SingTel continues shopping spree, acquires HungryGoWhere for US$9.4M

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

First-ever, livestream-only Digital Fashion Week could democratize fashion

This October, Singapore will play host to the first-ever Digital Fashion Week (DFW), a fashion show that sets itself apart by being livestream-only — a first in fashion history, touts the organizers.

This means that you won’t see any front row VIPs scrutinizing the models up close. Yes, no Anna Wintour-type tastemakers or wealthy celebrities.

In addition, this fashion week will let live viewers pre-order their favorite looks immediately after they spot it on the runway, and have it delivered to their doorstep within weeks. The show will feature the Spring/Summer 2013 collections from Singapore’s distinguished designers, as well as an unannounced guest designer.

DFW is a company set up by Keyis Ng and Charina Widjaja, and both used to work under Singapore celebrity singer Dick Lee in the advertising industry. Keyis also runs STORM Creative Events Agency, a public relations company. Read more

KDDI and Global Brain wants to fund young startups worldwide

The KDDI Open Innovation Fund, a 5 billion Yen (US$63M) corporate venture capital fund from Japan, is seeking to invest in promising mobile startups in the seed and growth stage. Read more

Shedding light on future mobile and wireless trends at UNWIRED 2012

Hear it from the industry leaders.

As mobile broadband adoption continues unabated in 2012, the telecom industry is facing a new era of opportunity and challenges to deliver a smooth experience in the increasingly important mobile cloud.

Listen to the chief protagonists in Singapore and Southeast Asia, from Google, StarHub, HP, Tellabs, Samsung and other distinguished speakers discuss a way forward, as apps demand increasingly more resources on networks as well as spectrum.

How can telcos deliver a smoother experience for consumers? Will there be enough spectrum to cater to machine-to-machine communications in future? Can users enjoy a truly unified interface for cloud services on the phone, tablet and PC?

Returning in its third year, Singapore’s independent seminar on future mobile and wireless trends, UNWIRED Conference 2012 will shed light on these issues. There will also be a demo of the first Windows 8 devices this year.

In previous events, more than 160 telecom executives, developers, academics, analysts and journalists participated in highly-interactive interactive discussions with panelists who shared their in-depth knowledge and experiences with the audience.

When: Thursday May 31, 2012
Time: 1pm – 5.30pm
Where: Angsana 3F, Level 3, Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre, 10 Bayfront Avenue, Singapore 018956

Register here.

Chatworthy lets you see nearby Instagram posts, in full retina glory

The last time we saw mobile app Chatworthy was at DEMO Asia 2012, where Keeran Janin, co-founder of Brunei startup MeSixty, gave a pitch about the product they’re developing (watch a short video interview with Keeran at DEMO Asia).

Now, they have launched the iPad app as a public beta. Chatworthy lets users view and interact with any Instagram post around them. They can also select the location of the Instagram posts they want to view.

Users can then share these posts or chat privately with their friends. Other features of the app include: Read more

Squiryl seeks to do for loyalty cards what Google did for ads

Loyalty cards are inefficient and generate a lot of waste. Even digital ones. A while ago, I was at a music shop and decided to preorder a music album for a friend.

To my delight, I received two chops on Perx, a loyalty card app I recently featured. But to my dismay, I was eight chops away from getting my reward. And it’s extremely unlikely I’ll step into the store ever again — I’m just not an avid music listener.

Here’s the problem with loyalty cards: They don’t always capture loyal customers. And when they don’t, they’re a burden to merchants.

This is a problem Singapore-based startup Squiryl hopes to solve. Unlike other loyalty card apps, it allows users to swap stamps — or acorns, in their lingo — with one another.

Suppose I have two acorns at a restaurant I’ll never visit again. I can use the Trades feature to exchange acorns with others by putting up an offer. For example, I can offer two acorns from Fisherios Fish n Chips in exchange for three acorns at a Puma store. Read more

Singapore’s m-commerce market jumps seven-fold to US$259M in one year

2011 has turned out to be a breakout year for mobile commerce in Singapore, says PayPal‘s Online and Mobile Shopping Insights 2011 study.

The report has revealed that the country’s mobile commerce market has grown by 660 percent reach S$328M (US$259M) last year from S4$3M (US$33M) in 2010.

The study was conducted by The Nielsen Company online using a representative sample of 1,009 Singaporean online shoppers aged 18 and above. 482 of them are mobile shoppers, which in this study means that they have shopped or made purchases using a mobile phone or tablet.

The mobile commerce market is expected to grow ten-fold to reach S$3.1B (US$2.45B) in 2015, indicating that shopping on mobile devices has become mainstream due to the ubiquity of such devices. Read more

Facebook Pages Manager now available on iTunes in Singapore and select countries

The Facebook Pages Manager is now available for free to iPhone and iPad users through the Apps Store. The app by the world’s largest social network lets users manage their company’s Facebook Pages using their phone.

While the official Facebook app allows for some basic Facebook Page management, it lacks a lot of key features. This new app has the ability to let social media managers post new updates and photos on their Pages, get push notifications about Page activity, view Page insights, and more. Read more

Eat this, tech purists: Aunty Binnaz reads fortunes from coffee cups, makes a killing

Technology startups are today’s entrepreneurial rockstars. Not a week goes by without an announcement of a new location-based app, niche social network, or online travel discovery service.

But like many hard-luck musicians, these startups burn bright at the beginning, relying on the quick fix of seed or venture funding, only to fade later on.

That’s because they are still searching for a business model, and until then, they can’t be legitimately called a sustainable business.

In the midst of this fever, Aunty Binnaz is an online service that stands out for modernizing an un-sexy industry — fortune-telling. Yes, I’m talking about psychic reading of the tarot-card, astrology sort.

Except in this case, Aunty Binnaz’s main product is coffee-cup reading, a popular form of fortune telling in Turkey. Read more

Responding to Google Drive, Insync shifts focus to power users, paid app

The creators of Insync, an app that offers Dropbox-like functionality to Google Docs users, have responded to the launch of Google Drive.

More than two weeks ago, I wrote that Insync is at risk of becoming redundant, since Google Drive replicates some of its features. Although Insync is the superior app for now, it’s only a matter of time before Google starts adding more features to its new offering.

In response, Insync announced two days ago that it will focus on Google Docs power and business users. Also, once it moves out of beta and into version 1.0, Insync will become a paid app with a free 30-day trial. Users will still be able to use Insync for Mac and Windows for free via a referral program. More details will be announced soon. Read more