Life is just one big game at Demo Asia

There were two major themes in DEMO Asia’s pitch session on social media startups (live blog): gamification and modernizing customer loyalty programs. It’s the battle between start-ups —  those that encourage you to have have fun in your daily life verses those that help you make money.

Keith Ng at GameMaki brought a Angry Bird plushy on stage and challenged the audience to put away their mobile games for real world challenges. He asked the audience to join the game by taking a picture with a DEMO friend and put it up on the GameMaki app, which allows people to see what interesting challenges are taking place around them and easily join in by snapping a picture of the completed activity.

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Live blog: DEMO Asia pitches by social media startups

Check out how these social media companies intend to change the way we live. Companies launching their products in this session are: MeSixty, Wildfire, DropIcon, GameMaki, Sageby, Teamie, Oceans Inc, and Squiryl. Startups doing Alpha Pitches are Burpple and MyManisku. Read more

Q&A with Wildfire: Singapore VC Association’s Most Innovative Company 2011

Wildfire Pte Ltd, a Singapore Word-of-Mouth Marketing company with operations in China, received the Most Innovative Company Award 2011 in the Interactive Digital Media category from the Singapore Venture Capital Association (SVCA) at the annual Gala Dinner event two weeks ago.

SGE wrote about Wildfire (XingXingHuo in Mandarin) before (exactly one year ago!) when they received their Series A.

A few days ago at the TechVenture 2011 Gala Dinner, I happened to sit next to one of the founders, Christoph Zrenner. We got talking and here we catch up on their progress. Read more

Wildfire on Bridging Brands and 40K Consumers in China

While working towards an MBA at INSEAD, Christoph Zrenner and Benjamin Duvall were also busy hatching ideas for a startup. Observing the Chinese market and how international brands were having difficulty reaching out to local consumers, Christoph and Benjamin set about creating Wildfire, aka XingXingHuo, a combination of a proprietary network of influencers and a technology platform that allows brand managers to create authentic word-of-mouth between their target consumers, listening in and impacting conversations between friends, both in the real-world and on internet social media.

Wildfire has worked with some of the biggest consumer brands like Johnson and Johnson, Kraft Foods, Campbell’s Soup Company, and The Coca Cola Company. They just closed their Series A round of SGD 780K (USD 603K) two months ago, led by IDEAS Ventures / Innosight Ventures.

This is a follow up of their first round of angel funding raised over 2009-2010 of SGD 550K (USD 425K) from 12 angels (mostly from Singapore) on a convertible note basis. Read more