| Company: |
BAK2U PTE LTD |
| Address: |
135 Middle Road Bylands Building #02-08 Singapore |
| Website: |
http://www.bak2u.com/ |
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| Interview with Mr Paddy Tan |
| by Kriti Arora on 24-Feb-2009. Student can be reached at kriti.arora.2005@smu.edu.sg |
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| Business Profile: |
| BAK2u Pte Ltd is a leading startup from Singapore that develops mobile security solutions to protect clients' communication devices and sensitive information; identification of thief via contact number, location, IP address, machine serial number and even video of the perpetrator. |
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| Interviewer's Comments: |
| Mr. Paddy Tan is a self-motivated businessman, who has gone through the risks to be an entrepreneur. He truly believes in what he does and is a high-achiever, who gives his best in all endeavors. Despite hardship and setbacks, he has succeeded in piloting his business through several crises. He is now firmly striding towards making his best Singapore born-and-raised company into one of the leading players globally. |
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| 1. What is the nature of your business? |
| BAK2u Pte Ltd is a leading company that develops multi-platforms mobile security solutions (patent-pending), to protect consumers' and corporate users' gadgets and confidential information from theft.
Since 2005, BAK2u has established itself as the Singapore start-up that develops anti-theft software for various devices, across multi Operating Systems; Windows Mobile (PDA Phone), Java & Symbian (Mobile Phone), Mac & Windows (Latop), iPhone and Android.
BAK2u also provides white label and branded applications to companies across the continents, customizing software to best fit the corporate requirements. |
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| 2. When and why did you decide to become an entrepreneur / take over your family business? NOTE: If it is not a family business, ask: Do your parents have their own businesses too? Have they inspired you in one way or another? (Select appropriate question according to the entrepreneur being interviewed.) |
| It started when I was very young and saw how hard it was to make a living for my parents who had to wake up in the wee hours to prepare food to sell at the hawker centre. They worked from 3am to about 4pm daily with no rest in between at all.
This made me think of better ways to make money which is enough to cover expenses at home and also to support our school fee.
I understood that the only way to get out of this cycle is to become your own boss and move up a notch to have people running for you with a good business model. |
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| 3. What are your reasons for choosing to do business in this particular industry? |
| I am quite forgetful and end up losing things easily. A job as an engineer initially took me to places like USA, Europe, and I lost a few things myself in the plane, lounge, hotel etc. I learnt that most of the time it is not that the items are not found, but that the finders have no way to return the items even if they are found as there are no identifications on the items themselves.
I thought about this for a long time and wondered if there was any way to recover these lost items. My partner and I did some research and found that this is an industry that was yet to be tapped. With more devices getting smaller and mobile workers becoming more reliant on them everyday, we believed that this was an industry that could be explored. |
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| 4. How did you put together all the resources needed to start your business? For example: getting the start-up capital, hiring staff, doing sales and marketing, advertising, etc. |
| When we first started the company in 2005, I combined resources with another partner (but had since left a year later) and we started with our own savings.
We didn't get any investors or Venture Capitalists to support this business as we wanted to test if the business model was viable, ourselves.
Using the knowledge that we learnt from our previous jobs in business development, sales and marketing, we made use of the internet to do viral marketing about our business. We saw it as the cheapest and most effective method to create awareness about our products. |
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| 5. How does the cellphone based anti-theft software work? |
| BAK2u mobile security software protects the owner's phone from theft and loss and also ensures that confidential information does not fall into wrong hands. When stolen it detects the thief's contact number, location and other details to help get the device back.
When an unauthorized SIM card is inserted into the stolen BlackBerry, an SMS text alert and email will be sent out immediately on the background to a pre-defined number/email address (e.g. spouse, colleague, IT dept) about the theft from the thief's own phone number, that includes IMEI & IMSI information which aids in recovery.
Repetitive alerts can be set to send SMS Text Alerts every minute on the background. |
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| 6. How do you manage your time between running your business, blogging, and travelling around the world? |
| I try to strike a balance by keeping all weekdays for business and only evenings and weekends for family and less than 30 minutes for blogging daily.
Blogging helps me rest my mind and slow myself down to reflect on what had happened the day earlier.
My family members understand that all this running around is not for myself but to build a better life for everyone. With the opportunity given in this consolidated business world brought about by the internet, now is the time to make full use of it and bring the standard of living up for everyone. |
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| 7. What are some interesting stories you have about your first few customers/first few years in business? |
| We have a customer who lost his BlackBerry in JFK airport, New York USA but ended up in Tokyo when a finder misused it by replacing the customer's SIM card with his own SIM card a week later.
