Aarti Gumaledar from Yahoo! Corporate Development team will be here to share Yahoo!’s interest in investing and acquiring potential start-ups. Following are the event details.
Pitch It! is the one of the open platform segments that going to be featured in Generating Idea Symposium, as part of the Asia On The Edge (AOTE) 2011 – a festival from 24-26 June that was first launched in 2008. AOTE was started by Asian Culture Enterprise (Singapore) (ACES) with the aim of creating a platform to highlight the latest trends, issues and artists in Asia, and as a gathering of like-minded individuals from the creative industries and the arts and cultural sectors in Asia. Targeted at creative entrepreneurs in the performing arts, design, film and new media, visual arts, and literacy arts, Pitch It! is an opportunity to get their ideas funded.
Program Details
Each participant has to submit his/her proposal to AOTE’s online platform. Shortlisted participants would be invited to present his/her idea to a professional panel at AOTE 2011 on 25th and 26th June 2011. Each participant is given 15 minutes to present his/her idea, and the presentation should include both audio and visual mediums: i.e. workshop stage for a performance, manuscript for literary arts, script for new media/film. The best voted idea will receive a SGD 10K (USD 8K) award to further develop the concept, and possibility of development from interested parties at the pitching session.
After an awesome overnighter at the first SuperHappyDevHouse in Asia, tonight will the SuperHappyDevHouse Decompression night where hackers show off what they did at SHDH Singapore. Find out more about the original movement started in Silicon Valley at SuperHappyDevHouse.org.
When: Tuesday 24th May 2011
Time: Doors open at 6:30pm with drinks and dinner. Presentations begin at 7:30pm
Where: Hackerspace.sg, 70A Bussorah St.
Check out part of the scene last week and the line for (mostly free flow) drinks at the bar!
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In the start-up world, Silicon Valley based Y Combinator is most respected incubator in the world. Its success has resulted in a number of incubator clones around the world (it’s not just start-ups that get copied). A while ago, I interviewed Jamie Lin, the founding partner of appWorks Ventures to get his insight into establishing such an incubator in Taiwan. Just last Friday, I attended their second Demo Day in Taipei.
Set in the National Taiwan University Hospital Conference Centre, the room was filled with investors, students and start-up junkies, eager to see how the second class of 10 start-ups have progressed. Taiwan must really be sprouting start-ups because appWorks has already accepted 28 start-ups into its next batch.
Led by AJ Chen the team of five focuses on online luxury discount shopping. In Taiwan, about 25% of online purchases are for women’s luxury goods and with brands used as a status symbol, the market makes sense. The business is inspired by the super successful American company Gilt.com and has China counterparts in Wooha.com and ihaveu.com. In contrast to Gilt.com, you don’t need to be a member to shop with Luxjoy. Offering everything from clothing, shoes, bags, accessories, watches, furniture, and home and boutique hotel offers a lot at affordable prices. With a proven business model and an energetic team, Luxjoy should believe ‘life is joyful’.
2. Petnii.com
What do you get when you cross Facebook with pets? ‘Petbook’? Not really, but close. Petnii is an online community to satisfy all your needs with your furry friends. From pet product recommendation information, to pet grooming instructional videos, to offline pet meetups to being pet friends on their online community, Petnii aims to be the go-to online pet service. During the presentation, Nancy tried to woo people by asking her cute little puppy to prance around.
3. VideOhya.com
Ever wanted to learn how to play the drums or do makeup? Ohya in its very early seed stage, aims to create online instructional video content. Founder David Liu believes that video sites like Youtube have so much content that it’s difficult to find exactly what you’re looking for. His idea is to record videos of people or schools that teach you something and turn it into a product. He then categorizes the content into something like music or fashion, so people can find what they want instantly and intuitively. The business model is a free ad version and paid no-ad version. He showed one example of a girl who teaches girls how to put on make-up and has integrated Ohya into her iPhone app.
With a team of 3 and capital of NT$3 million, Mamibuy aims to help parents find the best products for their baby. Especially for new parents, who don’t know which brand or type of product to use, Mamibuy, provides a useful crowd-sourced information platform that shows product reviews and ratings to ensure they are not alone in making important product choices. Besides baby product recommendations, the site also tries to build a community of parents who want to discuss issues and problems.
5. Justaple.com
Like Pinterest or readitlaterlist.com, Justaple is a way for people to bookmark cool things they have found online for later review. George, the presenting founder used the example of what Taiwanese people love most – food! People can pin a picture of the best ramen noodles in town, share it with someone by email or Facebook, add the location and time as well as ask people to comment on it. They intend to make money from analysing what people bookmark most, then give them targeted advertising.
