Numoni awarded for infocomm innovation

Singapore

NUMONI, a Singapore-based payments company, wants to reach out to over 80 per cent of the world's people. That's an ambitious goal for a young (just two years old) and small (a staff strength of 43 people) firm. We're talking about a market of more than 5.6 billion people.

But it's not an impossible target. Numoni has created, developed and manufactured the Nugen, a cash-based self-service terminal for people under-served by banks. And four in five people in the world don't have a bank account.

"The Nugen brings cash-into-account for such people," the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore said in a statement on Monday. "People can top-up prepaid airtime to their mobile phones, pay bills, purchase tickets, issue vouchers, repay micro-loans, conduct micro-savings, make small remittances or value transfers and top up to their mobile wallet with the Nugen machine."

The transaction is completed in three simple steps.

"The Nugen is designed to help bring the digital economy to the masses," IDA said.

It won one of four of this year's top honours in the National Infocomm Awards, which are given by IDA and the Singapore infocomm Technology Federation. The Nugen won in the "Most Innovative Infocomm Product/Solution" category.

A total of 15 winners from the private and public sectors were presented with 12 awards for infocomm innovation by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Monday, IDA said.

They were picked from a shortlist of 164 that met this year's new selection criteria - "innovative development of infocomm products or solutions and innovative use of technologies to improve the quality of life for users and enable new opportunities for businesses".

The Land Transport Authority was another top winner. It won in the "Most Innovative Use of Infocomm Technology (Public Sector)" category with its advanced analytics for the Bus Service Enhancement Programme. This has allowed commuters to enjoy better bus services, thanks to the leverage on data analytics .

DBS Bank clinched the top honour in the "Most Innovative Use of Infocomm Technology (Private Sector)" category. "A first-of-a-kind in the banking industry in Singapore, DBS drove optimal ATM cash management with analytics by converting valuable ATM usage and customer behaviour data into daily, weekly and even monthly ATM cash replenishment schedules that minimise inconvenience to customers," IDA said.

The top award for the "Most Innovative Use of Technology (Private Sector - SME)" went to Singapore District Cooling, which produced the iTransform solution. "(This) enabled the lean plant operation team to efficiently execute scheduled and ad hoc tasks and collect data in a flexible, location-specific manner, with the objective to transform the current maintenance operations from a paper-intensive, laborious and slow system to a real-time and location-sensitive plant operations and maintenance system," IDA said.

The other winners of the biennial National Infocomm Awards are ViSenze, Nanoveu, National University Hospital (NUH), Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH), National Healthcare Group Pharmacy (NHGPh) and Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS), National Environment Agency, Banking Computer Services, National Trades Union Congress, Singapore Transport Association and Eyeota.

There are three winners (including two runner-ups) in the four categories of winners. NUH, TTSH, NHGPh and IHiS are joint runner-ups for the Most Innovative Use of Infocomm Technology (Public Sector).