Facebook Credits available in Indonesia via prepaid cards

Indonesia’s largest online game entertainment publisher in Indonesia, Lyto, has partnered with Live Gamer, a micro-transactions solution provider to allow Facebook Credits to be used. Through this partnership, PT. Lyto Datarindo Fortuna became the first Facebook payment partner in Indonesia.

With this deal, Indonesians using their Game-On prepaid cards can buy Facebook Credits, which could be applied for a wide range of games and applications on Facebook.  The card, which was launched in 2003, is already Indonesia’s most popular prepaid game card with about 10 million Lyto gamers using it, and this latest partnership with Facebook – which is the world’s second-largest user base at an estimated 38 million users — would only strengthen its position. The card can be purchased in Internet cafes, convenience stores and shopping malls.

Lyto, which publishes a variety of games including those in the RPG, RTS, and casual games, is Indonesia’s biggest online game community with 12 million users. Live Gamer’s payment solutions, on the other hand, is used by over 95 million users in 60 countries and is employed by a variety of platforms including Facebook, Electronic Arts, Indy21, Namco Networks, REAL Networks and THQ.

The arrival of Facebook Credits here marks an increasing presence of the virtual currency in South East Asia, following its launch in Malaysia on June 27.

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AllDealsLeak: 80% of daily deals sites earned more revenue in June

This article is an excerpt from AllDealsLeak’s Lite Report for June. The report is the only publication of its kind that monitors the state of daily deals websites in Singapore. The AllDealsLeak website also reviews some of the deals on offer to see if they’re worth purchasing.

Revenue:

For the month of June, the total number of deal sites monitored has increased from 36 to 39. Not counting a total of 5 inactive sites, the total revenues for June were derived from the 34 active deal sites we have on hand. The revenue has also increased from S$7.1 million to S$7.8 million as seen from our previous page. However, the correlation between the increase in the number of deals this month with the increase with the revenues were not as strong as what ADL expected.

On average, 80% of the deal sites performed better than last month with increased revenues. However, there are some interesting things to churn out from June’s figures. Two deal sites performed exceptionally well this month with a stellar and strong sales force bringing way more deals as compared to last month. They were Juztoday.com and Voucherwow.com.

Juztoday had increased their sales by more than 7 times this month and Voucherwow tripling theirs with 50% in the number of deals. Congratulations to both of them!

With risers, definitely there are underperformers too. Among all the increased in revenues, particularly noticeable was Outlet.com.sg with a significant drop in their revenues this month. This was also due to the 25% decrease with the number of deals held this month.

For loyal ADL readers whom have been following our posts, there are a few more entrants this month and we hope they will continue to perform better in the upcoming months as they are currently focused on marketing efforts.

Deals:

There was once again another exponential jump in the number of deals from last month. The total number of deals has increased from 747 last month to 952 this month. As mentioned under Revenues page, the correlation between the increase in the number of deals and industry’s revenues were not as strong as what we expected.

In the month of June, travel deals revenue account for 38% of the total industry revenues. In terms of percentage, it had decreased from 46% last month. However, just the quantity of deals alone, it had increased yet another 32% from last month to 173. Even though travel deals are traditionally harder to carry out, but it does not deter more deal sites from administering it.

In the beauty segment, the number of deals has been steadily increasing since April. The number of beauty deals has increased another 18% to 268 this month. Particularly notable is a star mega deal by Groupon — $5 for 1 session of Brow Threading at Browhaus which has attracted over 5000 coupon buyers. It’s going to be brisk business in the months to come with 5000 customer swarming Browhaus.

The F&B sector has a 35% increase from 168 to 228 deals this month. As mentioned in our previous lite reports, F&B deals are normally the deals that hit our “Record Breakers” page, the deals that most easily kick start consumers’ inertia to buy. Check out this month’s “Record Breakers” for the mega, mega star F&B Deal.

Surprisingly, the number of retail deals remained the same, which is not what we expected in view that it is Great Singapore Sale (GSS) season. Also, Groupon has launched their “Deals Near Me” Segment which explain why they were leading the pack in the month of June with their number of deals and revenues.