Eddie Lin, the founder of Touchingworks believes he can save you more time to relax and enjoy your life by making an app called Neospeak that converts your Google Reader rss feeds from text to voice. It is aimed at people that commute on public transport or drive. Currently the Android app has about 2,424 installs and an average of 4 stars. He aims to make money by selling ads within the app.
Is an online and offline integrated marketing company. They offer services such as social marketing on networks like Facebook and Plurk, website ads and magazine advertising. They also do website building and promotion, event organization, product naming creation and finding creative talent through competitions.
A location based service focusing on providing users with the latest and most accurate weather forecast based on their location. Its main revenue will come from targeted LBS ads and other value added services.
9. Gameape.tw
With hundreds of thousands of iOS game apps, one of the biggest struggles for developers is how to get recognised amongst the crowd. To help both developers and users, search through the clutter of games apps, Gameape helps market apps for developers through ratings and reviews. They are the first website to focus on Taiwan game users. Later on they plan to move into the Android market. The business model is to generate money from advertising, CPA and an affiliate program.
10. Robospark.com
Aaron Lee believes that children’ education is a huge market. Robospark is an online iPad bookstore for children. Revenue will come from a monthly subscription fee, which gives users unlimited access to all the books. The bookstore has recommendations, book rankings and allows users to record their reading history. Their biggest competitor is kids.magv.com.
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Referral marketing startup Anafore has just secured their first round of seed financing from BAF Spectrum, engineering co-founder of Skype Toivo Annus, and SPRING SEEDS Capital – a wholly owned subsidiary of SPRING Singapore that co-invests in local start-ups.
Anafore’s referral marketing solution plugs into a merchant’s existing e-commerce platform such that after a purchase has been completed, the buyer receives a coupon from the merchant with a discount that can be used at the online store. The buyer then shares this coupon with her friends to give them a time-limited opportunity to purchase the merchant’s products at a discount.
Merchants can then track the referrals made using Anafore’s solution online:
Ecommerce platforms currently being supported include Amazon, bigcartel, Etsy, Magento, Shopify and Volusion.
Started in 2009 by principal founder and CEO Dinesh Raju, Anafore had previously raised a pre-seed round under the iJAM programme by the Interactive Digital Media programme office (IDMPO) with the incubator SiTF (Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation).
Dinesh says, “The rise of social networking gives us an unprecedented ability to connect merchants and buyers more efficiently and make irrelevant ads a thing of the past. We’re excited about this partnership with BAF Spectrum which gives us an incredible opportunity to realize this vision.”
As part of the investment round, BAF Spectrum’s William Klippgen (Executive Director) and Sanjeev Shah (Managing Director) have joined Anafore’s Board of Directors.
“Anafore is on the cutting edge of smart, online marketing solutions. They provide a compelling value to any online merchant by instantly increasing sales. We plan to work with the strong founding team to develop a suite of next-generation social network-powered tools to improve further the way buyers and sellers interact online”, said William Klippgen, Executive Director of BAF Spectrum. Mr. Klippgen is one of the co-founders of European shopping mega-portal Kelkoo (acquired by Yahoo!) and is leading BAF Spectrum’s investment portfolio in digital media start-ups.
Many small sized organizations prefer to have the Board approving the grant of stock Options. In large organizations, they either have a Compensation Committee or set up a Trust. Many Indian companies, including Infosys Limited, have used trust route to implement ESOP scheme.
We recommend startups opt the administration of ESOP by its Board of Directors rather than creation of a Trust (per Indian Trusts Act). A startup recently approached us for cleaning up the mess they had created in their ESOP grants and wounds they had self-inflicted in creation of their ESOP Trust, which triggered this post.
A Trust for ESOP works as follows:
The ESOP Trust then allots shares to employees on exercise of their right in exchange of cash and repays its loans.
Additional Information, if the company is a listed entity:
SEBI guidelines do not mention ESOP Trust and thus creation of trust to administer the ESOP scheme is optional. SEBI guidelines also do not specify any accounting principles to be followed in case of grant of options through a trust. A committee appointed by SEBI had recommended that since this is a consolidation issue rather than an ESOP issue, the ESOP trust should be consolidated with the company under AS 21 and the existing ESOP guidelines should be applied by the consolidated entity.
TRUST SET BY THE COMPANY FOR THE BENEFIT OF EMPLOYEES:
ESOP Trust (a Private Trust formed as a separate entity, but not being a charitable Trust) can be formed under the Indian Trust Act, 1882.
