Currently, business travelers are restricted to wifi access in the hotel, which often allows connection to one device, or they have to purchase a local 3G SIM card, which can have prohibitive costs. The hardware consists of a compact wifi router with a SIM card embedded within, giving customers hassle-free access to the Internet while on the go.

But their product purports to do more: Customers would not need to deal with a new mobile carrier when they visit a new country, since they now only need to register with LeapSky.

Besides travelers, partner operators would also benefit, since Leapsky would need to purchase 3G and Wifi bandwidth from them.

The company, which was incubated at the Singapore Management University Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, had also received seed funding from the Singapore government’s ‘Spring TECS-POV‘ grant.

The product is set for launch in the last quarter of this year.

This funding will be managed by SPRING SEEDS Capital, under a new Biomedical Sciences Accelerator (BSA) programme. They will select up to two BSA operators. High-potential med-tech start-ups will be identified, evaluated, financed and managed as well as to better commercialised the intellectual property developed in the sector by the selected operators.

Within the biomedical science industry, medical technology is one of the key sectors of Singapore economy. According to TodayOnline, the med-tech industry employs more than 13,000 people and contributes 10% to Singapore’s total manufacturing output.

Image Credit: zhouxuan12345678

Anafore’s referral marketing solution plugs into a merchant’s existing e-commerce platform such that after a purchase has been completed, the buyer receives a coupon from the merchant with a discount that can be used at the online store. The buyer then shares this coupon with her friends to give them a time-limited opportunity to purchase the merchant’s products at a discount.

Merchants can then track the referrals made using Anafore’s solution online:

Ecommerce platforms currently being supported include Amazon, bigcartel, Etsy, Magento, Shopify and Volusion.

Started in 2009 by principal founder and CEO Dinesh Raju, Anafore had previously raised a pre-seed round under the iJAM programme by the Interactive Digital Media programme office (IDMPO) with the incubator SiTF (Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation).

Dinesh says, “The rise of social networking gives us an unprecedented ability to connect merchants and buyers more efficiently and make irrelevant ads a thing of the past. We’re excited about this partnership with BAF Spectrum which gives us an incredible opportunity to realize this vision.”

As part of the investment round, BAF Spectrum’s William Klippgen (Executive Director) and Sanjeev Shah (Managing Director) have joined Anafore’s Board of Directors.

“Anafore is on the cutting edge of smart, online marketing solutions. They provide a compelling value to any online merchant by instantly increasing sales. We plan to work with the strong founding team to develop a suite of next-generation social network-powered tools to improve further the way buyers and sellers interact online”, said William Klippgen, Executive Director of BAF Spectrum. Mr. Klippgen is one of the co-founders of European shopping mega-portal Kelkoo (acquired by Yahoo!) and is leading BAF Spectrum’s investment portfolio in digital media start-ups.

The Emerging Enterprise 2011 is co-presented by The Business Times and OCBC Bank, and supported by RSM Chio Lim, SPRING Singapore, NUS Extension, Acorn Marketing & Research, and SingTel.

Past winners have included KAI Square (2010) and Scrawl Studios (2008)

Prizes

3 top winners each receive:

+ S$150,000 in cash
+ S$90,000 worth of professional services and training programmes
+ Support from SPRING Singapore in capability development

2 winners will also stand to win S$30,000 worth of prizes for the “Best Innovation Award”

Qualifying Criteria

All applicants should meet the following criteria:

• Be registered as a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited partnership or private limited company in Singapore.
• Be at least 30% owned by Singaporeans or Singapore Permanent Residents.
• Have no more than 20% in corporate shareholding. The net tangible asset of the corporate shareholder shall not be more than S$50 million.
• Meet annual sales turnover of not more than S$10 million as at the last financial year.
• Have at least 1 year but not more than 10 years of business operations.
• Have fixed assets of not more than S$15 million.
• Employ no more than 200 employees.

Judging Panel

Mr Alvin Tay, Editor, The Business Times

Mr George Lee, Head, Group Investment Banking, OCBC Bank

Mr Tan Chor Sen, Head, Emerging Business, OCBC Bank

Ms Chew Mok Lee, Group Director (Entrepreneurship & Innovation), SPRING Singapore

Mr James Tay, Director, NUS Extension

Mr Lim Lee Meng, Senior Partner, RSM Chio Lim LLP

Mr Danny Lai, Country Business Manager, Singapore, Acorn Marketing and Research

Mr Dumas Chin, Vice President, Business Sales, SingTel

Timeline

18 January 2011 Call for submissions

31 March 2011 Submission deadline

18 April 2011 Verification, review and shortlisting of entries

25 April 2011 Finalists are notified

27 May 2011 Briefing to finalists on final judging requirements

2 & 3 June 2011 Final judging

Results will be kept confidential until the award ceremony.

