South Korea Digest: Nexon partners with DeNA, Enspert collaborates with Google, and more

Here are some interesting startup news snippets 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) Nexon, a prominent online game developer and publisher in Korea, is examining a possible takeover of JCE, also an online game developer. On the 10th October, JCE announced an official investigation tasked with the provision of due diligence data amongst its majority shareholders and affiliated persons.

(2) Nexon Mobile announced on 5th October that it will enter into a partnership with DeNA, a Japanese mobile social game provider, to offer its social network game ‘MaypleStory: Our Adventure’  through Mobage, Japan’s largest mobile games portal.

(3) Enspert, a local media convergence specialist, will step up its collaboration with Google. The company is the first among local start-ups to be certified by Google after it launched the E201, its first Android tablet last year. This year, it unveiled the Identity Cron, another Android tablet, which is intended largely for overseas markets.

(4) Mobile messaging company KakaoTalk (CEO Mr. Jae-Bom Lee) had concluded an agreement on the cooperation and formation of an alliance with SM Entertainment (CEO Mr. Young-Min Kim) — famous for their promotion of K-Pop overseas as part of the Korean wave.

(5) Domestic mobile- messenger rookie “TicToc” is raising a few eyebrows. After a period of growth exceeding the leading Kakaotalk, Tik-Tok has been talking big of reaching the number one spot for all genre-leading apps in the online marketplace.

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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Report: Half of iDevices Are Jailbroken in China

Innovation Works portfolio company UMeng which helps app developers gathering up app usage statistics released its latest report on iOS usage in China. According to the report, as of late July of this year iPhone 4 commands 84% of all iDevices while iOS 4.3 becomes the dominant version with a drastic increase from 0.5% to 69.3% in 7 months.

Some highlights:

• iPad2 grows rapidly to 59.8% share in all iPads.
• iOS 4.3 hits mainstream from 0.5% to 69.3%. New iOS  the mainstream iOS version,increased from 0.5% to 69.3% among 7 months. New iOS update easily outruns older version in a month after launch.
• With some similarities to Android penetration, Guangdong、Beijing、Shanghai、Zhejiang、Jiangsu remains a stronghold of iDevices, combined commands 50.5% of iOS devices market.
• 1 out of 8 or 9 people in Beijing owns an iPhone.
• When it comes to app usage, iPhone users are not that different from Android guys. During weekdays, business, travel, information and news apps are among the top-used categories. While at the weekend game, photo, music, social and lifestyle apps rule.
• People use biz, travel, news app between 8 – 10 AM, while play games, consume entertainment contents between 5 – 9 PM. iPhones are mainly used during daytime (7 AM – 5 PM), while iPad are more active in the night (6 PM – 11 PM).
• Jailbroken devices grew from 34.6% to 51.0% during Q2, aided by numerous iPhone 4 that spread over China.
• 25% of users use an app only once before trashing it.

 

Photo Credit: UMeng

Related posts:

1. 34.6% of iOS Devices in China Are Jailbroken, According to UMeng’s Report
2. InMobi releases Mobile Insights Report
3. iPad custom duty cut by half – lower to 10%

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Men Can Experience Pregnancy With “Mommy Tummy,” A Serious Game

Kanagawa Engineering College Kosaka Laboratory exhibited their serious game which simulates the experience of pregnancy, “Mommy Tummy,” at the Tokyo Game Show 2011.

“Mommy Tummy” is a serious game which allows you to have personal experience of the roughly 10 month period of pregnancy in two minutes.  The condition of pregnancy is emulated by wearing a suit into which special stomach and chest sensor devices are inserted.

A water bag is fitted into the suit, and by injecting hot water into the bag, it simulates the experience of the belly getting bigger as the developing foetus grows little by little.  Also a “fetal movement belt” is placed at the back of the stomach; this gives users a body vibration and the sensation of “being kicked” from inside the stomach.  On the monitor, the present condition of the foetus, how big it is and how it’s moving are displayed, bringing a real sense of the actual feeling of pregnancy.  All of the CG of the foetus are coordinated with the sensor of the suit, so for instance if you move violently its mood gets bad, if you pat your stomach its mood gets better, and it changes depending on the user’s movements.  A touch sensor is included on the front of the stomach to perceive patting motions.  This seems to present the message of “restful pregnancy,” as too much violent movement results in “miscarriage,” a bad ending also included in the game.

 

Translation authorized by VSMedia

Men Can Experience Pregnancy With “Mommy Tummy,” A Serious Game

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TiE Singapore – Engineering Management in Tech Startups

Earlier this year in August, I was invited to attend TiE Global’s annual retreat in Bali and experienced the camaraderie of the TiE network first-hand. I bonded with many other Charter Members over glasses of sake and got myself a new moniker; Ashok Rao (Chairman of TiE Global) thought “motochan” wasn’t snazzy enough and went on to Continue reading → Related posts:

1. iJam Industry Networking Session
2. Startup Roots Speaker Series #6 Preview – Product Management
3. ‘Deep’ Engineering: an Endangered species in Singapore?

