I had fun watching the top ten startups pitch at the Echelon 2012 Singapore. The E27 event culminated yesterday with keynote speeches, lectures and lessons on bulding up startup companies, tapping emerging markets and managing growth (among others). The Startup Marketplace pitchfest had ten earnest teams vying for the Echelon 2012 Singapore Startup — where Builk came out on top, but the following three companies caught my attention.

Dropmyemail

This cloud-based email backup service is free for the first 128MB, $9.99 yearly for 5GB and $19.99 yearly for 10GB of backup storage. Refer your friends and you get 2GB free. You can back up multiple accounts at the same time, and for people who want to keep their 10-year old Yahoo email account safe, this one’s for you.

Your backed-up emails will be secured in the clouds and a snapshot taken every day (for upgraded accounts) or every week (free accounts). If you permanently deleted an important message, you can restore the previous day’s copy to recover it. Signing up is as easy as signing in to your email account, just go through Dropmyemail and you will get your free account. Your account passwords will be encrypted and Dropmyemail won’t have any access to it.

CEO and founder John Fearon said they are going to upgrade their security system to further encrypt passwords and secure the database. He also mentioned they’re working with Twitter to integrate message backups with Dropmyemail. Fearon also owns Dropmysite, a cloud-based backup service for websites.

PayrollHero

This payroll management software uses face recognition to clock in employees, whether on or offsite. A mood identifier feature encourages employees to smile when punching in, because a smile — whether forced or natural, still releases endorphins, brightens the mood and lowers blood pressure.

PayrollHero aims to eliminate “ghost employees, time stealers, time wasters and buddy punchers” from the workplace. Bundy clocks and paper timesheets will be eliminated, because employees can log in via the Web or by their mobile devices. GPS location tags ensure the employees really are where they say they are.

Employees can also use PayrollHero to log sick leaves or FTOs, reducing HR work in tabulating attendance and Finance responsibilities in computing payroll. The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in the Philippines is on closed beta, and they reported significant reduction in payroll processing (for 700 employees) from 16 days to a mere 5 minutes.

Perx

This customer loyalty and rewards app runs on Android and iOS, and helps reduce the clutter of rewards cards from your wallets. Users can download the app, go to participating merchants (over 450 locations in Singapore), scan the merchant’s QR code and get their purchase stamps (chops) electronically.

Perx veers away from the daily deals program and focuses on specific merchants who are willing to (and are already) handing out rewards stamp cards to customers. Some merchants prefer giving out freebies to loyal customers rather than handing out huge discounts to bargain hunters. Doing away with printed cards is an added bonus.

The company provides analytics to its partner merchants, showing how much sales the program generated for the store. Perx is working with point-of-sale (POS) providers on single-use receipt-printed QR codes to eliminate cash register queues. Perx will also introduce sponsored chops, where one merchant will give out an extra chop for another merchant. The second merchant pays for the sponsored chop, which in turn subsidizes the first merchant’s participation in the Perx program.

 

All images courtesy of their respective sites.

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