Netccentric Pte Ltd.
That's what my leetle dotcom is called.
My creative Singaporean partner Ming came up with the name (which is meant to incorporate the words "interNET" and "eCCENTRIC")
Netccentric Pte Ltd (our parent company) is based in Singapore but we also have a Malaysian company Netcentric Sdn Bhd to handle all the R&D work for the company which explains why I spend most of my time in Penang right now.
For those of you who noticed, the Singaporean company is spelt with an extra "C".
The joke behind that is, months ago we incorporated Netccentric Pte Ltd.
But when I came back to Malaysia to try and incorporate Netccentric Sdn Bhd, the Registrar of Companies in Malaysia didn't allow it.
They only gave us the permission to incorporate the company name with ONE C in the middle ie Netcentric Sdn Bhd.
So we settled for that eventhough our company logo was spelt with a double C.
Of course we later found out that used in our context, "Netcentric" is the proper way to spell it so the Malaysian Registrar of Companies was right and they were just trying to correct our bad English.
Anyway, our leetle dotcom at the moment comprises of 4 people though there will be another 2 joining us in the next couple of months.
We have two offices, one in Singapore and one in Penang where I have a tiny office with a table like this.
Notice the fan I have right next to my chair.
The central air-conditioning shuts off after 5.30pm so my office turns into an oven after working hours.
The fan saves my life every day.Our office in Singapore though is a little hidden shop-house somewhere in the city that gives me a very dotcom feel to it.
Every time I walk in there for my meetings I think about the little garage that the Google Guys started Google from.
The Penang Team though is a little more spoilt.
We work from an office located in this building.
So what exactly does our leetle dotcom do?
In time to come, I will slowly reveal bits and pieces here on my blog but as for now, all I can say is... we're working on something that doesn't quite exist yet in Asia.
No it's nothing as certain or tried and true like web designing or e-stores that but rather... something new that will either grow to be really big or fail miserably in the near future.
So it could be anything from having a new search engine to even selling fish online.
An online fish market. How cool is that?
No longer will you have to go to a smelly fish market like this to buy fish.
All you have to do is go online *click* *click* *click* and voila!
You have fish for dinner!
I bumped into the owner of an international publishing company headquartered in our building just a few days ago and he said to me
"Timothy... I should buy some shares in your dotcom then when it grows big, I won't have to work anymore."
I laughed and said
"HAHA! Mr Chew*, need I remind you that 9 out of 10 dotcoms fail miserably".
*Of course... Chew isn't his real name