Singapore Entrepreneurs

One of the best things about the web, in my opinion, is the fact that practically everyone has access to academic help these days. From the genius of the not-for-profit Khan Academy to personal online tutoring with some of the best teachers in the world regardless of where you are, it is amazing what someone who has the willingness to learn can master these days.

Forget the people who still believe that e-learning can never replace “real learning”. All of us who have learned something from the web, especially who have been tutored over the web, know for a fact that e-learning is real learning and there are no two-ways about it. And if you must have a 3rd party official statistic, 2011 Towards Maturity Benchmark Survey reported that 72% of the 600 companies they surveyed said eLearning helped their business adapt more quickly to change (an increase of 11% on 2010 survey results).

Here’s the great thing for entrepreneurs looking to get into the industry. Numbers show that e-learning rang in US$56.2 billion in revenues in 2012 with trends showing growth into a US$107 billion market by 2015 with Asia-Pacific taking the lead.

To whet your appetite further, New Ambient Insight Reports that the Asian eLearning market is expected to reach US$11.5 billion by 2016. Two countries with the highest annual growth rates are Vietnam (44.3%) and Malaysia (39.4%) with Thailand, Philippines, India and China, following closely behind (30%-35%).

And the whole thing makes perfect sense. Costs are brought down considerably while efficiency and efficacy is brought up, dare I say, exponentially. And while I mention stats for corporate e-learning, and have none for personal e-learning, I am still certain that the space is also set to continue to rise. After all, who wouldn’t want to get help and pay only for what you actually need? I mean, how much of traditional tutoring is really just baby-sitting (but ok, some parents do need it to be a baby-sitting exercise that happens to involve getting the homework done).

I know if I could dial back to my college days when I had the roughest time studying Calculus, it would have been awesome to have something like http://eduboard.com/math/ to just get some clarity on a problem.

Now, I have personal language tutors who work around my schedule and give me access to material that would have cost me an arm and a leg before. The options for today’s life-long learner are manifold and readily available at a reasonable cost.

Food for thought for today’s entrepreneurs seeking more opportunities.

Having dropped below 1400, almost to 1300 and then making its way back up, it seems that there has never been a better time to pick up gold, especially if you don’t have any holdings.

But is Silver the better investment bet?

How much longer will the Singapore Dollar continue to show it’s strength? While it all depends on which currency you are basing it against, the world standard is still the US Dollar and the SG$ is showing some signs of weakening. (However, if you are planning on going to the UK, Europe or Japan, you’re in for a nice currency exchange bonus.)

So while the last 30 days have seen very little up or down swings, at 180 days we can see a marked difference. If you had exchanged those dollars back on November 2012, you would have saved a pretty penny. Personally, I wasn’t expecting an upswing by the US$ because of its continued economic weakness and potential for another QE (quantitative easing = print more money) but then its economy started to show signs of life, which is all well and good.

We’re still much better off than 1 year ago when there was a big swing upwards for the US$ (I don’t know why that happened) from 1.24 to 1.28 in June, but I’m hoping we don’t go that way again, but what do I know.

Taking in a longer view, the SG$ has only been going from strength to strength. I wonder what that financial analyst on Channel News Asia thinks after he very confidently declared a march to S$1.80-1.90 (and even higher) against the US$ range back in 2005 when it was hovering around S$1.70. (Yes, don’t just readily believe analysts on TV, do your own homework, especially now that information is easily accessible).