8 Startups in Asia That Caught Our Eye

This week we covered yet more startups, with all the glee and grinning satisfaction of Mitt Romney firing people. Entrepreneurs, remember that you can submit your startup pitch to us, while everyone can send us news/tips here.

1. Fusing Photos and Voice, PaPa is the Perfect Social App (or Just Nonsense) | China

Aside from PaPa’s terrible name, it’s a clever app that fuses the best social elements of Path, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter/Weibo all into one. If that’s not enough, it also supports sending voice messages of up to 60 seconds in length.

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2. This Reader App Thinks It Knows What You Want to Read | China

In contrast to many other apps that demand you add in lots of subscriptions or preferred sites – which can be quite laborious – Wumii Reader instead uses its own clever algorithm to offer up what it thinks you might want to read.

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3. Food Recommendation App Mines Weibo Data For Restaurant Tips | China

Unlike some traditional food recommendation/listings services that are already on the market, this one is making good use of China’s largest microblogging site, Sina Weibo, to deliver better food tips to users.

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4. TickTok: Save time, Queue Smart | Singapore

Launched in August this year, Ticktok contains real-time queue time information at more than 8,000 food and beverage establishments in Singapore.

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5. Beepmo Updates, Introduces Discovery Feature to Make Business Networking Easier | Singapore

Beepmo has introduced a new “Discovery” feature which allows you to do better business networking and socializing while on-the-go.

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6. Indonesian Lifestyle Portal Updaterus.com Talks About its Transformational Decision | Indonesia

Now the site has pivoted, ditching the news format and instead evolving into a mens’ lifestyle and self-improvement site. We interviewed Updaterus’ CEO (pictured) about this move – which he reckons is already paying off big-time.

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7. Startup ‘Japan Healthcare Info’ Helps Keep Expats and Travelers Healthy | Japan

The Japan Healthcare Info service aims to be a comprehensive English-language guide to healthcare in Japan – and from what we can tell, it really delivers.

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8. Clozette Partners With Female Daily Network, Launches Clozette Daily | Indonesia & Singapore

Clozette Daily is a fashion social network that’s a new joint venture between Indonesia’s Female Daily Network and Singapore’s Clozette.

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Lots more awesome startups in here too:

• Startup Asia Bandung Hackathon: The Winners – hopefully some of these teams will soon form into fully-fledged startups! And thanks to everyone who came to our Bandung event last weekend.
• Indonesia Game Show 2012: Here are the Winning Game Developers – lots of great games in here, including some we’ve reviewed before, like TouchTen’s Infinite Sky.
• 6 Great Ideas from Open Network Lab’s Demo Day in Tokyo – Startups presented their apps and services at this demo day, and they’ll all be going live pretty soon. Take a look inside at some of the ideas which have come out this innovation cradle in Tokyo.

That’s all the startup action for this week. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

The post 8 Startups in Asia That Caught Our Eye appeared first on Tech in Asia.

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TheSunnyMag: How the mobile revolution is tripping up tech giants; Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ Author Files for Bankruptcy

Inc.

Mobile revolution, economy trip up tech giants: Disappointing earnings from Intel Corp, Microsoft, Google and AMD underscore how Silicon Valley, both the old guard and the new, is struggling to profit from consumers’ waning love affair with the stalwart PC and infatuation with mobile– the most significant tectonic shift in the industry since the advent of the Interne, writes Poornima Gupta in Reuters. Read more of the story which takes a look of American tech giants and their tryst with destiny.

‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ Author Files for Bankruptcy for His Company: Not like Robert T Kiyosaki, the author of several best selling self help books is actually bankrupt. Kiyosaki’s Rich Global LLC has filed for bankruptcy, making it to the headlines all over the Internet. Though Rich Global LLC has filed for bankruptcy, he reportedly conducts business through a number of corporations, including Rich Dad Co. Read the full story here.

Google’s Printing Mishap: THE big story last week was Google’s earnings leak. Google got burned on Thursday by a very old-school mistake: Its printer messed up. Shares of Google (GOOG) plunged 9 percent in the afternoon after a lousy earnings report was mistakenly sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission before the company intended. The stock stopped trading on Nasdaq (NDAQ) after Google’s share price fell from $755 to $681 between 12:30 p.m. and 12:38 p.m. This, of course, is why firms tend to wait until the market has closed before releasing earnings reports. Read more.

