OwnSkin.com is a website that allows users to customize their mobile phones by making their own mobile phone content such as themes (also known as skins) and wallpapers. The online theme creator makes it easy for users to create their own themes in just three simple steps, and then save, tag, share or download these themes. And the price of doing this? Free.

OwnSkin was founded by Chin Kwek Loong and Low Hsin Yee under their Singapore-based company Dalrus Pte Ltd. The company first started selling mobile content, but decided to give content away for free after the market declined, which led to the creation of OwnSkin.

“The tool(s) provided by the phone manufacturer(s) in the past was too cumbersome. We plan to simplify it, ” says co-founder Kwek Loong. “In the beginning, we targeted Symbian phones from Nokia, but soon moved to feature phones from Sony Ericsson,” shares Kwek Loong. The company later expanded to cover Windows Mobile phones and Blackberry.

OwnSkin has 15 million users who use the tools available on the site to create their own mobile content such as skins.

Most recently, OwnSkin is exploring Android phones and Apple’s iPhone. Its latest release is the OwnSkin LiveWallpaper Creator for Android, which allows users to have full control over how the home screens of their Android phone to look, including creating their own live wallpapers, how the clock, compass, calendars and battery indicators to look. “In future, the user would even be able to pull information from the Internet to their home screen,” adds Kwek Loong. Here’s how the OwnSkin LiveWallpaper Creator works:

Staying Free

Aside from advertising, it’s difficult to imagine how OwnSkin generates enough revenue to sustain itself by offering such tools and contents free to users. But the site has so far managed to garner 15 million registered users on our site, who have created more than 25 million different kinds of content using its tools – definitely a sizable audience.

OwnSkin is 99-percent self-funded.

The OwnSkin team - Kwek Loong is featured seated leftmost, with Hsin Yee beside him.

We have often talked about the success of TenCent and QQ in Asia. Inside their history, MIH Group, a division of Naspers, is one of their investors and owns 38% of TenCent in China. So, we have invited Craig White, CEO of MIH Group to join us in the TWIA virtual studio. Probably our most stellar guest so far, Craig shares his thoughts on the story on how MIH invested in TenCent, e-commerce in Asia and also a bunch of companies in Southeast Asia, BuzzCity and Lelong that they have invested.

Other stories we have discussed together with Craig:

• MyGengo raised funding from 10 angel investors
• Groupon acquires QPod – Japan Groupon Clone

This article was first posted at ThisWeekInAsia, a podcast that caters to what’s the hot and interesting news dominating the web and tech landscape in Asia, and a Young Upstarts content syndication partner.

Mumbai, India-based iWeb Technology Solutions was founded by Ketan Trivedi and Akshay Shah in 2005 to service the under-served small-to-medium enterprise (SME) market with cost-effective, enterprise-level software products.

iWeb‘s core product is its iWeb Enterprise Suite, an IT framework which core business applications – such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise information (EIS) and knowledge management (KM) – sit on that works on both Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models. The iWeb Enterprise Suite is built on based on AgileWiz, iWeb‘s own trademarked, proprietary technology.

“We understood that the SME needs were very complex, and unless we have a RAD (Rapid Application Development) Codeles technology, it would be difficult to satisfy all the SME needs and scale up,” says 28-year old Akshay, iWeb co-founder and the company’s chief operating officer. “We decided to build our own Codeless Business Process Management Suite which we called AgileWiz – an ‘agile wizard’ to customize, configure and implement enterprise wide business solutions on the fly.” They had checked other available products, but none seem to do what they wanted, and hence they proceeded to build their own.

The enterprise software space, even if targeted at the SME level, is an extremely challenging and competitive one. Industry giants such as SAP and Oracle have increasingly been encroaching into this segment. Also, the needs of SMEs have always been incredibly diverse, and hence, require much customization. However, to date the company has managed to penetrate various industry verticals, such as the financial services, training, telecommunications, and the non-governmental organizations (NGO) markets.

Accolades

Akshay Shah (right) being awarded a 'Star Entrepreneurship Award' at the 3rd International India Innovation Summit 2010.

iWeb regularly receives accolades from the industry for its work and its potential, such as having been named as one of the 50 emerging companies in India for 2010 by India’s IT industry body NASSCOM. Akshay himself has also been recognized as a promising entrepreneur, having topped the Most Popular Entrepreneur Challenge 2009 held by Indian online entrepreneur community YourStory. He was also recently awarded a ‘Star Entrepreneurship Award’ at the 3rd International India Innovation Summit 2010.

The iWeb team was recently in Singapore at Echelon 2010 to promote its services and look for potential investors. The company is looking for funding on an urgent basis, Akshay reveals.

Entrepreneurship

“Entrepreneurship is a tough game, but if you love what you’re doing you won’t feel the pain,” Akshay says. “Choose to become an entrepreneur only if you love what you’re doing and not just for the name of it.”

An important lesson he has learnt is to ‘never say die’. “Many times you will feel thats it’s all over and the night looks just too dark, but always I have learnt and experienced that there is a bright sunny day after every dark night, and every cloud indeed has a silver lining.”

His mantra? “Tough times don’t last, tough men do.”

This is a bi-weekly column dispensing advice and help for technology startup founders and aspiring web entrepreneurs written by resident startup advisor and mentor, Jeffrey Paine. Jeffrey is the founder and executive director of Battle Ventures and Founder Institute Singapore. You can ask Jeff a question on startups and entrepreneurship by emailing us at administrator [at] youngupstarts [dot] com.

Hi Jeff –

I have a question for you. We’re a start-up group-buying site in the U.S. focusing on the local (non-metro) and hyper-local markets which are being overlooked by all the other group-buying (daily deal) sites in the space.

My question is this: I noticed that a lot of newcomers are generating large numbers of opt-in email users. What is the best practice to employ to get our numbers up and what’s their secret?

Ron Butler
Founder/CEO
Ambianik.com

Dear Ron,

Let me try by answering your two-part question:

1. What is their secret?
If a competitor launched with an email list which converts well into eventual users, this can be credited to them finding the list and executing on it. Most of the time an email list of some sort with demographics can be purchased for a fee, another way to do this is to partner with a company with such email database and compensate them with equity in the business or some kind of CPA (cost per acquisition) remuneration package (some structure where boot strapping startups can stomach as opposed to paying for each email address).

2. What is the best practice to get your numbers up?
Well since it is a hyper local market you are targeting, you need to find exactly who this target audience who will be clamoring all over your deals. I assume you have limited funds and need a bootstrap way of reaching them. Besides the obvious flyers in campuses, finding online influencers (i.e. local bloggers), local traditional media coverage, you can also try to gather a mailing list of sorts, to not pay much for it, you need to be creative, but first find the companies with the exact user/reader demographics as yours and you can try to work out some kind of a barter trade. For e,g, a local monthly magazine publisher who organized events may have a list of readers that may fit your target audience, offer the publisher free listing for subscription deals in exchange for the permission to market to their email list.

Regards,

Jeff

Is it safe to say most young entrepreneurs don’t worry enough about data maintenance and data loss? Contributing writer Caroline Yeung speaks to Felix Chang, managing director of data recovery company Adroit Data Recovery Centre (ADRC), about data recovery and loss.

How would data recovery apply to young entrepreneurs?

Young entrepreneurs often do not start out with a lot of capital. As such, many of them do not have a robust, IT infrastructure that would factor in data loss. In a startup, most of the value resides in the company’s intellectual property, and it would be a critical situation in the event that data is lost. Downtime from loss of data also translates to a significant loss in revenue, contracts, opportunities, and records.

What do entrepreneurs have to do in general to protect themselves from data loss?

The number one rule to prevent data loss is to back up your files and data conscientiously. Certain practices – like not booting up when your laptop or computer has crashed and not meddling with the data in a state of panic – can help to make the data recovery easier later on.

What do the young entrepreneurs have to do should data loss occur?

Here are some simple tips that entrepreneurs can take in the event of data loss:

1) Do not power up or keep re-restarting your hard disk
If you suspect that your hard disk has crashed, do not power it up or keep re-starting it hoping for a miracle. It’s important that the system remain shut down. Forget about going through the shutdown procedure in the event of a crash – just pull the plug out from the wall. Believe it or not, this will decrease the risk of any permanent data loss.

2) Avoid running software recovery tools if unsure
If the crash is due to a physical damage, using software recovery tools such as Checkdisk can worsen the situation and further diminish any recovery chances. This action might result in a permanent damage to the data platter if hardware component failure is not resolved first. Only if you are sure that it’s a logical file system error (such as file system corruption or data deletion), then you may try using such software recovery tools. Even so, you have to do it right and not accidentally re-write the recovered data into the same disk. It is important to note that reformatting will not fix your hard drive and it may even lead to the data deletion.

3) Refrain from opening up the drive yourself
Handling delicate parts of a damaged hard drive should only be carried out in a “class 100” clean room (an industry standard) to avoid any contaminations. “Class 100” clean rooms are cleared of any pollutants in the air, and they are equipped with special sophisticated equipment used to fix the internal parts of hard drives.

4) Do not resort to strange, quirky practices
Although it’s natural to ‘Google’ for information to fix your hard drive, those quirky “life-saving” techniques that you find discussed online may cause more harm to your hard drive. For example, some users insisted on placing the faulty hard drives in the freezer. Low temperature will contract the metal bits for it to work for a few minutes but eventually, condensation will take place and your data, which may be salvageable before, will now become permanently unrecoverable.

Another common technique is to hit it with a screwdriver, and there is no logical explanation for this. Also, dropping it intentionally or hitting it against a hard surface is equally deplorable.

5) Leave it to the professionals
Consult a professional data recovery service provider for an assessment. In the case of physical failures, be sure that your chosen vendor has a “class 100” clean lab. Ensure that the vendor adheres to strict data confidentiality if you have sensitive data in your hard drive. Make it known to that you do not like to use any third-party, outsourced vendor, and ensure that the vendor has a secured environment to prevent data theft. Ask around or search online for recommendations and testimonials from past customers.

When you are experiencing a hard disk crash, the best thing is to seek professional advice immediately and refrain from tampering with your hard drive. This is your best chance of recovering the important data from your damaged, hard drive.

What kind of damage is most common?

Hard disks commonly fail due to damaged read-write head, mechanical fault, corrupted firmware, partial platter damage, electronic malfunction, logical file system corruption and a combination of any of the above.

What does Adroit Data Recovery Centre (ADRC) do?

Adroit Data Recovery Centre (ADRC) Pte Ltd is Southeast Asia’s leading data recovery centre equipped with the first Class 100 clean laboratory in Singapore to recover data from damaged media such as crashed hard disks.

ADRC’s team of qualified forensic experts is also equipped with the technical expertise of networking, system security and cryptography in order to perform a complete investigation. Moreover, ADRC is able to provide court-ready reporting of digital evidence for civil and criminal litigation through the installation of rigorous forensic methodologies in order to identify, acquire, preserve, analyse and document digital data (electronically stored information) for use as evidence in court or other legal or administrative proceedings.

Who are ADRC’s customers?

Based in Singapore, ADRC serves a wide spectrum of customers from home users, SME businesses, MNCs, financial institutions to government ministries and organisations in Singapore. Previous clients include Motorola Technology Sdn Bhd, Far East Organization Centre Pte Ltd and Land Transport Authority. The company has also served customers from Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, China, Japan, USA and Europe since its establishment in 1998.

TWIA producer, Mike Foong is finally back with the crew in the virtual studio after 3 months of hiatus, with also one of our highest recurring special guests, Serkan Toto (@serkantoto) from TechCrunch in Japan to talk about the top news that rocked the web and tech landscape in Asia this week. We discussed a few big hitters in the form of TenCent’s acquisition of Comsenz, the growing popularity of Sekai Camera and Koprol’s TV ad that rocked Indonesia along with other stories that focused on e-commerce in Asia, online forums and the big events in Asia which will have our September and October calendars all filled up.

• NTT Technologies Showcase – Serkan tells us his recent trip to NTT Docomo Labs (article in Japanese).
• Nobot partners with BuzzCity: A Japanese smartphone ad optimizer partners with Singapore mobile ad network, BuzzCity which is focused on mobile ads on WAP/Feature phones. Is BuzzCity heading for smartphone space?
• TenCent acquires Comsenz: TenCent has acquired China’s largest site for online forums. Is this an extension of acquiring traffic, creating new channels of distribution and integrating new service layers with the acquisition? The panel also discuss why online forums still have an appeal in Asia as compared to the dying ones in the West and how they can earn revenues off their online forums.
• China Alibaba buys Auctiva: The flurry of E-Commerce activity is heating up in Asia, with Rakuten in Japan making acquisitions in the US, while Groupon takes Asia clones. Now Alibaba is getting into the game with an acquisition. What lies ahead for Asia’s top tech companies? Is this the beginning of a new era where we start owning US tech companies?
• Sekai Camera on Web: Sekai Camera, a TechCrunch50 company from Japan, has taken the whole Japan by storm with their augmented reality app and sees a new gaming world with social, location based and augmented reality (which they call “solar”). Serkan tells us about the app, Sekai Camera and how they have iterated their technology and acquired a big influx of users into their app.
• Koprol gets 7K users from TV Ad: Similar to what FourSquare did with Bravo in the US, Koprol launched a TV ad in Indonesia and acquired a good amount of users within a day. Is the use of old media still relevant to new high tech social media companies? We also discussed Mixi’s new location based service and also Facebook Places along this issue.
• Events: (a) Geek Camp – 4 Sep 2010, (b) Accelerate – 22-23 Sep 2010, (c) Social Media World Forum Asia – 22-23 Sep 2010, (d) SeedCamp Singapore, (e) Barcamp JB, (f) Barcamp Phnom Penh – 25-26 Sep 2010, and (g) Barcamp Singapore 6 (9-10 Oct 2010) & Barcamp Bangkok (23-24 Oct 2010). One last thing: AsiaJin Meetup in Hackerspace SG (25 Sep 2010).

This article was first posted at ThisWeekInAsia, a podcast that caters to what’s the hot and interesting news dominating the web and tech landscape in Asia, and a Young Upstarts content syndication partner.

The Rotary Youth Social Entrepreneurship Challenge (RYSEC) is back! Organized by the Rotary Club of Singapore and SYINC, the business plan competition is looking for new youth-driven ideas on socially responsible businesses, with the aim of empowering youth by providing a platform to discuss business ideas that also tackles social challenges.

Aspiring applicants candidates may apply to any of the two categories:

1. Idea Launchpad for teams with a social business idea and want to test the concept, and
2. Project Accelerator – For teams with a matured or already started business concept, and are looking to meeting people and develop networks to bring the idea one notch higher.

So if you are between 15 to 30 years old, based in Singapore, meet the eligibility criteria and have a great idea for a social enterprise, you can apply for the competition here. The original submission deadline is over, but you can still make it through facilitated submissions before 11 September 2010.

The JH|13 Pro, the world’s first-ever six-driver in-ear monitor that features dual low, mid and high range drivers on board and a frequency response of 10Hz to 20kHz.

JHAudio‘s founder, 50-year old Jerry Harvey, has been mixing rock bands as a sound engineer since the age of 16. He’s also lived a roadie’s dream, having spent some 20 years on the road with some of the music industry’s most famous names, such as Van Halen, KISS, The Cult, k.d.Lang, Linkin Park and Morrisey.

In 1995, Jerry decided to capitalize on his knowledge of audio equipment and founded Ultimate Ears while on tour with Van Halen. “The first IEM (in-ear monitor) I designed was for Alex Van Halen,” says Jerry, who would be Ultimate Ears‘ chief IEM designer leading the company’s innovation in the development of earphones and audio circuits until his departure in 2007. Ultimate Ears would later be acquired by Swiss peripheral device maker Logitech in 2008 for US$34 million. “I’m proud of what Ultimate Ears has become, considering when I started the company my goal was to make enough to pay my car payment.”

