After 15 years working in Spain, France, the US and Hong Kong in the international development consulting space, Vincent De Saint-Exupery quit his job and launched his first startup in 2007 – Catapulte. His startup’s aim was to provide startups or larger firms with local subsidiaries a full suite of administrative, accounting and legal services to help in their local and regional developments.
From Catapulte came Ecclesia, a SaaS startup that collects, manages and stores data for limited companies in Hong Kong. In his latest venture, De Saint-Exupery continued on his quest to provide companies with a low-cost, web-based secretarial service solution called LCCS, which is geared towards startups or big companies looking to expand in Asia.
What is your startup?
LCCS is the first and only web-based company secretary solution in Hong Kong that offers company formation, hosting and company secretarial services for corporate changes that have to be reported, as well as statutory records that must be kept updated according to the laws.
With incorporation fees starting from 3,000 HKD, LCCS is also among the cheapest company secretarial service providers in Hong Kong. This has been made possible because LCCS is powered by Ecclesia, our SaaS (Software as a Service) that facilitates and accelerates the collection and the management of data required to set-up and maintain limited companies in Hong Kong, as well as the online storage of those data.
How did you come up with this idea?
The web, and even more, the Cloud, is the best platform we could have ever dreamed of to facilitate the exchange, the management and the accessibility of data (not to mention backup and storage). The same people who progressively gave up using fax because e-mails, scanners and pdf docs made data exchange more convenient and faster, have been moving their personal data to the Cloud and making use of user-friendly solutions such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
The idea first came up in the early 2000’s while web technologies were not yet as impressive as they are now, but internet was already an extraordinary data exchange platform.
Behind the scene, being a player on the market providing corporate services as part of our consulting services, we knew that such data were managed by professionals selling low added value services to their customers. We thought that such low added value services could be sold at a lower price when making use of new possibilities offered by the web and IT in general.
In the late 2000’s, when such new possibilities became available, we started to develop our online software solution (Ecclesia). We actually imagined and developed a SaaS solution without knowing what SaaS was and we thought it would be welcomed by professionals who had no time, no skills and no money to invest in such heavy developments!
Unfortunately, we ran into a very conservative market with professionals not interested at all in innovation and new technologies. So later, taking advantage of even newer solutions offered by the Cloud and the increasing number of solutions available to develop specialized applications, we had the idea to offer directly to end users to upload, store, exchange and manage their corporate data by themselves with a user-friendly and low-cost platform (LCCS).
Who are you targeting and how big is the market in HK/Asia?
We target any individual or corporate body willing to set-up and maintain a limited company in Hong Kong.
In 2013, 170,000 private companies were incorporated to make a total of over 1.1 million private companies registered in Hong Kong. Out of 7 millions residents in Hong Kong, it is a very impressive figure!
Among all those companies, some are well structured and well established companies that can afford global and comfortable high-hand corporate service providers or even have their own administration staff dedicated to company secretarial works. But on the other hand, a majority of those are probably just startups, dormant companies, holding structures with limited activities or SMEs with limited financial means which would definitely consider an alternative online low cost solution such as LCCS.
Our business plan clearly shows that with about 500 customers, LCCS would already feel quite comfortable. 500 companies out of 1.1 million companies seems to be a reasonable market share to be achieved especially when the market itself is growing with around 170K new incorporations per year. 500 customers are also less than 0.3% of this annual new incorporations figure.
What are your futures plans for your startup?
Our plans are:
- To extend the panel of services we could offer beyond company secretarial services, connecting LCCS with other specialized platform dedicated to other legal services, accounting services, tax services, etc. We truly believe that the trend to upload and manage data online will accelerate while security solutions will also be developed and access to the cloud will be always wider and faster.
- To bring our model to other markets such as Singapore.
1 Benefit and 1 Challenge in the HK startup scene?
The 1 benefit is definitely the entrepreneurial dynamism that makes Hong Kong such a great place to set-up a business. The tax environment and an incredibly efficient administration is a magic cocktail to facilitate and even encourage entrepreneurship locally. Obviously, Hong Kong also benefits from its geographical location and its proximity to the leading Asian country in terms of development after more than a decade: China.
The main challenge in Hong Kong is to innovate in a very stabled environment where old practices also became habits and routines and where not so much room left to challengers. In an always been competitive open market, some actors have been in Hong Kong for decades ruling the sector. Disruptive solutions offered by new players are not really welcomed unless supported by huge marketing investments.
Vincent De Saint-Exupery on Startbase.HK: Vincent De Saint-Exupery
LCCS on Startbase.HK: LCCS
