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Lionel Tan, 42, never planned to start a business — he just wanted to know when the bus was coming. With two kids in tow and a bus stop five minutes away, fumbling for his phone was a hassle. So the fintech exec thought: Why not have something on the wall that shows bus arrival times at a glance? That was nine years ago.

In 2024, he finally gave it a shot. Armed with a 3D printer — originally bought to make stuff for his kids and home — and zero knowledge of hardware or software, Lionel Googled away and cobbled together a small display that shows live bus arrival times.

He called it Bus Aunty, a tongue-in-cheek nod to Singapore’s all-knowing aunties.

"Aunties know everything, so aunty knows the bus times, very accurate," he laughs. At first, the gadget was just for his family. Then Lionel posted about it on TikTok, “thinking that maybe 10 people would be interested”.

“My DMs exploded. Hundreds of people were asking how much and how to pay me,” he says.

“I, on the other hand, was thinking how many can I fulfill?”

What started as a weekend tinkering project snowballed into a “second job”.

He suddenly found himself running a cottage industry from the dining table of his four-room HDB flat in Bishan. In three months, he sold over 600 Bus Aunties — at $95 a pop, all made from scratch — with another 150 on order.

“Bus Aunty starts work at 11pm,” Lionel jokes. “After the kids sleep, I put on my headphones and just start working.”

And he genuinely enjoys the grind. “Every time I assemble one, I just hope it’s useful to somebody,” he says. “If they find utility out of it and enjoy the product — I win already.”

Despite racking up over $23,000 in sales last month, Lionel insists Bus Aunty is “not a very profitable business.”

The margins, he explains, “aren’t great” because of the pricey e-ink screens he uses.

 “Not many factories make e-ink displays which are only for like e-book readers. They can't play video, they're not as multi-purpose as LCD technology,” he explains.

“If I used LCDs, I could sell it at one-third of the price.”

He’s also aware of sceptics who point out that free bus apps already exist. But for him, Bus Aunty solves a different problem: attention.

“Yes, you can definitely use your apps,” he says. “But I just wanted something that can sit on my wall and I can just glance over. Because if you go to your phone, the chances of getting distracted by a notification, a DM, or social media is so high. These things suck your attention.”

Plus, not everyone — like kids or the elderly — has a mobile phone handy.

That focus — a single-function gadget, designed to do “just one thing and hopefully one thing well” — is what has won over customers. Some of his 18,000 TikTok followers even urge him to live-stream his late-night assembly sessions.

Before Bus Aunty, Lionel was already a hobbyist inventor.

Some of the “useful useless” things he built like a Telegram bill-splitting bot and a gym-door opening bot drew hundreds of users, but he never thought of charging for his creations.

Now, he’s toying with ideas for Bus Aunty’s “siblings”.

There’s Bus Baby, a Tamagotchi-like keychain version that shows one bus stop at a time, Calendar Uncle, a display that syncs with a shared family Google Calendar, and if all goes well, Pakcik Azan, a Muslim prayer-time display.

For now, though, he’s keeping things small and low-key. “Oh my goodness, my downstairs neighbours recognise me as the Bus Aunty guy,” he laughs.

“But because I time my exit from the house so chun that the bus would come, I quickly, jump on the bus, and go away. Avoiding social confrontation — that’s the whole point.”

Photos: 8days.sg, Busaunty.com, linodoestiktok/TikTok