New new world

European Regulators Come Down on Google’s Privacy Policy: When it comes to privacy, Google has never had it easy in Europe, a region home to some of the most survilled cities on earth. Just weeks after getting hit with a record $22.5 million U.S. fine for Internet privacy violations, Google (GOOG) is facing fresh criticism in Europe for its collection of users’ personal dat, reports Carol Matlack in Bloomberg Businessweek. Read the full story here.

This Tech Bubble Is Different: Bloomberg Businessweek’s Ashlee Vance takes you through the journey of Jeff Hammerbacher, a 23 yeard old math genius out of Harvard hired by Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. The bigger story, of the so called tech bubble, unfolds through the 4 page article. The question? How is this tech bubble different from the previous ones. Read on.

Gadgetvice

Knowing When It Pays to Upgrade Your Gadgets: If a gadget breaks, gets lost or is stolen, it makes sense to replace it. But deciding whether to abandon an older, still-working device for a newer, shinier one can be a soul-sucking dilemma. Read more from The New York Times.

Entrepreneuring

Vivek Wadhwa’s recent study on Immigrant entrepreneurs in the valley was a top headline since its release earlier this month. Based on the study, which found that while number of immigrant founded startups in silicon valley have dropped “shockingly,” the number of Indian’s who started up went up. Almost one third of startups in the Valley were founded by Indians. Tim Devaney and Tom Stien ask why are Indians so entrepreneurial in the US? Read more.

Jeff Bezos says smart people change their minds: Amazon.com’s Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos says that people who are right a lot often change their minds. Bezos said he doesn’t think consistency of thought as a particularly positive trait. It’s better, even healthier in fact, to have an idea that contradicts one you had before. Read more from the man who built the largest e-commerce company in the world from scratch.

Technicolor

Soon, pack 10 terabits on tiny device: Are we getting closer to singularity? It would seem so indeed. A new discovery may open the way for the development of next generation data storage devices with capacities of up to 10 terabits (10 trillion bits) per square inch – vastly enhancing storage on much smaller data devices, Tech2 reports. Read more here.

/roots

Ada Lovelane (Image: Wikipedia)

From Ada Lovelace to Marissa Mayer: The Rise of Women in Tech: Every once in a while, we hear of women breaking the glass cieling and making it big in the corporate world. Most of us rubbish those claims as corporate gimmick. But without women, tech would not have been what it is today. An interesting infographic in the Mashable takes you through the history, from Ada Lovelace in 1800s– often described as the first computer programmer, to Marissa Mayer at Yahoo! in the 21st century. Take a look.

The History of GIFs: Ever wondered how GIFs came about? Read on about those cool animated things that have flashed across many a webpage, flickered within millions of MySpace profiles and glittered among innumerable Tumblrs. Stephanie Buck writes for Mashable: You’ve spotted them in animated advertising, email signatures, web forums and social avatars. Indeed, if I had to repurpose the acronym for “GIF” it would be “Great Internet Fun.” Read here.

Lifehack

Three Keys to Beating Information Overload: This piece does not suggest that you stop reading right now. Paul A Laudicina, a managing partner and Chairman of the board of A T Kearney and the author of “Beating the Global Odds: Successful Decision-Making in a Confused and Troubled World.” blogs at the Wall Street Journal that information overload is more about over consumption of information of the wrong kind than about actually being bogged town by too much information being thrown at you. Read more to find out what are the three steps to beat Information overload.

Big picture

True Progressivism: A new form of radical centrist politics is needed to tackle inequality without hurting economic growth argues The Economist. Read more here.

States of Play: With a little more than two weeks to go until Election Day in the US, the polls show the race to be as tight as ever, with very fluid findings in some states. Read on and see how Mitt Romney’s offense stacks up against Barack Obama’s defense.

How Relevant Is Marissa Mayer’s Maternity Leave? Not Very.

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» TheSunnyMag: How the mobile revolution is tripping up tech giants; Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ Author Files for Bankruptcy @Pluggd.in.

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JFDI mulls ‘JFDI Score’, says it will accept second round of applicants to startup bootcamp soon

Singapore-based startup accelerator JFDI will be accepting applicants into the second iteration of its program soon, it said in a blog post today.

