Indonesia Will See More Websites Blocked

Image source: www.tuvpn.com

On August 7th, Nawala Nusantara, a foundation providing internet filtering service, announced a partnership with Association of Indonesia Internet Service Provider (Asosiasi Penyelenggara Jasa Internet Indonesia or also known as APJII) to block more websites that are deemed to have negative content in accordance to Indonesia’s Information and Electronic Transaction Law (widely known as the ITE Law) such as: pornographic materials, betting, hate speech regarding race and religion, malicious software, and online theft. Quoted by Kompas.com, M. Yamin, CEO of Nawala Nusantara stated that up until now Nawala has blocked more than 800,000 websites with negative content. Yamin added,

It is indeed a small number, but what’s more important is the quality of our filtering method.

With this partnership, APJII will provide Nawala with five servers and operational costs. Nawala, in turn, will filter websites containing contents prohibited by Indonesia’s ITE Law. This partnership expects Nawala to continuously grow the number of blocked websites for the next three years.

Nawala’s filtering system will be placed in Indonesia Internet Exchange (IIX) servers owned by APJII. If a certain internet service provider is connected with Nawala’s DNS server in IIX, all of its customers won’t be able to access blocked sites. There are at least 250 ISPs registered as APJII member.

Source: Kompas.com

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NCR based TableGrabber launches real time online reservation system for restaurants

The eternal quest of a foodie to dine at his favorite restaurants goes on. But nothing ruins a perfect dining experience than having to wait outside to relish one’s favorite cuisine simply because the restaurant is full.
It is here that Delhi based startup TableGrabber comes to the rescue. Founded by Cornell educated Pawan Marwaha, TableGrabber aims to take restaurant reservation online by passing the hassles of calling and emailing the restaurants to find out about the booking availability and confirmation.

In simplest terms, TableGrabber is a real time, online restaurant reservation system.  Similar to what airline and theatres offer, TableGraber allows the user to streamline their search, in this case a restaurant by location or cuisine with further filters depending upon the time for eating out and the number of people. This is where it provides the choice of the available restaurants and the reservation can be made. For making the reservation, a simple one time sign-up is required and the booking is confirmed when the user makes a missed call to a 1800 number from his listed mobile number.

TableGrabber is currently operating only in Delhi and the NCR, with some 50 restaurants including brands like the Oberoi Group, Leela Hotel and The Park on board. But as the market awareness for TableGrabber and the concept of online restaurant reservation increases, they will expand to other cities and move from fine-dining to casual dining in the coming months.

The bookings on TableGrabber are recorded on the ERD ( Electronic Reservation Diary) which syncs the booking availability between the TableGrabber and the restaurant’s own system. ERD can manage reservation for the restaurant from web, phone and walk-in so that the information is updated in real time. TableGrabber  provides an ad-free online presence along with value added services like Table Management and CRM tools for the restaurants.

The company has also built time-based yield management tool, which allows their partner restaurants to push discounts/deals in real-time based on demand and supply. For example, during the off-peak hours the restaurant can offer discounts and deals to attract more diners. These discounts/deals can be changed in real-time, giving the restaurants full control to manage their inventory effectively with best yield management practices.

An iOS app is being launched in the coming weeks, which would be followed by the launch of the apps for Android and the Blackberry users.  A Loyalty program where the user gathers points on each dining-out made via TableGrabber can later be redeemed for special deals and privileges.

Keeping in mind that the service is just a month into its beta phase, it is simple and easy to use and I could make all of my test bookings in minutes for the various restaurants. With no formidable competitor in market right now, they do have an early movers advantage. The biggest hurdle to TableGrabber’s success ironically might be the Indian mindset, where very rarely does a person make a reservation for a restaurant and TableGrabber wants to change that. But then five years ago we weren’t pre-booking movie tickets online either!

If you are in NCR area, do give TableGrabber a spin and share your feedback with the team.

[This startup coverage is part of Pluggd.in’s 65 startup special series, which is supported by Nexus Venture Partners. If you are a product startup, submit your details here.]

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Indonesia Celebrates 17th National Technology Awakening Day

Indonesia’s 17th National Technology Awakening Day (aka Hakteknas) will start today at 1:30pm and run until August 11 in Bandung city. The main events consist of an RITech Expo at Sabuga, a Triple Helix 10th International Conference at Grand Royal Panghegar Hotel, and a string of workshops and talk shows. There will also be a research and technology carnival held on the city’s main streets as well. You can see the event schedule below:

The theme for Hakteknas 2012 is “Innovation for Our Nation’s Independence.” The official celebration will take place on August 30 at Bandung’s Merdeka Building with Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and the former Indonesian president Prof. Dr. Ing. B. J. Habibie as the guests of honor.