Late June 2011 Award ceremony gala dinner

Now, SPRING Singapore has released details on the Angel Investors Tax Deduction Scheme.

“Under the scheme, an approved angel investor who commits a minimum of $100,000 of equity investment in a qualifying start-up within a given year shall enjoy a tax deduction at the end of a two-year holding period based on 50% of his investment costs, subject to a cap of $500,000 of investments in each Year of Assessment (YA).”

For Angels

Criteria

A key thing that an eligible angel investor must be able to do is to “demonstrate the ability to nurture investee companies”. To help judge this, one must be either one of these three:

(1) Experienced angel investor with at least 3 years of experience in early-stage investments; OR
(2) Experienced/serial entrepreneur with at least 5 years of entrepreneurial track record; OR
(3) Senior management professional/executives with at least 8 years of corporate senior management experience

An approved investor will be given the approval status for at least 12 months, following which, the status will have to be renewed.

Reporting

The angel investor must:

- Update SPRING every half-yearly for investments made during the qualifying period
- Submit Annual Reports of investment activities to SPRING in such template and timeline as may be required by SPRING.

Investee Company-related Criteria

Eligible Investee Companies

- On the date of first investment, the investee company must be a Private Limited Company incorporated in Singapore for no more than 3 years and have business operations in Singapore.

- On the date of first investment, the company does not have any individual shareholder who is a relative of the approved investor.

Board Seat

The approved investor is required to take up a board seat / advisory role for the entire holding period of the investment (minimum 2 years). There are some exceptions and waivers.

Limit of Total Shareholding

The approved investor should possess no more than 50% shares of any investee company within the two-year holding period and; this also takes into account the potential shareholding should a convertible loan be converted into shareholding.

Qualifying Investments

Investments that are made between 1 March 2010 to 31 March 2015, are qualified.

The approved investor must commit at least S$100,000 within 12 months from date of becoming an approved investor.

Investments co-funded by SPRING Start-up Enterprise Development Scheme (SPRING SEEDS) and Business Angel Funds (BAF) are not eligible under the scheme.

For more details, check SPRING’s site or contact SPRING at (65) 6279 3191 or angel_scheme@spring.gov.sg.

For Startups: Where Can You Find These Angels?

One place you can start is by heading over to the Business Angels Network (Southeast Asia) (BANSEA).

Image courtesy of Bert K.

In the real world, you need about two weeks to work out the stage from ideas generation to execution. Here is how I will break it down for you using 2 weeks:

• Day 1 – Day 4: Sketch your ideas within the first four days on the industry you focused. Try to brainstorm without constraints and work out all possible ideas you have. The key is to make sure that you have enough ideas to be eliminated in the next stage.
• Day 5 – Day 7: From the list you have brainstormed, decide on the top 3 ideas which you think will succeed.
• Day 8 – Day 11: Do your market research, surveys and reading secondary data on your industry. One important thing is to make sure that you end up getting the final idea. Make sure you talk to people in the industry whether they are from an MNC and start-up.
• Day 12 – Day 14: Focus on the last idea you have eliminated and work out the timeline and milestones so that you can get a prototype to market within 6-8 weeks from this date.

So good luck in generating your ideas for the start-up. :)

Update: We have 6 finalists!

The last 15 semi-finalists will be provided with funding up to $15K to develop their product or service with the assistance of mentors provided by the business challenge. Here are their team names:

• Care Inc.

Care Inc is a solution provider for Indian hospitals to eliminate medical errors caused due to nurse negligence with the right help of a middle wear application. Delivering Right Patient, Right Drug, Right Dose, Right Time and Right Root of Administration.

• Catch the Crowd

A new power in interactive ‘on-the-road’ crowd engagement!

We help brands/institutions catch the attention of the crowds by offering an interactive brand immersion experience through the innovative application of technologies like SMS and dynamic displays.

Our main focus is to provide companies/institutions interaction with the people ‘on-the-road’. ‘On-the-road’ engagement refers to interaction in locations/situations where it is not possible to interact with a large number of people directly using traditional media.

Our flagship product – CrowdMagnet – consists of a dynamic digital display which is made interactive through the use of SMS. Advertisers will be able to run simple campaigns like games, surveys and quizzes that capture the attention of the crowds and expose them to their brands.

By providing an immersive and interactive experience that the consumer chooses to take part in, CrowdMagnet enables the brand to reach the crowd in an engaging, fun and non-intrusive manner. Additionally, the advertiser is also able to obtain crucial consumer data gathered from surveys and polls.

• Coating Concepts

Coating Concepts Pte Ltd is founded by Kevin Tan and Cai Fei, both are final year undergraduates from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Nanyang Technological University Singapore. With inspiration and guidance from Professor Huang Yizhong, the founders are committed in turning their innovative coating technologies into products. The company is funded by SPRING Singapore.

