCA investors to the start-ups, enabling them to invest more in technological innovation and to accelerate their path to growth.

About the Author
Dr. Wong Poh Kam [LinkedIn] is a professor, angel investor and consultant. He holds positions at the NUS Business School, (by courtesy) at the NUS Engineering School and LKY School of Public Policy. He is also the Director of the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre. As an angel investor, Dr. Wong has invested in many high-tech firms and sits on the boards of many. His portfolio companies include Invantest, iWow and GlobalRoam. He has consulted widely for international agencies such as the World Bank and ADB, various government agencies in Singapore such as EDB, IDA and A*STAR, as well as many high tech firms in Asia.

Dr. Wong Poh Kam blogs at Connect The Dots@Singapore.

Image credit: visualpanic

Vickers has led the US$9.5M (S$7.36M) Series A round with co-investors, Credit Suisse and Lausanne-based Eurofin Capital. This strategic partnership will bolster Lotaris in the Asian markets and secure growth in resources for both companies.

Lotaris services large mobile software vendors by allowing them to embed technology within their apps that conduct sophisticated data anaysis that gives insights on customer usage patterns. Based on these insights, vendors can decide how best to monetize their app.

Dr Jeffrey Chi, managing director at Vickers: “Lotaris’ strong partnerships with recognized companies, including IT leaders, provide immediate and global credibility. The company’s platform is about to revolutionize the way mobile apps are distributed and activated.”

Robert Tibbs, founder and CEO of Lotaris, said: “The hands-on value of Vickers strategic advice and relationships in Asia and across the globe, and our experience in working with them over the past year convince me of a joint vision that is both long-term and aggressive.”

He added: “The explosive growth in mobile apps demands assertive but sure-footed expansion. This ideal combination of Swiss and Asian capital and influence, combined with truly exceptional new partners will propel us into a leadership position.”

Vickers’ core management team has been working together since 2005, focusing on venture capital investments in Asia. Their track record includes investments in hits like Baidu.com, Focus Media Holding, Kongzhong Corp, and Cambridge Real Estate Investment Trust. In Q2 2011, they invested US$3M (SG$3.7M) in Shanghai-based gaming development house, Spicy Horse, in the second quarter of 2011.

About the author

Julian Abraham Chua is a freelance writer whose works were featured in Strait Times’s Youthink section previously and regularly writes for various magazines including NTUC Lifestyle, Spin Asia, Timeout Singapore and Campus Magazine.  Graduating from Nanyang Polytechnic not too long ago and majoring in business management, he along with his friends, started a company YTY Group and is now an established entreprenuer with his own distribution business in gifts and stationery. His passion for the pen was ignited when he started writing for his polytchinic’s online news portal and interviewed various rising sports stars including footballer Hariss Harun and national gymnast Lim Heem Wei.

SCOOP, which was launched in Indonesia last year, has over 800 magazines, tabloids, and books in its stable.

70 percent of Indonesian magazines have their digital editions on the app, which has so far been downloaded over 120,000 times, making it one of the top ten grossing iPad apps in Indonesia. SCOOP is also available for the iPhone.

Gobi Partners is a venture capital firm headquartered in Shanghai focusing on early stage digital media and technology startups. While it invests primarily in Chinese companies, it has also funded a couple of Singapore-based ones, most notably games developer Time Voyager and media company Xinya.

Mitsui Global Investment is a Tokyo-based investment firm that funds startups mainly from US, China, and Japan in the areas of heathcare, IT, F&B, and retail.

The involvement of these two VC firms indicate Apps Foundry’s interest to develop SCOOP for the Chinese and Japanese markets.

“With their extensive knowledge in their home countries, we will be able to learn from the experience in these other markets and leverage on their networks,” said Willson Cuaca, CEO of Apps Foundry. “We will use the fund to bring in more regional publishers, improve our infrastructure and expand our product range.”

Previous Apps Foundry investors include East Ventures, a Singapore and Indonesia-based VC firm, and Nic Lim, co-founder of Catcha.com, a Malaysian online media company.

SCOOP faces stiff competition from other newsstand apps out in the market.

One example is Zinio, which has over 850 titles available for download. They recently raised around US$20M in funding. Internet giants like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Yahoo also have their own newsstand apps.