Tech Briefings: Taobao To Launch Open Platform For TMall; Baidu Launches URL Shortening Service; Kaixin001 Goes Aggressively On Mobile App

1. Taobao To Launch Open Platform And New Logo For TMall

TMall, the B2C subsidiary of Taobao, is launching a B2C-oriented ecommerce open platform alongside a new logo for the China’s largest B2C site in terms of sales (RMB30b in last year). It might be a signal for an independent IPO for the Taobao subsidiary.

Founded in April 2008, TMall has attracted more than 70,000 prominent brands including Lenovo, HP, Panasonic, Adidas, Disney, L’OREAL and so on to operate their official shop on the platform.

Interesting, Paipai by Tencent is also on track to release its Super B2c platform in the fourth quarter of this year.

 

2. Baidu Secretly Launches URL Shortening Service With API

Baidu launches its short link service dwz.cn yesterday with Open API. The service lets users shorten links and reduce URL length – handy on Sina Weibo or other social media.

The search giant’s American counterpart Google also has a similar service Goo.gl and G.co while Twitter (t.co), Sina Weibo (t.cn) and Tencent Weibo (url.cn) all have their own short links offerings.

 

3. Kaixin001 Goes Aggressively On Mobile With New iOS App

Kaixin001, the SNS site that is seeing significant decline in traffic and user activity, has just released its new iOS app, which is an ambitious combination of LBS service, Instagram and microblogging.

With the new app, users get to check-in, check out strangers who’re nearby (like Weixin) and exchange business cards (like Bumper) and post pictures (with similarities to Instagram).

The thing is, in making a blend of a diversified set of features hail from hot startups and their original idea, Kaixin001 ssems to be lost in following new and trendy concepts and fail to find its own way to serve its very core users. Not all that mobile users are in need of a load of fancy functions. Mostly, they only want an app to share and communicate with friends, online and offline. That’s always the core of all kinds of social.

 

Related posts:

1. Tech Briefings: Kaixin001 To Co-operate Group Buying Service; Baidu To Launch Online Recruitment Service With New Domain Name And Branding
2. Tech Briefings:Mecox Lane Loses $ 3.4 M; Tencent Launches Mobile app Center With Money Incentive
3. Tech Briefings: iFeng Launches Liteblogging Service; Baidu Expanding Into Egypt and Thailand; Google China Shifting From Search Ad To Displaying Ad

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South Korea Digest: Tech news not influential, fashion website Style Share launches, and more

Here are some interesting startup news from South Korea, not only in its capital, Seoul, but also other startup hubs such as Busan, Incheon, Ulsan and many more. These stories are taken from our partner, onsuccess, a website on start-ups and entrepreneurship in South Korea.

(1) Bloter.net, a tech news website, analysed the scale of influence the tech news media wields through posting on Twitter. At Bloter.net’s request, Gruter, a cloud computing corporation, helped to gather information and analyse data dating from 1st April of 2009 to 31st July of 2011. The results show that the overall proportion of tech news from Bloter.net on Twitter is discouraging, at only 0.1 per cent, in spite of being the most influential tech news medium. Worse, the genuine rate at which the articles are viewed is 0.003 per cent out of the whole Twittersphere, reflecting how lightly tech news is treated.

(2) Style Share, a new sharing website for fashion information, was launched on 31st August with high interests from the fashion industry. Information on clothes and accessories, their prices and brands, are disclosed on the Style Share web site and its iTunes App, through photos of street fashion posted by its users. Even before its launch, there were more than a thousand users leaving their addresses on the platform and many Korean fashion corporations inquiring on advertisement of their own products on the Style Share domain. It excels in obtaining information on street fashion, an unexplored niche, and combining them with an open sharing platform, a recent trend in business. Style Share is the only Asian participant at the Masschallenge Start-up Competition and Accelerator 2011 in Boston.

(3) Ticket Monster, a Korean social commerce corporation selling inexpensive tickets for restaurants, café, bar and others, plans to launch Perche this October. Perche, a fashion brand with an e-commerce site, provides shoes of high quality only for a fixed price of 49,000 won ($45.77). After answering questions on fashion preferences on the Perch, consumers will have stylists stock shoes and accessories in a cyber showroom. This allows consumers to fit items that best suit their style. Right now, Perch is on a promotion to offer shoes and styling suggestions for a few selected ticket-appliers of VIP Launching Party.

(4) NC Soft Corporation, founder of the 9th Baseball team in Korea, launched an ‘Interesting Baseball Learning’ application with the Korea Baseball Organisation on 31st August. This iPad-only app teaches users the basic knowledge of  baseball in the form of an ‘i-action-book‘, which allows users to move illustrations around, play music and enjoy games. Beginners can learn via baseball videos with recorded explanations and 148 baseball terminologies with pictures and animation. Users can also find out their knowledge level with a quiz. Interesting Baseball Learning is available at the Apple App store.

(5) Start-Up People, a cyber-foundation connecting employers of start-up businesses with potential employees, was launched by Shift W Inc. in Korea. The website provides over 160 profile information of developer, designer, marketer, investor, and planner from all ranges, thereby allowing users to recruit another. Also, they can share creative business ideas or projects with others on the Start-up People website.

More startup news in South Korea:

(6) In an attempt to make your entire music sharing experience effortless and enjoyable while also focusing on improving social connectivity between friends, Nomad Connection, an upcoming Korean startup, has come up with Zim.ly, a new media player for Android devices.

(7) When it comes to music, not many individuals or companies have been instrumental in bringing together bands, brands, and most importantly, fans. fanatic.fm is a tad different. The new music sponsorship platform was launched early this year in an effort to create music that has the potential to change the world.

This has been brought to you by SGE and Onsuccess. Onsuccess is a media enterprise for start-ups and ventures in Korea. Onsuccess introduces innovative Korean start-ups and ventures to people overseas through media partners and inspires readers by sharing interesting business ideas and trends from all over the world. Furthermore, Onsuccess holds various events, offering actual chances for Korean start-ups and ventures to meet other start-ups, venture business partners and investors abroad. They publish in both Korean and English.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.

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Events For The Week – 17-24 Sep

For a one-stop to all events related to or concerning entrepreneurship, certain industry-meets-business forums and seminars in Singapore, check out our Calendar. If not, you can also follow our bite-size updated posts for upcoming events for the week.

Events range from simple get-togethers to full-blown conferences. Get to meet fellow developers, entrepreneurs, startup CEOs & founders, and meet & learn from CEOs of established companies who have seen it all.

Our aim here at SGE is to make it easy for you to pick & choose from the event buffet. Enjoy.

Here are the events for this week. Events are mostly in Singapore (generally 30 minutes drive from anywhere), but we also include key events from around Southeast Asia and beyond.

Saturday 17th September:

(1) Software Freedom Day Singapore 2011

Saturday to Sunday 17th-18th September:

(1) crUX for Transcient Workers Count Too

Wednesday 21st September:

(1) Think Big Entrepreneur Convention 2011

Saturday 24th September:

(1) Techlaunch

Image courtesy of joyosity.

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Review Of Mobile Recharge Websites [The Smiles And Straight Faces]

Keep talking!!

Har ek friend toh zaroori hota hain, lekin in the course of keeping in touch with all or most of them, we usually run out of our balances on the mobile. But, we now no longer need to run to shops across the street to keep talking. Recharging the mobile is just a click away. Startups like Freecharge, Mobikwik, PayTM and Rechargeitnow have made things easy.

And why only these? Either am ignorant or you aren’t good enough!!

Freecharge.In

Smiles for:

• Providing free coupons worth the recharge amount. In fact if you recharge for Rs 60, you can still get a coupon worth Rs 100. Cool isn’t it? And do remember to read the T&C’s while choosing the coupons.

