GreenPost, the first company in Asia to offer aggregated bill presentment, is set to aggressively expand its regional footprint.

Its co-founder, Harveen Narulla said the company’s next step is to move into Malaysia, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia and other parts of the region.

“By year-end, we see ourselves more aggressively enter Malaysia and the rest of the region,” he told Bernama in an interview.

Click here to read the full article on Bernama.

GreenPost – Because Bills Should Be Green
by Daniel Goh, youngupstarts.com

If you’re anything like me, I get really annoyed by the stacks upon stacks of bills I receive every month – not only is it a painful reminder of how much hard-earned money is being sucked from me, but also because it’s really, really difficult to keep track of one’s finances this way.

Not to mention, it’s a massive waste of paper. That’s also how Anand Singh and Harveen Narulla felt, and that is why they founded GreenBills Pte Ltd, the technology start-up behind e-bill aggregation solution GreenPost.

Click here to read the full article on youngupstarts.com

A local startup, GreenPost, is helping Singapore to go paperless with its aggregating solution to help consumers move away from paper bills towards receiving electronic bills in one easy platform.

Read the full article here at Green Business Times.

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.’

Singapore, 7 March 2011 – GreenPost is pleased to announce the implementation of its groundbreaking locally developed technology to help Singaporeans and residents go paperless with their monthly bills and statements. The National University of Singapore Society (NUSS) has recently implemented a pilot run of the system to a small group of its members.

The technology aggregates NUSS members’ monthly statements online with many other bills and statements of local providers in a single portal (www.gogreenpost.com) which they can access with a single login. The service is also available on mobile apps on the iPad and iPhone.

When NUSS mooted the idea of providing members’ bills electronically, they recognised the challenges in changing consumer behaviour to accepting e-bills.

GreenPost, a leader in e-bill and statement aggregation, supports multiple billers’ statements on its portal, including from some of Singapore’s highest volume billers. NUSS members can now check their NUSS electronic Statement of Accounts (eSOA) on GreenPost, in addition to their telco and utility bills as well, among others. Members could also access these bills on GreenPost’s mobile apps.

The pilot run of the eSOA was implemented in second quarter of 2010 with a selected group of NUSS members receiving their SOAs on the portal instead of printed copies.  Members in the selected group who did not want their SOA in electronic format could inform the Society of this and continue to receive hard copy statements.

So far, the convenience of being able to receive several bills in one place has proven an effective hook for the paperless lifestyle. Encouragingly, only a small percentage of members in the first phase chose to stick with hard copy statements, with the rest willing to try the aggregated model and accept eSOAs. As a result, conversion rates to paperless billing for NUSS have outstripped industry norms. The reduction in paper volumes is also expected to save NUSS money on its monthly billing.

Mr Johnny Tan, President of NUSS commented: “In keeping with industry trends and as part of our corporate responsibility to be more environmentally conscious, we have started offering some of our publications in e-format and making them available online to our members.  We see the importance of implementing sustainable practices that benefit the environment and will continue to look for ways to conserve the environment while offering convenience to our members.”

Mr Francis Pavri, a member of NUSS who tried the service, had this to say:  “I am impressed! I managed to get bills from four billers – NUSS, StarHub, SingTel and Singapore Power – within a few minutes, and it works wonderfully. I can see all my bills on the website. This is really convenient. Good job and thanks!”

With the aggregated eSOA offering, NUSS is riding the crest of a wave of interest in saving paper. 2011 has been declared the International Year of Forests by the United Nations, with many international initiatives in the area being organised by various groups.

“We were very pleased to work with NUSS on its e-bills aggregation. The club’s management is far-sighted and keen to explore new technology. Our solution is convenient for members and will deliver cost savings to the club. Bill aggregation is the key to widespread paperless adoption. It is the missing piece in the consumer behaviour puzzle and we are confident it will change the paper billing industry as we know it,” said Mr Harveen Narulla, GreenPost’s Director (Strategy).

GreenPost is discussing several contracts with clubs, larger billers, payment collectors and banks here. It is also looking to be a technology provider to the government’s OneInbox initiative, which is up for tender soon. The company has regional ambitions and has already started work on its Malaysian, Australian and Hong Kong aggregated e-billing systems.

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About NUSS

NUSS is the foremost graduate club with more than 15,500 graduate members from NUS and other universities. Officially established in 1954, NUSS has undergone several revisions in name – the University of Malaya Society (1954), the University of Singapore Society (1962) and finally the National University of Singapore Society (1981), as it is known today. For more information on NUSS, please visit www.nuss.org.sg.

About GreenPost

GreenPost is Singapore’s only aggregator of electronic bills and statements. It is driving the adoption of a paperless lifestyle in Singapore through its novel approach to presenting ebills. Its service is free for users, who can also access their bills on mobile (iPad, iPhone) and enjoy value added analytics and bill payment options.

Website: www.gogreenpost.com

International Year of Forests 2011

The UN General Assembly in 2006 declared 2011 as the International Year of Forests. This was driven by the understanding that sustainable forest management can contribute to sustainable development, poverty eradication and achievement of internationally agreed development goals. Official page: http://www.un.org/en/events/iyof2011/

UN General Assembly Resolution 61/193: http://www.un.org/en/events/iyof2011/resolution.shtml

For more information, enquiries, or media interviews, please contact:

Donna Garcia
Rice Communications for GreenPost
Mobile: +65 9734 8808
Email: donna.garcia@ricecomms.com

Harveen Narulla
Director (Strategy), GreenPost
Mobile: +65 9852 9373
Email: harveen@gogreenpost.com

Almeta Chia
Assistant Director, Corporate Affairs, NUSS
Tel: 65863766
Email: almeta@nuss.org.sg