It concluded its inaugural 100-day JFDI-Innov8 Startup Bootcamp in May this year, the first of its kind in Southeast Asia.

For the upcoming round, the application process will be more transparent. Startups which apply for the upcoming bootcamp will get to understand how exactly they are evaluated. The applications will open “this coming year”.

The post also revealed that JFDI has been using its own model of evaluating startups. It’s one that it hopes to further develop into a “ third-party, objective assessment” of a startup and its team — dubbed the “JFDI Score”. It will be prototyping the process during the next round of applications.

JFDI is also thinking of eventually opening the method up to any startup — not just those who apply for the program.

“If this takes off, I could see a world where VCs ask startups: What’s your JFDI score? Don’t have one yet? Go get an assessment done, and come back when you do. Insert freemium model here,” wrote the author.

Of course, JFDI is not the first to attempt something like this. YouNoodle tried, and so did the Startup Compass. They’re all part of a movement to transform early stage investing into more of a science rather than an art.

The last time we wrote about JFDI was in May when it held a Demo Day to showcase its graduates (check out our interviews with the investors who were present).

Since then, incubatee FetchFans have gone on to raise further funding, while Flocations and ShopSpot have received investment offers. Some, like ShopSpot and Kark, have even received funding while the bootcamp was still ongoing.

Another alumnus, TradeGecko, has recently launched their product.

It’s not all good news however. At least one team, Remember, has decided to call it a day soon after the program.

The post JFDI mulls ‘JFDI Score’, says it will accept second round of applicants to startup bootcamp soon appeared first on SGE.

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Newsreel [Oct 20th]: British startup produces the first – “petrol from air”, PM launches Aadhar enabled delivery system

Here goes the Newsreel, our daily news roundup.

- A British startup has produced the first “petrol from air” using a revolutionary technology that promises to solve the energy crisis as well as helping to curb global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five litres of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapour, read complete post here.

- Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has launched the much awaited Aadhaar enabled system for direct cash transfer to beneficiaries under social schemes such as MNREGA and pension in Dudu, Rajasthan. The launch of the scheme by the Prime Minister coincides with the second anniversary of Aadhaar project, read complete speech of PM over the launch.

- After Vodafone, telecom major Airtel plans to use Aadhaar (UIDAI card) for issuing mobile phone connections. Vodafone is already accepting Aadhaar cards in Andhra Pradesh. It has deployed Aadhaar-enabled KYC (Know Your Customer) services at two stores, one each in Hyderabad and Vijaywada and accept it as proof of identity before issuing a new SIM card. Currently, there are more than 200 million people with Aadhaar numbers in the country, read complete post here.

- Earlier, we have reported about Starbucks coming to Mumbai, now it has launched its first flagship store through partnering Tata – Tata Starbucks in Mumbai at Elphinstone Building in Fort on Friday. Two smaller stores are slated to open next week at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Colaba and Oberoi mall in Goregaon in Mumbai. Starbucks has tried it to give an ‘affordable’ price to Indian consumers. Its coffee prices range from Rs 80 (for a 30 ml Expresso shot) to Rs 200 (for Caramel Coffee), while the Tata Tazo co-branded teas have been priced from Rs 90 to Rs 130. The regular cappuccino and café lattes range from Rs 95 to Rs 135, while brewed coffee would be a relatively cheaper option (ranging from Rs 85 to Rs 105), read complete post here.

-  A recent study exposed an alarming trend in the tech industry in US. Immigrant entrepreneurs, who in recent years have launched half the startups in Silicon Valley, are founding drastically fewer companies. Except for one group: Indians. The startup study was sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation and conducted by Vivek Wadhwa, who’s the director of research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. The study’s data showed that the number of immigrant-founded startups in Silicon Valley has fallen from 52.4% to 43.9% since 2005, however Indians are defying gravity and starting more companies, the number of Indian startups went up from 26% to 33% of all immigrant startups. Read complete post here.

- Even before President Obama’s debate performance this week rallied the left, it seems that liberal Democrats found more to “like” online than their conservative counterparts.
According to a new study on social media and civic engagement from the Pew Internet & American Life Project released Friday compares social media behavior between Democrats, Republicans and independents. Among its findings it said that while 52 percent of liberal Democrats who use social media have used the “like” button, 42 percent of conservative Republicans have done so. Overall, Pew said that 38 percent of people who use social media “like” content related to political or social issues.

