PayPal announced that it plans to double its number of employees in Asia Pacific from 1,000 to more than twice the current strength by the end of 2010. It plans to add more than 100 new jobs in Singapore, its international business headquarters and development center.
It will be hiring Singapore-based professionals with expertise in technology, product development, infrastructure design, risk and engineering.
In the past 2 years, 26 technology start-ups from around the world like Wikinvest and mig33 from the US, and Snap Group from Europe called Singapore their Asian home. Savvy investors and entrepreneurs like like Joi Ito, Saeed Amidi and Brad Greenspan have also chosen to base their ventures in Singapore. This is in addition to more than 7000 MNCs and 10,000 small-medium enterprises that have already established their operations here.
Singapore is an ideal location as a core technical centre for innovative technologies. Unique to Singapore is the ability to provide a city/state ecosystem within a stable and well-educated society. This allows for technical and market assumptions to be tested and piloted before achieving mass market deployments. In addition, Singapore’s blend of Western and Asian cultures allows innovations to be expanded into other parts of Asia Pacific and towards the global market.
In recent years, the Singapore Government’s belief in creating a more startup-friendly environment and release of R&D funding avenues have also been important pull factors as there are now more opportunities for startups to get project funding and participate in joint public and private projects. More opportunities to trial and use startup technologies will definitely be a key factor in attracting innovative startups to set up a presence here.
Real estate developer Japan Land has completed its new Jurong Data Centre in Singapore.
The new centre in Singapore has seven floors covering more than 34,000 square metres, of which 30 data suites are dedicated with separate engineering facilities.
The project has a positive impact on Singapore’s role as a regional info-communications centre. Its customers include Singapore Telecommunications, Singapore Power Telecommunications, fibre-optic broadband company OpenNet and Axia NetMedia.
Asia Pacific’s data centre services market is expected to grow by US$10.68 billion by end 2011, based on figures from Frost & Sullivan. The demand for data centre space has been driven by the increasing demand for Internet services across Asia. This is also contributed by the Singapore’s government initiatives towards broadband and digital content development.
While Wikinvest’s main office is based in the United States (US), the company has invested in an offshore office in Singapore which does a lot of development work.
“We’ve had great luck attracting a team of some of the best engineers and that, combined with our partnership with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), is really what makes it work for us,” said Mr Michael Sha, CEO of Wikinvest.
“One product that will be launching in early 2010 will be a revolutionary portfolio tracking tool that will help you easily keep track of your personal portfolio of investments,” he said.
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