Retail News CRM

Tag: Asia Pasific

  • 3 startups win entry to IBM Watson-backed ‘pre-accelerator’ in Singapore

    3 startups win entry to IBM Watson-backed ‘pre-accelerator’ in Singapore

    IBM needs no introduction when talking about technology and computing. The US-founded company casts a long shadow over the developments that brought us the personal computer. These days, it’s throwing its weight behind another development: cognitive computing.

    The IBM Watson project is a computer system that’s based on machine learning and natural language processing. You might have seen it beating humans at Jeopardy. The aim is for the computer to keep learning from previous user interactions and experiences, and thus provide better solutions over time.

    This year, the firm held the IBM Watson Asia-Pacific New Venture Challenge, looking for startups that use the technology to develop new ideas and applications. The six-week, 25-team competition culminated in an event in Singapore, where the 12 winning teams were announced.

    Of the companies that came out ahead in the contest, three of them were the top performers on the strength and execution of their ideas. The 12 winners are invited to join Tag.Pass, a newly-announced “pre-acceleration” program run jointly by IBM and Singapore’s Infocomm Investments. Areas of interest include retail, travel, healthcare, the public sector, and finance. They also get access to IBM’s Watson API and cloud resources, making them part of a worldwide network of developers.

    Top teams

    Raydar

    Singapore-based Raydar is a search engine for stock photos. It uses the Watson tech to get better insights on content and improve its keywords, making its search function more effective.

    Snapask

    Snapask is a Hong Kong-based, on-demand mobile marketplace connecting students to tutors. It uses Watson to make sense of the students’ and tutors’ behavior on its service in order to be able to offer more personalized content.

    Silverlake

    Silverlake is a Malaysian company that helps businesses improve customer experience and engagement through big data. Among its software products is WALIC, a lifestyle concierge app powered by Watson that offers customers personalized recommendations.

    Runners-up

    Cogniant

    Singapore-based Cogniant is a mental healthcare service. Its app uses the technology to help mental health patients remember their medication and complete their thoughts in collaboration with their clinicians.

    Embodied Sensing

    Embodied Sensing is another Singaporean company. It works on speech-to-text and voice recognition. The product, Emotibadge, uses Watson tech to analyze conversations between staff and customers in order to improve customer service.

    Konversations

    Konversations komes comes from India. It helps prospective students choose universities, student loans, careers, and more, through a chat app. It uses dialogue tech provided by Watson to ensure a natural experience for users.

    LocoBuzz

    LocoBuzz is based in India and provides an online marketing service that includes big data, social media, and email marketing. It uses Watson to make sense of unstructured data and improve its customer intelligence to enable better targeting for its clients.

    mClinica

    Back to Singapore with mClinica, a health data and analytics startup for pharmaceutical companies and medical professionals. Watson tech helps it prevent medication dispensing errors and update prescription information in medical libraries in real-time.

    MobiCart

    Singapore-based MobiCart helps aspiring e-tailers to set up an online storefront on iOS, Android, and HTML5. It also provides an ecosystem of add-ons for merchants, like payment systems.

    StockFlock

    Singapore’s Stockflock is an online platform for investors, offering company comparisons so that users can make better investment decisions. It uses Watson tech to better personalize its search function and the information it sends to its customers.

    Swizzle

    Swizzle hails from South Korea. It uses its own tech along with Watson to scour the internet for trends, insights, and influencers. This way, it helps advertisers identify potential customers and better target their campaigns.

    Zumata Technologies

    Singapore-based Zumata works with travel retailers to offer hotel and travel booking options. Through predictive tech and proprietary APIs, it offers travel sites and agents competitive prices and attractive inventory. Watson tech helps the firm with changing listing information, like hotel descriptions and images.

    Lees ook:

  • Strong Visitor Figures for Regional Duty Free and Travel Retail Event

    Strong Visitor Figures for Regional Duty Free and Travel Retail Event

    TFWA Asia Pacific Exhibition & Conference 2015, the 20th event for the duty free & travel retail industry in Asia Pacific, closed on 14th May in Singapore after a very successful week.

    With occupied exhibition space topping previous years at 9,118 m2 – up 9% on 2014 – and 292 exhibiting companies present (+12%), of which 73 were new to the show, there was a huge variety of products on display for the benefit of visiting buyers and agents.

    Visitor numbers were considered satisfactory by organisers TFWA in a year which has been challenging for the duty free and travel retail industry, with aviation accidents, a new approach to gift giving and luxury consumption among the all-important Chinese travellers, financial instability and political tension in several countries and the resulting slowdown in the growth of air passenger traffic.

    A total of 2,655 trade visitors attended the show, equivalent to last year, from 1,053 companies (+3%) of which more than a third were “key buyers” – duty free & travel retail operators and landlords from airports, airlines, ferry and cruise companies, cross-border and downtown duty free stores.

    “I was very impressed by the quality of the stands, the assortment of products on display and the energy around the show,” said Erik Juul-Mortensen, President TFWA. “This year has not been easy for the industry in this region and, in light of that, we are really very satisfied with the number of companies present and the quality of the visitors.”

    Duty free & travel retail sales in the Asia Pacific region in 2014 totalled US$23.6 billion, up 5.5% on the previous year, according to provisional figures from independent analysts Generation Research, which ranks the region top in the global industry with 38% of total sales. The second largest region is Europe, followed by Americas, Middle East and Africa.

    Forthcoming events organised by TFWA include TFWA World Exhibition & Conference from 18th to 23rdOctober 2015 in the Palais des Festivals, Cannes and the Middle East & Africa Duty Free Association Conference from 22nd to 24thNovember 2015 at the King Hussein Bin Talal Convention Centre, Dead Sea, Jordan. Details of these events can be found at https://www.tfwa.com.

     

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook: