For the ACE Start-ups scheme and the young entrepreneurs that it supports, the past year has been a successful one. In total, 50 new ventures have received funding of up to $50,000 each, to help them take the first steps towards building differentiated businesses.
Read on to find out how four ACE Start-ups grant recipients – Kerbside Gourmet, Innervative Learning, Viddsee and Carousell – have fared in their first year and how they plan to continue growing in the years ahead.
Small Kitchen, Big Mission
Kerbside Gourmet, or Kerby for short, is a gourmet food truck on a mission – to bring Singaporeans a convenient and healthier alternative to fast food. Started by former communications executive Ee Poh Luan in February 2013, Kerby is set to revolutionise the food scene by serving up gourmet food on wheels – and judging by its burgeoning following, it is on the right track.
Besides using better quality ingredients and more greens in her food creations, Ms Ee is also introducing a social element to the business. Kerby will match every meal sold with free meals for underprivileged children, prepared by retired seniors with cooking skills once every three months.
“While there’s no starvation in Singapore, more than 10 per cent of the student population of a school that we spoke to are on financial assistance and go home hungry in the afternoon. We encourage our customers to support Kerby knowing that every main dish that they buy will go beyond maintaining our truck and sustaining the business,” says Ms Ee.
Like many entrepreneurs, Ms Ee had a great business idea but found it a challenge getting capital to start the business. However, a $50,000 grant from the ACE Start-ups scheme lent credibility to the company and enabled Ms Ee to win over sponsors that believed in her vision such as Borneo Motors, Electrolux and Huber’s Butchery. Besides funding, ACE also gave her access to networks and mentors, which helped to open doors and bring her business a step further.
Just a month on, Ms Ee is already busy with serving up mouth-watering creations like sous-vide duck breast, oven baked basil chicken, and truffle fries from the carpark of the National Museum of Singapore. Due to the nomadic nature of the business, Ms Ee uses Facebook to keep her customers informed of Kerby’s operating hours and whereabouts. Looking ahead, Ms Ee will continue to market Kerby and promote wholesome good food at affordable prices.
Economics Made Fun
Economics is often regarded as a difficult subject, with many technical terms and abstract concepts. But this could well change with Innervative Learning’s mobile app game, Oikonopolis, which promises to make learning economics a fun experience for students.
Developed with funding support from the ACE Start-ups scheme, Oikonopolis allows users to step into the role of a policy maker and to come up with policies to steer their ‘cities’ through an economic cycle. Students are also taught basic economics and financial literacy through in-game tutorials.
“Many existing programmes in Singapore merely introduce checklists for people to institute basic financial discipline, with little coverage of teaching economics. Oikonopolis helps users to understand how financial markets and personal investments are affected by the economy,” says Mr James Chia, who
co-founded the company with his partner, Ms Lynn Koh, in April 2012.
Despite only launching in February this year, Oikonopolis has already met with interest beyond Singapore and has been downloaded by users in 30 countries. In Singapore, Innervative Learning is partnering schools such as Anglo-Chinese Junior College and Raffles Institution to conduct economics and financial literacy classes for students using Oikonopolis.
Mr Chia attributes this success to the mentoring and customised business advice provided by ACE: “We benefited from the advice of established entrepreneurs in areas such as business development and marketing, which has been invaluable in shortening our learning curve.”
Making Films Accessible
Fans of independent movies now have a new place to watch the next hard-to-find film, thanks to Viddsee, a free online streaming platform for Southeast Asian films. Co-founded by filmmaker-engineers Ho Jia Jian and Derek Tan in September 2012, Viddsee also allows users to rate the films for the quality of the story, acting and sound.
This could be a boon for small-scale filmmakers, who might be struggling to get their work seen. “We realised that filmmakers had to compete with other videos on video sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. So we came up with the idea of a targeted content platform where users can watch short films on their desktops or mobile devices,” says Mr Ho.
Since its launch in January, Viddsee has gathered a collection of more than 100 short films, including “Taxi Taxi”, director Kelvin Sng’s “The Gang”, and James Khoo’s “Hentak Kaki”. Besides being the digital partner for the inaugural ASEAN International Film Festival & Awards this year, Viddsee also collaborated with the Singapore Short Film Awards (SSFA) to showcase nominated short films from past SSFA editions.
Mr Ho shares that ACE has played an instrumental role in helping the company gain exposure. Looking ahead, Mr Ho hopes that Viddsee will eventually provide an alternative platform for filmmakers to reach their audiences.
“ACE has helped us with industry opportunities such as obtaining a booth at Startup Asia. We are now working with them to strengthen our marketing efforts,” he adds.
Snap, List and Sell
Have a pile of clothes, gadgets or accessories that are new or barely used? Now, you can give new life to these items with Carousell, a smart phone app that can help you cash in on those unwanted items. And if you clear out enough space, you can use the app to do some shopping, too!
Launched in August 2012, Carousell is a mobile marketplace that takes the hassle out of buying and selling online. It also has interactive features that allow users to not only “Like”, “Comment” or “Share” items on Facebook and Twitter, but also “Follow” other users with similar tastes.
“To create a listing on a forum or classifieds site, you will have to take photos using a camera, then re-size and upload them to an image hosting site. With smart phones, this tedious process could be made seamless,” says Mr Quek, who set up Carousell with his friends, Marcus Tan and Lucas Ngoo.
As first-time entrepreneurs, the trio decided to apply for the ACE Start-ups grant to fund product development. The funding support enabled the company to increase its staff strength by two, pay for server hosting and web services, as well as develop its Android app.
Carousell now has more than 75,000 items listed for sale and recently partnered STClassifieds to increase the base of prospective buyers for the items on the site. With the number of users increasing by the day, Carousell is looking to expand into Malaysia and Indonesia in the near future.
Reproduced with permission from SPRINGnews May 2013 Issue. Published by SPRING Singapore.