Today’s guest of The Asia Business Investor Podcast, is the one of the co-founders of MyWobile, Cris Lim. myWobile is a Singapore based startup that provides location based services for mobile phone users. myWobile is also part of Azione Capital’s portfolio where the venture capital firm provides the startup with the necessary facilities to help kick start the business operations.

Hello Cris, thanks for joining us on “The Asia Business Investor Podcast”.

Cris: Good day to you Nicholas! It is my pleasure to be on this podcast.

Can you tell us a bit more about yourself?

Cris: Sure no problem! I am the business development manager and also the co founders of myWobile. Before joining myWobile, I was primarily a freelance consultant to a number of Singapore and US based companies managing their social media campaigns. I was also pretty much involved in another company, Information Technologies Laboratories Private Limited (http://www.itlab.com.sg) in the late 2007 and early 2008 which develops educational technology solutions. I am also currently in my last year of studies pursuing a Diploma in Financial Business Informatics.

Could you tell us a bit more about MyWobile?

Cris: Certainly! MyWobile Pte Ltd is the company that develops myWobile, the mobile application that empowers mobile phone users with context-aware mini-apps that tap into the richness of their environments. MyWobile is also a second-generation location-aware open mobile social networking application platform that enables mobile developers to rapidly develop and deploy location based services on myWobile infrastructure.

Where did the name come from?

Cris: The idea was coined in 2007, funded in August 2008, and was finally later incorporated in December 2008. My team initially wanted Mobile World but the “.com” domain extension was taken! That actually made us pretty upset because we loved that name quite a bit. My team got down to brainstorm quite a bit with these keywords “Social”, “Mobile” and “World” in mind. After a few rounds of debating, the name “myWobile” was born.

How does it work and what does it do?

Cris: myWobile currently supports 2 mobile platforms. One would be the Nokia Symbian 60 series and the other would be Sony Ericsson Java Platform 7 and 8. We have also just finished demonstrating our Windows Mobile application to a group of windows mobile developers at Microsoft last Thursday too, and we are expecting to launch it in late Nov or early December.
myWobile application uses GPRS data plans or wireless access to determine the mobile users’ present location. Once their location has been determined by the algorithm combination of Cell Tower ID, GPS and Wifis, myWobile will actually pull the latest happenings, events and shops around their current location and present to the user. Users can also twitter, locate friends and even get discounts offered by advertisers!

How did you come up with the idea?

Cris: Location-based technology is slowly becoming integral to our daily lives. No one can deny that! Users retrieve information based on not just what they want to know, but also based on where they are. If you have noticed, there is a growing trend of companies providing child tracking services, be it hardware or software.
If you are talking about mobile phones, there are already so many location based applications on both Apple iPhone and HTC Android which allow users to know what’s going on around them. myWobile saw a need to provide to these normal phone consumers, and wants to provide non iPhone and Android mobile phone users the same capabilities and functionalities without the need of buying a particular brand of handset. In Singapore itself, myWobile has the potential to capture close to 70% of the market share because Nokia’s current market share stands at 52% and SE stands at 24% respectively.
Since the financial crisis which happened in 2008 to early 2009, advertisers have been shifting and re-allocating some of their marketing budgets from traditional media to social media because they recognize that “power” behind social networks. myWobile brings about to the advertisers a more cost effective medium of engaging and delivering targeted ads to their audiences.

Can you tell us the various stages you have gone from to where you are today?

Cris: Let’s see.. our idea was formulated in 2007, funded in Aug 2008, incorporated in December 2008. We also released our beta during the same month. 2009 has indeed been a breakthrough year for us as a startup! We were nominated as the finalist for MobileMonday Peer Awards 2009. We were also present at AdTech 2009 – Asia Digital Marketing event and CommunicaAsia 2009 – Asia largest international communications and information technology exhibition and conference. We have also just started our very first successful blogger outreach program last month to engage them to help us market our brand. Just last Thursday, we were invited to one of Microsoft’s event to showcase and demonstrate our Windows Mobile application to a group of developers! We are in fact, currently now in partnership talks with key content providers to see how we can serve better accurate contents and maps to our users in the long run.

Can you tell the listeners what have been the biggest challenges for you in the start-up?

Cris: I think one of the biggest challenges that we are facing right now is the slow user adoption rate of myWobile. In as much as we want to bring in key content providers to provide consumers mobile convenience, advertisers would generally prefer to work with a company with a huge database of users. One way of tackling this solution is to encourage these advertisers to work together with us to integrate myWobile into their marketing campaigns as their mobile advertising solution partners!

Do you have any thoughts you could share with listeners looking to do their own start-up?

Cris: Do a thorough market research based on the idea you have. Googling is never enough, ask your friends to see if they know of anything or something that is related to what you are planning to do. Once you are ready, be ready to sacrifice your time and sleep because time will be the essence in everything you do from then!

What is the future of MyWobile, where would you like to see it in 2 years time?

Cris: What is the future of myWobile in 2 years time? We are currently in expansionary talks with several foreign telcos and we also hope that we can export our technologies to our asian counterparts like Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia to allow the consumers to enjoy location based services too.

Finally, so that our listeners can learn more about MyWobile, can you provide some links to your company?

Cris: Haha! Of course of course! For Singapore based listeners, you can download and use myWobile at m.mywobile from your mobile phone web browsers. For overseas listeners, I would like to invite you to see myWobile can do at mywobile.com. Alternatively, listeners can connect with us at mywobile.blogspot.com and twitter.com/mywobile.