Pinch A Dollar for Special Olympics

Last month, we did the WP7 review of Affle’s product, Pinch. To prepare for the review, we decided to do a face-to-face interview with Anuj Khanna Sohum to find out more about the idea behind Affle. And boy, did we learn a lot from an experienced, down-to-earth serial entrepreneur.

And Anuj is not stopping there with Affle. Two days ago, the company announced the launch of  their “Pinch A Dollar for Special Olympics” campaign. The unique corporate social responsibility campaign is supported by Asia’s leading sports content provider ESPN STAR Sports (ESS), whose association with Special Olympics in Asia goes back to 2006. ESS will be extending on-air exposure on its networks for airing commercials promoting the initiative over a two-month period.

How does this campaign work? The campaign will generate donations in two ways, first by donating 100 per cent of the net revenues accrued from the download of Affle’s messaging  app, Pinch, to Special Olympics between October 25, 2011, to December 24, 2011. Secondly by creating a sub-app within Pinch where consumers will be able to donate in denominations of $10, $20, $50 or any other unique amount.

According to Anuj in the press release, “We are grateful to Special Olympics for giving us an opportunity to work with them and to ESPN STAR Sports for supporting the campaign. Pinch A Dollar brings the power to make positive contributions to the hands of the users, literally. Smart phone users in Singapore can now download Pinch, donate a dollar or more and spread the good word about the Special Olympics movement with the help of inbuilt social plugins. Affle will be making additional efforts to spread awareness for the campaign by reaching out to the millions of consumers who already use Affle products in other markets. We hope to inspire consumers to come forth and participate in the Pinch A Dollar movement.”

This is heartening to see a tech startup collaborating with the world’s largest sports organization supporting children and adults with intellectual abilities to engage the community more. Affle recently secured a US $10 million investment round from Japan’s largest mobile advertising company, D2 COMMUNICATIONS Inc (D2C) to further their product portfolio and traction. Looks like 2011 is a year to remember for Affle.

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Personal Assistant Siri Personified In Drawings As Well

iPhone's new voice interface Siri is getting kind of artificial personality with human voice and many prepared witty answers. If so, such "virtual person in machine" is of course the Japanese anime/manga people's favorite theme as seen on human voice synthesizer Hatsune Miku and her Vocaloid buddies are followed by a lot of illustrations, comics, dance movie, etc.

Around the social drawing community Pixiv, there are already many Siri illustrations by Japanese creators.

By @michirushiduki

By Bohe(@bhe_bbo)

By Kuuki Satoh. This uses the line that Siri's name sounds ass in Japanese (Shiri).

More on Pixiv [J].

Personal Assistant Siri Personified In Drawings As Well

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Tokyo Architecture Navigator – Visit Tokyo’s 1000 Notable Buildings With iPhone

"Tokyo Kenchiku Navi/Tokyo Architecture Navigator" is a new English/Japanese bilingual iOS app by real-estate information website R-Store, which covers about 1,000 Tokyo buildings designed by architects like Tadao Ando, Arata Isozaki, Kazuyo Sejima, etc.

The app contains around 3,000 photos of the buildings, information of each building such like the designer's name, address, year established, etc.

By GPS, you can list the buildings around you on map, route guide to a building as well.

The new buildings info are planned to be updated every year. Android version is under development. The price is 600 yen.

via MyCom [J]

Tokyo Architecture Navigator – Visit Tokyo’s 1000 Notable Buildings With iPhone

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October 2011 Japan IT Links (Part 2)

Continued from (Part 1). Middle part of October news which we did not write as a dedicated article. Continued to (Part 3)

Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated.

• Kagawa Pref. Declares To Rename To Udon (Japanese wheat noodle) Prefecture - Kagawa is known by enthusiastic udon lovers. Official runs extreme tourism promotion
• Kanazawa Local Govn Reproduces Finctional Festival In Anime, 5000 Fans Gather - Anime made up very traditional-looking ritual ceremony, the web assists fans to pilgrim, local government and people realized the ceremony as if it has been held hundreds of years.
• Microsoft Japan Lends PC/Xbox/Windows Phone For College Festivals. named 5 Windows Phone Ambassadors From Miss Uampus
• WordPress Claudia (Microsoft Japan Anime Character For Cloud) Voice Plugin - Claudia explained

  

• Taiwanese PC Game Parodies Chinese Civil War With Historical Figures Feminized via kashikou
• iPhone FAQ By KDDI au
• Development Of Japanese Popular FTP Software FFFTP, once declared its termination by the original author, Resumed By Successor Group
• Tokyo Metro and Yahoo! Japan Experiment Smartphone Location Guide Service In Subway Platform
• Kebyo-Bukuro - 150 Cough Sound Android App For Malingerer Sounds Ill
• Hatsune Miku Panel Event Held At MIT
• Japanese Tried Siri English
• Nikkei's Reporting The First Softbank iPhone 4S Purchaser's Photo Shows "Out of area" in Shibuya, Tokyo - the photo seems taken down. Mirror
• "Big Wave Guy" Appeared On iPhone 4S Line In Omotesando. This guy was a kind of icon at the first iPhone release frenzy in Japan. He comes back!