The alert message was sent all the way back to the owner in Singapore when he came back from his business trip. Upon receiving a call from the owner, the finder first refused to return the phone but in the end had to return it back when his location, mobile phone number and other identifications were clearly spelled by the owner.
Another interesting story is about how Singapore's companies don't see a future for other Singapore companies.
When we first started the business, we approached a handful of other companies including a big Singapore telecommunication company. Interestingly, the most common reason given to us by those Singapore companies that slammed their doors on our face was "Singapore products are not as good or that you are not known overseas yet. Come back later."
When we managed to get a place in the SpringWise.com "Top 10 life-hacking business ideas! Lost & found in the 21st century in 2006", overnight we became a Made-in-Singapore company and now, those that had rejected us earlier, want to work with us! |
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| 8. What were the initial difficulties and challenges you faced in this industry, given that the mobile market is pretty competitive? |
| The most difficult challenge that we have faced is getting potential customers to see that mobile security is as vital as it is to protecting their computers and other communication devices like phones against viruses; That BAK2u software is to help ensure that their sensitive data is not stolen or leaked when the devices are lost. Companies can be greatly affected when their employees' devices are lost with confidential information leaked out to the competitors or to the public.
When we first started, it was not so much about the technology as during that time, most of the Operating Systems were pretty much consistent with no major changes unlike in the recent years - 2008 and 2009. I believe that another challenge will be to constantly keep up with the progress of the Operating Systems that have evolve very quickly in the past years. As BAK2u is the only company in the world that develops mobile security software across multi-platforms (Windows, Mac, Symbian, Java, iPhone, Android), the need to keep learning new programming skills is essential. |
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| 9. How did you overcome them? Please share some specific examples of the action you took to overcome the challenges. |
| To educate more potential corporate and consumers about the importance of securing their devices, we run road shows together with our local and international partners and create as much awareness as possible via viral marketing (blogging etc) to reach out to this group of customers.
To ensure that BAK2u is able to develop mobile security software in the shortest possible turnaround time, our programmers are cross-trained to learn as many languages as they like according to their passions. Over time, we will have a team that enjoys injecting their ideas on how to improve the programs and also explore opportunities to dive into the unknown while developing new Operating Systems. |
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| 10. We see that you moved beyond the mobile phones and started providing security for computers, and why did you decide to move into the security market for Mac and PC laptops? |
| The main reason is the feedback that we gathered from our customers. Many of them who use our phone software, PhoneBAK love it and asked us if we had any intention to extend this to other devices like laptops.
Originally, we were developing a similar software for the iPhone but later learnt that the software would only be for the American market and won't be in any other part of the world. That was the trigger point as we decided to cover the Mac environment first while waiting to see how the progress of the iPhone evolved.
The Mac software has proven very popular as we managed to make use of the built-in camera of the Mac to take videos of the thief when triggered. It was considered as a very cool application to have for protection of the expensive laptop. We thus extended the software to the Windows OS about 9 months later. |
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| 11. What are some of your proudest business achievements to date? And why are they so important and meaningful to you? |
| As our software is standalone and does not go through a central server, we do not monitor the activities of the devices nor do we track the location of the laptops when connected (even if not stolen unlike our competitors).
We help our customers whenever they make a report to us about losing their devices and in general, the recovery rate is hovering around 65-75%. |
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| 12. What are some of your proudest business achievements to date? ii. And why are they so important and meaningful to you? |
| It will have to be the nomination for Businessweek's Asia's Young Entrepreneurs 2007. It was a huge surprise when I was informed by a customer who called me to share the news with me.
The next achievement has been to be mentioned in the CNN and other international news channels like WSJ, CNBC about how our software help owners retrieve their stolen devices and secure their confidential data in it.
As an entrepreneur, I am like many others who run their businesses constantly asking themselves if what they are doing is correct. This is especially so if you are entering into a new market with limited cash but a big passion to match. |
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| 13. How many employees do you currently have and how do you motivate them? |
| In BAK2u, we have about 15 colleagues supporting us for administration, sales, programming and designing. We have tried to keep it as lean as possible, in the looming recession hitting many companies globally.
I don't treat them like employees because the company pays them but instead I want them to have fun and be able to learn as much as possible from everyone. A company will grow only when its staff don't think and work like employees but run the company like its business owners. |
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| 14. What are some business ideas you have implemented that created great results in your business? |
| Entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship has been introduced into the company where everyone is keen to know more about running their own business.
The direction is very simple, cover your own salaries with your contributions in the company and learn to run the business like yours, with an opportunity to run your own in the future with the support of this parent company.