The first product is a coating poised to be commercialised designed to enable self lubrication in high speed cutting operations. The company’s vision is to provide state of the art coating solutions for industrial and consumer applications.

• Forget Boundaries

Forget Boundaries is a team of passionate and experienced travellers. Aadil, an NTU engineering undergraduate, has extensive experience in sales and management as a financial consultant with Prudential. Syazanah is an SMU graduate, specialized in marketing and psychology. Zafirah and Adeline are NUS graduates with respective strengths in finance and market research; and public relations and events management. Faisal, an SIM computer science undergraduate, is excellent in website development and programming. He completed numerous assignments such as one for the New Zealand Embassy. Zafirah, Adeline and Syazanah are working full-time on Forget Boundaries.

Forget Boundaries aims to change the landscape of travel. We provide opportunities for youth to explore sustainable and responsible travel. Our platform presents a unique and interactive experience for users to put together their travel itineraries. Users can map their travels and share the memories by creating digital scrapbooks of their travel photos and videos.

• Full Water

Full Water is a functional drinks company that is in the business of making low calorie, fat free, vitamin enhanced water. Our mission is to develop and supply a leading brand of next generation functional drinks to the Asia-Pacific market, with the aim of promoting healthy eating practices and improve the health and wellbeing of youths and working professionals.

Our team is a passionate, intellectually diverse, and coachable team comprised of four founders with backgrounds in the engineering, business, health and chemistry.

• GIVE.SG

Team GIVE hopes to inspire a social movement for good. Our website, www.GIVE.sg is here to help you get involved and make a big difference. You can build a shelter and feed the homeless children. You can preserve our dying forest and protect endangered animals. Together, we can change the world. Stand up and be part of the solution. For my birthday, I’m celebrating by getting my friends to make a gift to children education. I love to run so I’m challenging a marathon to raise funds for breast cancer. Next holiday, I’m having a dinner party and serving only vegetables to encourage my friends to eat healthy and go green for our environment.

• i-Free

iFree is founded by Mr Aung, Mr Li and Mr Wang. We specialize in electronic devices design and development. Mr Aung is in charge of business plan, marketing research and customer analysis. Mr Li is specialized in product control. Mr Wang is in charge of technical support and product development.

iFree provides a platform that combines computer vision, computer graphics and GUI interface design. Our products have potential applications in areas such as banking, automobiles, health and education. We aim at changing the life style, improving the living standard and connecting the people. Company spirit: “You are all set”.

• In Vitro

In Vitro Pte Ltd is a technology company founded by a group of NTU students who use their expertise to develop innovative lifestyle products like “Plant-in-a-Bottle”.

Our flagship product “Plant-in-a-Bottle”, has empowered customers with the ability to own a plant, that actually grows, WITHOUT THE NEED TO WATER OR MAINTAIN!

We are currently developing a spinoff product by adding functions to improve your well-being and quality of life at your personal space!

In Vitro promotes green conservationism, using recycled or reused materials to make their products which are alive, attractive and affordable while keeping it hassle-free!

• Joint Tech

Total knee replacement (TKR) surgery is the only solution for thousands of patients severely afflicted by osteoarthritis each year. The knee joint, consisting of the femoral head, tibial condyles and patella, is replaced by two or three prosthetic implants during a typical surgical procedure.

Currently, surgeons rely on experiences and visual observation to align the prosthetic knee. TKR surgery’s malalignment leads to fast wear-out of the tibial spacer and a consequential early revision surgery to replace this component.

Using JointTech’s real-time pressure-mapping system, surgeons can assess the pressure distribution at the bones’ interface. As prosthetic knees are aligned more easily and accurately, their longevity is improved.

With the first mover’s advantages and great market trend, JointTech has huge potential to be the world-leading company in pressure sensing technology for joint replacement surgeries. More importantly, thousands of people’s lives will be better with the development of this product.

• Manga Castle

Manga Castle is the most exciting, entertaining and engaging e?commerce platform for manga fans. Online shopping has never been more fun!

Look out for many features that generate interest-excitement! Play games and earn discounts? Meet people who share your passion? It’s all possible at Manga Castle.

Our team is truly amazing. Wu Di is the web guru armed with five years of industrial experience in web and game development as well as search engine optimization. Yao Xiaohui Sylvia is the business mind who is totally into marketing and social media.

• Outliers

Our web application, Wishii, is a wish list and events calendar hybrid that’ll both notify you of important events, and suggests not just appropriate gifts to buy, but also the best (cheapest) place to buy it.”

• Paredigm

Currently focused on developing innovative green printing solutions, Paredigm has attempted to address the massive expenditure incurred by corporate houses and educational institutes, on purchasing paper and managing waste. By launching our twin pioneering products GraphitonTM and ErasonTM, we aim to make laser printed paper reusable.

