Social games analytics and pesonalization engine Sogamo raises funds from IncuVest

Sogamo, a Singapore-based real-time analytics and personalization engine for social games, has recently closed USD 500K in seed funding from Incuvest and NRF under the Technology Incubation Scheme (TIS). The funds will help ZelRealm, the company behind Sogamo, scale and market their product.

Unlike conventional application data analysis systems, Sogamo doesn’t just focus on generating data. Instead, it interprets data and turns it into actionable recommendations. ZelRealm, founded in 2007 by a group of game enthusiasts and engineers, claims it is one of the first companies in the industry to make use of gamers’ profiles to automate personalization in-game events.

The platform, which works on Flash games, also offers real-time market dynamics visualization metrics and cohort testing. Game publishers can use Sogamo to improve game stickiness, lower churn rate and increase monetization by personalizing in-game events in accordance to individual user personalities and preferences.

According to a BI Intelligence report, the US social gaming market will exceed USD5.5 billion in 2015. In addition, the social games market, including smartphones, is expected to more than double from last year. Given the expansive proliferation of social games in the industry, game developers and publishers now face more competition in retaining their players.

Social gaming is also lucrative in Asia. In South Korea, the online games market is worth some USD3B, and the industry has been pioneers of concepts like virtual goods, which are now ubiquitous in social games. Japan is another key player with mobile social networking services generating a revenue of USD2B, with social games featuring heavily on platforms like mixi, GREE, and DeNA.

Incuvest is one of several of the new TIS incubators that have finalized seed investments lately. Golden Gate Ventures recently confirmed that it has invested in TradeGecko, RedMart, and Coda Payments, while TNF Ventures announced that it is funding TradeHero and Flocations.

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GREE Messenger is Developed with GREE-Invested Company eBuddy

GREE’s investment in eBuddy hasn’t gotten much press attention compared to its other acquisitions. But within our newsroom we suspected GREE’s long-term strategy has got something to do with messaging, which could possibly be aligned with its future strategy in mobile game distribution.

We were right. As my colleague Rick wrote about GREE Messenger’s secret/test launch earlier today, I wondered if this involves eBuddy. And the answer turns out to be a yes. A GREE representative told us:

Yes, we have released a chat app in India, Australia, and New Zealand, but it’s only a test version. And we have been developing it with eBuddy.

It is not clear if GREE Messenger will ride on eBuddy’s 250 million worldwide users. But I would speculate that it’s likely. eBuddy’s messaging platform works like Apple’s iMessage or NHN’s Line, allowing users to text on mobile and desktop interchangeably. In other words, the social graph extends to both mobile and desktop which might just bring in the possibility for GREE to launch desktop games in the future. I’m not suggesting that it will, but there’s a possibility for this too.

And given that eBuddy is working so closely with GREE on launching a customized messaging platform for its investor, it seems like the relationship isn’t just that of a mere minority investor. It is perhaps very likely that GREE could acquire the entire eBuddy team to focus on mobile chat if GREE Messenger works out well.

So social gaming rival DeNA, with its new Comm app, isn’t the only one working on mobile messaging in 2013. We’re in for another mobile chat app war between these two Japanese gaming companies.

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Malaysian Business Angel Network launches, accredits angel investors for tax breaks

The early stage funding gap is a common problem across Southeast Asia and various methods have been applied by the stewards of the local economies and public monies in an attempt to plug this gap. In Singapore and Malaysia, we’ve had both governments dish out generous grants to startups, sometimes on its own, sometimes in partnership with private investors who are given a lot of leverage.

(Read this overview of angel investing in Singapore by the Chairman of the Business Angel Network Southeast Asia (BANSEA) and this map of startup money in the country.)

We’ve also seen tax breaks given to angel investors in Singapore and to come in Malaysia.

Another way to shore up early stage investment is to facilitate the flow of information: dealflow, on-the-ground market information and due diligence-level of information. How this has been done is to create formal and semi-formal networks of angel investors just like the Business Angel Network Southeast Asia (BANSEA) – which was formed 11 years ago and has informal ties with many other angel groups around the region and globally.

This time, Malaysia will see its own angel network as Cradle, an agency under the Ministry of Finance that manages the RM 100 million (USD 32.7 million) Cradle Investment Programme officially launches the Malaysian Business Angel Network (MBAN).

