Taking the path less travelled, to make a real difference
Mr Mohan Belani, co-founder and CEO of e27, an ‘online marketplace’ curating IT products for start-ups. Photo: Robin Choo
SINGAPORE — Had he not ventured overseas and experienced first-hand the revolutionary potential of start-ups, Mr Mohan Belani would have become a white-collar worker in a government organisation or private corporation, the way most of his peers and friends did.
Instead, the 34-year-old is the chief executive officer and co-founder of e27.co, an online platform which serves as an intermediary matching entrepreneurs, investors, and people looking for work in an innovation-led environment. What inspired him to create his own start-up was his year-long experience working at a new e-commerce outfit in Silicon Valley as part of the National University of Singapore’s Overseas Colleges (NOC) programme, where between 2006 and 2007, he experienced first-hand the opportunities and challenges of starting a company, and interacted with founders of other start-ups. “I got very deeply involved in the start-up eco-system in Silicon Valley and saw how these people could really make a difference,” he said.
Today’s household names like Facebook and YouTube were just taking off at that time, recalled Mr Belani, and there were a host of apps like Mint, which helps people to stay on top of their finances in a convenient manner, and Echosign, which pioneers e-signatures for online documents, that were taking off.
“My own classmate at Stanford was also building something to help companies manage payroll … It made me realise that start-ups can really change the world,” he said.
Excited by buzzwords like Web2.0 and a plethora of interesting ideas about how the second Internet wave would look, Mr Belani decided to give the nascent start-up scene here a leg-up upon his return to Singapore.
His idea was to set up a platform that hosts a list of investors, a jobs portal, and an “online marketplace” curating IT products and services useful for entrepreneurs — such as branding, Web design and publishing — that could “help entrepreneurs as much as possible”. What started out as a Singapore-centric platform in 2007 has since grown to feature outfits and opportunities across the Asia-Pacific.
For instance, it also curates a series of events that may be of interest to techies and entrepreneurs, such as bootcamps and workshops.
Although the local start-up scene has “grown tremendously” over the past decade, with the likes of homegrown mobile consumer marketplace Carousell and property portal blog 99.co helping to “solve deep problems and every-day issues”, Mr Belani said challenges remain.
For instance, entrepreneurs here still face challenges getting funding at the later stages of their venture.
Also, there is a lack of tech and design talent here, compared to many other countries, he said.
Still, he lauded recent efforts by the Government and angel investors to help start-ups take their first step forward, saying: “This is a space where there can never be too much support.” Kelly Ng