  

• NHN/Naver Japan and Livedoor Group To Move To A New Building Next To Shibuya Station In 2012 Autumn. They are now in Osaki and Nishi-Shinjyuku. The new building Shibuya Hikarie is under construction.

  

• Shonen Jump Gives Up Paper Magazine Business In US, Moves To Digital Version
• Tokyo's Internet-enabled appliance manufacturer Cerevo introduces LiveShell, the first-ever Ustream-approved product.

  

• DeNA To Integrate 3 Mobile Shopping Sites Into One Brand, Bidders. These services are the one of the reasons they cannot rebrand the whole company with "Mobage".
• Mixi To Establish US Subsidiary For Investement And Business Development
• 1/3 of Japanese Smartphone Users Keeps Their Feature Phone
• Research: Online Video Services Users On PC Web Passes 30 Million In Japan. On it, Hulu Japan's first month visitors are estimated 160K
• Cookpad To Begin Foodstuffs Delivery From November

If you want to know any specific news more, but unable to find them in other English blog/media, please let us know.

October 2011 Japan IT Links (Part 2)

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CyberAgent Ventures Invests In Startup Company “Qrunch”

CyberAgent’s [J] consolidated subsidiary for developing investment and venture capital operations, CyberAgent Ventures, [J] on the date of October 7th, 2011 made an investment into Qrunch Co., [J] developers of “Qrunch,” [J] a social Q&A service which allows you to lightheartedly ask questions to friends.  This company became the chosen enterprise for the business plan contest “Startups2011-spring-” held by CyberAgent Ventures.

Qrunch is a startup venture business with members who have an abundance of experience in web service development and application.  They will develop Qrunch, a Q&A site for lightheartedly asking questions to friends, and they are planning to offer it as a browser version and as a smartphone application.  Presently, they are accepting up to 10,000 advance account registrations for their alpha version, via the url above.  Qrunch is strengthening their develpment system via this recent fundraising, and they are aiming for an early stage business startup.

 

Translation authorized by VSMedia

CyberAgent Ventures Invests In Startup Company “Qrunch”

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Apple products are becoming more popular than ever in China

China is currently seeing a rise in affluence and changing consumer preferences. This is reportedly instigating a rapid surge in revenues with more and more people buying Apple products. The growth can be seen from the following figures. In the fiscal year of 2009, only 2% of Apple’s sales took place in China. The next year however, this number rose to 12% and then as high as 16% in the last quarter. This is an annual rise of 270% and in the last 12 months, the nation has yielded $13bn for Apple. When you measure this against the $3bn figure a year earlier, you can see that this has been a significant rise.

New CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, has said that he has never seen a country that has this many people who buy Apple products. The rise in technology in many different countries all over the world is apparent, with many people owning mobile phones they purchased from the O2 website, or carrying laptops around with them. However, the specificity with which residents of China are going for Apple products is interesting. Cook has recognised that there are more and more people in this country who are rising to the middle class and aspiring to own a product that Apple has made.

Apple are now very eager to keep this success going and are placing additional investment here. Being the world’s most highly populated nation, China provides a very valuable opportunity for Apple to grow even larger than it is now. Apple has recently revealed its first branded retail branch in Hong Kong, as well as one in Shanghai. There are now more than 200 Apple Premium Resellers or chains that only sell Apple goods, as well as around 7,000 points of sale. An official e-commerce platform went live at the end of 2010 and by the looks of it, there is more expansion to come.

• Beijing Apple store violent conflict
• Video: People crowded to watch a vagrant playing with his iPad in Beijing
• Yosion Apple Peel 520 now on sale, priced at 520 Yuan
• Video: HTC Magic runs iPhone OS4?
• Jobs Steve sent three words to confort a China developer that got robbed during WWDC2010
• Apple meets iPad trademark problem in China
• Funny video:Apple’s Beijing store attacked by a Terminator robot
• Apple paid Hanvon $3.65 million in the ‘i-phone’ trademark deal
• Foxconn is building WAPI version iPhone for China Unicom

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Kayac Releases Location-based Social Fighting Game “The King of Fighters Encounter”

Kayac Inc. [J] has released “THE KING OF FIGHTERS ENCOUNTER,” an iPhone social game application working with location information, which allows you to have battles with characters of people who pass by on the street in real life.  Download is free.

“THE KING OF FIGHTERS ENCOUNTER” is a game app based on the popular title “KING OF FIGHTERS.”  The user chooses their favorite of all 21 fighters and sets their “Skill,” and can then enjoy a “Pass-by Battle” with a user passing by on an actual street.  By defeating bosses and raising levels from repeated battles and training, gradually more characters can be used, and the type of skill that can be set for each character is different.  Also you can send messages to former opponents, get an area ranking, country ranking, and world ranking, and use it in tandem with Facebook by inviting Facebook friends to battle.  At the moment 21 characters are available but this number is planned to increase from here on.

