Wattcost to gain access to over 500 million customers across Asia and Africa and prime placement on Samsung content and services platforms

Singapore, 26 November 2014 - Following months of intensive pitching, mentorship and submissions, Wattcost emerged the winner of the first SingTel Group-Samsung Regional Mobile App Challenge. 

The challenge is organised by the SingTel Group, including SingTel in Singapore, Optus in Australia and the regional mobile associates, AIS in Thailand, Airtel in India and Africa, Globe Telecom in the Philippines and Telkomsel in Indonesia, in partnership with Samsung. 

Beating five other finalists and over 500 submissions from around the region, Wattcost from Australia turns a home into a smart home of the future with an affordable wireless beacon and a free mobile app. Simply attached to the home's electricity metre, the beacon analyses energy use with advanced machine-learning algorithms and sends real-time alerts to help customers optimise their energy consumption and save electricity costs.

The winning team will work with the SingTel Group and Samsung to market its app to over half a billion mobile customers across Asia and Africa. The winning app will also enjoy prime product placement on Samsung content and services platforms. 

Mr Mark Chong, SingTel, CEO International said: "The SingTel Group-Samsung Regional Mobile App Challenge is part of our efforts to foster innovation within the regional start-up ecosystem at a time when mobile devices are becoming more pervasive in the Asian markets. In addition, through this challenge, we can also tap on the innovative minds of talented start-ups to offer relevant solutions to our customers. As a Group with a reach that extends across 25 countries, we are in a position to enhance the way people live, work and play by harnessing our collective insights and resources." 

"Through the Mobile App Challenge, we hope to identify and support talented app developers to roll out innovative content and services across various mobile platforms," said Dr Won-Pyo Hong, President and Head of Samsung Media Solution Center. "We are pleased to partner the SingTel Group for this initiative as we share a common vision of building a vibrant and robust content ecosystem that will ultimately help enhance consumers' digital lifestyle."  

Jointly organised by the SingTel Group and Samsung, the challenge aims to identify innovative start-ups in Asia and help them accelerate their development, while improving the smartphone experience for customers of the SingTel Group and Samsung. The challenge is part of a larger group-level collaboration between the companies to increase smartphone penetration and the proliferation of mobile apps in the markets where members of the SingTel Group operate. 

The six finalists were selected from a pool of over 500 start-ups comprising over 1,000 participants from Australia, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.   

Judges include industry leaders such as Steve Leonard, Executive Deputy Chairman of Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and Mr Amit Anand, Managing Partner of Jungle Ventures, as well as representatives from the SingTel Group and Samsung. 

For more details on the finalists, please refer to the appendix.

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Appendix

Finalists of the SingTel Group-Samsung Regional Mobile App Challenge 

Country

App

Description

Australia

Wattcost

Wattcost turns a home into the smart home of the future, with a low-cost wireless beacon and smartphone app that delivers real-time alerts to help consumers save on electricity costs and improve their home safety.

India

Catch It

Catch It is a mobile app that enables users to share images, videos, contacts and more with people around them.

Indonesia

Jepret Story

Jepret Story is a mobile app that allows users to collect photos published on social networks and organise them into a special video story, helping them access and share their treasured memories with ease. 

Jepret means "snap" in Indonesian.

Philippines

Epic Life

Designed exclusively for Samsung smart watches, Epic Life is an adventure game that can be played entirely from customers' wrists. The game also helps gamers stay in shape as it syncs with the smart watches' fitness data to unlock enhanced features and gameplay.

Singapore

Fiuzu

Fiuzu is a smart trip planning app on the web and mobile that plans travel activities by generating itineraries that match travellers' time, budget and interests.

Thailand 

Nugrean

Nugrean helps parents and teachers ensure child safety throughout a school bus journey by providing a unique student tracking solution, comprising a cloud service, a tracking gadget, and two mobile apps. The first mobile app presents a list of buses on a teacher's device, and the other app is for parents to track their child's location in real time.

President and Head of Samsung Media Solution Center, Dr Won-Pyo Hong;  Minister of Communications and Information, Dr Yaacob Ibrahim; SingTel Group CEO, Ms Chua Sock Koong and Optus CEO, Mr Allen Lew present prizes to the winning team, Wattcost. 

CEOs of the SingTel Group comprising AIS, Airtel, Globe Telecom, Optus, SingTel and Telkomsel together with the finalists of the SingTel Group-Samsung Regional Mobile App Challenge. 

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