• The whole process of buying and selecting coupons seems to be well-directed and simple.

• And this seems the best – In the customer support page, the Freecharge people have impressively addressed the common complaints of the customers. Though the FAQ’s on most sites do the same thing, I personally liked the way they framed these common issues.

Why the straight face?

• Had the tariff rates been provided on the website, it would have saved my time of searching them on the service provider’s website.

Mobikwik: Review

Smiles for:

• Listing the recharge plans and allowing me to choose the suitable one.
• Wow!! SMS-Recharge and Dial-recharge and even schedule-your-recharge options – Having enough balance in your account would allow you to recharge through all the above options.
• You can add up to five numbers in your account and can avail the online recharge facility.

PayTM: Review

Smiles for:

• Such a simple and neat UX. It definitely follows the KISS principle (keep it simple and straightforward) without missing out on the important information through a stick note.
• This whole process makes more sense – Enter the mobile number, Select the mobile operator, Search for the available recharges (Pop-up window) and Enter the amount. And more importantly you never navigate to other pages during this whole process.

Why the straight face?

• Expected the offers to be as exciting as my experience with Paytm. The offers (especially when compared with the Freecharge) are a letdown.

RechargeitNow: Review

Smiles for:

• Not asking me to register/login to the account. You can straight away recharge even if you don’t have an account with Rechargeitnow.
• Lists out the topup and recharge plans alongside thereby reducing the effort of searching for them.

Why the straight face?

• The website is designed with a lot of pics, though the intention may be is to help the user to choose the operators easily, somehow it makes the UX a bit clumsy.
• Have a feeling that they look down on BSNL users. Sometimes the BSNL user can’t pay by ICICI netbanking facility when an Airtel user is allowed to and sometimes it doesn’t even allow you to go till that step.

Having listed out my likes and dislikes, it’s not mandatory that even you like Sushmita Sen over Aishwarya Rai just because I do. So people, try out the online recharge’s and do let us know your experiences.

[Guest article by Srikanth Ch/Reproduced from his blog.]

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Deals @Pluggd.in: Manage Your Cloud Servers At Just Rs.6000/Month

Running on cloud? Here comes a deal from our partner, Aptus who manage cloud servers for companies.

The Deal:

Manage your cloud servers at just Rs.6000 per month.

• 2 Instances : INR 12,000
• Upto 5 instances : INR 25,000
• Upto 12 instances :INR 45,000
• Upto 30 instances : INR 90,000
• Greater than 30 instances lease ask for a quote.

Preview Web Site

http://www.aptus.in/cloud_services.php

Terms and Conditions

• Minimal contract of 6 months
• Payment at the end of each month
• Taxes as applicable

About the Company

 

Aptus Software Labs was started in 2008 by thoroughbred technology professionals and works in the areas of Infrastructure Management, Security Consulting, Performance Analysis and Quality Assurance.
Contact Details:
Ajit Anand@ 91-9900127506 (ajit@aptus.in)
Ankur Godambe 91-9663371269 (ag@aptus.in)
Web site / info@aptus.in

– More details, T&C here

—————–

Another active deal: 70% off on Udemy’s best selling startup courses

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Singapore gay portal Fridae receives investment from LGBT Capital

Apparently, the pink dollar is hawt in Singapore (not that the government wants to admit it).

That’s because Fridae, a Singapore-based gay social network with a strong Asia presence, has announced a strategic alliance with LGBT Capital to “further develop a world class LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) operation in Asia to support this rapidly developing market and empower the LGBT community.”

The news was announced on 16th September.