Dr. Ir. Pariatmono, the chairman of Hakteknas, when speaking with Kompas, explained that the reason they chose Bandung as the host is because Bandung is deemed as Indonesia’s center of technology. The first Hakteknas was also held in Bandung in 1995.

We also like what we see so far from Bandung, which is one of the reasons why we chose to hold the next Startup Asia Hackathon there in October. You can check out more details of the Hackathon here.

[Source: AntaraNews]

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Jokes aside, 9GAG’s co-founder Ray Chan shares about the serious side of their latest US$2.8M round

9GAG takes on a serious funding round of US$2.8 million to continue to grow online humor with the talent they need.

Possibly the world’s largest crowd-sourced online humour site, 9GAG, recently secured an impressive US$2.8 million funding round from True Ventures and the likes of Chris Sacca, Kevin Rose and Naval Ravikant. According to co-founder Ray Chan, the funding will be used to grow the engineering team as the Hong Kong and US-based startup seeks to stamp its mark as a serious contender in the art of tickling online users’ funny bone.

9GAG started raising its round of funding at the beginning of 2012. Ray says, “We believe that if we want to build a great company, we need the experience and connections from the best people.” According to True Ventures’ welcome post, 9GAG currently sees over 70 million unique visitors monthly.

Ray mentioned that the best VCs are in Silicon Valley, unless you are a startup targeting local markets which requires strategic investments. In his opinion, it is always better to raise funding from US investors as they understand the “game” better. “Although more investors are willing to invest in non-US startups, geography is still a concern for them as they want to work with their portfolio companies more closely. However, working outside of Silicon Valley may reduce the noise. Overall, I think it’s still to be better if you are based in Silicon Valley,” commented Ray.

The team behind 9GAG are/were also involved in other projects such as StartupQuote and Singboard. But, according to Ray, these are just side projects and they have currently paused or stopped them to focus on improving 9GAG. When asked what is the secret sauce behind building a crowd-sourced website, Ray had this to share, “The trick is simple: always care about your users the most. Your customers are your users, not advertisers or investors.”

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Jokes aside, 9GAG’s co-founder Ray Chan shares about the serious side of their latest US$2.8M round

9GAG takes on a serious funding round of US$2.8 million to continue to grow online humor with the talent they need.

Possibly the world’s largest crowd-sourced online humour site, 9GAG, recently secured an impressive US$2.8 million funding round from True Ventures and the likes of Chris Sacca, Kevin Rose and Naval Ravikant. According to co-founder Ray Chan, the funding will be used to grow the engineering team as the Hong Kong and US-based startup seeks to stamp its mark as a serious contender in the art of tickling online users’ funny bone.

9GAG started raising its round of funding at the beginning of 2012. Ray says, “We believe that if we want to build a great company, we need the experience and connections from the best people.” According to True Ventures’ welcome post, 9GAG currently sees over 70 million unique visitors monthly.

Ray mentioned that the best VCs are in Silicon Valley, unless you are a startup targeting local markets which requires strategic investments. In his opinion, it is always better to raise funding from US investors as they understand the “game” better. “Although more investors are willing to invest in non-US startups, geography is still a concern for them as they want to work with their portfolio companies more closely. However, working outside of Silicon Valley may reduce the noise. Overall, I think it’s still to be better if you are based in Silicon Valley,” commented Ray.

The team behind 9GAG are/were also involved in other projects such as StartupQuote and Singboard. But, according to Ray, these are just side projects and they have currently paused or stopped them to focus on improving 9GAG. When asked what is the secret sauce behind building a crowd-sourced website, Ray had this to share, “The trick is simple: always care about your users the most. Your customers are your users, not advertisers or investors.”

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Xiaomi Makes an Acquisition, Points to Building an Apple Facetime Rival

The makers of China’s hottest homegrown smartphone, Xiaomi, has made a curious acquisition in the form of the team behind the third-party messaging app MSNLite. The financial details of the deal haven’t been revealed, but Xiaomi’s co-founder, Huang Jiangji has confirmed that it has occurred, and described the Microsoft MSN clone as the best MSN client software [1].

One possible motivation behind the acquisition is that Xiaomi, which also makes the mobile-oriented, Whatsapp-esque group messaging app Miliao, wants to give that app some desktop/PC support to make it more like Apple’s Facetime.

