Hungry go where? Check your phone for mouth-watering outlets in your vicinity. Picture: screenshot from Hungrygowhere.com

12 March 2009: Food is always the no.1 subject in Singapore. And the no.1 question on food is “Hungry, go where?”

To answer the question is an award-winning application from GTW Holdings that helps you quickly locate restaurants in the vicinity. The information appears on your mobile phone, listing the outlets, their dining promotions and detailed reviews.

The application leverages on LBS (location-based service) technology and the Hungrygowhere.com Web site database to provide the information on the food outlets.

For this approach, GTW Holdings wins the Consumer Mobile Application Innovation Award in the inaugural SingTel i.Challenge08 competition.

The contest encourages the development of innovative Infocomm solutions to meet real-life business and industry needs.

Cash rewards totalling S$80,000, attracted 39 software firms from Singapore and the region. Winners are also given the opportunity to work with SingTel to bring their solutions to market.

SingTel’s Singapore CEO Allen Lew says: “Businesses must innovate to succeed. In these tough times, innovation is crucial. The SingTel i.Challenge08 provides a platform for ICT entrepreneurs to harness and develop their ideas for the marketplace. Through these innovations, customers enjoy better service and productivity.”

Participants were required to design solutions that address a set of real-life business challenges based on the experiences of customers and key industry players. The judging criteria include the ease of adoption, user-friendliness, innovativeness and commercial viability of the solutions.

Prizes are awarded in four categories: Consumer Mobile Applications (won by GTW Holdings), Healthcare, Logistics and Transportation, and Workplace Innovations.

• The Healthcare award was won by KOOPrime-CommerceHub consortium with its Mobile Patient Health Record solution.

The application helps patients retrieve personal medical records using mobile phones and PDAs. This is useful during medical consultation as it allows doctors to have a clear and concise view of a patient’s condition and history.

• The Logistics and Transportation award was won by Growth Venture, a company that develops mobile platforms, robotics and communication systems.

Its intelligent remote vehicle tracking solution continuously monitors the status of vehicles and drivers to allow companies to better manage their fleet and minimise maintenance costs.

• The Workplace award was won by Advanced ERP, a software company that offers Web-based solutions for Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management, e-business, media and workplace collaboration.

Its DreamApps WorkSpace solution is a work collaboration tool that facilitates the exchange of information and digital content such as blogs, documents, images, sound clips and videos. The solution is ideal for events, campaigns and community building projects.

Mr Asok Chattopadhyay, Advanced ERP’s CEO, says: “As a small company, we need all the help we can get to compete with large multinational corporations. The SingTel programme gives our solutions exposure to a large audience and raises the profile of our company.”

RADM(NS) Ronnie Tay, IDA’s Chief Executive Officer, says: “IDA is encouraged to see the progress of the SingTel Partner Programme. It contributes to the rich environment of the Singapore infocomm ecosystem, which fosters world-class R&D of a wide range of infocomm products, services and solutions and facilitates our local infocomm enterprises in creating market-driven intellectual property.”

Launched in January 2008, SingTel's Partner Programme enables ICT entrepreneurs to transform ideas into reality, and not be limited by funds and resources. Established at a cost of S$2.3 million over two years, the programme now has an active membership of more than 130 software firms.

More information on the SingTel challenge

More on SingTel

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