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Congratulations – Winners Of Start-Up@Singapore 2009

June 1, 2009 by Start-Up@Singapore  
Filed under Events, Start-Up@Singapore

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S@S

After 3 intense rounds of judging over a period of 8 months, the winners of Start-Up@Singapore 2009 were revealed at the Awards Ceremony on 30 May 2009.

Open Category winner, Zimplistic with their winning invention of the Rotimatic walked away with $40,000. Winner of the Youth Category, E-Thermnity won $10,000 with their baby milk bottle that changes colour according to the temperature of their content.

Open Category

Winner: Zimplistic
1st Runner-up: KAI Square
2nd Runner-up: DGI

Youth Category

Winner: E-Thermnity
Merit: Envite
Merit: Prozo

Team Profiles

Winner (Open): Zimplistic

Chapati or roti is a staple in Indian diet. Yet it can take over 30 minutes to prepare a simple meal of roti. Repeating this at least three times every day is a cumbersome process.

Zimplistic’s invention is an elegant automatic roti-maker set to be the rice cooker of India. With a push of a button, the roti-maker can mix, make and bake rotis from just the addition of water and flour to the machine.

Zimplistic’s founder Pranoti Nagarkar Israni is no stranger to product design. Only in her 20s, she left her job at a leading electronic manufacturer to start-up on her own. She graduated from NUS and majored in mechanical engineering. Zimplistic aims to go one step further by developing more innovations such as the roti-maker, to make every meal more convenient to make and consume.

1st Runner-up (Open): KAI Square
KAI Square has developed a video surveillance platform that leverages on the Teleco infrastructure to change the surveillance landscape, allowing live footages to be transmitted and received securely through 3G/4G networks. More interestingly, these surveillance cameras make use of intelligence analytics such as virtual fencing, intruder detection and face recognition that can instantly notify users upon an alert. This entire setup can be employed using battery or solar cells making them highly mobile, thus enabling users to deploy surveillance systems in any location effectively.

KAI Square’s founders Neo Shi Yong and Victor Goh Hai Kiat are no strangers to innovation. They have won the Tan Kah Kee Young inventor award and were part of the champion team of the Star Challenge Search 2008.

2nd Runner-up (Open): DGI
Chronic liver disease such as hepatitis is a problem globally and liver cancer is Singapore’s 3rd most prevalent cancer. Two A*STAR technopreneurs have come forward with their latest development – a revolutionary biophotonic and computer-assisted diagnosis technology, Histo-Index™ that will significantly improve the efficiency and reduce the cost and time needed for pathological diagnosis, clinical research and drug development.

DGI is founded by Dr. Dean Tai, a postdoctoral in IBN and who has extensive R&D experience developing many biomedical imaging equipments and also co-founded StudentShop Ltd in New Zealand, and Dr. Gideon Ho, currently Assistant Vice President in the biomedical sciences division of Exploit Technologies

Winner (Youth): E-Thermnity
Team E-Thermnity takes baby-care to the next level with their product Chromi – a series of non-toxic, light-weight and durable baby milk bottles that incorporate several special features to aid caregivers and parents as well as to keep the infant safe.

With a strong background in engineering, marketing and research, NTU undergraduate students Brendan Goh, Tsang You Jun and graduate Fan Shufen have identified a practical problem faced by parents and formulated an interesting and innovative solution that addresses this immediate need.

Merit Prize (Youth): Envite
The youthful team of 16 to 18 year-olds from Raffles Institution aims to make buying and selling eTickets easy for both event attendees and organizers. Envite identifies that eTickets are now the preferred means of ticket sales with paper tickets becoming more obsolete. The team hopes to bring convenience, accessibility and cost-effectiveness to the process of ticketing. Envite also provides value-added services such as providing organizers real-time statistical reports on their ticket sales and even an online community for users to network within the portal.

Merit Prize (Youth): ProZo
Eric Hu, Alexander Chan, Jensen Tan and Sylvanus Quek, four highly enthusiastic research-oriented students from Hwa Chong Institution, have developed an advanced and breakthrough technology known as ProZo, that effectively eliminates frequent use of cleaning agents in homes and hospitals.

This technology utilizes nano zinc oxide to create a coating that can be used to give medical healthcare appliances, surgical tools and even the floor, a long lasting anti-bacterial layer.

SGEntrepreneurs.com is the official blog of Start-Up@Singapore, the premier national business plan competition.

Related posts:

  1. Finalists of Start-Up@Singapore 2009
  2. Start-Up@Singapore 2010 Crowns Its Winners
  3. Aftermath of the 7th Start-Up@Singapore Finals
  4. 11 Finalists for this 11th Start-Up@Singapore
  5. Start-Up@Singapore Young Entrepreneurs Workshop – Make Ideas Happen!