This result is excellent progress for the company, when many see it as both a playground to test their ideas and also as a good environment to learn about oneself to identify their strengths and weaknesses. |
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| 15. How has the recent global financial crisis affected your business? |
| Our sales dropped drastically as we depend much on the US and EU market and when the ball is dropped with the subprime crisis rolling bigger and bigger and eating up banks along its way to Asia, BAK2u is hit badly.
We are handling it as we move along but we are looking to evolve much faster with better ideas and creative software together with the support of our local and international partners to walk out of this crisis together. |
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| 16. With the changes in the market today, do you think it has become harder or easier to succeed in business? Why do you say so? |
| Since the internet has entered into the business world, it has made it both easier and more difficult for companies to succeed, by reaching out to more customers and at the same time, introducing more competitors into the market.
It is a double edge sword but as a businessperson, I prefer to use it to my advantages than to see it as a more difficult flight of stairs to climb.
I would say it is much easier than ever because it is not about the products anymore but it is wits against wits to capture the flag and the changes in the market, giving you the opportunity to ride on the wave when it builds up. |
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| 17. What do you see for your business in the next 5 years, and does it include any plans for expansion? |
| BAK2u will always be a software house that develops and expands with innovative products under the umbrella of mobile security and this will be the direction for the next 5 years.
I believe it is a must today to prepare the next generation of people to take BAK2u to the next level as the market gets more chaotic and challenging. |
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| 18. How was the experience being shortlisted as BusinessWeek's Asia's top 25 Young entrepreneurs? |
| It was great! Never in my dreams did I even think that I could be nominated for any of these prestigious awards!
While others said it would be better to win, but I had started this company without thinking about winning. My objective is to provide better living conditions for the family.
When the news was out, I realized that it was not luck that got me nominated but I was nominated because there are people out there who believe in the business that I am running. And some of these actions may have affected them in a good way for them to nominate me for this award. |
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| 19. What does entrepreneurship mean to you and in your opinion, what other qualities does a person need in order to be successful in business? And why? (Educational qualification, work experience, attitude) |
| To become an entrepreneur, the person needs to be daring and crazy at the same time move into the unchartered water. Why have sleepless nights starting your own business when you can be assured of a monthly salary by taking up a job in a company?
It was for these reasons that I wanted to test myself for I can and can't take in the chase of my passion in creating something out of nothing and making a footprint in the business world with stories to tell to the next generations.
The few qualities that any one will need are passion and a big stomach to bear failures. With a passion, unforeseen actions will be pushed forward to solve the most difficult problems when confronted. A big stomach to take failures is so that when you fail, you can still pull yourself up again and assure yourself that this one failure helps you move an inch closer to success.
While education is important in helping an entrepreneur, it should be seen as a tool that when combined with other skills would help one to propel higher and faster into the know-how of running a business. But the emphasis should be on becoming street-smart as opposed to learning from books. Nothing beats a higher EQ than IQ but if both can be combined, it will be a force to be reckoned. |
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| 20. In your opinion, what does it mean to have the "spirit of enterprise"? |
| The unselfishness of sharing with others what one has learnt and encountered in the course of running his or her own business, without expecting anything in return, is the most significant. The willingness to share as much as possible with others to help shorten if not hopefully to shed some light about the path one had taken, in order to help the next generation of young entrepreneurs. |
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| 21. In your opinion, do you think that age constitutes a challenge for young entrepreneurs? |
| No, it does not. Most importantly it is to know the role to play.
For example, when I first approached a few potential customers, I couldn't give provide them with any confidence as they had this thinking that anyone in the security industry should be older (and wiser) and not be a punk who looks just out from the university. I learnt after a few of such stints.
So I turned the thing around by having some one more senior to engage the customers and play a role behind the scene instead to achieve the same result that would not have been possible otherwise. |
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| 22. What are the three important lessons you believe that young entrepreneurs of today should learn through your experience? |
| Hit the wall hard, climb over it and roll with the time.
Learn to make as many mistakes as possible; all these experiences will accelerate your achievements.
Climb over it; when facing with problems or mistakes, don't just look into solving them directly. Learn to climb over it to the source of the problem. Sometimes, problems may have been created indirectly by yourself instead.
Roll with the time; whatever decisions made in the past were based on best interests at heart. If they are no more applicable now, roll with it and solve the problem with a new set of solutions. What works then may not necessary work now or again. |
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| 23. A final word? |
| Start as young as possible, get your foot wet into entrepreneurship. Start earlier to gain a foot faster than others. What you learn early will be yours to keep and will help you build the fundamental direction that may shape your future. |
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| 24. N/A |
| N/A |
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