According to DigitalNewsAsia,

“MBAN is an umbrella body that would function like a trade organization, driving regional and international linkages between angel investors. It would formalize and coalesce angel investment in Malaysia – currently informal and somewhat unstandardized.”

The report continues with a quote from Nazrin Hassan, CEO of Cradle,

“MBAN would lead the voice of private sector angels for Malaysia and become their platform for engagement and action, both for the domestic and international community and to help develop the angel capital market within the country.”

MBAN, is however, not the first angel-focused group in Malaysia. Cradle has previously also helped in the creation of the Virtuous Investment Circle (ViC). (Find out how ViC sees itself as fitting into the Malaysian scene amidst government funding bodies like Cradle and MDeC.)

What is different is that MBAN will offer formal accreditation of angel investors which will then allow them to make use of the aforementioned upcoming tax break scheme. Unsurprisingly, to attain accreditation as an angel investor, the individual has to have a certain lower limit of net worth but also with relevant experience so that investees can look to them not just for funding but for strategic advice and help too.

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Got no loose cash change? Try mobilegullak

Retailers in India often struggle for loose cash (often called ‘change‘) and many a times retailer insist you to buy something else worth of Rs 3 which ideally is chocolates or mints. Both customer and retailers are in loss because of these change issues. Many times retailers have to pay commission to agents for buying and stocking change in their cashbox.

To solve this issue, mobilegullak has taken a SMS and web based approach targeted towards these retailers.

1. SMS :- A sms gateway to receive and parse long code and send recharge instructions to telecom API integrator with 13 operators. Hence , retailer can just send SMS with below syntax and mention the amount he wants to return to customer :-

MG <operator code> <customer mobile number> <amount >

Once, this SMS is sent, customer receives the amount in his mobile. This amount then can be used to recharge his phone, DTH bills, Loyalty points or pay other utility bills.

2. mGLite is a desktop application which integrates with POS and allows retailer to save change in customers mobile phone. It is written in python and uses wxPython for UI. It gives multiple features to retailer and supports both online as well as offline mode.

mGLite is currently deployed at 26 stores in Delhi and Gurgaon and plans to start operations in Bangalore from 2nd Jan 2013.

As far as monetization model is concerned, mobilegullak charges 35 paisa for each transaction irrespective of the change amount getting saved and of course, they get recharge commission from telephone operators.

As interesting play, mobilgullak is trying to create a two-sided market and given the unorganized nature of this industry, it will be interesting to see how they crack the offline retail market.

What are your thoughts on this model?

Related posts:

1. Payin2 – Cash Collection Network For SMEs
2. Review of Online Prepaid Mobile Recharge Services in India
3. Aryty Lets you send prepaid recharge credits to India, Partnership with Indian Telcos

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[Breaking] 2-channel Founder Hiroyuki Nishimura’s Drug-deal Aid Case Sent To Prosecutor

Asahi briefly reports that Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has sent today a case to the public prosecutor’s office for possible violation (inciting, instigation) of the Anti-drug Law.

2-channel has been accused by leaving some posts around illegal drug deals. Hiroyuki, who influenced US 4-chan, indirect homage of 2-channel, told his ownership of the site was handed over to a Singaporean company Packet Monster in January 2009, and has been guiding Niconico group.

[Breaking] 2-channel Founder Hiroyuki Nishimura’s Drug-deal Aid Case Sent To Prosecutor

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Nokia No Longer King of Mobile as Samsung Set to Ship More in 2012

Samsung Galaxy S3, Docomo’s Tokyo launch

According to forecasted numbers from analysts at iSuppli, 2012 will see Korean manufacturer Samsung (005930:KS) took the lead in the mobile manufacturing race. Preliminary figures for 2012 global shipments put Samsung as the top OEM, displacing Nokia which previously held that position for 14 years.

Samsung is expected to account for 29 percent of the mobile market in 2012, which is up from 24 percent in the previous year (see chart below). Nokia, on the other hand, drops to an expected 24 percent from 30 percent last year. Wayne Lam, senior analyst at iSuppli, elaborated on this changing of the guard in the mobile space:

Samsung’s successes and Nokia’s struggles in the cellphone market this year were determined entirely by the two companies’ divergent fortunes in the smartphone sector.