Found this report useful? Why not get the full report (at S$19.90) via PayPal, where you’ll obtain:

• The No. of Deals offered and Coupons sold by each of the 39 Deal sites
• The total revenues earned per deal by each of the 39 deal sites
• The highest grossing deals and most bought/least bought deals by each of the 34 deal sites
• The types of deals offered (by categories) by each of the 39 deal sites
• The Revenues earned (by categories) by each of the 39 deal sites
• Detailed analysis of the entire industry based on all the data compiled

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Startup Leadership Program Coming to China

Chinese startup ecosystem is even more vitalized with the kickstart of Beijing program of Startup Leadership Program, an entrepreneur, founder and leader training program originated from U.S. and later on spread over US in Boston, Chicago, New York, Silicon Valley, San Diego, UK in London, India in Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi, and now coming to China in Beijing and Hong Kong.

 

According to SLP Beijing Program leader Tony An, the program is characterized by its globally scattered network from which you can learn a lot, inspiring peers with whom you can share experience, and seasoned mentor from whom you can gain support. SLP to date had curated 100 startups that have raised US$ 88 million in total.

 

Some of SLP’s graduates include online fitness community and app vendor RunKeeper, online sharing tool Shareholic and personalized information network Pinyadda. The program’s main focus lies on areas such as life science, technology, clean tech and social enterprise. But innovative and even disruptive ideas are always welcomed.

 

Globally, SLP has established partnership with some of the top-notch venture capitals including Accel, WI Harper, Longworth Venture Partners etc.

 

SLP fellows will receive coaching from industrial experts, professional VCs and get to brainstorm your idea into another level with your peers across the world. At the current state, all selected fellows will have access to the chance of being funded by venture capitals, and SLP has also been considering investing in some of the best programs if it sees fit.

 

For anyone who wants to be a part of the world-class network to get inspired, you can now apply for the program on its website.

 

Also, there’re more and more similar programs and opportunities in China, like those we reported before, TiSiWi and Chinaaccelerator, which bode well for the ever-rising entrepreneurship in China.

 

Related posts:

1. TiSiWi, the Hangzhou-based Y-Combinator Announced Its Accelerator Program
2. Startup Weekend Taipei – International 54-hour Startup Event comes to Taiwan
3. G-Startup Competition Prizes Announced, So Apply Now!

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Japan Digest – 23 Jul

Here you can find interesting startup news from Japan, not only from its capital, Tokyo, but also other startup hubs like Fukuoka, Kyoto, Osaka, and many more.

(1) Several sources have reported that the folks at telecomms company KDDI will debut a Win7 handset in August running on the next-gen. Mango platform.

(2) Mobile Healthcare Inc (“MHC”), a pioneering mobile health company and home to the global award winning lifewatcher cell phone and cloud-based health management platform, announced that it has initiated collaboration with Jean-Michel Halfon to contribute to the expansion of the company as an advisor and investor.

(3) Colopl, a mobile phone and GPS-based game, officially announced that a total of 2 million users in Japan are playing Colopl (needless to say, it’s the country’s most successful service of its kind). What’s interesting is that the game needed close to 5 years to hit 1 million users in April last year and just 15 months to add a second million.

(4) Takako Kansai (@kansai_takako), a full-time engineer at Tokyo’s web service start-up and also the best known tech geek girl in the country, just released her first iPhone app called Zaim, the socialized cashbook app, on Tuesday.

(5) Following the introduction of cloud girl Claudia, Microsoft Japan will continue their attempt to appeal to the Japanese by using a new anime character.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.

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Entrepreneurs make their presence felt at Singapore 9

Entrepreneurs, it turns out, form a large bulk of the nominees at Singapore 9, an online voting contest to recognize nine Singaporeans who have left their mark in the past year.

Previously, we wrote about Jannie Chan, founder of watch retailer The Hour Glass, as well as beauty and F&B entrepreneur Cynthia Chua, who founded Browhaus, Skinny Pizza, and others.

Now, as Yahoo! Singapore finally unveils the nominees for all categories, we’ve found more entrepreneurs in the mix. In the Youth category, there’s Adrianna Tan, who started popular Asian travel blog Popagandhi and runs her own Hackathon events. Edwin Chia, CEO of Timbre Group, also made the list. He runs a chain of popular music bars that supports local musicians.

In the Thinker category, we have Ho Kwon Ping, executive chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings, which runs a number of luxury spa hotels.  He’s done really well, with Forbes listing him in 2010 as the 26th richest man in Singapore. What many don’t know, however, is that he took over his father’s hotel business and turned it into the empire that it is today.

