Mobile ad network Millennial Media expands to Southeast Asia

Millennial Media, a mobile ad network with a presence in US and Western Europe, has announced an expansion to Southeast Asia. 15 new job openings are now available in the region.

Leading the charge is Robert Woolfrey, who will oversee the expansion of the company’s in-market brand and agency sales in the area. Besides Southeast Asia, Millennial is also targeting the Korea, Japan and China markets.

The mobile ad industry in Asia-Pacific is projected to see strong growth. According to Gartner, the industry will grow from US$1.6 billion to US$6.9 billion in 2015.

Millennial is seen as one of the largest independent mobile ad networks in the world, following AdMob’s acquisition by Google and Quattro’s purchase by Apple. The company is also heading towards an IPO either later this year or early 2012.

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Trim roaming charges with FlexiRoam

If you are a frequent traveller, especially if it is for business, staying connected via phone is really important. So you have probably two choices when you land in a foreign country, grab a new mobile line and then inform some key people of your new contact number or keep your current line and pay exorbitant international roaming charges. Or you could probably try something that my girlfriend almost did recently, purchase a dual-SIM phone. Do you know how ugly these dual-SIM phones are?

Anyway, back to international roaming and all its pains. What if there was a solution that allows you to keep your personal mobile number when roaming, but avoid the high cost of international roaming? If all you had to do was get a new local mobile line when you land and all calls and SMS to your personal line are forwarded to your local number at a fraction of roaming charges? ReapField Technology, a Malaysian-based company is looking to provide that solution with their product, FlexiRoam. And I believe they are on the right track with their product.

FlexiRoam is already available in 200 countries such as China, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and the UK. There are also plans in the pipeline to introduce smartphone apps for Blackberry, iPhone and Android for users to quickly utilize FlexiRoam’s services.

e27 managed to interview FlexiRoam’s CEO, Jef Ong, to find out more about saving on mobile roaming charges.

Tell us how the idea for FlexiRoam came about?

As I myself, is a victim of shocking roaming charges, I decided to do some research and concluded that there are three major problems with roaming as we know it. Firstly, it is very expensive. Secondly, you wouldn’t know exactly how much you will be charged even if you request for the information from your mobile operator because it is complex. Lastly, some customers need to fork out a high amount of cash as deposit in order to activate roaming. I wanted to fix all of these problems and that is how FlexiRoam came about. FlexiRoam offers a prepaid, flat rate, unlimited roaming to customers, so that they do not have to worry about expensive roaming charges when they return from their overseas trip.

Who is behind FlexiRoam?

A group of young and passionate, talented people who have a vision to make international roaming free for travellers.

How does it work?

Front-end

Firstly, customers will need to purchase our service online or at any of our counters/kiosks in major airports. Upon purchase, they will receive a “Roaming Pass” with clear instructions on how to activate FlexiRoam before they leave the country, and upon arrival of the foreign country. Once the activation process is complete, they can connect their overseas line to FlexiRoam to make and receive unlimited International roaming calls without even changing to a new number.

Back-end

FlexiRoam innovates existing technology such as SMS and Call forwarding function for mobile phones. Customers simply forward their calls to a local Flexi number before they leave the country. Upon arriving overseas, all they need to do is send an SMS from their overseas mobile number to link their local number to the overseas SIM.

How many users have you had so far?

To date, we have serviced a total of 17,138 individuals who have used our FlexiRoam platform. Through that, we have helped these travellers save RM1,023,587.00 worth of roaming charges.

Other than smartphone apps, what are future plans to expand reach? Looking to extend this service beyond Malaysia and Singapore? What are the difficulties faced when going global?

We are looking forward to work closely with travel agencies and airlines to expand our reach. Through partnership with FlexiRoam, they will be able to yield additional ancillary income and provide value-added service for their customers. FlexiRoam is also the first in the market to offer free roaming to subscribers so we will continuously be devising campaigns with ‘free roaming’ as our core message. We are definitely looking to extend our service beyond Malaysia and Singapore. Global domination is our goal!

The challenge we face is in educating travellers that there is a cheaper alternative out there that can help them to save a huge amount of money.

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Small, Hardly Becomes Big in China Web

If you read the lists of the startups incubated by TiSiWi, you may question if any of them can be big one day. I love most of the ideas. They are good, but it’s also true that the technology barrier is low and there are a few applications or service already in the market. It could be so hard for some of them to survive.

I was on stage and talked to Kevin, the founder of Instagram at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing. What most impressed me is that they can now manage 12 millions users with only 6 staff. Even now, Japan has become it’s 2nd largest market. It’s a small application, but now becomes big! In silicon valley, if your product is good and distinguishing, you can open up your platform and it’s a fair market where you may win the respect. You may find plenty of examples like Twitter, Foursquare and even Facebook etc.

People ask me if I see any small startup can have the chance to be big, my answer is the possibility is so low.

1. Being a platform is just a dream. If you are relatively small and have a bunch of users. To expand quickly, you may think of being a platform, i.e. announcing your API to expect more third-parties can join you to drive the market together. That’s what Instagram, Foursquare and Twitter did. But here, it’s so hard. Why should people follow you and your standard? Even you are big like Tencent, don’t forget Baidu, Alibaba, Sina etc are there and they would not be ‘regulated’ by your game rule. That is why, there are many so call Open Platforms but none of them can be the dominant.
2. Cooking a good startup takes time, meaning not to question much about the revenue model etc. But Chinese market is lacking of patience, the founders usually don’t have it, so do the investors. It’s getting better these days as in mobile web, almost all the hottest sectors don’t have clear business model even in silicon valley anyway, investors are more willing to tell you, they invest it not for product but mainly because of the team.
3. Probably we should not complain about market environment which can not be expected to be changed tomorrow. The most disappointing one is, and we are short of disrupt ideas which give people the confidence that we can be Big.

Everything starts with tiny and small. You may find lots of successful company in China starting as one-man business. What I want to emphasize here is that, in China web, we need give more space and better ecosystem for Innovation.

 

 

Related posts:

1. 39 Companies from ZhongGuanCun Listed in 2010, Is It China's Silicon Valley?
2. Part 2 – Calvin Chin on Innovation in China
3. How to Run the Professional Social Network in China, Interview with Co-founders of UShi.cn

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DealsAndYou Secures $17mn Funding

DealsAndYou has raised $17mn from Mayfield Fund, Norwest Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Nokia Growth Partners.

DealsAndYou was earlier called Wanamo which was acquired by Smile Interactive in June 2010 and the fresh round of funding will be used for investments in infrastructure, technology and branding (source).

DealsAndYou is a group buying service and earlier raised $1.5mn from Group Buying Global AG.

DealsAndYou competitor, Snapdeal earlier raised $40mn from Bessemer Venture Partners, Nexus Venture and IndoUS Venture Partners.

Couple of months back, European early stage investor Mangrove Capital Partners invested in BeStylish, Smile Interactive Venture (the parent company of Dealsandyou).

Related posts:

1. Group Buying Site Wanamo Acquired, To Change Avatar To DealsAndYou.com
2. Snapdeal Raises $40mn From Bessemer Venture Partners, Nexus Venture and IndoUS Venture Partners
3. Funding Roundup: SAIF Partner Invests in Zovi, Online Apparel Store
4. Snapdeal Funding from NEA-IUV? Details
5. Weekly Recap: Snapdeal’s $40mn Funding, 51% FDI In Multi-Brand Retail

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As The First In Its Kind, Digital-Focused Event To Be Held This Weekend In Fukuoka

As the first in its kind (for me at least), there will be a big three-day event in Fukuoka this weekend, which is called Myojo Waraku or just "MJ" in short, where a bunch of celebrities, geeks and techpreneurs from music, online video filming and start-up communities in the city come together.

For those who don't know much about the city, it's located in the south-western island of Japan and much closer to Shanghai and Seoul than Tokyo or the country's capital. That's why it's often considered as a gateway to Asian countries for Japanese, not only for its geographical reason, but also for a high reflection from Asian flavor in the city's local foods.

The city is a little bit away from Tokyo, however, it has a good enough population of techpreneurs and engineers because not a few large IT businesses have set up their headquarters there. So is it for the volume of its local tech start-up community, too.

The event is highly inspired by SXSW (South-by-South-West), a one-week-long festival that happens in March every year in Austin, TX and focuses on making great exposure opportunities for filmmakers, music artists and web media creators. MJ is led by Masanori Hashimoto, the co-founder of Fukuoka-based tech company NuLab, also known as the developer of collaboration-based drawing tool Cacoo, and Taizo Son[J], a serial entrepreneur, angel investor and a younger brother of Softbank Mobile's CEO, and aims at encouraging local start-ups to go more international and make their services spread out all across Asia.

Visit these webpages for a brief introduction about the event in English, Korean, Chinese and Japanese. Also for more updates, visit the event's main website at http://myojowaraku.net[J]. (sorry, the latter one is mainly written in Japanese).