MSNLite is popular, reportedly having millions of users. It’s a desktop app that started development in September 2010. With such a generic and odd name (and copyright-infringing too?), it’s hard to search for, but I eventually tracked it down to Hada.me.

For now, says Xiaomi’s co-founder, the MSNLite team will come work in Xiaomi’s Beijing HQ, and adverts will be dropped from the MSNLite app. It’s likely that the MSNLite app will morph into the Miliao PC app – or the team of geeks it has acquired will make a separate app for that purpose. The Miliao.com homepage says that it has 17 million users for its mobile messaging app, putting it behind NHN Line’s 50 million and WeChat’s 100 million.

[Source: QQ Tech - article in Chinese]

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1. Isn’t that a bit like a Victorian freak show running a beauty contest?  ↩

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Squiryl partners with Sakae Sushi and Cafe Cartel, dishes 10k acorns in under a month

Singapore-based mobile loyalty app Squiryl has partnered with restaurant chains Sakae Sushi and Cafe Cartel to distribute ‘acorns’, their version of loyalty stamps, through POS systems.

The program began on the first week of July, and as of 25th the same month, about 10,359 acorns have been issued to 1,555 new and existing Squiryl users. Seven outlets from Cafe Cartel and 32 from Sakae Sushi were involved.

According to Squiryl co-founder Mulyadi Syariffudin, developing a POS solution was crucial for getting big restaurant chains on board since it reduces fraud and increases convenience.

A Squiryl-integrated POS system would be able to generate unique QR codes with the customer’s receipt. These codes can only be used once, preventing people from abusing the system. Printing QR codes on receipts also means that customers can handle the scanning themselves, saving staff the hassle of doing so.

Gregg Lewis, brand manager at Sakae Sushi, says that the company adopted the service due to the acorn trading feature, which allows a person to exchange for acorns from other merchants with fellow users. This creates a win-win situation for merchants where they can leverage on other brands that are on the platform. Squiryl is also free for both merchants and customers.

He has seen some measurable impact on the business since partnering with the startup. Every time a user gets acorns or trades them, the activities are reflected on their Facebook walls. Customers also tend to spend a little more just to get a reward stamp.

“I guess we have more reach and it’s generating a little more revenue,” he says.

Mobile loyalty apps are becoming mainstream in Singapore and parts of Asia, due to the efforts of apps like Squiryl and its main competitor, Perx. However, there remain issues to be ironed out when it comes to working with merchants.

Gregg thinks that the process of receiving stamps can be sped up further by “bumping” one phone with another. He also hopes that vendors will understand that merchants can only go so far in offering attractive redemptions, since they would not want to devalue their brand. Also, higher-value rewards would require better ROIs.

Merchants are also concerned about the mix of brands on a mobile loyalty platform. According to Gregg, they would be worried about having “too much demographic diversity” or being placed with too many merchants with similar products, which means “more competition in a smaller space.”

Overall, it’s about balancing the needs of the loyalty app, consumers, and brands, he added.

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Paypal Loses Biggest Asia Partner as China’s DHgate Pulls the Plug

Remember that massive deal between PayPal and the Chinese B2B e-commerce site DHgate? The huge one that was PayPal’s biggest partnership in Asia? Well, it’s all over.

Chinese media is reporting that DHgate removed PayPal as an e-payment option on August 6th, ending the tie-up that was announced in April of last year. As my colleague reported at the time, it centered around the m-commerce service at m.dhgate.com, which made use of PayPal’s Mobile Express Checkout. But eBay-owned (NASDAQ:EBAY) Paypal is clearly gone from that site, as well as from the main website, leaving behind payment options such as MasterCard, Maestro, and Western Union for its overseas businesses looking to buy bulk items from Chinese suppliers.

DHgate is the smaller rival to the Alibaba.com B2B site, which is also for international sourcing. DHgate wrapped up a huge series C funding round worth RMB 200 million (US$31.66 million, albeit at today’s rate) back in early 2010. But by September of last year we were hearing reports of huge staff cuts at the company, with some departments letting go of 50 percent of their personnel.

As for PayPal, it’s a blow to its shaky efforts in Asia – and leaves the online payment platform without any major partnership in mainland China. Chinese online shoppers mostly use a mix of Alibaba’s Alipay, Tencent’s Tenpay, and the Maestro-esque UnionPay.

[Source: QQ Tech - article in Chinese]

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