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This article was taken from GMA News Online,
In the year 2003, Computer Science college dropout and former radio DJ Carlos Hinolan started a company that offers " in-store music" thru customized audio for fast-food chains and convenience stores.
'Customize the sound'
"When I was on FM radio, I really wanted to have my own radio station. But when you are a young guy, back then, you cannot just own a radio station because you need a congressional franchise to be able to do it," Hinolan told GMA News Online in an interview. "But then I saw there's a lot of traffic inside the malls, inside the stores, at the supermarkets. But what they have is dead air. There's really nothing happening inside. And I said, 'Why don't I customize the sound?' And that's what I did," the founder, Chairman, and CEO of tech firm WAV Global noted.
Seizing the opportunity, Hinolan used P500 to buy a microphone and create voice content for his "big break" and very first client Chowking, the fast-food chain which had 238 fast-food restaurants nationwide at that time. "You could say I was lucky that we created relevant content for those 238 stores. And they used that content to tell their customers what's for breakfast, what's for lunch, what's for merienda (Snacks), and what they can take home to their families," he said.
Asked how he convinced such a well-established client to sign a deal, the tech entrepreneur noted it was about the product. "It's not about how small you are ... It's about how good your content is. At the end of the day, the content will always be king," he said.
"If you look at Facebook, or what's happening in viral videos, some of those fantastic contents came from cheap cameraphones and they're gathering millions of views. So it's all about relevant content," Hinolan emphasized.
But in order to grow his business, he said his service needed to evolve – not just stick to CDs and flash drives to be played in the backrooms of stores.
"We realized that we cannot do it anymore with just CDs or USBs, so we ended up with our proprietary devices to be able to push and centrally control these devices via the internet," he said.
Today (Audiowav) WAV Global manages thousands of stores and their in-store music across multiple countries. Philippines, Singapore, and Indonesia. WAV will continue to expand in other territories across the region.