There’s also Cherian George, media academic and former editor at The Straits Times, who started two current affairs publications, mixmagazine.sg and What’s Up under his company News For Kids.

And this might surprise you: the Entertainment category actually features the most entrepreneurs, more than the Business category in fact. How’s that for star-studded?

First up, there’s ‘Singapore Boy’ Hossan Leong, who co-founded Paul Carr Consultancy, a Singapore-based entertainment and media training company.

Next, Irene Ang, popularly known as ‘Rosie Phua’ in hit comedy sitcom Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd, runs her own artiste management company FLY Entertainment (read SGE’s interview with her).

And who can forget the chameleonic comedienne Michelle Chong, most famous for portraying multiple roles in news parody show The Noose. She recently adopted a new role of an entrepreneur when she founded Huat Films.

Finally, there’s Adrian Pang, actor, presenter, and dramatist, who recently left Singapore’s largest broadcaster to start his own drama company PANGDEMONiUM! with his wife.

It looks like the entrepreneurial community will be spoilt for choice here.

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Deals For Startups: Save Rs 40,000 on Accounting, Compliance and Payroll + Free CFO level consultation

Here is the latest deal from Pluggd.in’s deal site : A discount of upto 25% for small and mid sized companies, provided by Xllent Corporate Services Private Limited.

Deal Details: Accounting, Compliance and Payroll Services

• Tier 1 companies (with employees not more than 2, revenue of less than Rs. 10 lakhs per year) – Rs. 6,000 per month *

• Tier 2 companies (with employees not more than 10, revenue of less than Rs. 20 lakhs per year) – Rs. 9,000 per month *

• Tier 3 companies (with employees not more than 20, revenue of less than Rs. 40 lakhs per year) – Rs. 13,000 per month *

Compliance includes the preparation and filing of the following :

• Monthly VAT return
• Monthly Profession Tax return
• Filing of half yearly returns under Service Tax
• Filing of annual returns with MCA
• Filing of quarterly ETDS returns
• 4 Board meetings and Annual General meeting minutes
• Maintenance of statutory register
• Filing of Income Tax return for the company/firm

* Excludes filing fees, stamp duty, taxes or any other charges as applicable.

Following key services would also be provided along with the above

• Documents would be picked up from your office once a month for accounting.
• E-support for 6 days a week would be provided to the clients.
• 2-3 hours of CFO level personal consultation per month would be offered as part of the package.

- T&C here.

How To Avail The Deal

These services are available at Bangalore to begin with. Registrations if any are not covered as part of this package. These can be taken up at very special rates. Please send an email to info@xllent.in or enter
your details in http://www.xllent.in/Enquiry.htm so that the team can get in touch with you.

—————————-

Get Deals Delivered Via Email

Email:		*
Name:

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39Shops–A DIY Ecommerce Platform That Offers Powerful Tools To Build Your Own Store

As ecommerce continues to grow in India, there is an obvious need to enable more sellers to start building an online business. We have earlier covered Infibeam’s BuildABazaar store, which enables you to create your own store using tools/services provided by Infibeam.

39shops is a startup that is precisely targeting the DIY ecommerce store business (a store example here) with a set of predefined themes, one page checkout, flexible shipping rates, content management, managing product/process etc). The service accepts credit card/paypal payments and can be hosted on your own domain name also. In terms of product capability, 39shops is a well executed product especially the set of tools team has built (few screenshots below).

The company is targeting global audience (precisely North America and India) and so far has managed to grab 200 sellers (free+paid) and business model lies in subscription fee (starts at $15/month) plus sales commission.

SAAS Based Ecommerce Stores

The business opportunity for SAAS based ecommerce store is huge (Gartner expects that by 2014, 40% of e-commerce implementation will use Software-as-a-service), but the challenge lies in the marketing side of it. Small businesses do not have marketing budget and sites like 39shops need to build traffic to their site, or a solid distribution channel in order to be more relevant to entrepreneurs.

In fact, most of small businesses do not get the Internet part very well and lose interest after a few months of trying out, as such services do not provide them the necessary marketing push (Yahoo Small Business has merchant account service which does pretty much the same thing – just that it was never ever a phenomenal success as renewal rates are very low).