As The First In Its Kind, Digital-Focused Event To Be Held This Weekend In Fukuoka

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Qiuqiu, a Location and Interests Based Discovery Engine For Android Applications

Google’s official Android Market is not available in China, leading to a plethora of independent markets – over 70 at last count. The system works – sort of – but users may find it annoying because you actually don’t know how to find the good stuff. China is still lacking any sort of innovative search mechanism to help people identify the apps they really need in daily life.

Discovering the apps should not be boring, and the core value of Qiuqiu is to bring the pleasure of discovering apps during different activities. Qiuqiu’s app search engine is unique because it offers results based on your location, the time of day, and the things you like and do. Each scenario is expressed by a series of apps – education apps for the school day and travel apps for your vacation. It’s a compelling and interesting change from the traditional “editor’s choice” and selected apps lists found in many markets.

Qiuqiu, the new app discovery engine is developed by AppChina, one of the leading third party Android markets. The founders are a group of very experienced senior engineers and product managers from STC Bing search technology centre and graduates from Tsinghua, Beijing and Fudan Universities. Being successful in the Android market, as Luo Chuan, the co-founder of AppChina, formerly CEO of MySpace China, said, means suppling the right apps at the right time. AppChina is moving forward to the field of search engine and data mining and try to develop a new way of discovering Android apps most suitable for you.

[Editor: this post's first published on TechCrunch, and the video is from TechCrunch TV.]

Related posts:

1. Google And Tencent Partnership On Search Engine Will End Soon
2. 22.14m Android App Downloads Vs. 78.29m iPhone App Downloads in China in August 2011
3. AT&T joins the Location-Based Ads camp… what about China mobile?

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China Digest: Baidu invests in Baijob, Sina’s zombie accounts, and more

Here are some startup news snippets from China, not only in its capital, Beijing, but also other startup hubs such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Hangzhou, and many more.

(1) Online jobs site Baijob disclosed that it has received a second investment of RMB 100 million (US$ 15.7 million) from its parent company, Baidu.

(2) Sina has shut down tens of millions of Weibo accounts that are used as zombie accounts to send spam messages or attack other users.

(3) Sina Weibo’s new 9-digit user accounts, called Weibo Code, entered open beta testing today. Codes come in three levels (bronze, silver, gold) and can be rented for 5-50 RMB (US$0.78-7.8) a month.

(4) Lashou, a leading Chinese group-buying site, has filed for a US IPO. It plans to list on NASDAQ under the ticker LASO, with an initial proposal to raise US$100 million.

(5) Chinese Internet giant Tencent’s CEO Pony Ma shared that developing closer relations with game developers and e-commerce retailers was the firm’s most important task of 2011.

(6) Tencent has attracted more than 180 million users with its mobile instant messaging service Weixin, according to a report by Chinese tech blog 36kr.

(7) Top Chinese industry regulators are reviewing Alibaba’s B2C e-commerce site TMall for the possibility of holding a monopoly.

(8) Baidu, China’s largest search engine, joined the Open Compute Project (OCP) last month. The OCP is an open source movement initiated by Facebook.

(9) November 1, 2011 marks the launch of the domain Xueqiu.com, a new social platform for value investors. Xueqiu, currently in public beta, uses a microblog format to enable investors to share ideas with fellow investors and follow their favorite stocks.

(10) The Chinese mobile browser provider UCWeb said it will file a lawsuit against Tencent accusing the Chinese Internet giant of forcing its partners not to adopt UCWeb’s software. UCWeb recently published an open letter accusing Tencent’s mobile browser of misleading statistics and unfair competition.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.

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Local Search Player, Getit Launches Deal Coupon Service

Local search service, Getit has launched GetItHotDeals.in, a discount coupon service plus a mechanism for consumers to access the deal details by calling GETIT on 4444-4444 from any city (manual/call-center operation).

You know why is this cool? Because a startup (dealradio) built a similar feature at Pluggd.in hackathon that automatically identifies one’s location (using the Android app) and one can call +91 80 30860788 to get the deal from nearest restaurants (fully automated service).

Earlier, we talked about the business model of deal aggregation (read: Business Model for Deal Aggregators? Should Not Be Aggregation of Deals) and one differentiation that deal aggregators/new deal sites can bring to this over saturated marketplace is : location.

