Southeast Asia is big on contests - Entrepreneur Jamie Lee

Jamie Lee was a banker in his previous avatar. But he was quick to realize the opportunities in internet. In 2004, he and his wife quit their jobs and started a dating site, which is operational to this day in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Later on, he stumbled upon an idea to improve customer engagement for brands and launched his current venture, Prizle.comJamie opens up about starting up twice over with his wife, and his big plans with Prizle.

First venture in 2004

I was at Deutsche bank before I started my own company. I started a dating company called Lunch Actually with my wife Violet Lim. Many of our friends with busy work life found it hard to meet new people with similar interests. We saw a big need for making dating easy and memorable for busy working professionals. Thus began my first entrepreneurial venture Lunch Actually, where we pre-select and match people basis interests to meet for lunch. Lunch Actually did pretty well, we expanded the service to Hong Kong and Malaysia as well from Singapore. This venture is operational to this day and is being run by my other partners.

In 2011, I saw a big opportunity in creating an integrated contest platform for brands to engage meaningfully with large audiences. I came out of Lunch Actually, again with my wife, and started Prizle.com

Working with my wifeWhen I was started my first venture with my wife, most people tried to talk me out of it. But I think this is the best decision I have made. I believe I have grown closer to my wife after we started a company together.

We bring complementary skill sets to the table. She is good at all the things I am not good at, and vice-versa. That makes us a very good team. I respect her, and she respects me.

Today we have shared goals, that brings us very close.

Plans with Prizle.com

Prizle is a free contest and giveaway portal that creates a ready platform for consumers to participate in an unlimited number of contests and lucky draws for opportunities to win prizes. Today we are operational in Singapore and Malaysia. We have about 170 brands that are leveraging our platform to engage with their audiences. Southeast Asia is big on mobile, social, contests, giveaways, prizes, and that makes our venture all the more exciting in the region.

We are a 5 people team today, and we are determined to take the platform to the whole of Southeast Asia very soon. We believe that the global market for contests is about 90 billion dollars, and we are well positioned to capture a sizeable market from Southeast Asia.

Partnership with Expara IDM

We are a part of Expara IDM incubator and are fortunate to have raised money from Mr. Douglas Abrams. We are going to use the funds to expand our IT and sales teams. Today my biggest challenge is that I have always been in B2C always, but have never done enterprise sales. I feel that B2B is way harder than consumer. But I am excited by challenges, and like beating them.

And I would love to come to India if we find the right partners there, signs off Jamie.

More about Prizle here https://prizle.com/