A trio of companies have won certain parts of the Ministry of Communications and Information’s tender for media intelligence services. Those firms are U.S.-based Meltwater; Australia-based Isentia; and Singapore-based Truescope Singapore, which is a joint venture between Singapore’s Dataxet Group and Australia’s Truescope.

According to one report, “Meltwater’s total rate card is SG$20,580 while that of Isentia’s and Truescope’s were SG$12,264 and SG$9,800 respectively. The three companies will oversee all government agencies, which include all ministries, statutory boards and organs of state. There were 10 firms vying for the account, including Carma Asia, Digimind, Digitas, Happy Marketer, Insightmatrix, and StarHub.”

All three of these firms are global competitors, and in Asia Pacific their competition is especially fierce. Meltwater had its initial public offering in late 2020 after its merger plans with rival Cision fell apart. And Dataxet was formed in Singapore in late 2019 by David Liu, Danny Levinson, and Jason Lee — three former top executives at Isentia. And Truescope was formed by the former Isentia CEO John Croll. So Isentia’s partial loss to the Truescope and Dataxet team is surely bittersweet.

MCI’s bid for these media monitoring contracts went out in September 2020.