- Six operators, including Airtel, Vodafone, Tata Teleservices and Idea Cellular, have filed applications to participate in the spectrum auction set for November.Among the new players only Videocon and Norway’s Telenor submitted applications. Russia’s Sistema and the other companies like Etisalat, STel and Loop, whose licences are set to be cancelled in December, have decided to stay away from bidding. Reliance Communications is the only major incumbent player that has not submitted its application. However, according to market sources RIL could gain entry later by acquiring a stake in Videocon, if Videocon succeeds in winning spectrum auction, read complete post here.

- Apple has finally started work on the first-phase of its new renewable data center in Prineville, Oregon, development which is expected to set the company back more than $68 million, read complete post here.

- Google Inc is mulling over settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over potential claims it broke antitrust law in its handling of patents for mobile devices. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which has been conducting an antitrust investigation of the Internet giant’s business for more than a year, in recent months began probing Google’s handling of patents that it acquired when it closed the $12.5 billion purchase of device-maker Motorola Mobility, read complete post here.

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» Newsreel [Oct 20th]: British startup produces the first – “petrol from air”, PM launches Aadhar enabled delivery system @Pluggd.in.

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TaxiMonger and Piktochart nab top prizes at MSC Malaysia APICTA Awards 2012

TaxiMonger, an Echelon 2012 alumnus, has just announced that they won the MSC Malaysia APICTA Awards 2012 for the Best of Tourism & Hospitality category. Malaysia based Piktochart also won the Best of Start-up Companies category. TaxiMonger wins Best of Tourism & Hospitality category TaxiMonger is a taxi booking and review application based in Malaysia. Shortly...

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TaxiMonger and Piktochart nab top prizes at MSC Malaysia APICTA Awards 2012

TaxiMonger, an Echelon 2012 alumnus, has just announced that they won the MSC Malaysia APICTA Awards 2012 for the Best of Tourism & Hospitality category. Malaysia based Piktochart also won the Best of Start-up Companies category. TaxiMonger wins Best of Tourism & Hospitality category TaxiMonger is a taxi booking and review application based in Malaysia. Shortly...

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4 social enterprises receive S$340K DBS grant in efforts to spur social entrepreneurship

Four social enterprises in Singapore received project grants from DBS amounting to S$340,000. DBS has recently announced that the bank is providing four social enterprises in Singapore with project grants to help with their business expansion plans, while pursing social causes. The project grant awarded to the four social enterprises amounts to S$340,000. In addition,...

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4 social enterprises receive S$340K DBS grant in efforts to spur social entrepreneurship

Four social enterprises in Singapore received project grants from DBS amounting to S$340,000. DBS has recently announced that the bank is providing four social enterprises in Singapore with project grants to help with their business expansion plans, while pursing social causes. The project grant awarded to the four social enterprises amounts to S$340,000. In addition,...

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Cloud inventory management SaaS TradeGecko enters public beta

TradeGecko, one of the startups that graduated from the first batch of the JFDI bootcamp in Singapore earlier this year, has just sprung out of its closed beta. You might recall that TradeGecko is a B2B web-based service providing supply chain management for independent brands and their retailers. With TradeGecko, users can do tasks such...

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Cloud inventory management SaaS TradeGecko enters public beta

TradeGecko, one of the startups that graduated from the first batch of the JFDI bootcamp in Singapore earlier this year, has just sprung out of its closed beta. You might recall that TradeGecko is a B2B web-based service providing supply chain management for independent brands and their retailers. With TradeGecko, users can do tasks such...

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CommonFloor secures Series B funding from Accel and Tiger Global

Commonfloor has raised Series B funding from Accel India and Tiger global partners. This is further to the first round, raised from Accel India in 2009. The new funds will be used for scaling presence across multiple cities, upgrading technology capabilities, hiring talent and expanding marketing initiatives.

CommonFloor started operations from Bangalore in 2007 and is currently used by customers in over 120 cities across India. The company has close to 50,000 communities listed with it, constituting more than 25 lakh homes and recently opened offices in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune.

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» CommonFloor secures Series B funding from Accel and Tiger Global @Pluggd.in.

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