(Men gathering at the annual Pink Dot in Singapore, a signature event that celebrates diversity. Photo: Missybossy)

The company was co-founded by Dr Stuart Koh and Robert Yeoh in 2000 (way before Facebook). Robert, unfortunately, died of pneumonia seven years later. The web portal claims to have half a million registered users, 1.5 million visitors, and 30 million pageviews a month. That’s about 20 pageviews per user per month. Hmm…

So, what does this mean for Fridae? LGBT Capital will invest an undisclosed sum in the social network, and work closely with the company to develop both its commercial business and “impact investment” capabilities through the establishment of a Fridae Foundation.

This probably means that the Foundation would become a vehicle to invest in other LGBT-friendly projects. They would expect not just financial gain, but also social returns. Through the Foundation, they also hope to develop its HIV/AIDS education program and strengthen support for the community.

LGBT Capital co-founder Paul Thompson will also serve as Executive Chairman of Fridae to steer the company forward. They plan to strengthen its news operations for the Lesbian and Transgender sector, and launch a Fridae mobile app.

While Asians are often generalized as having more conservative attitudes towards homosexuality, the pink dollar in the region cannot be underestimated. Fridae estimates that there are some 300 million LGBTs in Asia with a combined spending power of US$800 billion per annum.

In Singapore, which has a law banning sex between two men, gay bars like Tantric and Play have been in business for quite some time. LGBTs have also left their mark in the entertainment scene — Kumar, one of the country’s most recognizable and politically incorrect standup comedians, recently came out of the closet.

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Tech Briefings: iFeng Launches Liteblogging Service; Baidu Expanding Into Egypt and Thailand; Google China Shifting From Search Ad To Displaying Ad

1. iFeng.com Launches Liteblogging Service KuaiBlog

iFeng.com, the online news outlet of Phoenix New Media is launching a Tumblr like lite blogging service named KuaiBlog (快博, translates to fast blog).

People close to iFeng said that KuaiBlog is a core interactive product of strategy importance to the new media company. The product lets users publish pictures, texts and videos under a disparate of categories ranging from photographing, music, movie and traveling and thereafter an interests-based community will be built on top of these categorized contents.

As an online media offering, iFeng.com has been diving into Web 2.0 area with several interactive community products including microblogging initiative iFeng Weibo and video  service iFeng Video.

2. Baidu Expanding Into Egypt and Thailand

Baidu stealthily launching its QA service Baidu Zhidao in Arabic in Egypt and a Thai version of its website links aggregator Hao123 in Thailand, highlighting the company’s latest effort to conquer overseas market, though as we mentioned before, the giant internet search engine didn’t fare well in Japan or other territories outside China.

Kaiser Kuo, spokesman of Baidu said that “We’re trying to dip our toes into these markets and to understand local environments. We’re in no hurry and will be patient.”

The Arabic Baidu Zhidao was launched in last week and now has over 6000 questions centered on love, health and football.

 

3. Google China Finds His New Way: Displaying Ad

After retreating from mainland China, Google China has been in silence for a long while, till now. According to Google VP Liu Yun, the search giant is shifting its Chinese strategies of ad sales and product development.

Liu Yun said that the company is pivoting from search ads to displaying ads and mobile ads. The market size for displaying ad is $20b – 25b globally, and the number is about to surpass $200b in the future. “Displaying ad has a momentous potential as compared to search ad,” Liu said.

 

4. Perfect World Lowers Q3 Revenue Forecast

Chinese online gaming vendor Perfect World lowers its Q3 revenue guidance to between RMB702m and RMB741m (between $109m and $116m) since the company decides to slow down in-game promotional activities for some of its existing games in Q3 to further enhance the content of the Company’s portfolio and lengthen the life cycle of its current offerings.

The company’s stock slipped 12% in the wake of the announcement.

Related posts:

1. Tech Briefings: Kaixin001 To Co-operate Group Buying Service; Baidu To Launch Online Recruitment Service With New Domain Name And Branding
2. Baidu Teams up with Bing to Offer English-language Search Service
3. Google China Still Wants to Be Local, Launched Group-Buying Aggregator Service

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Entrepreneurship 101: Identifying ideas & business opportunities

This first post of a multi-part series touches on the definition on entrepreneurship, the different forms of entrepreneurship, how countries measure growth of entrepreneurship activity, and the first toolkit: How to identify ideas and business opportunities.

