GreenPost is Singapore’s only aggregator of electronic bills and statements, presenting them on a single platform for the user’s convenience, reports TAN SHIHAO SEAN.

E-BILLING is great. You save trees while you pay your bills, with the mere click of your mouse. When more and more companies start to offer e-billing services, you eagerly take them up, you love the thought of doing your part for the environment, not to mention how convenient it is.

Mr Narulla (right, with founder and CEO Anand Singh): ‘We believe that we are doing something that could change the shape of the world. It could lead to hundreds of thousands of trees still standing.’

Then comes that one night, which finds you seated in front of the computer, all ready to settle your monthly bills. You soon begin to realise that what was once ‘a mere click of the mouse’ has become a tiresome labyrinth of portals and Web interfaces – a much more tedious process than before.

What you would have experienced, is what Harveen Narulla, director of GreenPost, calls ‘multiple log-in fatigue’, a phenomenon he feels is the main reason why many people are not going paperless with their bills.

‘At a time when people are increasingly under pressure, dealing with work commitments, family commitments, and a shortage of time, they want technology to make their life easier, not harder,’ he explains.

This is where GreenPost comes in. GreenPost is Singapore’s only aggregator of electronic bills and statements, presenting them on a single platform for the user’s convenience.

‘Every biller wants to pull customers to their website to check bills. It takes a third party who’s not a biller, to say ‘Hey, I’ll aggregate all your bills,’ and that is what we are,’ says Mr Narulla.

GreenPost currently aggregates bills from some of the highest volume billers in Singapore (M1, StarHub, SingTel, Singapore Power services, NUSS Alumni club), and plans to link up with all billers – not just the top volume ones – by 2012.

The company also aggregates bills from Malaysia (Maxis, Digi, TNB), and Australia (Optus), and intends to expand its presence in both. Plans for India, Hong Kong, and America are in the pipeline.

This will save upwards from two million pages of paper per month, a conservative estimate based on a function of user take- up rates, the average number of bills per person, and the average amount of paper used to mail a single bill.

‘We will achieve these numbers with 125,000 users,’ says Anand Singh, the founder and CEO of GreenPost, who pointed out that signing an agreement with any of the six banks they are currently in negotiations with would allow them to hit 400,000 users within six months. These six banks include OCBC, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, UOB, ICICI, and ANZ.

Under the pending agreements, users can choose to display the bill information aggregated by GreenPost within an Internet banking platform of his choice. This gives the user the convenience of having his bill information alongside the bank’s existing payment service, making it much easier for him to make payments.

GreenPost is also in the process of negotiating commercial terms with the most common payment collection providers, which will enable users to pay their bills from the GreenPost portal itself.

Data analytics and a bill archive are also available, allowing users to keep track of their bill history from up to two years ago.

To top it off, all these benefits will be provided to users for no charge at all. So where does the money come from?

Former Bloomberg news anchor Bernie Low posed Mr Singh the same question in 2009, describing the company as a free service, an effort to save the trees. ‘It’s not a business model right?’ asked an incredulous Mr Low. ‘You’re not a money making proposition.’

Mr Singh disagreed, describing three ways in which the company intends to make money, charging billers a portion of the cost savings GreenPost affords them through reduced paper costs, advertising revenue from intelligent ad banners (replacing the marketing pamphlets often sent together with bills), and charging a fee for payment collection.

Today, the business model has evolved to include two more – the accumulation of carbon credits from forest savings, and a paid curtain where users can pay to upgrade their accounts to include more in-depth bill data analytics and a larger archive.

Things weren’t always smooth going though. The company struggled to attract initial investment due to the financial crisis in 2008 and a general wariness toward B2C (business-to-consumer) companies by investors in Singapore – something Mr Narulla attributes to the unique revenue cycle of a B2C company.

The revenue cycle of a B2C company ‘is almost flat for a long while, hits an inflection point and then spikes’, something Mr Narulla feels Singapore investors are relatively unfamiliar with, compared to the gradual growth curve of a traditional company.

To make matters worse, the original idea, incubated with the assistance of NUS in 2005, of linking up biller systems with the GreenPost platform was deemed unfeasible despite successful technical integration due to cost, says Mr Narulla.

‘Integration by connecting directly with biller systems, and pulling data from biller customer management systems is a very expensive exercise,’ he explains, referring to the pilot tests done with the support of a dedicated engineering team from StarHub.

However, with the aid of a co-investment from Spring Singapore and a round of private angel funding, the team managed to reconceptualise the product to draw the data from the biller’s portals, which avoids the hugely expensive integration challenges the company had faced before.

From then on, the company launched its beta platform in September 2009 and launched commercially in March 2010.

It has since developed mobile apps for the iPhone and iPad in June and August of 2010 respectively, with plans to release an Android app in May 2011, making it the first bill aggregator in the world to incorporate a mobile platform.

