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18 December
2012 Last updated at 23:41
GMT

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Singapore's technology start-ups seek success
By Saira Syed BBC News, Singapore

Singapore ranks first in the
World Bank's list of the easiest countries to do business in

Continue
reading the main story

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Singapore's fortunes have long been
tied to tech industry.

In the late 1960s it emerged as one of Asia Pacific's key electronics
manufacturing hubs, making transistors and basic gadgets, before shifting into
PCs and other more complicated equipment for many of the leading brands.

But in recent years much of this work has been lost to other nations where
labour costs are lower. This has prompted the government to pour investment into
research and development, and offer cash grants and incubator schemes to help
get new businesses off the ground.

Entrepreneurs have also been reassured by the knowledge that Singapore is
also one of the easiest places to close a company if it fails - a fact
recognised by the World Bank which has repeatedly ranked the country as the world's
easiest to do business in.

The result is a growing start-up scene which benefits from its proximity to
some of Asia's key growth markets.

These are a source of both talent and potential investment - as recently
demonstrated by Chinese tech giant Tencent's purchase of a minority stake in
local video games developer Level Up.

Here are three other innovative companies chasing success from the
island:

The hospital in your hand

The team at Zensorium want you to take your fitness into
your own hands... or at least into your thumb.

It has developed a device called the Tinké, which works in conjunction with
an iPhone or iPad.

Using optical sensing technologies it measures blood volume changes in your
body.

That allows it to measure your heart rate, respiratory rate and blood oxygen
level when you put your thumb over its red and infrared light sensors.

Zensorium has developed its own software to use these measurements to display
an overall score for fitness and wellness on the smart devices' screens.

It also has a separate index to tell you how stressed you are at any given
time based on the rhythm of your heart beat.

Stressed? The device can also
tell you how 'zen' you are with its Zen Index

The firm says Tinké is not a medical or diagnostic device but rather a
"motivator" for people to set goals and improve their health.

Visit Thaveeprungsriporn, chief executive of the company, says many countries
having ageing society and healthcare resources will be strained in coming years.

"We are empowering people to quantify themselves," he tells the BBC.

"We hope it will be easy enough, simple enough that we can then change
consumer behaviour."

But angel investor and mentor to start-ups, Kristav Childress, says this kind
of product needs validation for consumers to buy in.

"I would like to see videos, testimonials and clear value of the product plus
a 'try it for yourself' button that lets you order one for a trial," he
says.

Whatever its merits, Tinké heralds a trend of new health-focused tech which
takes advantage of falling sensor prices to offer consumers the kinds of
feedback they might have previously have only been give by medics.

The firm is also working on a follow-up product - a urine analysis
device.

Visit says the more data points people can collect for themselves the better
they might be able to spot a problem and take preventative measures.

The automated roti maker

Co-founders Rishi Israni and Pranoti Nagarkar want to
revolutionise home cooking in South Asian households.

For centuries women in the sub-continent have painstakingly made rotis, a
kind of flatbread, by hand for their families.

But the team at Zimplistic have taken the guesswork and labour out of the
process with their machine The Rotimatic.

You place flour and water in compartments - no measurements required - tell
the machine how many rotis you want, and out pop fully cooked and puffed rotis
at a rate of one-a-minute.

"When making rotis at home, human judgement is required to determine
consistency," says Pranoti who says she came up with the idea after realising
that it was not sustainable for her own life to be making rotis by hand
everyday.

"This system has been built into the device to determine how much water and
flour must go in. It auto-corrects and auto-adjusts," she says adding that the
team often eat the rotis in the office for lunch.

Pranoti says the market for the machine is mainly South Asia and Indian
expats living abroad.

The Rotimatic will be consumer tested in Singapore next year.

Speak to unlock

No more passwords, pin codes to remember, or finger
swiping - you could soon be unlocking your smartphone with your vocal chords.

China-based Lenovo, in what it calls an industry first, has introduced this
feature on the A586.

The technology was developed by Baidu and A*Star's Institute for Infocomm
Research in Singapore. You speak a phrase and the phone identifies you as the
speaker and unlocks.

Li Haizhou, is leading the research on human language technology at A*Star.
He describes how the technology measures the individuality of the human voice.

Lenovo hopes the
speak-to-unlock feature will help drive demand for its smartphones

"Digital signal processing and computing algorithm offer a solution to
speaker recognition, which is also called voice biometrics or voiceprint," he
says.

"With speaker recognition technology, we extract speaker traits from speech
samples and use that to establish a speaker's identity."

He says the team is also working on speech translation technology which will
"transform the way people communicate".

However, analysts say there may need to be more applications for the
innovation beyond just unlocking a phone for it to make a significant impact on
sales.

"They have to come up with other usage around this feature, perhaps involve
mobile payments that can only be made with your voice for example," says Ajay
Sunder, vice president telecommunications at Frost and Sullivan Asia
Pacific.

"At that level it could really have resonance for users."

More on This Story

Related Stories

New York start-ups' own flavour
18 DECEMBER 2012, TECHNOLOGY

Can UK compete with Silicon Valley? Listen
17 AUGUST 2012, TECHNOLOGY

The African tech-hub boom
19 JULY 2012, BUSINESS

Vietnam's new technology entrepreneurs

24 MAY 2012, BUSINESS

Silicon Fen shows off its wares
09 DECEMBER 2011, TECHNOLOGY

Related Internet links

tinke

http://rotimatic.com/

Lenovo

Frost and Sullivan

World
Bank Doing Business report

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