What’s your take on this model? Do you think a focused/vertical approach works (say, a DIY store just for sellers selling apparels/handicrafts etc), especially when it comes to marketing the service to sellers?

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By Fall 2011, Indian App Developers Will Be Able To Publish Apps On WP7 Marketplace

Microsoft has been a player in the mobile market for many years but steadily lost the smartphone race to more solid competitors like Apple, RIM and Google. But Microsoft’s latest mobile OS, WP7, has gotten some pretty good reviews. We at Appnomy have always believed that apps drive platform success to a huge extent. Microsoft is taking the mobile market more seriously everyday and the newest announcement that comes from Microsoft relates to the additions it will be making to its Windows Phone Marketplace. Here’s what developers need to know.

Power to the developers:

• Developers will now be able to publish apps in 19 new countries, this takes the total number of markets available to app developers to 35. Some of the new countries that have been added are India, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden and Taiwan.
• Mango apps submission registration support will be extended to India in early fall 2011.
• Advertising can be a pretty good revenue stream and Microsoft Advertising pubCenter will support Windows Phone 7 app developers in the following 18 countries by the end of 2011: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
• Multiple distribution options will be available to developers.
  Beta distribution will allow developers to make their app available to a group of up to 100 access controlled beta testers for up to 90 days.
  Targeted Distribution will enable you to distribute applications through Marketplace in a hidden state, where they are not discoverable via browsing or searching Marketplace. To enable targeted users to access your hidden app you simply share the deep-link to the app with the users you want to have access via e-mail, text or other mechanism. You may distribute the app as many times as you wish or even publicly publish your app whenever you like.
• Along with these additions, Microsoft is providing more tools to make app development easier for developers. These include handy additions like enhanced reporting, easier app management process, new features like crash report collection and better dashboard for developers to manage their apps.

The next version of Windows phone7 (Mango) has already gathered a lot of interest from developers, we all know Microsoft is capable of making awesome software and now that they’re taking the mobile market seriously it might be a good idea to take a serious look at Windows Phone Mango app development.

Via: Appnomy.

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Philippines Digest – 22 Jul

Here you can find some interesting startup news around Philippines, not only in its capital, Manila, but also other their startup hubs such as Cebu, General Santos City, Pasay, Quezon City, and many more.

(1) Known in the Los Angeles area for her cotton candy business, which she named Rodecker’s Tasty Clouds Candy Company, Obana-Rodecker is one of the entrepreneurs invited to Washington D.C. to encourage Americans to start their own businesses and help the recovering economy of the land of milk and honey.

(2) Rommel Juan, CEO of Binalot Fiesta Foods, says that July brings excitement to budding entrepreneurs on the hunt for a franchise business to invest in.

(3) Jollibee Foods Corp. rocked the food service industry twice last year. First, when it purchased 70 percent of Mang Inasal, and second, when it let go of its Délifrance franchise. The former received much fanfare, but little attention was paid to the latter.

(4) Corporations will soon be able to file their registrations with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through the Land Bank of the Philippines’ (Landbank) larger branch network under an inter-agency effort to simplify business processes.

(5) Local ice cream manufacturer, Fruits in Ice Cream (FIC) launched the first flavor of their yogurt ice cream. While there are already a hundred yogurt stores dotting Metro Manila, FIC promises a new experience for its customers with their own version of yogurt ice cream.

(6) S & S Travel Agency, a Filipino-owned business thriving in the United States (US) for more than 20 years, is a living testament that Filipino entrepreneurs can compete side-by-side foreign counterparts in a global market environment.

(7) Finding a good office space can be a difficult and expensive affair, especially in major business districts. CEO Suite, a serviced business center in the heart of the Makati City business district, is keen to this aspiration of companies and offers a good business address at a fraction of the regular cost.

(8) Counterfeit goods pose a real economic threat not only for individuals but for businesses as well. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and HP Philippines launched an offensive strike against the growing counterfeit market in the country.

(9) Tourism has long been a major money-earner for the Philippines. Are there still areas for the aspiring entrepreneur who wants to put up a tourism-related enterprise?

(10) Introduced to the country in the 1980s by foreign companies like McDonald’s, franchising now covers a wide range of business ventures — from restaurants, drugstores and Internet cafes to salons, review centers and repair shops. According to the Association of Filipino Franchisers, Inc. (AFFI), there are an estimated 50,000 franchisees in the country today.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.

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