Singapore Entrepreneurs

Nov 30, 2007

In Conversation with P.K. Chan, CEO of EditGrid

Last night, I met up with Mr P.K. Chan, the CEO of EditGrid, a Hong Kong web 2.0 company whose main focus is about online enterprise solutions and specializing only on spreadsheets alone. Of course, I took the chance to interview him and ask him several questions about EditGrid and how his company is taking on Zoho, Microsoft and Google on a very competitive market.

BL: Hi P.K, thank you for agreeing to be interviewed on SG Entrepreneurs. Tell us a bit more about your background and what motivated you to start EditGrid?

P.K Chan: My pleasure. Our company TnC started as an event management solution provider and has been on the web technology forefront from day one. Event organisers are intensive spreadsheet users. As we grew more and more accustomed to the industry, we realised that the bulk of the system requirements boil down to one point: convert their piles of Excel spreadsheets into something which allows collaboration by multiple users simultaneously, with permission control and audit trails. And, with the advent of the Web 2.0 trend and Ajax technology, we think that, well, we can do that and create a product instead of develop piecemeal solutions for each enterprise. So we started a protoype, secured funding from Silicon Valley-based angel investors, applied for matching fund from the HKSAR Government, and we were all set to go.

BL: What are the features in EditGrid that singles itself out from Google Spreadsheets, Zoho and even Microsoft (which have declared that they are launching an online version of Office?

P.K Chan: EditGrid’s slogan is “More than Spreadsheets”. On top of the conventional spreadsheet features that advanced users have grown familiar with, including 500+ formula functions, 100+ keyboard hotkeys, drag-and-fill and all flavours of cell and number formatting, EditGrid boasts a wide array of power features that enable users to mash up external data and produce customised outputs:

1. Real-time update (we call it “RTU”): every change is immediately propogated to other users opening the same spreadsheet without user intervention.
2.Remote data: allows user to fetch live stock quote and currency exchange from Yahoo! Finance and other external sources.
3. Access control: one can share the read and write permissions of each spreadsheet to different other users, or set it to private.
4. Revision history: last modification record down to the cell level greatly enhances accountability.
5. EditGrid API: enables partners and customers alike to retrieve data from and write data to EditGrid, and build applications around EditGrid.

BL: Given the competition in the market by Google and Zoho, what are the business strategies you have deployed to overcome the barriers and risks?

P.K Chan: In addition to having the best product on offer, which is widely recognised by industry experts in the know, the uniqueness of EditGrid lies in its business model. Being an individual software developer with a laser-sharp focus in the online spreadsheet arena, we embrace a flexible business model which extends from pure-play SaaS-based subscription model for SMBs, to standard licensing model for larger-scale deployment behind the corporate firewall. We have a dedicated customer support team to provide top-tier customer service. We can go into strategic and profitable business areas which are beyond the reach of the big competitors for strategic reasons.We will continue to innovate to keep the product lead. Real-time update (”RTU”), viewport, remote data and My Data Format (”MDF”) are just a glimpse of the efforts that we have applied to make EditGrid more than just a spreadsheet.

BL: Who are the current users of EditGrid, mainly personal users or corporate users?

P.K Chan: EditGrid is offered free-of-charge to personal users so we have a mix between personal users and enterprise users. Enterprise users mainly come from the US and Europe. We have also secured a couple of important partners and channels in Japan, leading to a good concentration of paying users from Japan as well. For personal users, we are nicely surprised to see a recent surge of usage from Hongkong, largely thanks to two popular spreadsheets which are entirely built by our users to dissemminate financial contents: http://www.editgrid.com/user/wargodriver/adr and http://www.editgrid.com/user/thomaswu0530/all-in-one.

BL: Our favourite question: What are the three traits of an entrepreneur that you believe that one must possess?

P.K Chan:Â

1. Have an open mind and ready to accept and embrace new trends, new technologies, new concepts, new paradigms of thinking — even when they differ from what you have held and when you are being challenged of it.
2. A vision of what the world ought to become, rather than taking the status quo for granted.
3. Persistence till the very end, perspiration to make things happen.

BL: What do you see will be the trends in online enterprise solutions?

P.K Chan: Convergence towards the web will be an irreversible trend. Unlike the 98-00 era, the web really does work this time. The technology is ready. More importantly, people are ready. Mashups and interoperability will be the key towards success and strategic advantage.

BL: How do you find Singapore over your few days of stay here? What do you think of the web 2.0 scene here?

P.K Chan: We are here to represent EditGrid and Hongkong in APICTA 2007, hosted by Singapore this year. We’ve just been awarded the Merit award in
APICTA 2007 today. I am nicely surprised to find that the Singapore government is seriously committed towards building a good infrastructure for the web development here — the city-wide Wifi coverage here is impressive. A good, forward-looking infrastructure like this will bring up new use-cases which were impossible before, and this can only do goods to the industry. We are here to look for strategic partners and distributors and we’re ready to talk to all interested parties.

BL: Congratulations on your merit award. We wish EditGrit the best of luck in the future and we look forward to hear from you again.

References: