SME community portal TowkayZone.com launched

January 25, 2014 Leave a comment

SME community portal TowkayZone.com launched

Friday, January 24, 2014 – 20:25

AsiaOne

SINGAPORE – SPH Magazines has launched TowkayZone.com, an online portal designed and created with small medium enterprises (SMEs) in mind. The portal was soft launched in September 2013 and officially launched today.

Built in partnership with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the site provides a platform for the SME community to exchange ideas and seek advice on technologies that can transform their businesses as well as on other issues pertinent to them.

It also allows users to sign-up using their Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, which can further enhance the potential for them to broaden their networks within the community.

Since its soft launch, the site has gathered more than 15 partners, attracted about 4,000 unique visitors monthly and generated more than 400 forum threads.

The site was officially announced by Ms Sim Ann, Minister of State, Ministry of Communications and Information, at the DP Information Group’s 27th Annual Singapore 1000 & Singapore SME 100 awards dinner.

“I hope to see more SME owners, topic experts and industry players coming on board, to tap on TowkayZone to exchange knowledge, and to generate new ideas for your company and beyond,” Ms Sim said at the dinner.

Several business owners and experts have come on board TowkayZone.com as advisors, including Jackie Lee, CEO and founder of clickTRUE and Noisy Crayons; Prakash Somosundram, Social Media Director of YOLK; Eric Koh, founder ofTravelogy.com; Tiang Lim Foo, Market Development Manager for Evernote Asia Pacific and Dylan Hu Dingren, Director for Poli Medical.

Eric Koh, Founder of Travelogy.com, said: “The idea of having a forum for discussing startups and entrepreneurship is welcoming. There has been a lot more interest in this area recently, with the government chipping in to help kickstart the ecosystem. I don’t think there’s a credible online discussion forum yet in Singapore for entrepreneurs.”

“The next step for the site is probably to have more organisations like ACE, SITF and IHLs (Institutes of Higher Learning), etc. to come on TowkayZone and use it as a bridge to support their entrepreneurial efforts in Singapore. Young companies need all the publicity out there,” said Jackie Lee, CEO of clickTRUE and Noisy Crayons.

He added: “Be it as a mentor or an entrepreneur, I find TowkayZone to have the potential to reach out and generate efficient conversations beyond the traditional one-one mentoring, giving visitors a many-to-many scale. That’s where it will become a lot more interesting and useful.”

Terence Ang, Product Manager for TowkayZone.com, said: “Some business owners, or “Towkays”, have accumulated a wealth of experience over the years but have never really shared the secrets to their success openly. Over time, we would like them to share these experiences, and pass on their wisdom to future generations of business owners.”

He added that there is also a mobile edition of the website that users can access using their smartphones.

 

Filed under Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment