Four young graduates of the National University of Singapore (NUS) have shown that you don’t need to be in Silicon Valley to invent breakthrough products or attract the attention of technology giants

Darius Cheung, a Singaporean, and three Indian nationals, Varun Chatterji, Indradeep Biswas and Rishi Israni, founded tenCube when they were fresh graduates from NUS in 2005. The company is behind the popular and critically-acclaimed WaveSecure software, which helps mobile phone owners track and locate their lost phones, back up their data, and remotely wipe out data to protect privacy.

Cheung, CEO of tenCube, said the company had considered Silicon Valley in the US and India when they were deciding where they would set up their company. “We ended up in Singapore primarily because we wanted to target the whole Asia market, which is where the mobile market was hot at the time. Singapore was also a great place where we could easily attract diverse talents from India, Vietnam, and other places in Asia,” he added.

Singapore’s cosmopolitan population where residents come from all parts of Asia as well as other parts of the world, proved a boon to the start-up. Cheung recounted, “My co-founders (from India) were not only great engineers but more importantly, they were instrumental in our Indian Development Centre, which was a big part of how we became successful in the first two years of our start-up.”

Another Singaporean, Lee Chee Wee joined them, bringing with him a wealth of experience in digital and social marketing, while Rico Wyder, a Swiss who had previously started his own company, helped spearhead business development. They were also able to hire Cal Dillysul, a Filipino with call centre credentials, and Pham Duc Dungan, an engineer from Vietnam.

“Singapore is an ideal hub for attracting diverse talent and that diversity gave us a competitive advantage that allowed our team to complement and leverage on each other’s strengths,” Cheung said.

The young and energetic team made its debut at the university’s Start-Up@Singapore, billed as Singapore’s biggest business plan competition, which became a launch pad for their fledgling enterprise. This helped pull in venture capital as well as funding from SPRING Singapore, a government agency.

Cheung said tenCube’s experience dispelled the common perception that Singapore is an expensive city to start and run a business. “If you consider the productivity gains that you can get with the talents over here … the efficiency of the infrastructure, the incentive schemes available – taking into consideration all these factors, Singapore is actually a very cost-effective place to run a business.”

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He reckoned that with the productivity gains from the talents readily available in Singapore, the effective cost of operating in Singapore is the same as in India where the lower salary was often offset by increased overheads and lower overall output.

tenCube’s innovative product propelled the company to the international stage where it gained wide recognition. Within a year since it started in 2005, tenCube was named one of the top 100 tech start-ups in Asia by Red Herring, a US-based technology magazine. The company also received a further boost of S$1 million in investment from India-based One97 Limited.

Other accolades included Top 10 Wireless Innovation by Frost & Sullivan, Overall Winner of the Mobile Monday Peer Awards, and a Top 3 Winner at Google’s Android Developer Challenge.

More excitement and recognition followed when McAfee acquired tenCube for an undisclosed sum in 2010, in a move to strengthen McAfee’s leadership position in mobile security. The software giant decided not only to make Singapore a hub for its mobile security business and R&D centre, but also added to the headcount post-acquisition.

Wahab Yusoff, VP and head of McAfee South East Asia said: “McAfee intends for Singapore to become one of the hubs for its mobile technology development. We will continue to tap on the pool of talent here and grow the team.”

Cheung added, “Singapore is a particularly interesting place for new product developments. It’s almost like an incubation centre that is representative of any modern economy.”

He cited the following reasons – close industry-academia collaboration which makes research and recruitment easy; the presence of government agencies and large corporations with the budget to experiment with new technology; customers like the Singapore Police Force and the military, who are willing to co-develop and test-drive products.

“Singapore is a very small place so the proximity really helps. The executives who are based here have an open mind about trying new products. So the entire chain smooths the path for any new product developments, be it for a start-up or a large company,” Cheung explained.

Now part of a larger company themselves, Cheung and his co-founders who created a multi-million dollar venture out of a simple idea of locating lost phones, will no doubt have a much bigger budget to fuel their creative drive and take their business to greater heights.

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