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Events For The Week – 15-22 Oct

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.

Friday to Sunday 14th-16th October:

(1) Startup Weekend Singapore 3

Saturday 15th October:

(1) Ideas.inc Startup Conference (Grand Final) 2011
(2) Secrets to Managing a Successful F&B Business Conference
(3) Ideas.inc Elevator Pitch

Monday to Wednesday 17th-19th October:

(1) Web In Travel Conference and Bootcamp 2011

Tuesday to Wednesday 18th-19th October:

(1) [KL, Malaysia] 2011 APAC Developer Conference

Wednesday 19th October:

(1) Angel’s Gate Launch
(2) Web Wednesday

Thursday to Friday 20th-21st October:

(1) [KL, Malaysia] Silicon Valley Comes to Malaysia

Image courtesy of joyosity.

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Web Wednesday – 19 Oct

Next week, Web Wednesday will have Don Anderson of CNNGo as the speaker. He will speak on “Building a Successful Social Travel Brand”. Based on his experience in CNNGo, he will provide an overview of CNNGo’s operations and content strategy, included CNNGo’s intiatives in establishing itself as a socially relevant conversational travel brand online.

On top of that, he will discuss the current situation and new opportunities facing the travel industry across digital streams (online, mobile, social), new business models (eg. deals) and the impact of social media.

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Event Details

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When: Wednesday, 19th October 2011
Time: 630pm-9pm
Where: The Pump Room, Clarke Quay, 177a River Valley Road, Singapore 179021 (Map)

 

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Code Online Using Programr, Pune Based Startup

Need to learn coding? Wanna learn how to create animation games? Well, Pune based Programr is a online service that helps you code, compile and run your programs online (i.e. in the browser itself).

The startup has also launched krazykoder.com that enables students to create games/animations online (example: Anna Hazare Games, Talking Dinosaurs) in less than an hour’s time, and thereby sharpen their logical skills.

The business model for Programr is centered around certification and providing SAAS based service to institutes (as a replacement of their computer labs). A very neat idea (just like CodeAcademy), the team should just go ahead and execute on the plan without spending much time chasing VCs/investors (such ideas sound fancy from day one and doesn’t really fall under the investing framework) .

As far as marketing is concerned, the team is relying more on online/social media initiatives, but I would strongly recommend them to conduct Hackathons on the site itself (online hack events of course) – i.e. select a theme and get developers to build games/apps.

Here is a quick QnA with the Programr/KrazyKoder cofounder, Rajesh Moorjani:

Founding Team

The team is basically Rajesh Moorjani & Santosh Surve. We are friends from our previous company Cybage Software where we worked for about 7 years on different projects together.
I have been project lead for web projects from Microsoft, Doubleclick, EA and a few other clients , while Santosh has been project lead for systems projects from Symantec and Altiris.
Our team consists of me, Santosh and 4 great engineers.

Revenue model for Programr:
1. We sell online courses to students worldwide (we have some courses available now at www.programr.com/courses )
2. We will soon be offering certification to students worldwide (we will test their hands-on coding knowledge over 30 days. If satisfactory, we will issue a certificate)
3. We will offer our entire system as a SaaS to computer institutes so that they can get rid of their physical expensive computer labs. This will help them save costs on real estate, computers, maintenance and air conditioning. ) IT will also give their students a 24×7 lab which they can access even from their home. a true win-win.
4. We will offer our solution to tech book publishers such that they need not give a CD along with every book . They can now simply put a “Try it out now” link below every example in their book using which the book reader can try the example live right while reading the book.

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In a way, this could also be a great competition to InterviewStreet and the team should also look at online mock-up interview based business model as well, as the platform is capable of doing this and companies/customers are willing to pay for a service like this.

I am not really sure whether focusing on computer institutes etc model has a huge opportunity – essentially, the requirement scope will bloat the product to become almost a virtual desktop (the hypothesis is that students use computers only for coding, and that needs to be validated).

Do you think that institutes/colleges are open for a service like this? All I know is that if done well, Programr is onto a big opportunity – and should start building authority in the programming space, for them to issue certificates etc.

What’s your opinion?

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» Code Online Using Programr, Pune Based Startup @Pluggd.in.

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Paypal India Increases Receiving Limits to $3000 Per Transaction

Paypal is pretty much a dead channel for transactions, but for the lack of a better alternative – freelancers are forced to use the channel for accepting payments.

