The Real Group Blog

TECH-SAVVY and bubbling with youthful exuberance, many local entrepreneurs of Web-based start-ups know how to drive traffic to theirInternet sites with attractive and value-added content that can beaccessed without charge.

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And judging from what they said at a conference last Saturday, it appears that making money from their sites often comes as an afterthought.

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“What we are sure about is that we don’t want to charge users for it,” said Mr Dominic Ee, 26, one of the three founders of online transport guide Gothere, whose website is at www.gothere.sg.

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The site, which is only two months old, now gets about 5,000 hits a day.

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One of the most popular features from the online transport guide is the function that helps drivers plan routes that bypass the Electronic Road Pricing gantries.

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This feature is especially useful for motorists as more and more ERP gantries are being set up with higher charges to control traffic flow.

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Mr Ee was representing one of the 17 technology startups pitching their wares at the fifth E27 Unconference 2008 for entrepreneurs last Saturday.

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“Marketing is a huge problem for us,” said Gothere co-founder Toh Kian Khai, also 26. The company does not have any income stream yet, but he hopes to be able to earn the first dollar by the end of the year.

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“We’re trying to come up with ways to tie up with companies to provide more value-added services to their websites,” said Mr Toh. Currently, many corporate websites only have a map of their location and the bus or MRT services nearby, he said.

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Besides the “avoid-ERP” feature, www.gothere.sg: includes details such as parking charges, which prompted one user to call it a “driver’s Bible”.

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The economic slowdown hasn’t deterred many of these first-time entrepreneurs:from launching their services.

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Being fans of the free access model used by Google and Facebook, these technopreneurs offer their services free to benefit as many as possible. They also attract traffic by making their sites user-friendly and by allowing “consumer-generated content”.

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Mr Vinod Nair, the 26-year-old chief executive of Real Group, said: “We are not so concerned about monetary gains now. What drives us is that people just love to use the services.”

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When he started :www.homespace.sg with four of his classmates from the National University of Singapore last May, he had the home buyer in mind rather than profits to be made from the site, which currently attracts 300 to 400 users a day.

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His team of five collects information from the Urban Redevelopment Authority and Housing Development Board websites as well as from real estate agents and presents it through a simple interface. The graphical presentation on the site features the recent transactions of homes from each neighbourhood so that home buyers know what the average market price is.

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“We hope to launch a similar site for rental markets by August,” said Mr Nair.

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Mr Nair, who is a computer science major, is confident that once the site gathers more traffic, there will be a way to profit from it. For now, he is focused on developing content.

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According to a DP Information-ACE Startup Enterprise Survey done in March, only about half of the startups are aware of the existence of Government assistance schemes. DP recommended that start-ups take advantage of the various training grants available, which includes subsidies on marketing and other business courses.