(C) SNK PLAYMORE

 

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Kayac Releases Location-based Social Fighting Game “The King of Fighters Encounter”

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AngelPrime–An Incubator From Sanjay Swamy (ex-mChek) and Snapfish Cofounders, Bala and Shripati

AngelPrime is an incubator launched by Sanjay Swamy (earlier CEO of mChek), Bala Parthasarthy and Shripati Acharya (cofounders of Snapfish, which was acquired by HP). Essentially, AngelPrime will co-ideate the business plan with entrepreneurs and work like cofounders. The idea is to get the first version of the product out, ensuring a product/market fit, provide substantial (~12+ months) seed capital and also help the company in raising Series A funding.

I had a brief conversation with Sanjay regarding the incubator model and here are a few highlights

- The AngelPrime team will focus on three key areas to start off : mobile internet, ecommerce and tablet/mobile app space.

- The team works like cofounders, i.e. in partnership mode with entrepreneurs (no cash-compensation).

- As far as equity is concerned, there is no set number.

- AngelPrime has raised funds from 12 individual investors and the incubator will provide mentorship and of course real estate (the incubator is located in Whitefield, Bangalore).

- AngelPrime is actively scouting for exceptional leaders who want to be co-founders and build great companies.

- Current portfolio includes a product in payment space (which I am in the know of and is surely a promising product) and another startup in smartphone/tablet space.

Incubation/Accelerator Model In India

The incubation/accelerator mode in India has so far mostly focused on real estate part of the incubation centers. While there are quite a few incubators operating in the country, there surely is a need for incubators who can actually provide business mentorship.

Very few incubators in India actually focus on strategic aspect of business – i.e. providing industry insights and access to industry contacts. Most of the incubators tend to focus on either the real estate part or operational aspects of running a business, which is quite a sub-optimal definition of ‘incubator’.

AngelPrime’s big differentiator is the team and focused approach (i.e. expertise based) and is surely an initiative to watch out for.

If you have questions for AngelPrime team, do leave them here (in the comment section).

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» AngelPrime–An Incubator From Sanjay Swamy (ex-mChek) and Snapfish Cofounders, Bala and Shripati @Pluggd.in.

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IDA will give you tax deductions to implement cloud computing

Companies who want to implement cloud computing can now receive a boost from the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore.

It comes in the form of tax deductions of up to 400 percent on up to S$400,000 (US$316,000) of qualifying expenditure incurred per year on each of six qualifying activities, which are:

• Acquisition or leasing of automation equipment;
• Training of employees;
• Acquisition of Intellectual Property Rights;
• Registration of patents, trademarks, designs and plant varieties;
• Research and development activities; and
• Investment in approved design projects.

Cloud computing was only recently included under the Productivity and Innovation Credit Scheme, which aims to help businesses improve productivity through automation. All businesses that have incurred expenditure in the six areas can apply for tax deductions.

Certainly, this is also good news for cloud computing service providers, as companies would now be incentivized to adopt their services.

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Flipkart Raising $200Mn From Carlyle And General Atlantic?

There have been a lot of speculation regarding the latest valuation and series D funding of Flipkart. While a billion dollar valuation has been talked about and also been ridiculed, there wasn’t any credible name that came forward until now. A Reuters report names US based PE firms Carlyle and General Atlantic (was rumored earlier as well) to be talks with Flipkart for an investment of $150-200Mn (at a valuation of $1Bn?). Though it is reported that the deal is still midway due to differences in valuation.

Given that this is series D and also looking at the pink health of Flipkart (from an outsider’s perspective) it does not seem that the dilution would be anything more than 15-20%. Which would mean a $1Bn valuation, post money.

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Recommended Read: Read the unofficial Story of Flipkart to know what makes it a billion dollar company.

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Lately, Flipkart’s traffic has taken a major leap owing to the heavy ATL advertising spends.

With Alexa India rank of 35, it is second only to Ebay India, amongst the eCommerce players.

Quick look at Flipkart funding announcements:

A. Oct 2009 – Accel India

B. June 2010 – Tiger Global – $8-10Mn

C. June 2011 – Tiger Global – $20Mn

There are rumors that Flipkart may acquire the Chakpak.com team. Chakpak’s traffic has taken beating for the last 1 year and is drastically falling (read: Chakapak Analysis). It’s interesting to note that Accel India is a common investor between the two companies. Also an interesting co-incidence is that like Flipkart both of Chakpak’s founders are IITD/Ex-Amazon.

Too much going at Flipkart’s HQ? Well, watch this UnPluggd video where Sachin Bansal, Founder & CEO shared the Flipkart story

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» Flipkart Raising $200Mn From Carlyle And General Atlantic? @Pluggd.in.

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