I will also provide some interesting case studies, for example, the Aravind Eye Centre for social entrepreneurship. This series is based on the “MPS 812: Entrepreneurship” course I have been teaching in the School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University. This post is republished from my blog.

Author’s Preface: I will include elements of a previous course which I have taught in Nanyang Technopreneurship Centre as well as some advice which I used to dispense via my role as an entrepreneur-in-residence for INSEAD Business School. I have refined the presentation slides and notes after teaching that course for four semesters over the past two years. Note that the content I have done up for this course is under Creative Commons – No Commercial, Share-alike and Attribution.

One important thing that I want to stress even though I have worked as an academic in the past: Entrepreneurship is a contact sport, and it’s easier to teach as a practitioner because you encounter a lot of challenges and issues from starting a company to managing, maintaining, growing and exiting from the company. My original intention is to change the course name to “Technology & Business” (and it’s not possible) as I am not a fan of teaching entrepreneurship but more of providing a toolkit for the students to use whether they are advancing their career or starting their own businesses. Do bookmark this post as I will update it from time to time.

My Course Slides:

Entrepreneurship 1: Introduction, Identifying Ides & Business Opportunities View more presentations from Bernard Leong

Talking Points

• Course objective: My aim is not to teach anyone to become entrepreneurs. The success rate of any start-up from an investor’s viewpoint is 1 out of 10 based on anecdotal evidence, which means that 9 other start-up ventures will fail. So trying to convert you to become an entrepreneur is not the wise thing to do. The important thing I want to dispense through the course is to help you understand and learn the process of building startups and companies. The business plan assignment will provide you some basic understanding on various aspects of a business: Marketing, business strategy, financials and intellectual property (specifically for technology companies). The best takeaway is that you should learn to make all the mistakes about something as fast as possible. Simply put: Learn to fail fast.

• What defines an entrepreneur?: Different people have different perspectives of what an entrepreneur should be. In some cases, they are defined by the success of their businesses, and in other cases, they are defined by how their products or services have added value to everybody’s lives. Entrepreneurs also accept the inherent risks of their enterprise and are accountable for their success or failure. Unfortunately, some people do call themselves “entrepreneurs” but are totally off the mark, for example, companies who use Ponzi and pyramid marketing schemes to cheat consumers or lend money illegally (loan sharks) do not add any real value.

• Window of Opportunity and First Mover is not an advantage: While most investors like to emphasize on the first mover advantage of technology companies, note that many successful technology companies are not first movers. For example, Google was preceded in the search business by AltaVista and Inktomi (which was acquired by Yahoo! for US$20M instead of buying google for US$1M). Similarly, Facebook was not the first in the business of social networking. Before Facebook, there was Friendster (which was acquired by MOL Malaysia) and MySpace (which was acquired by News Corp). What made these businesses successful was that they learnt from the first mover’s failures and innovated to deliver greater value.

Videos

Video 1: Michael Pritchard’s LifeSaver in TED 2009

Lessons learnt from this video:

• Articulation of the problem and opportunity: The speaker discussed the problem of clean drinking water and used examples of a developing and developed country to illustrate that there was no good solution when a calamity struck. He also described how existing solutions have not achieved what they were meant to do.

• Describing technology simply: While the LifeSaver bottle solution has many features, the speaker only focused on one aspect of the technology: the 15nm pore. He explained it simply, describing how the filter is small enough to stop bacteria and viruses from entering. He could have explained how the entire bottle works but he chose to condense the solution to a simple feature so that the audience could understand him.

• Explain why his solution is better than traditional solutions: The speaker made a comparison with traditional solutions of delivering clean water, for example, people within the disaster area would make long trips to carry jerry cans filled with water from one location to another. He focused on how his solution made people’s lives easier.

