Wong Jeat Shyan, Chief Executive Officer of TalariaX Pte Ltd, shared with InnovAsia analyst Tina Wu his opinions about innovation is particularly challenging in Asia, and why his product exemplifies Asian innovation.

"Are you prepared to walk your journey on your own, face all your challenges, and make all the sacrifices to run a business?" That was the question Wong Jeat Shyan asked himself before founding TalariaX Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based mobile wireless application company designing customised SMS (short messaging service) servers. Now, after 3 years, TalariaX has launched a series of 6 SendQuick SMS servers, serving 30 or so customers ranging from transport, insurance to healthcare industries.

A Malaysian who came to Singapore for secondary school studies, Wong fully understands the traditions of potential Asian innovators and entrepreneurs. In his opinion, it is the Asian culture that discourages most of innovations translating from ideas to actions. "We are used to think ourselves as inferior to the western world," said Wong with a sigh. "It is also difficult for people to sacrifice what they already have, but to jump into some venture."

Wong himself, however, is among the emerging group of Asian talents who are willing to make a change. He is constantly looking at new wireless technologies, and sourcing for innovative applications. A former researcher from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, Wong started his first company, Cybersource Pte Ltd, with a schoolmate in 1996. Cybersource was an e-commerce company with internet paging technology expertise. "During the dot com era, it was quite easy to raise funds. But then you know, the technologies evolved so fast and paging started to face greater challenges." said Wong. He started transferring from paging to SMS technologies since 1999, and then closed Cybersource completely in 2001, and founded TalariaX.

With previous experience in a similar industry sector, Wong did not face many problems when starting TalariaX. He was also very confident in the core product, a fully-customised SMS server for corporate users. However, the initial business was not as smooth as expected. "We were targeting small and medium enterprises initially, and then we found that usually big companies were more willing to invest in such products." After the strategy shift, TalariaX started to attract more and more customers.

In June 2004, TalariaX launched the world's first on-demand printing system based on SMS in partnership with HP (Singapore). With the so-called SendQuick Print Server, people can use their mobile phones to send a printing job from anywhere. Take a retail shop for example, instead of preparing tons of brochures for new products and promotions before hand, it can now wait for customers' commands to print out exact number of copies required. That introduces higher flexibility and can reduce wastage.

The SMS on-demand printing system is just one example of innovative applications from TalariaX. To Wong, innovation may be the only way for Asians to stand out in the world. He used the TV industry in China as an illustration. "Ten years ago, they made the cheapest televisions. But now, they are already reaching the bottom line of the cost and price. They are forced to go for innovations." That is the pressure Wong always feels, but he turns it out to impetus to drive better but also different ideas and technologies.

Now Wong is looking beyond text-based SMS server for growth. A new MMS (multimedia messaging service) based server will be rolled out in Singapore and Malaysia by the end of 2004.

Link: www.talariax.com

* Analyst, INSEAD InnovAsia. Contact Tina Wu (tian.wu@insead.edu) for questions and comments, or visit www.inseadinnovasia.com for information on INSEAD InnovAsia'sservices.

INSEAD (www.insead.edu) is widely recognised among the world's top-tier business schools as one of the most innovative and influential, with two comprehensive and fully connected campuses in Asia (Singapore) and Europe (France). InnovAsia, a wholly owned subsidiary of INSEAD, provides independent intelligence and research on emerging technologies across Asia. For more information, visit www.inseadinnovasia.com.