After leaving Ultimate Ears, Jerry founded JHAudio, a designer and manufacturer of premium, custom in-ear audio monitors for professional musicians, audiophiles and music lovers, as well as avionics equipment for pilots. It’s where he continued to create cutting-edge audio products such as the newly-introduced JHAudio PRO series of custom-fit, premium in-ear audio monitors that promises to deliver the most accurate sound quality, greater clarity, more effective noise isolation and better comfort than any other in-ear audio monitors on the market.

Making In-Ear Monitors Professional Musicians Appreciate

The PRO series of in-ear monitors features JHAudio’s proprietary precision-balanced armatures and integrated three-way crossover to reduce distortion and deliver more accurate sound quality. Noise isolation of up to -26dB reduces background noise for greater sound clarity without increasing the volume to prevent hearing loss that often results from loud music. “Everyone who tries our products is absolutely blown away by the new sound elements and audio levels they hear with our PRO series even from music they’ve listened to a million times before,” said Jerry. “Listening to music through the PRO Series is like sitting right there in the studio mix down room with the sound engineer.”

“Not only is the sound quality unprecedented, but the PRO series is designed to be exceptionally comfortable,” adds the audio pioneer. “They’re custom fit to stay put and built to withstand the head-banging, over-the-top, soaked-with-sweat on-stage performances of professional performers.”

Custom-fit, because customers who order the devices need to visit a professional audiologist who takes an impression of their ear canal. The mold is sent to JHAudio, which will then design the shell piece to precisely match the mold for a truly custom fit. Shells are available in clear and over 50 other custom colors, for an added personal touch. Which also explains the premium pricing – the JH|13 PRO, the world’s first-ever six-driver in-ear monitor that features dual low, mid and high range drivers on board, a frequency response of 10Hz to 20kHz, retails for a whopping US$1099. Despite that, JHAudio has found an audophile fan base who revere its products and counts the likes of Aerosmith, Guns ‘N Roses, Lady Gaga, Linkin Park, Alicia Keys, Barry Manilow and many other professional musicians, as fans.

Either You Rock, Or You Suck

Jerry Harvey, founder of JHAudio.

JHAudio is fully owned by Jerry Harvey and his wife, and they have no plans to take on any outside investment. “We became profitable in 12 months and the cash flow of the company is enough to fund any future projects.” What keeps Jerry jumping out of bed every morning, he says, are his children, his wife, and the desire to make sure that his business will always be the leader in IEM technology and audio quality.

Jerry admits that, right from the beginning, he never thought of himself as an entrepreneur. “I was tasked with building Alex Van Halen (of the band Van Halen) a better IEM than was available and my goal was to design a tool that worked for him and I,” he says. “It wasn’t until the opening act (Skid Row) asked me if I could build them them same IEM that Alex was using that I realized there was a need for this product in the pro musician market.”

“I think this path actually chose me.”

Jerry says that as entrepreneurs, when beset what seems to be a catastrophic event in business, it is important to look for the silver lining in any dark cloud. “I’ve had at least three (that) actually opens the door for a better opportunity. Learn from the setback, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get on with the fight.”

“Choose your partners wisely,” cautions Jerry, “and make sure they offset your skill set.” He says his wife and partner Brittany brings to JHAudio the business chops that he himself does not have. “I am creative and she is the business mind of JHAudio.”

To stay competitive and grow his business, Jerry says his strategy continue to introduce ‘a line of cutting-edge universal-fit earphones that outperform the competition’.  Continuing to pursue the musician and audiophile market, he says, will be key.

“In my mixing career and in my IEM ventures I have lived by one motto: either you rock, or you suck.” Spoken like a true rocker.

The biggest highlight and selling preposition of Groupon-like group buying sites, the daily deal, is also its greatest weakness - these sites can only list one deal at any one time. That’s the pain point that new site All Deals Asia seeks to resolve, by finding and aggregating the daily deals from group buying sites onto one site.

