This article was republished with permission from the author’s blog.
“What are you doing here in (insert country), you should be in Silicon Valley.”
Do these words sound familiar to you?
In Asia, it’s very common for Founders with great ideas to either run their companies in boot strap mode or relocate to Silicon Valley. Even great talent is expected to take huge pay cuts when they join a startup.
We don’t need a scientist to figure out the primary cause of this issue. This is primarily because of the scarcity of risk capital in Asia. Entrepreneurs with good ideas have to slog for cash. One key factor that gives wings to the dreams of most Silicon Valley startups is the free flow of capital that lets them dream big…really big.
Silicon Valley is blessed with excess capital. And, that is probably why failure is embraced.
But how do they get that kind of money? What is the source? Who are these Limited Partners (LP)? Read more
Filed under Funding, Special Commentary, Venture Capital & Private EquityTags: indonesia, Innosight Ventures, Malaysia, Philippines, piyush chaplot, Singapore, SingTel, Southeast Asia, thailand
SingTel announced in a press release today that it is acquiring GTW Holdings, the owners of HungryGoWhere, Singapore’s most visited foodie site, for S$12M (US$9.4M).
The site, which was started in 2007, has a presence in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Australia. Under the terms, GTW will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of SingTel. It will merge operations with inSing.com, another SingTel subsidiary with an audience of two million customers.
With the purchase, SingTel claims it has the largest food and lifestyle audience in the island state.
GTW’s Singapore-based founders will play a crucial role in growing SingTel’s services in Singapore and beyond. Read more
Filed under Featured, Innovation & Technology, Mobile, News Stop, TechnologyTags: Australia, Cambodia, dennis goh, gtw, GTW Holdings, Hong Kong, hungrygowhere, inSing, M&A, Malaysia, SingTel, Start-Up@Singapore, vietnam
SingTel, Southeast Asia’s largest mobile carrier, is looking to potentially acquire non-phone businesses in China and India, in a move away from slow-growth markets in Singapore and Australia, reported Bloomberg.
In a statement released last week, the phone company mentioned that it may raise its stakes in its Asian and African associaties, as well as make other “strategic investments”. The company also reported a 30 percent jump in fourth-quarter profit, at S$1.29B (US$1B), in the three months preceding 21st March. Read more
[a•mo•bee] Acquires Adjitsu – 3D Mobile Ads from Amobee on Vimeo.
Amobee, a US-based digital advertising company owned by SingTel, has announced today the acquisition of AdJitsu, the standalone 3D mobile advertising business unit of Cooliris.
This purchase enables Amobee to leverage on AdJitsu’s technology to create greater innovation in 3D mobile ads. Amobee will also collaborate with ad networks, premium publishers, brands and agencies to create 3D ad units. Read more
Mobile advertising has taken on a whole new level with Amobee, mobile ad platform company responsible for defining mobile advertising, announcing an exclusive partnership with AccuWeather, the world’s leading multimedia weather information source.
A division of SingTel’s Digital L!fe Group which focuses on creating new digital growth engines, Amobee offers comprehensive, end-to-end mobile advertising solutions and services for advertisers, publishers and operators worldwide while AccuWeather on the other hand, is an innovator in mobile advertising by making its mobile inventory, mobile applications and mobile web highly contextual by providing over 100 weather, lifestyle and location attributes for advertisers to choose from.
With its US$321 million acquisition of Amobee last month, SingTel has set its sights on expanding into the mobile marketing arena, especially in the area of one-to-one connections between brands and consumers. Read more
SingTel, Southeast Asia’s largest phone company, has announced this week that it has agreed to purchase US-based digital ads company Amobee for US$321M. Singtel aims to introduce products from Amobee to its customers within a year.
Amobee’s flagship product is an end-to-end advertising platform for publishers, advertisers, and operators. They’ve recently made a push into Asia, announcing partnerships with advertising companies in Vietnam and Indonesia. Read more
Philippines telecom operator Globe has partnered with Singapore counterpart SingTel to bring MyAppsMall, a cross-platform mobile app store, to Globe prepaid and postpaid subscribers in the Philippines, reported ABS-CBN.
The app store contains over 20,000 free and paid apps, which includes categories like games, social networks, Internet browsers, lifestyle, news, entertainment, and more. The app can be accessed via a web browser on both PC and mobile. Read more
The SingTel exCiteTV workshop is happening this Friday. The participants can learn more about the platform and learn how to develop interesting TV apps and monetize them through the exCite TV Store.
Event Details
When: Friday, 25th November 2011
Time: 2pm-5pm
Where: IDC Asia Project Lab, Block 20, Level 3/53 , School of Enginnering, 21 Tampines Ave 1 Singapore 529757 (Map)
Register here
Updated: 21th September 2011, 8:17pm Singapore time.
SingTel, Singapore’s largest telco company, has acquired the intellectual property rights to Singapore-based OrSiSo‘s flagship social media dashboard for an undisclosed sum. The app aims to organize and simplify the user’s online social life.
Read more
With electronic bills slowly entering mainstream usage, GreenPost hopes to aggregate all your digital bills into one place for convenient viewing. Users would need to register for an account on the website (or through their iPhone, iPad, and Android app) and link the respective service providers — like your phone company for instance — with GreenPost. After that, the bills will appear on the GreenPost website or app. Read more
Filed under Innovation & Technology, Mobile, TechnologyTags: 3mobile, Android, astro, citylink, digi, digital bills, electronic bills, green startups, greenpost, iPad, iPhone, M1, maxi, NUSS, optus, paperless, singpower, SingTel, Starhub, tnb