LBS hasn’t yet taken off beyond the regular find-direction service, but deals could turn out into a BIG play for LBS services that can offer deals based on one’s current location (i.e. not a dumb call-center based system). Getit’s current implementation (including the mobile apps) is far from being perfect, but that’s what I’d expect deal aggregators like Offergrid to crack.

What do you think could be the differentiating point for deal coupon services? Getit being a local search company has the right infrastructure/sales force to crack this model, but the company lacks the technology skill (and maybe, mindset) to improve on the existing model.

The opportunity for a startup to crack this is NOW, i.e. when there are ‘enough’ deal sites and consolidation hasn’t yet started.

Related posts:

1. DiscountPandit Wants To Be The Hyperlocal Deal Search Engine [With Social Angle]
2. Aggregated List of Local Deal Aggregators In India – Where Is The Value Add?
3. Business Model for Deal Aggregators? Should Not Be Aggregation of Deals
4. Is There a Business Model in Deal Aggregation Space?
5. iXiGo launches Travel Deal Search Engine – Search for all things travels

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A Look at AngelPrime’s CTO-in-residence Program

AngelPrime, the newly launched incubator has launched a CTO-in-residence program aimed at hackers and geeks.

“We minimize risk, provide basic salary, a professional fully-furnished and well equipped office space, and a great environment to work with proven entrepreneurs and advisors on a day to day basis, to disrupt and innovate. But most importantly we provide a great opportunity to turn their disruption into a funded product company within a few weeks or months”.

The Bangalore based incubator is currently looking for (upto) 5 CTOs who could turn validated business concepts into great companies within 90-180 days. Two of the incubated projects at AngelPrime are a) a company in payment space and b) another startup in smartphone/tablet space.

While the idea sounds very cool, the key would be to see if AngelPrime goes beyond the ideas that are currently incubated (which have been in-the-making for quite sometime), i.e. get geeks outside the incubator’s founding team network and give them the ammunition to build something awesome.

A Peeve: Making of Incubator Bubble in India

Related posts:

1. AngelPrime–An Incubator From Sanjay Swamy (ex-mChek) and Snapfish Cofounders, Bala and Shripati
2. #PiHackathon–5 Tickets Sponsored By AngelPrime Team. Come And Hack
3. Early Stage Technology Entrepreneurship and Incubators in India
4. Kaun Banega Entrepreneur Program from TiE Bangalore
5. IIM A launches iAccelerator program for Indian startups

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Japan Digest: GREE investment, DeNA closer to acquiring pro-baseball team, and more

Here are some startup news snippets from Japan, not only from its capital, Tokyo, but also other startup hubs like Fukuoka, Kyoto, Osaka, and many more.

(1) Mobile social gaming giant Gree announced on 2nd November that it has established a new investment subsidiary called Gree Ventures, which will invest a tentative 2 billion yen (US$25.6 million) in total.

(2) DeNA just announced that it had submitted an application to acquire pro-baseball team Yokohama Bay Stars from current owner Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS).

(3) D3Publisher has begun the distribution of “Dream Club Pure Clock Amane ~ Preview Version ~”, the iPhone app version of their popular title “Dream Club”, a romance simulation game series.

(4) The Japanese can now enjoy a new Internet connection service called AKB48, which is named after Japan’s most popular girls group.

(5) The first episode of a drama based on popular social game Kaitou Royal got a 4.2% audience share in the Kanto-area (greater Tokyo and around).

(6) Gree announced that it has increased its annual sales outlook from an original forecast of 90-100 billion yen (US$1.15-1.28 billion) to 130-140 billion yen (US$1.67-1.80 billion). Net income is expected to increase 11 billion yen (US$141 million).

(7) Toyota has released a promotional racing game called “Social Network Racer” for Facebook. “Social Network Racer” is designed to enhance global recognition of the FT86-II concept sports car.

(8) Pokelabo has released “YakyuTomo! Gekitou Puro Yakyuu Hen” (Baseball Buddies! Fierce Battle Pro Baseball Edition), the latest installment of their popular Mobage feature phone social game “YakyuTomo”.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.

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Extended : UnPluggd Nomination Deadline To Nov 9th.

Given that there was a confusion regarding hackathon and UnPluggd nomination deadline, we have decided to extend the deadline for UnPluggd nomination to November 9th (nomination form link, or you can also use the form embedded in this post).

For those who have already filled up the nomination form, they will start hearing from us today (late) evening onwards.

If you are wondering why nominate, here are a few testimonials from some of the startups who demoed at the previous UnPluggd event(s ).