• Product Demo and Authority: He was able to do a demo with the solution (as seen in the video). What’s more, he drank the water from the bottle and also passed it to Chris Anderson, the organizer of TED who is a well-known personality and got his endorsement that it’s safe.

• Provide vision on how to implement the idea and exact amount to fund the solution: He gave a plan of how the solution can be scaled and the amount of money required to solve the world’s drinking water problem. The amount was stated as 20 billion for worldwide implementation, but it was very clear to the audience what he was asking for.

Video 2: Thulasiraj Ravilla: How low-cost eye care can be world-class in TEDIndia 2009 – Aravind Eye Care Center

Lessons learnt from this video:

• Aravind Eye Care Hospital was founded in 1976 by Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy. The existing management has laid out a vision of what the Aravind Eye Hospital aspires to become in the future.
• The hospital evolved itself not just as a healthcare service giver but also as a social enterprise that deals with the blindness problem in India. It treated 2.4 million poor Indians over 30 years.
• Interesting Features: Eye Surgery facility that runs 24 hours with doctors focusing on surgery and nurses focusing on pre and post eye care. Free surgeries for the poor and also a top class R&D centre on eye treatment.

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IITs To Get A New Fee Structure–You Pay 8L If You Get A Job [Mindlessness]

[Editorial Notes: Though we don’t discuss politics related issues on Pluggd.in, such decisions, we believe will have a long term impact on India’s technology ecosystem and should be discussed.]

IITs are gearing up for the new fee structure that will bring general category students to give back anywhere between 6Lakhs-8 Lakhs back to the institute if they take up a job.

According to a new proposal, general category IIT graduates may soon have to pay back the money that the government incurs on their education as soon as they find a job after passing out.

Mindless as you may call this, but if you are a general category student, you need to pay back the tution cost if you take up a job after the college.

Dilbert's Asok on IITs

“Roughly half the students of an IIT are from the general category because 49.5 per cent of the seats are reserved. A rough estimate pegs the total expenditure on an IIT BTech graduate over four years at Rs. 6 lakh to Rs. 8 lakh. The student will not be liable to pay the difference between the tuition fee and the actual expenditure in case he studies further like pursue MTech, PhD and so on.

Even though the ministry and the IITs have agreed upon this proposal “in principle”, it can only be implemented if Sibal can get the finance ministry on board. Obviously then, as of now, there is no deadline for implementation of this decision.”

In short, this also means that if you go abroad for higher studies, you only pay Rs. 2 lakhs, but if you stay back in India – you will be robbed of anywhere between 6L-8Lakhs.

Game?

Aside, decisions from IIT Council Meeting:

• General category students will have to repay the difference between the tuition fee and IITs’ actual expenditure once they get a job
• A common entrance examination for all engineering institutes in the country to be in place by 2013
• An empowered task force will be constituted for implementation of the recommendations of the Kakodkar Committee for expanding the research output of IITs to 10,000 PhD graduates annually from around 1,000 presently by 2020
• A common web portal for all 15 IITs to be created
• A task force will be set up to look into the increasing number of suicides by IIT students
• IIT Delhi to set up an extension centre in the NCR region [via]

Image credit: dilbert.com

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News Roundup: Huawei, ibibo to provide free calls, SMS on Huawei mobile phones

Telecom equipment maker Huawei and internet social networking firm ibibo have entered in a tie-up for mobile phone applications, including one that will enable user to make free calls and SMS to their contacts.
“Users of this service will have to register at Ibibo and install an application from their website on their Huawei smartphones. They will have to add people in their list who they wish to contact. Once its done they’ll be able to enjoy free calls among themselves”.

Catamaran may exit SKS Microfinance

Catamaran had invested Rs 28.1 crore in SKS Microfinance on January 16, 2010, for 937,770 shares. This represents a 1.3% ownership of the company on a fully-diluted basis. A final decision on the matter (to exit) is likely to be taken shortly [source].