Startups are you hearing us?
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. This is not a legal advice or opinion.
[Guest article by Sharda Balaji, founder of Novojuris, a Bangalore based legal consulting firm. The article has been reproduced from Novojuris’ blog]
Miku Miku Dance(MMD) is a Japanese freeware to let 3D human models dance. Originally it was developed for the famous virtual singer Hatsune Miku, as the software name implies.
If you get or create another 3D model date, you can make any dance movie with them. Here is the latest popular one on Nico Nico Douga, mashup of the 80's video game Karateka and "Who's bad?".
The version re-uploaded on YouTube,
The original Nico Nico Douga version (with comments, which you may turn off),
The 3D model, stage data and MME(effects of MMD) are provided by the author POP.
It’s rumored that Chinese group buying service 55Tuan is raising US$ 200 million of Series A funding from Goldman Sachs. Both 55Tuan CEO Xu Maodong and VP Wei Jinghan refused to comment or disclose more details. This is so far the largest funding in Chinese group buying area. Lashou, one of the biggest rival of 55tuan, raised US$ 110 million in Series C.
The funding came after spreading rumors suggesting that 200 of Lashou’s core team in north China market suddenly left for 55Tuan. Xu confirmed this by disclosing that some new employees did come from its competitors given the company offers better option incentive plan.
Although being a late comer in the burgeoning Chinese group buying market, 55tuan has become very aggressive and active recently with mass recruitment and big funding.
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Sunday, it seems is a relaxing day for entrepreneurs and while we continue to bring India’s most amazing startups/entrepreneurs, we have bowed down to requests from startups
asking us to extend the PowerPlug’s May month deadline to May 23rd, i.e. today (yesterday was the deadline).
Details :
Theme: Consumer Internet.
Application Form: www.pluggd.in/apply-to-be-a-powerplug/ (also embedded towards the end of this post).
Deadline: Today (May 23rd)
What is PowerPlug Contest?
India’s first ever contest where we recognize early stage technology startups on a regular basis (the contest is supported by Sequoia Capital India). As an applicant, you would be up against the best startups in the country – and the people running them. You would have to come out all guns blazing to win this – and we are sure you would. The PowerPlug is a story you want to tell about yourself to the world and you should make sure the story is compelling to win you the coveted prize.
Goodies ?
As a startup, you get a lot of credibility/bragging rights + media coverage and an iPad2 (32GB/WiFi) as well (thanks to our partner Sequoia Capital India). And this is apart from all the VC calls and customer interest.
PowerPlug Contest Rules?
» Follow PowerPlug Contest on Twitter and PowerPlug’s Facebook Page for further updates.
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Microsoft Surface is an amazing touchscreen technology that gives LCD panels the power to see without the use of cameras. Microsoft partnered with Samsung to bring Samsung SUR40 which will be launched in India this summer.
Microsoft and Samsung worked closely to develop the LCD panel and the new hardware product, which is being manufactured by Samsung and will be sold to business customers through its broad distribution and reseller network.
Samsung SUR40 will bring companies around the world a much different way to help drive sales, showcase their brand, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. The product features include these:
The manufacturer’s suggested price for Samsung SUR40 starts at $7,600 (U.S.), though launch price etc will be announced once the product is officially launched in India (plus 22 more countries).
Please Note: If you are a startup/geek/entrepreneur interested in learning more about Surface (and opportunities it holds), we have 5 tickets to an invite-only event Microsoft is conducting on May 31st (Venue: N. Delhi). If you are interested in attending, do hop to our Facebook page and tell us why you need the pass (link).
India has yet to witness the broadband revolution, but Internet will continue to being used as a tool that demolishes boundaries and democratizes the citizen participation. Gujarat is the first state in the country to use Internet voting using technology provided by Scytl, a Spain based firm that has recently started India operations.
The State of Gujarat is using Scytl’s Internet voting technology with the aim to boost voter participation and avoid traditional long queues. The first binding trial was carried out in September 2010 and online voting was successfully used for the second time last month, during Gandhinagar’s Municipal Corporation elections, where 77,16% of registered evoters cast their vote electronically – either from home or from e-voting booths.
Scytl‘s internet voting solution, Pnyx.Government, has been specially designed for public elections, carrying out of all kind of electoral processes (elections, referendums, surveys, citizen consultations, etc.), ensuring the highest levels of security in terms of voter privacy, vote integrity and transparency. The solution supports multiple languages and can be used remotely from any place connected to Internet or from supervised locations (polling stations).
Will we ever see general elections voting being conducted over Internet? Lets hope so.