Archana was an entrepreneur with a startup in Bombay, working with women from lower income groups on hand-made products. She now lives in Singapore, writing and training in Iyengar yoga. She has also been a corporate lawyer in another life.
Follow her on talkingqalam.wordpress.com or @talkingqalam and write to her at [email protected].
- 24th Jul 2013Enabling smooth Doctor - Patient connect in Singapore, DocDocSingapore based DocDoc is an online platform that enables patients to search and book doctor appointments, at no cost. We caught up with Co-founder Grace Park on starting up the company, its challenges and her journey as a women entrepreneur. Excerpts from our conversation.
- 16th Jul 2013Internships with startups around the world; decoding the NOC Program by NUS, SingaporeThe National University of Singapore has several initiatives to foster an entrepreneurial spirit among its students. Few weeks back, we spoke about the role of National University of Singapore in the startup ecosystem of Singapore, through an interview with the director of the NUS Entrepreneurship Center. Here, we bring to you another interesting initiative by the NUS Enterprise (enterprise arm of NUS), the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) Program, as part of which, students get to intern with Startups around the world. Professor Teo Chee Leong, Director of the NOC Programme spoke to us about the objective of the program, student take-aways and the challenges of organizing it.
- 15th Jul 2013"Singapore is a good place to have a regional HQ," Shirley Wong, Managing Partner of TNF VenturesTNF Ventures is an approved Incubator under the Technology Incubation Scheme by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of the Singapore Government. Managing Partner Shirley Wong, who has also been the founder of Frontline Technologies Corporation Ltd in 1994 (listed on the Singapore Exchange in March 2001) brings to TNF her own experience of being an entrepreneur for over 20 years. We caught up with Shirley to understand what drives their investment decision and the general startup buzz in Singapore.
- 8th Jul 2013Learnings from a serial entrepreneur - with John Fearon, Founder of DropmysiteSuccessful entrepreneurs often find a logical transition to becoming an investor or mentor to young startups. South African born and Singapore-based John Fearon, founder of Dropmysite.com, has managed to find a great balance between entrepreneurship, mentorship and investments. John's nest of startups include EatAds, Dropmysite, ApexPEAK and HelpLearn.Asia. Their common thread - a large workspace that they share and John himself, who takes turn playing investor, mentor and management at each of them.
- 1st Jul 2013The business of car rental in Singapore, with Drive.sgSingapore is an expensive place to own a car. Firstly, import being the only source of supply makes the car itself more expensive than most other countries in the world. Add to that, increased taxes and the high cost of certificate of eligibility (to own a car!), which is the Government's way of discouraging people from owning cars. Honestly, with the combination of a very efficient public transport system and short distances, one may not really 'need' a car, but who doesn't like a nice long drive? Drive.sg is an online marketplace based in Singapore for car rental businesses to rent out their cars.
- 27th Jun 2013The role of NUS in the startup ecosystem of Singapore- With Director of NEC, Prof. Wong Poh KamIn the last few weeks, I have met several entrepreneurs in Singapore with one common thread binding them - National University of Singapore (NUS). Most of them also admitted their entrepreneurial journey began while they were at the University. In the recent past, we have also discussed the role played by Universities in fostering the right environment for entrepreneurship. The bits of information I collected on the ‘NUS-entrepreneurship puzzle’ finally brought me to NUS Entrepreneurship Centre (NEC), which falls under NUS Enterprise that was established by NUS in its endeavour to infuse entrepreneurial spirit and provide an enterprise dimension to its student community.
- 27th Jun 2013From Bloomberg to Travel bug: Roomorama's journeyJia En Teo and Fedrico Folia, were living and working in New York, at Bloomberg, when the travel bug bit them. The couple would sub-let their apartment and rent a similar arrangement during their travels. It met two of their needs: living in someone’s apartment when they travelled gave them a local and homely feel to the place and secondly, it subsidised their travel. The duo saw a great business idea in it and thus was born Roomorama, in 2009.