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Comments

  • Oh, Kris from NEC? Hey, nice seeing you here :)

    abc, i think kai square has good technologies, but need to polish business? IMHO, I felt their business can scale better than zimplistic and higher barrier of entry as well. (Disclaimer: I know them personally )
  • Stanley Tay
    S@S is truly a worthwhile event in Singapore which SPARKS ideas, innovations and *of course* great presentations from the start-ups. My take - instead of debating on the likelihood of business success, perhaps its not too late to compare our start-ups and their "products" with competitions of similar nature in Europe and *of course* USA ??? All start-ups would think that our ideas and "products" are world-class and "sure make it!", but lets sit back and evaluate our stuff against stuff in other parts of the world. Should we not benchmark ourselves against the best if we want to be the FIRST IN THE WORLD ? DGI - good to know that some "start-ups" started cooking in government agencies, while others started from basically nothing.
  • abc
    any one with any comments on the runner-up kai square?
  • Kris
    Hi Sean: I am a marketing advisor and helped with some of the strategy and positioning work on the product. I agree that Christofer did not propose he has an idea, my point was in the spirit of "light one candle rather than curse the darkness". I would love to see more and better ideas, presentations and, agreeing with Arun, teams coming out of S@S.

    BTW, Sean, think you and I may have met - over beers, at United Square - or am I misremembering.
  • Arun
    I think that more than the idea itself, it's the people behind the idea that count. Good ideas are dime a dozen. Good people, not so much.
  • Dear Kris,

    Congratulation and you must be a really good advisor. (btw, on what aspect you advise?)

    Regards to your last part about asking Christofer what idea he has, I think that is really funny. Personally, I do not think you need a business idea in order to criticize other people's one. Soccer fans do not play soccer but criticize alot right?

    Anw, he did not say he has a superb idea which he think is better than everyone, right?

    So when are we seeing the chapati-maker in the market? I will get one to support local startup, but i will buy if its less than 80 sgd and is as simple as making toast bread :)
  • Kris
    Hi Christofer:

    I was Pranoti's advisor going into S@S although a number of people helped her. I thought she did a spectacular job conceptualizing, prototyping and selling her ideas.

    While I think I should step to Pranoti's defense, I will not respond with the same vitriolic (look it up) that you used. But let me just say that your criticisms are unfounded and *of course* she won't show some of the real, subtle innovations in her product in a public contest. Industrial grade chapati makers are only an alternative if your family wants to spend US$50K and eats 1,000 chapati an hour! Industrial chapati quality is also not so good I hear.

    Zimplistic was a surprise winner and they may be the first S@S winner to break the $10M annual revenue "ceiling" you observed.

    But rather than argue over such an inane issue - let me know what is YOUR big idea for a product. If it has merit, perhaps we can help YOU to win the next S@S.

    Warm regards,

    Kris
  • Hi Christofer,

    Thanks for your reply.
    I still do not understand why you feel Phokki does not deserve to win. Can you share with us who are the players in the market that Phokki is in from your opinion?

    Perhaps you are right that some of the ideas are better, but most importantly, it is how you present and execute it in the competition.

    Those that did not win, did they carry on to bring their ideas to reality? If not, why not? Just trying their luck or do not believe in their idea that much?

    And of cos i will do whatever I think its right la, but hearing more feedbacks can help us improve better.

    Thanks :)
  • whoa! you picked it up fast. Sean.
    Well, Listen please.

    First of all I didnt mean to unleash a personal attack on you or any other past winners.
    Also it is not my aim to discourage/or say nasty things about you or any other budding entrepreneurs.

    Just that 1) I see other players do things better in the market.
    2)or felt sometimes other contestants in the competition were better.
    3)or dont see some of the ideas being very successful.
    Again, these are just my opinions and I could be wrong just as anyone.
    Even Google was rejected by very knowledgeable VCs and buyers before they became successful.

    So In summary, you do whatever you think is right
    and I would love to see someone from Startup@SG
    being very successful and prove me wrong.

    Good luck.
  • Hey Christofer,

    Nice! I have been waiting for someone to shoot such message to us. Tell me more of why you think we are doing silly things?

    Say nasty things if you need to, I love to hear that than just cliche encouragements. Say it here or email me if you want to :) I totally dun mind.

    my emai is here sean[at]phokki.com

    From
    Sean Seah
    Phokki.com - the company you think is silly
  • Its shame that Zimplistic won the startup @ sg.

    1. A Product which will never hit the market

    2. Its not that people have never thought about a chapathi maker. A family makes a max 20 chapathi's a day and to clean a machine like this after making 20 chapathis is a nightmare.
    Which is why the Press and Heat chapathi makers are only popular for home market in India. and that too for < 50 $.
    Oh btw, industrial grade chapathi makers already available for hotels and restaurants.

    3.Zero Zilch in competitive advantages. Basically some electric motors and a heating element. Any Tom,Dick & Harry reproduce it for less than 50 bucks from china compared to 300$ for which Zimplistic is offering it for.(if the product is succesful, which i dont think it will be.)

    4. A patent for a bunch of motors and a heating element. Pranoti You are joking . Right?

    5.There is no wonder, that in the 10 year history of startup @ sg , there is not a single company which is successful or made atleast 10M$ revenue pa. All the time judges( or jokers?) select silly companies as winners. Look at last year winner phokki.com
  • Congrats
    just saw kai square's name on the recent papers about some other awards they won, and stumbled here after searching about them~ perhaps they will be the one who can really make singapore proud and show us what it means to be true entreprenuers.

    Chris, your point 5 may be proven wrong, but perhaps not by Zimplistic this time (which i simply dunno what it does, or what value it has, what the heaven is chapathi?! is it a "must have" thing or a want? how come i dunno what it is?)
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