After e-bikes and tennis apps, this serial entrepreneur is betting on AI cameras

He walked away from his father’s successful firm to launch his AI smart camera business

Ivan Mun has always been tinkering with new ideas and different ventures.

Even while climbing the ranks in his father’s success SGX-listed company, Aztech Global, a global design and manufacturing solutions provider, he has spent years experimenting with side hustles from selling titanium parts for foldable bikes to building a tennis matchmaking app.

Some ventures took off, others fizzled out, but the drive to create never left him. Now, at 44, Ivan has gone all-in. In May 2025, he invested his own money to start Hello Ello, an AI smart home camera business he believes has so much potential that he walked away from his role as Vice President of Business Development at Aztech.

We spoke to Ivan to find out more about his entrepreneurial journey, and why he decided to step out of a comfortable, secure job for his latest venture.

A serial entrepreneur

Ivan’s very first side hustle was conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, he noticed a surge in interest for foldable bicycles, particularly Bromptons.

Owners wanted titanium upgrades, but the original parts were prohibitively expensive. Spotting a market gap, Ivan launched Wheely Good, an e-commerce site specialising in aftermarket parts. He sourced components from China and accessories from Japan, learned to navigate customs and shipping logistics, built its e-commerce webstore, and even taught himself to disassemble and rebuild Bromptons from his basement workshop.

“I never imagined I’d spend months in my basement taking apart bikes during my free time,” he recalled. “But it was satisfying to see something people loved, and knowing I was delivering real value by solving a problem for them.”

The side hustle was unexpectedly lucrative, bringing in close to S$40,000 in just four months. However, when the pandemic ended, more people returned to work and Wheely Good slowly faded into the background—but the entrepreneurial spark it ignited never did.

Another venture sprang from Ivan’s love of tennis. He noticed that casual players often struggled to find partners who matched their skill level or had compatible court availability. The solution was Athletix, an app that matches players based on skill and schedule. The app is still active today, and Ivan continues to update it in his free time.

He then went on to set up The Founders Agency, a consultancy aimed at helping startups navigate connections with reliable Asian manufacturers and vendors. While the venture never fully launched, mostly because Ivan was balancing other commitments, it gave him valuable insights into operations, supply chains, and the challenges startups face when scaling internationally.

Building on these experiences, Ivan turned his attention to what would become his biggest venture yet: Hello Ello.

Creating a system that doesn’t need babysitting

Ivan was inspired to start Hello Ello in early 2025, just as Aztech was rolling out its line of commercial security cameras. He thought that he could take the modern smart camera further by leveraging AI technology.

I wanted to build a system that was smart enough to work without needing to babysit it or mute its notifications.

A key problem he wanted to tackle was notification overload. Most smart cameras bombard users with alerts, many of which are irrelevant, causing people to ignore them or turn them off entirely. That inaction can leave homes vulnerable, with incidents only discovered too late during a post-mortem review of video footage.

Determined to bring this vision to life, Ivan left his job to create a ‘smarter’ doorbell called Ello. The device was designed to offer a wider field of view and more intelligent notifications than existing consumer products.

Multiple Ello cameras can be placed throughout a home, creating a virtual map of the layout. Using this system, Ello can identify individuals, track their movements, and build a “family tree” of known users.

The camera only alerts users when something urgent or suspicious occurs, such as an unfamiliar person outside. For routine updates, users can interact with the system through an app that functions like a chatbot.

Similar to texting on WhatsApp or ChatGPT, users can ask what the cameras have seen, request summaries, or set monitoring periods in plain language.

When prompted, Ello provides a video snippet along with a text description of the person’s movements within the home, and can even suggest further actions, such as notifying security.

The early prototype currently operates on Telegram, but Ivan plans to migrate it to Ello’s own proprietary app for added security.

When asked about the accuracy of Ello cameras, Ivan explained that the system has been trained on a range of Vision-Language Models (VLMs) and Large Language Models (LLMs). This, he claims, allows the chatbot to quickly analyse movement captured on camera and provide essential information as accurately as possible.

Users can also give feedback to Ello, allowing the AI to continuously learn and improve—just like any other machine learning system.

Testing his product on the world stage

Unlike his previous side projects, Ivan went all-in on this venture. He has high confidence in the product, having invested significant time, effort, and a substantial amount of his own money to bring it to life.

In Sept 2025, Ivan took Ello to IFA (Innovation For All) Berlin, one of the world’s largest consumer electronics trade shows. Despite not having a working prototype and relying only on demo videos, Ivan decided to showcase the concept to gather feedback and test interest on the global stage.

While many attendees ignored the booth, those who stopped by provided invaluable insights. A Londoner explained she often ignored her camera’s alerts because they were overwhelming and usually irrelevant—there would be a notification that everytime there was someone who walked past her townhouse in a busy street—until it was too late.

That conversation validated Ivan’s approach and highlighted the markets where Ello would have the most impact. Many told Ivan that Ello was “exactly what they needed.”

That said, Ivan had identified from the start that Singapore should not be its target market. With its low burglary rate, home security was not a pressing concern for most households.

“Cameras here are primarily used to monitor children, helpers, and the elderly, not so much for home safety and security, where there’s a constant risk,” he noted. Instead, Ello is aimed at the UK, US, and EU, where high rates of housebreaks drive demand. 

Stepping out of the comfort zone

As a small startup, Ivan acknowledged that finding local investors was challenging, particularly since Ello’s focus is outside Singapore.

Hiring is also challenging—finding the right talent is an ongoing obstacle for the startup.

Running lean with a team of just three, Ivan takes every small success as motivation—from opening Hello Ello’s new office to securing approval for one of his staff’s Employment Pass.

“It’s about celebrating the little things,” Ivan said. “It builds culture and morale. And it reminds me why I do this.”

Moving forward, beta testing for Ello is scheduled for Dec, with an official launch planned in early 2026. Although leaving the comfort of a family-run empire brought uncertainty, Ivan is glad he did—the journey thus far has brought purpose and the satisfaction of creating something truly his own.

“Stepping out of the comfort zone was scary. There’s just so much uncertainty, especially when your family is at stake,” he reflected. “But I’ve never been more convinced I made the right choice, and I’m very blessed and thankful for the support I’ve gotten from my family and friends.”

The serial entrepreneur’s message to other founders is clear:

“Know the problem you are trying to solve. Do not justify it by coming up with an imaginary problem and then a solution. Talk to as many people as you can to validate your idea.”

Every venture he undertook, whether successful or not, reinforced this philosophy and was a learning journey in itself. And it’s why he chose to build Ello for markets that need it, rather than chasing easy success at home.

Featured Image Credit: Hello Ello