GreenPost was also selected as technology partner by CrimsonLogic for its bid for the Singapore government’s OneInBox tender, which, if successful, would see them aggregating all Government-to-Citizen correspondence.

Mr Narulla hopes to be supporting the top 20 billers in Singapore, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Australia by the end of 2012, and to fully commercialise three of these countries in a three to five year time-frame.

Says Mr Narulla, ‘We believe that we are doing something that could change the shape of the world. It could lead to hundreds of thousands of trees still standing.

‘If people’s mindsets and attitudes don’t change, the last tree will fall one day. But if through our lives, work, and involvement we can delay that by even 20 to 50 years, we will have done our job.’

Greenbills
GreenPost campaign

Singapore | November 2009 to February 2010

GreenBills Pte Ltd engaged Rice Communications in November 2009 to develop and implement a limited PR campaign to create awareness for its flagship eco-friendly billing solution, GreenPost.

Over a period of three months, Rice Comms sought to build GreenBills’ profile in Singapore and the region through tier-1 interviews and article placements, supported by a social media campaign. During this period, Rice Comms secured an email interview with Straits Times as well as interviews appearing on Bloomberg TV’s Asia Confidential  and Channel News Asia’s Eco Ventures. Rice Comms actively engaged the social media community with regular news and eco-features posting on Twitter and Facebook;  drove  traffic to the GreenPost website, and connected  GreenPost with eco-bloggers.

Singapore – 03 December 2009 - GreenBills, a fast-growing technology solution provider based in Singapore, has launched its online bill aggregation and delivery platform GreenPost that brings all of a consumer’s bills to a single digital “mailbox”. GreenPost is an eco-friendly and intuitive solution for single window digital bill delivery, management and reporting. Free for consumers, GreenPost is available via the web or through GreenPost Express, a desktop-based program.

Anand Singh, Founder and CEO of GreenBills said “Single log-in bill aggregation was a long sought way for industry to reduce paper waste and save millions of dollars in paper, printing and postage costs. The Singapore Government and the Infocomm Development Authority are enthusiastic about a single window bill delivery and payment system for Singapore.”

Singh said almost a billion pages are wasted in paper billings and other business-to-customer documents, costing billers well over S$200 million each year. GreenPost has come up with a unique, patented technical solution for billers to go paperless as efficiently as possible. GreenPost provides billers with a complete delivery solution from their online portals or directly from their billing platforms, which can slash bill delivery costs by 80 percent and more.

“If you factor in paper, printing, postage and labor costs, each paper bill or statement can cost anywhere from 0.70 cents to 2.65 dollars. This does not factor in the negative impact of paper billing on the environment. GreenPost addresses both the financial and the environmental cost of paper billing” he said.

Over the last six months GreenPost has been running in beta mode, delivering bills of four of Singapore’s highest volume billers: telecommunications companies Singtel, M1 and StarHub, and utility firm Singapore Power. Thus far, feedback has been very favorable with more than 80 percent of test users rating GreenPost’s model of aggregation and bill management positively and saying they would go paperless using GreenPost. By comparison GreenPost’s surveys indicate that only about 5% of consumers are currently paperless for their bills.

“The results are very encouraging. Those who have tried GreenPost are happy with their experience and they have been promoting paperless billing to their friends, family and companies. We have also received enquiries from service bureaus, payment collectors, billers and financial institutions,” Singh shared.

Singh’s vision is for GreenPost to define the standard for paperless billing in Singapore, and ultimately, across the region and beyond.

Founded in 2005, GreenBills has received support from the Singapore Government (through SPRING Singapore) and institutions like the National University of Singapore. GreenPost had its beta launch on June 5, 2009 on World Environment Day, promoting its Paperless-2012 mission for Singapore which aims to save 2 million pages per month by the end of 2012.

So that users can share in the savings that are generated by paperless billing, GreenPost plans to reward them with a loyalty program, lucky draws and other benefits. At present, GreenPost has 3 monthly lucky draws worth S$88 cash to encourage users to register at the GreenPost website and support the “Paperless-2012” mission.

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About GreenBills
GreenBills Pte Ltd is a Singapore founded B2C technology solutions provider, focusing on aggregated
EBPP (Electronic Bill Presentment & Payment) through its patent-pending system, GreenPost. For more
information, please visit www.greenpost.com.sg.

For further information, please contact:

Donna Garcia
Rice Communications on behalf of GreenBills
Tel: +65 6221 8729 | Mob: +65 9734 8808
Email: donna.garcia@ricecomms.com

Siddharth Kumar
Rice Communications on behalf of GreenBills
Tel: +65 6221 8729 | Mob: +65 98977916
Email: siddharth.kumar@ricecomms.com

Anand Singh, CEO of GreenBills Pte Ltd, a fast-moving technical start-up and creator of GreenPost®, an eco-friendly and intuitive solution for single window digital bills delivery, management and reporting.

GreenPost® is poised to be next generation digital postman. Anand Singh was interviewed by Bernard Lo on Bloomberg TV’s Asia Confidential.