Singapore tech company Moxian is building a growing business in China with an online platform that helps connect bricks and mortar retailers with customers.

The firm’s ambition also led it to an initial public offering on New York’s Nasdaq last month, the first Singapore company to be listed on the tech-heavy board since Creative Technology’s delisting in 2007.

Moxian runs an online marketplace where retailers can interact with existing customers and attract new ones through a location-based mobile phone application.

With its own chat tools, virtual currency, reward programmes and customer data analytics, Moxian wants to give retailers a social marketing edge to attract customers online despite the dominance of e-commerce.

“We went live early this year, and we have 8,000 merchant users,” chief executive James Tan told The Straits Times.

“As we roll out our full launch, we are targeting 50,000 to 100,000 merchants plus two to three million consumers by the end of next year. In 2018, we should reach half a million merchants and 20 million consumers.”

The initial months have shown very encouraging results, he added.

“A merchant is able to generate US$1,000 to US$2,000 (S$1,400 to S$2,800) of revenue for us, our expense was last reported to be around US$6 million, and our gross profit (margin) is at least 80 per cent.

“All this tells us we will turn profitable next year – one of the fastest Internet start-ups to break even,” Mr Tan said.

Moxian serves merchants in Shenzhen and Beijing, with expansion to Shanghai and Guangzhou on the cards.

“The e-commerce business is killing physical retailers in China… but there are many things we still can’t buy (online), particularly in services line… We’re talking easily 20 million potential merchant clients… that’s a very large market gap we’re tapping.”

Moxian was in the cloud service business before an acquisition and reorganisation led by Mr Tan turned it into an Internet company.

Mr Tan, 56, was the chief executive of Singapore Exchange-listed firms Vashion Group and Vantage Corporation, which was delisted in 2008. He was also a director at Pacific Internet, which was listed on Nasdaq until its delisting in 2007.

The seasoned entrepreneur returned to the New York exchange this year with Moxian’s IPO, which raised about US$10 million.

The stock, which started trading on Nov 15, closed at US$2.86 last Friday.

Opting for Nasdaq over the Singapore Exchange and Hong Kong Stock Exchange was a very natural choice for the Shenzhen-based company, Mr Tan noted.

“If you’re a tech company that aspires to be the next Facebook, then you want a market that can give you the exposure and valuation – that is what only the Nasdaq can offer.

“The SGX has issues attracting tech companies with real growth potential because, in my opinion, the regulatory regime still puts too much burden on a company, and that’s very challenging for a tech firm that needs to move fast.

This article was first published on December 06, 2016.
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Insurer AIA Singapore will raise the premiums of its Integrated Shield Plan (IP) relating to private hospitals from 2 per cent to 23 per cent from Jan 25.

The move comes soon after rival Aviva raised its IP premiums by between 10 per cent and 25 per cent, while Prudential hiked its premiums by 8.8 per cent to 36.6 per cent.

The increases apply to IPs that cover private hospitals.

The other three IP insurers are AXA, Great Eastern (GE) and NTUC Income.

Industry observers believe it is only a matter of time before they raise premiums as well, although AXA may be the last to go as it began offering the policies only in May.

The insurers are raising IP premiums now that the 12-month moratorium – which was imposed when MediShield Life was introduced on Nov 1 last year – has expired.

AIA has started sending letters to affected policyholders, informing them of the increases.

The Prudential and Aviva premium rises start this month.

The AIA premium hike comes with some enhancements to the IP, subject to certain conditions.

They include offering the highest policy annual limit at $2 million and extending the pre- and post-hospitalisation benefits by up to 13 months. These are the longest in the IP market.

Ms Ho Lee Yen, AIA’s chief marketing officer, noted that the need to increase IP premiums is a result of escalating claims costs.

“While AIA Singapore has been doing our best to actively manage the increasing claims costs internally, it has become necessary to increase the premiums of the AIA HealthShield Gold Max A for it to be commercially viable for us… Larger medical bills, greater healthcare consumption and the increased use of newer and costlier procedures which leverage medical technological advancements have resulted in an increase in medical costs and claims for IPs,” she said.

It has been reported that NTUC Income plans to increase the premiums of some IPs next year.

GE said it is reviewing its IP premiums and plans, and is unable to provide any timeline at this stage.

Mr Andre Czanik, AXA Singapore’s chief health officer, said it has no plan to increase IP premiums.

This article was first published on December 6, 2016.
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In our annual Causes Week, back for its fifth year, we spotlight individuals and groups that are making a difference in the community, and look at how others might pitch in too.

Lawyer teams up with 10 of the coffee chain’s outlets in food redistribution programme

Foreign worker Murugan Ganeshan was pruning plants outside Capitol Tower in the punishing 4pm heat two Saturdays ago when a woman approached him.

The Indian national was initially puzzled.

Then as lawyer Dipa Swaminathan, 44, explained that she was giving him free food from coffee chain Starbucks, he broke into a smile.

Mr Murugan, 46, who has been in Singapore for seven years, said he was delighted by her thoughtful gesture.

While most Singaporeans have Saturdays free, most foreign workers continue toiling, constructing buildings and fixing roads.

To bring them a little joy, Ms Swaminathan has teamed up with 10 Starbucks outlets to give away unsold food items to migrant workers in the stores’ vicinity.

“As you know, they would never be able to go into Starbucks and get a drink or muffin. What better thing to do than to take perfectly good food destined for the bin and to give them a snack,” said the Singapore permanent resident.

This food redistribution project started by chance in May, when Ms Swaminathan visited Starbucks’ Singapore Polytechnic outlet to buy coffee for parents of players on her son’s tennis team.

“I saw they had a whole container full of pastries and I knew that they close at 4pm on Saturdays. So I asked if they were throwing away all the food and if they could give it to me instead and I’ll go pass it to migrant workers,” she said.

She paid for her coffee, drove out, and passed the pastries to workers mending the road. A Facebook post she put up then went viral.

“Some people thought it was a donation initiated by Starbucks and they were saying they will start patronising Starbucks because it is doing such a good thing,” said Ms Swaminathan, assistant general counsel at Singtel.

“Using that, I wrote to Starbucks – including their worldwide CEO – and said, ‘You’ve got so much good publicity out of this, why not consider doing it in Singapore?’ “

So from June, the Singapore Polytechnic outlet started passing the unsold food to the lawyer. And by October, the project had expanded to 10 Starbucks outlets in schools or in the business district – which are also stores that close earlier on Saturdays.

Through Facebook, Ms Swaminathan has mobilised a group of 10 to 15 volunteers to help her collect food from the various outlets each week, and later distribute it to workers nearby.

She estimated that each outlet passed the volunteers 20 to 30 items every week.

Each week, the food goes out at random to workers nearby.

“Literally within minutes, it’s donated because there are migrant workers everywhere in Singapore,” she said, adding that the random distribution allows volunteers to reach different groups of workers instead of heading to the same work sites each week.

Distributing the food immediately also means the pastry will not go bad before it reaches the workers.

In March, 7,600 Starbucks stores in the United States started donating ready-to-eat meals to food banks.

The coffee chain said it is thinking about how to extend this programme to Singapore.

“We are also encouraged that we have customers, like Dipa, who are passionate about these causes as well,” said a Starbucks spokesman.

Ms Swaminathan has been helping migrant workers through several projects.

Each Deepavali, she collects money from friends to buy and distribute phone cards to foreign workers in Little India so they can call home.

She also collects raincoat donations for foreign workers who have to work through bad weather.

Mr Murugan said: “Usually, people here don’t notice us and we don’t receive goodies.

“But now, I’m happy to know there are (people) who care about us and appreciate our work.”

This article was first published on December 6, 2016.
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Q What is your secret to looking fabulous?

A Eat a healthy diet, drink plenty of water, have enough rest and train hard. Having a positive mindset is important too.

Q Has there ever been a time when you were not fit and fab?

A This was during my national service in 2013. I had a bad fall and had to undergo surgery for a dislocated shoulder.

I took more than a year to fully recover. During that time, I could not exercise and kept eating as I was bored. As a result, I piled on 20kg and weighed 95kg at one point.

I shed the extra weight within six months by exercising regularly and watching my diet.

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2016-12-06 13:39:04

Photo Gallery

Man lost 16kg in six weeks and won muay thai belt

Source:

The Straits Times

Grace Louise Tan

Simren Panoo

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Q What is your diet like?

A Mainly steamed fish or chicken breast, with egg whites and a salad (without dressing) or vegetables that are stir-fried without oil.

I will snack on cashew nuts and almonds if I need to. Or, sometimes, I will have a bowl of granola with a scoop of peanut butter.

I avoid eating carbohydrates for dinner.

Q What are your indulgences?

A Occasionally, I go for buffet meals with family and friends.

Q How important is it for you to keep up with your fitness routine?

A It is very important. I have to train regularly because I don’t know when my next fight will be. I want to make sure I’m always prepared.

Q What is the most extreme thing you have done in the name of fitness or diet?

A I lost 16kg in six weeks in order to fight in the 69kg weight category at the Johor Chief Minister Championship Belt in October last year.

I ate healthily and trained twice a day, five times a week. It was very tough. My mind was telling me to give up but I managed to persevere till the end.

Thankfully, I brought back the championship belt.

Q How do you maintain a healthy work-life balance?

A I am juggling work and school. I work as an instructor at Juggernaut Fight Club. I am also doing a degree in Sports Science at PSB Academy, a private education institution.

It’s tiring but my passion for muay thai keeps me motivated. I finish work at 5.30pm on weekdays and attend classes at 7pm. To stay awake, I make sure to have a cup of coffee before class.

I will spend time with my family during the weekends.

It can be very difficult when I have to prepare for an examination while going on a strict diet and training at least twice a day for an upcoming fight. But I am determined to do well in my studies and also be a successful fighter.

Q What are the three most important things in your life?

A My family, muay thai and my studies. I am studying hard to get a good job after I graduate.

Q How has your active lifestyle influenced your family and friends?

A Some of my friends have joined the gym after seeing that I had lost weight and am keeping fit with a proper diet and training regimen.

Q What’s your favourite part of your body?

A My arms. My least favourite part is my chest.

Q Would you go for plastic surgery?

A No. In martial arts, there is no need for plastic surgery to look good.

Q Do you think you’re sexy?

A I have never thought of myself as sexy, although many people have told me that I look like the South Korean pop star Rain.

• Bio Box

• TERENCE TEO JIA JIN

  Age: 25

  Height: 1.85m

  Weight: 79kg

  Although Mr Teo has always been active, he had problems maintaining a healthy weight as a child.

  Despite playing soccer in primary school, he was placed in the Trim and Fit (TAF) club for overweight pupils.

  Joining the athletics team in secondary school helped him to lose weight and keep fit.

  His fitness level reached a new high in 2011 when he tried out muay thai. “I was so hooked on it that I trained five times a week,” he said.

  Mr Teo has an elder brother who is a project manager. His mother is an insurance broker and his father works part-time as a warehouse supervisor and diving technician. 

This article was first published on Dec 06, 2016.
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Some subscribers of Singtel broadband were still without Internet access yesterday, a day after the telco said all its services were fully restored on Sunday morning following an islandwide outage.

They were unable to restart their modems and routers to re-sync their connection to the servers despite following the instructions they received from the telco.

Singtel said yesterday the problem bugged “a small number of customers” and its technician had gone to their home or workplace to fix it. The outage for Singtel fibre broadband customers started on Saturday morning, and the telco is still investigating why its servers could not send IP addresses to customers’ modems to enable broadband connectivity.

Most of the 10 subscribers interviewed yesterday had their connection restored except for Mr Daniel Tan, 36, owner of convenience store Angel Supermart. He re-started his Internet equipment multiple times with no success, he said, adding that the outage cost him about $300 a day.

Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA), the regulator, is also looking into what caused the outage. “IMDA takes Singtel’s service disruption very seriously,” a spokesman said yesterday. “IMDA is investigating the cause(s) of the incident and the service recovery measures taken by Singtel,” it said in a statement.

Most Singtel customers said they regained access to the Internet by following the telco’s instructions but several said it took more than one attempt.

Freelance musician John Paul Kwan, 28, had to manually edit his router settings as his modem was working but not his router after he reset both. “It’s strange as I found out that a filtering system was enabled when it shouldn’t be, which blocked Internet access,” he said.

Mr Alvin Pang, 43, who works in information technology, rebooted his modem twice to restore the connection yesterday afternoon.

An irate Mr Tan of Angel Supermart said there were long queues and unhappiness at his shop in Woodlands over the weekend.

He added that he hired extra people to man the cashier counter and to manually count the stock and replenish goods, work that typically was done automatically through an online system using cloud storage.

He said Singtel should let subscribers like him terminate their contract without penalty for “major breakdowns like this”.

Mr Rene Loh, 49, said his daughter dipped into her data plan at another telco for Internet access to finish her school assignment.

She used 75 per cent of her monthly plan in a few hours. Still he is undecided on whether to switch to another telco. “It may be slower or have its own problems too,” he said.

Read also: The day Singtel broadband went down
SingTel apologises for mobile and fixed broadband service disruption
Singtel handled Internet outage well: GPC chairman
Singtel broadband services restored, subscribers to get 10 per cent off bill for Dec

This article was first published on Dec 6, 2016.
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The Workers’ Party-run Aljunied-Hougang Town Council (AHTC) expects to spend $17.5 million to replace selected lifts over the next five years, ahead of those lifts’ usual 28-year lifespan.

The AHTC, which manages more than 1,700 lifts, also gave details of how it plans to implement the Housing Board’s Lift Enhancement Programme (LEP), which helps town councils fund the installation of recommended lift features.

In a statement, AHTC chairman Pritam Singh noted that lift maintenance and part replacement costs have been rising.

The town council’s lift department continues to review the scope of maintenance works needed for each age group of lifts, he added.

Under HDB guidelines, lifts are scheduled for major upgrading or replacement after 28 years.

The AHTC plans to “progressively schedule lifts nearing the 15-year mark of their lifespan” for the LEP, roughly corresponding to the halfway point of the recommended lifespan.

But the AHTC also noted that some older lifts had critical parts which became obsolete earlier than the 28-year guideline, “contributing to frequent breakdowns”.

It will thus replace selected lifts ahead of the 28-year guideline.

On Oct 6, it issued a tender for the installation of 20 new lifts in Aljunied GRC. Over the next four years, it will call similar tenders to replace selected lifts.

“Over a five-year period, the overall cost of this lift replacement exercise, funded chiefly through the town council’s sinking fund, is estimated to cost, at current prices, approximately $17.5 million,” said Mr Singh.

This article was first published on Dec 06, 2016.
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