Graphiton is a unique erasable dry toner catering to the laser printing market, while Erason is a one touch automated machine developed to erase paper which has been printed using Graphiton. The idea is to enable users to print on fresh paper using Graphiton, use it like they normally do and ultimately retrieve the fresh paper by passing the used paper through Erason.

Paredigm is a team of five highly motivated and entrepreneurially minded individuals hailing from diverse academic backgrounds. A good blend of technical knowledge and business acumen will definitely stand us in good stead, allowing us to develop unique yet commercially viable products.

• Phoenix

We are a humble pair of recent graduates from the Communications and New Media and Electrical Engineering fields. We were both from NUS’s Raffles Hall, and Phoenix is the mascot of our Hall. It symbolizes the never say die spirit that is embodied by each and every Rafflesian. We hope that we can bring forward our synergy to the next level with this entrepreneur start up.

While we are in the process of patenting our business idea, we hope to share our simple but innovative online service with everyone soon.

• Soyato

Love soy milk and frozen dessert? How about combining the best of both worlds?

Introducing SOYATO! Made fresh with soy milk, SOYATO features a new category of frozen dessert- FROZEN SOY, which unlike ice cream, is low in fat, lactose and free of cholesterol. FROZEN SOY also misses out on the tartness of frozen yogurt, which makes it more palatable for our Asian tongues. It makes a perfect dessert for weight watchers and high-cholesterol patients, so you’ll never be deprived of your favourite frozen dessert again!

What’s more, SOYATO creates FROZEN SOY with many different flavours, so you get to eat your favourite chocolate-flavoured frozen dessert without the guilt of calories and cholesterol! Look out for this sin-less and tasty frozen soy dessert. SOYATO- Indulge the healthy way!

• Tinkrbox

Tinkrbox makes sense of internet hyperlinks by converting links to actual content so you can access the content right in your Tinkrbox. Looking back in time, internet links give you one piece of information per link. Today, Tinkrbox allows you to put together different types of media; allowing you to simultaneously see, hear and read on your interested topic.

At Tinkrbox, you can easily collect and enjoy your favorite stuff in customizable boxes that can be accessed anywhere with an internet connection. Create mashups of your favorite items (i.e. websites, videos, images, flash games, documents, etc) and share them effortlessly to friends via Facebook, Twitter and instant messengers.

We wish them all the best for the next round of competition and will look forward to hear from the Ideas.Inc organizers in the coming year.

Update: We have 6 finalists!

This Executive Summary workshop aims to not merely guide participants in the technical requirements of preparing an executive summary; far more importantly, it gives you a better understanding of what entrepreneurship is about, and how you can build an enterprise that is sustainable is every sense of the word. The workshop will also highlight important points that investors and “judges” look for in an executive summary. In short, it will help you to propel you idea further with a clear purpose!

The Executive Summary workshops will be facilitated by Dr Bernard Leong, who is co-founder of SGEntrepreneurs.com [yes, that's us]. He is an investor for early stage Interactive Digital Media companies as a partner of Thymos Capital. He has been a judge on business plan competitions at NUS, NTU, INSEAD and was formerly an advisor to Start-Up@Singapore business plan competition.

Date: Saturday, 24th Oct 2009
Time: 1-7.30pm
Venue: 100 Victoria Street, Level 5, Imagination Room, National Library Singapore

RSVP here.

Expected number of participants is 60 and attendance is only by RSVP.

For more information on the Ideas.Inc competition organized by Nanyang Technopreneurship Centre, NTU and SPRING, please go to the main site.

This Executive Summary workshop aims to not merely guide participants in the technical requirements of preparing an executive summary; far more importantly, it gives you a better understanding of what entrepreneurship is about, and how you can build an enterprise that is sustainable is every sense of the word. The workshop will also highlight important points that investors and “judges” look for in an executive summary. In short, it will help you to propel you idea further with a clear purpose!

The Executive Summary workshops will be facilitated by Dr Bernard Leong, who is co-founder of SGEntrepreneurs.com [yes, that's us]. He is an investor for early stage Interactive Digital Media companies as a partner of Thymos Capital. He has been a judge on business plan competitions at NUS, NTU, INSEAD and was formerly an advisor to Start-Up@Singapore business plan competition.

Date: Saturday, 12th Sept 2009
Time: 9.30 am – 4.00pm
Venue: Nanyang Technopreneurship Center, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), 50 Nanyang Drive, Research Techno Plaza, 2nd Storey, BorderX Block

RSVP here.

Expected number of participants is 50 and attendance is only by RSVP.

For more information on the Ideas.Inc competition organized by Nanyang Technopreneurship Centre, NTU and SPRING, please go to the main site.