All Deals Asia essentially scouts  all the best shopping, entertainment and lifestyle deals available in Southeast Asia and aggregates them in one single website. Since Chicago-based Groupon introduced the social group buying concept in late 2008, the daily deal phenomenon had spread across the globe - Groupon CEO Andrew Mason earlier in March estimated 100-150 clones around the world, although the number is far, far higher if the 100-200+ clones in China estimated by Mobinode founder Gang Lu is to be believed. It has also taken hold in Southeast Asia and especially Singapore, with the launch here of VoucherWOW, Deal.com.sg, Beeconomic and Voucherous.

“We have been keen followers of the daily deal phenomenon, where we have bought many deals ourselves and absolutely love the discounts which otherwise could be too tough on our pockets,” says Goh Yiping, co-founder and advisor at All Deals Asia.  ”However, since June 2010 there’s an ever growing number of daily deal sites and going to each of these sites everyday has become quite a task. Imagine visiting some seven to nine such daily deal sites per day just in Singapore!”

Solving A Consumer And Business Pain Point

Yiping points out that not only is this a consumer pain point, it can also be a business pain point – with the steady increase of daily deal sites in Singapore, newer daily deal sites that offer very interesting deals may not be able to garner enough consumer mindshare. “Why not marry demand and supply in one single website?”, the founders asked themselves, and that was how All Deals Asia started.

The site targets users who are smart buyers with a keen eye on great bargains, customers who love to share the latest deals with their friends and adventurous individuals, families or corporate groups who are looking for new things to do at a great price for their next outing. ”We provide the single avenue where users can find these highly attractive deals,” says Yiping.

The business model for All Deals Asia, reveals Yiping, will focus around placement fees from social buying sites to list daily deals on the page. This includes additional fees for premium placements, such as being listed on top of the site as a “Featured Deal” and on email newsletters and the company’s Facebook page. All Deals Asia also offers advertisers advertising opportunities through web banners on the site (although we reckon this is not going to make up a large part of their revenue).

One of All Deals Asia‘s biggest achievements and also their biggest challenge, she says, was being able to launch the All Deals Asia site in a very short time and limited budget. Since their launch in early August, they’ve managed to gain quite a lot of attention from consumers, merchants and even investors – proving to the team that “they’ve done something right”. They’ve been approached by several international investors and are currently in talks with them, reveals Yiping.

Aside from Yiping, the other co-founders of All Deals Asia includes 27-year old Thomas Goh, the startup’s managing director, as well as Wayne Goh, who serves as their marketing director. Thomas comes from a hospitality, retail and telemarketing background, and previously co-founded a lifestyle marketing company, while 18-year old Wayne is an accountancy student who started his first business when he was just 16.  Yiping herself is a familiar face in the Singapore tech startup circle, where is is currently the managing director of Human Network Labs Singapore and a vice president of Singapore’s Mobile Alliance.

There Is No Such Thing As Failure

Goh Yiping

Entrepreneurship is a journey where you keep learning and keep going, says Yiping.  ”There’s no such thing as a failure; you will only get better – if you learn quickly.”

“An entrepreneur starts from a blank canvas and everything he or she does makes a huge difference,” Yiping explains. “ This is what I enjoy, the journey of making a difference and contributing to our world in every little way.”  She adds that entrepreneurship is a great way to - at least for some people - dramatically accelerate their self-awareness and can propel them to exponential personal and professional growth.

“It is one of those paths where you are allowed a rare access to view the world from very different perspectives.”

“I’m happy and honored to do what I’m doing; I cannot imagine a life any different.”

Seedcamp Singapore is coming! The one day event, which will take place on October 5 2010, will bring together 20 of the region’s best web, mobile and software technology talent with some of the leading entrepreneurs, developers and experts from Asia and Europe.

Participating teams in Seedcamp Singapore can get access to a world-class network of advisors and seed and venture capital, as well as get recognition as one of the 20 best start-ups in the region.

Interested startups can apply here. Application deadline is September 19, 2010.