Samsung invests $70 m to expand Noida cellphone facility

“India is one of the top 3 mobile phone markets for Samsung in the world and we stand committed to this market and our Indian consumers. Given the strong potential of this market, we are working on consistently strengthening our presence in the country through an innovative portfolio as well as enhanced manufacturing and R&D operations.”[source]

3G roaming pacts under DoT scanner

The Department of Telecom has asked Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd to put on hold its plans to do a roaming deal with private players for 3G mobile services.

The DoT wants the PSU to wait till the Government decides on whether such deals are permitted under licence conditions. Roaming agreements signed by private operators, including Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, are also under scanner [source].

Genpact buys US-based EmPower Research

Offshore BPO major Genpact has announced the acquisition of EmPower Research. This is a US-headquartered media and business research company with capabilities in social media research, media monitoring and measurement [source].

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Incubation Program – Hong Kong Science and Technology Park

Hong Kong is not famous for providing the best environment to entrepreneurs. But if you look around, help is there. Established in 2001 by Hong Kong government, Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks offers incubation program for technology startups in the territory.

The program, called Incu-Tech, has been operating since 1992. At first, it was located in a downtown building in Kowloon Tong. Then, it moved to Science Park, a water-front county-side area in the north-eastern part of Hong Kong, in 2001. The place offers a rare campus-like environment in the crowded city.

The program lasts three years – long enough for a company to grow from just an idea to a big business. Apart from providing office space – free for the first year and substantially low for the next two, it also provides various support typical entrepreneurs would need. For example, mentorship, business plan consultancy, training for business skill, technology support and laboratory services, assistance in marketing, legal services, accounting services, meeting with potential investors, and so on. It also helps entrepreneurs to leverage on research ability of local and oversea universities. For example, if a startup would like to do research for certain project, it can hire some student interns from the universities and the program can offer subsidy for the students’ salary.

The best of all, the program requires no equity in exchange. As long as the startups get accepted into the program, they can enjoy everything. To be qualified, the startup has to be incorporated in Hong Kong for less than 2 years – no offshore company is allowed. It has to be financially independent, i.e., less than 20% is owned by other companies. It has to have more than 2 full-time staff. The entrepreneur has to own more than 10%. And most importantly, there has to be some innovation or research element in the startups.

Overall, it is not very difficult to get into the program. It is heard that last year, nearly half of the applicants got accepted.

Since the program started in 1992, it has incubated over 250 companies. About 77% still survive. In comparison, the survival rate for startups in the Silicon Valley is about 30-35%. Some of them were already listed. For example, TeleEye, a provider of network CCTV solution, was listed in HK Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) in 2001. Advanced Card Systems, a manufacturer of card and card readers, was listed in GEM in 2003.

One thing unique to Hong Kong and Science Park’s program is that it can leverage on the manufacturing capability of South China. Nearby region, such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen, are global manufacturing hubs for mobile phones and electronics. With a good idea and low manufacturing cost, a big business can flourish. In fact, both TeleEye and Advanced Card System are heavy into manufacturing.

TechNode has also reported some of Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks incubatees in the past. For example, Admomo, which develops online marketing analytical tool. And, Stepcase, which has over 7.5 million users on its photo app platform on iPhone.

Other good companies incubated by the program include:

• Radica Systems, which provides email marketing solution.
• Kanhan Technology, which provides Chinese text translation and voice recognition technology.
• Intuitive Automata, which develops a coaching robot for people on diet.
• Infotalk, a provider of multi-lingual conversational speech understanding technology.
• Pencake, which provides marketing solutions on Facebook in the Chinese community.

Related posts:

1. Hong Kong's Cyberport Creative Micro Fund Announces Winning Startups
2. Hong Kong Startups Need Investors
3. Apple’s Flagship Store to Open in Hong Kong on September 24

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