“Presenting at UnPluggd increased our visibility in the start-up eco-system. Infact, couple of our hires have been readers of Pluggdin who found about us through the blog post on UnPluggd.” – Suruchi Wagh, COO, Next Leap

“Unpluggd gave us more visibility and credibility in the Indian market. It also connected us with the right people in terms of technology investing and mentorship.” – Raj, Recruiterbox

“After the event couple of users started developing on the platform, one of them developed across multiple platform and rated us the best as per his evaluation” – Atul, Kookoo.

“Unpluggd was a great experience. I was able to make rapid progress both in anticipation of presenting at UnPluggd and to deliver to the promises made. Close to 150 new users signed up for updates and many participants mailed me with valuable feedback. I was also approached by few entrepreneurs and VCs” – Harsh (Appcanvas)

Unpluggd feedback from startups

Date: November 19th, Pune.

Venue: MES Auditorium, 131. Mayur colony, Near HDFC Bank (Karishma Chowk),Karve Road, Pune , India.

Block your seat: http://unpluggd4.ayojak.com or http://unpluggd.doattend.com

Nomination Form

Nomination Form For UnPluggd4, India's Largest Startup Visibility Platform

• Your Name*
• Company Website*
• Email*
  Your Email Address. Ensure that you check this email id frequently.
• Company HQ Location*
  Company Headquarter Location
• Company Founding Date*
• Company Logo*
• Product Name*
• Industry Category
  InternetMobileEnterprise SoftwareCleantechHardwareOthers
• Product Description*
  Tell us why do you think this is a great product.
• What (and Whose) Problem Are you Solving?*
  Be precise about the problem statement you are solving Do mention the target segment as well as your business USP.
• Core Technology
  E.g. : PHP, Java etc. Do share the core technology used in the product.
• Working Prototype/Video/Demo Link
  Share link to working prorotype or demo of your product.
• Have you started making money?*
  YesNo
  Are you pre-revenue? This doesn't impacts the nomination evaluation process, but we need to know what stage are you in.
• How do you plan to make (more) money?*
  How do you plan to make (more) money?
• How many employees do you have? How do you pay their salaries today?
  We have to know how you are running the business today. This will definitely be a question asked up in stage - so do get your answers prepared :)
• What do you intend to get from UnPluGGd?
  Do let us know your expectations (be candid).
• Tell us Something Special About Your Product/Startup.
  Tell us something special (about the product/company) that you haven't told anybody else.

Related posts:

1. Startups: UnPluggd Nomination Deadline Extended to Today
2. Pluggd.in != Supreme Court [#UnPluGGd2 Nomination Deadline Extended]
3. Quick Reminder: Only A Day Left To Apply For UnPluggd Demo Slot Nomination [Deadline]
4. UnPluGGd Nomination Deadline Ends Today
5. Launch @UnPluggd – Demo Nomination Begins Today!

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Find Pluggd.in on Google+ Pages: Is + a Poor Social Network or a Great Collaboration Tool?

Google+ page is open for businesses and we are live with Pluggd.in page (oh! is it +Pluggdin?).

If you ask me one BIG difference/edge that Google+ has over Facebook pages, it surely is the concept of circles. You can post updates specific to circles (like customers, employees etc) and to me, that’s one big advantage over Facebook, which is currently clogged with numerous updates in the timeline.

Google+ has the opportunity to start from a clean slate and the key would be to offer features which help brands to connect with audience in a much better way and importantly, in a specific context. For example, why can’t brands use the concept of circles to announce deals/offers etc to say, VIP customers only; and similarly, use + for announcement to vendors.

In fact, like I said earlier [read: Google+ Now Available To Apps Users–A Differentiator That Facebook Doesn’t Have], Google+ pages can be more collaborative than Facebook, which is often considered a 1-way street for brands (and their social media agencies).

That may not be the ‘social networking’ use case for Google+, but its for Google to define whether they want this as the ‘next big thing’ or a ‘Google’s version of Facebook’.

What’s your use case for Google+ Pages? Treat it like your FB page? Or make more sense of it? To me, Google+ seems more like a great collaboration product rather than social network (read: cheap-clone-of-Facebook).

For now, you can follow Pluggd.in on Google+, Facebook, Twitter to keep yourself updated on startup scene in India.

Related posts:

1. Why Google+ may be miles away from being a great Social Product!
2. The Great Google Franchise Network: How Dependent is Your Web Startup?
3. Marketeers Wishlist for Facebook Pages
4. Google Wants To Mix Your Business With Social Network [Orkut Badge]
5. Yahoo Mail is a Social Network..Will that Help?

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