Earlier, Paypal reduced the receiving limit to $500 (as per RBI guidelines), but to our surprise the company has now increased the receiving limits to $3000/transaction (though there isn’t any updated guideline from RBI regarding the receiving limit)

Now you will be able to receive export-related payments of up to USD 3000 per transaction into your PayPal account (see).

In order to comply with the RBI Guidelines, all PayPal users in India must:

• Add a Permanent Account Number (PAN) and Purpose Code.
  By adding this information, you will continue to receive export-related payments into your PayPal account and your account will not be limited from receiving future payments.
• Add a bank account in India.
  This will help us to auto withdraw your PayPal balance out of your PayPal account and transfer your balance to your bank account in India. Note: If you don’t add a bank account in India to your PayPal account then your PayPal account will also be limited from receiving export-related payments.

And mind you, you still cannot purchase anything from your Paypal account.
Recommended Read: How To Choose Your Payment Gateway [R.I.P. Paypal] | Top Alternatives Of Paypal For Indian Entrepreneurs

Recommended Startup: Analyze Your Paypal Transactions With Putler

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» Paypal India Increases Receiving Limits to $3000 Per Transaction @Pluggd.in.

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Apple Charged Me For An International SMS. And Why That’s NOT Cool

I upgraded my iPhone 4 to iOS5 yesterday. The look and feel is better than the last build – and as Aamir khan says, you can only improve perfection so much. A review of the iOS5 features is coming up in a few days – but the topic of this post is something Apple did that pissed me off.

Due to my (vested) interest in messaging, the first feature I wanted to try out was iMessage. So I turned to Settings – and turned the iMessage settings on. To my surprise, I got an alert from Aircel (my provider) that an SMS has been sent to an US number and my prepaid balance has been debited. Apple had basically sent a background SMS from my phone to an US number to verify my phone number without informing me. 

Now this pissed me off. 

The reason was not that it sent an SMS without asking me – I am sure that would be covered somewhere in their 42 page terms of use. The reason was not that they sent it to an international (UK) number +44 7786205094 – I would happily pay Rs 5 for the activation. 

The reason was that they sent it in the background.

Now there are two common ways in which phone numbers are verified in different OS - 

a) Take the number from the user in a signup form. Send an SMS with a unique code and ask the user to input it in the next screen. This is how most other apps validate on the iPhone platform

b) Ask the user to send an SMS with a particular code to a predefined number (depending upon his country). 

c) Send an SMS in the background to the same number from the same phone. Intercept it and prove validity. This is allowed by Android and some other OS but not iOS

So the precise fact that pissed me off was that iOS sends an SMS in the background for validating my phone number for its own app. But it doesn’t extend the capability of sending an SMS in the background to other apps and neither the capability of intercepting them. This is a huge disadvantage for any app that needs to validate your number. Similarly iOS app store has been known to reject many apps that send any kind of SMS from the users’ phones – even if they take consent for it. So why dont the same rules apply to Apple as well?

This is in the same spirit as pointed out by the Google employee (not for much longer I guess) - 

The Golden Rule of Platforms, “Eat Your Own Dogfood”, can be rephrased as “Start with a Platform, and Then Use it for Everything.” You can’t just bolt it on later. Certainly not easily at any rate — ask anyone who worked on platformizing MS Office. Or anyone who worked on platformizing Amazon. If you delay it, it’ll be ten times as much work as just doing it correctly up front. You can’t cheat. You can’t have secret back doors for internal apps to get special priority access, not for ANY reason

I think this is cheating. Cheating the customer and other app developers by not providing them the same playing field. Not cool Apple – totally not cool. 

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» Apple Charged Me For An International SMS. And Why That’s NOT Cool @Pluggd.in.

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Corporate Gifting Service Capricorn Receives Seed Funding from Seeders

Seeders Venture Capital has invested in Hyderabad based Capricorn Gifting Solutions Pvt Ltd. Founded in April 2011 by Rajiv Lulla, the company is a corporate gifts and promotional products company with clients in IT, Pharma and other industries.

Capricorn Gifting draws on the almost 9 years experience of its founder Rajiv in ideating and building a corporate gifting and promotional products business. A brick-and-mortar company, Capricorn Gifting aims to use technology and Internet as key enablers to grow exponentially by increasing its reach and customer experience.

The corporate gifting space has seen a lot of traction over the last few years (eYantra has raised $7.8mn), though the competition from local vendors and strong tie-ups with HR/admin has been a huge challenge for the industry.

Other investment by Seeders are:

• Cloud Based Learning Platform, Eduora Receives Seed Funding from Seeders
• Portal For Buying/Selling Cars, CarSingh Raises Seed Fund From Seeders Venture Capital

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» Corporate Gifting Service Capricorn Receives Seed Funding from Seeders @Pluggd.in.

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