According to preliminary figures from iSuppli

How will Apple fare? The Cupertino company is forecasted to be a distant third, accounting for 10 percent of all global shipments. ZTE and LG round out the top five with six percent and four percent respectively.

If we drill down to the smartphone space, which iSuppli says has grown by 35.5 percent this year, you’ll see exactly where Nokia has failed. Where the company accounted for 16 percent of all smartphones in 2011, it will only account for five percent this year. Samsung, in contrast, will jump from 20 percent market share of smartphones to 28 percent in 2012. Its success this year has been largely due to its flagship Galaxy S3, which Samsung announced in November had surpassed 30 million units sold.

As for Apple’s smartphone shipments, those will stay about the same, up one percent in 2012 to 20 percent.

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Tamil Nadu to include Cyber Crime in Goonda act. It means preventive detention for up to 1 year

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Wednesday said that cyber crime will be included under the Goonda Act.The nature of cyber crime which warrants detention under the act has not yet been defined, The Hindu reported citing a senior police official.

J Jayalalithaa, CM, Tamil Nadu

However, any offence targeting a larger segment of innocent people with the intent to commit fraud or endanger their safety would be considered serious enough for detention under the Goondas Act, the report said.

Detention under the Goonda Act is for one year.

As of now, the 1982 act allows preventive detention of Bootleggers, Drug Offenders, Forest Offenders, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders, Sand Offenders, Slum Grabbers and Video Pirates.

This move by the Tamil Nadu government is likely to trigger more outrage among Internet users in India, who are currently battling to protect Internet freedom, threatened by new amendments to the Information Technology act.

Under sections of the amended IT act, the police made multiple arrests for comments on social networking sites and on the Internet. Recent arrest of girls from Mumbai and two Air India employees led to widespread protests amidst fears that the act gives excessive powers to the police and can curb freedom of expression on the Internet.

So far, Cyber Crime in India has been covered under the Information Technology Act 2000 which was amended in 2008. The section 66 (A) of the act introduced during the 2008 amendment which was used to make arrests in many instances, is being hotly debated.

Related posts:

1. Cyber crime in India : 42 million Indians hit by cyber attack, $8Bn loss [Report]
2. Dear Google, Bangalore Airport is in Bangalore (Not Tamil Nadu)
3. Government to set up Cyber Coordination Centre to prevent cyber attacks

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Why Foxconn is Delaying its Indonesian Investment

Foxconn’s (LSE:HHPD; HKEX:2038; TPE:2354) plan for building a massive manufacturing plant in Indonesia is being delayed for around three to six months according to Indonesia’s industry minister, M.S. Hidayat, cited by the Jakarta Post this week. There were two main reasons given by both the minister and a Foxconn spokesperson regarding this postponement: the ongoing discussion on tax regulations, and the task of finding suitable local partners.

Regarding the tax situation, WSJ reports that Foxconn demanded that the Indonesian government draft a regulation that would effectively block super-cheap mobile phones from entering the country. The Indonesian minister mentioned that Foxconn also requested several tax incentives such as a special treatment for import tax.

Another reason for this delay is the challenge in finding suitable local partners to help with distribution and marketing. Foxconn’s possible local partners include the major manufacturer of consumer electronic goods, Hartono Istana Teknologi; state-owned cellular network firm, Industri Telekomunikasi Indonesia; or Indonesia’s largest telecommunication provider, Telekomunikasi Indonesia. But the government minister said on Monday that they might look for new candidates for Foxconn’s local partners to help solve the issue.

There was also a third reason stated by the ministry, which is the issue of the land for the factory. But so far no further details are available about that. A report from the Taiwan News Agency, (cited by the AFP), said that Foxconn also has concerns regarding insufficient measures against counterfeit gadgets in the country.

The Foxconn spokesperson reassured the public that they are committed to building a plant in Indonesia, and that this is just a postponement. The Foxconn representative added that there is no time-frame or spending target set for the project just yet. The Indonesian ministry stated that the initial investment made for this project may be as high as US$3 billion.

[Sources: Jakarta Post, WSJ, Republika, AFP, and Reuters, via e27]

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Now open your online store and start selling in 10 minutes sans any hassle with Zepo

Going online for small businesses including manufacturers is a cumbersome affair and requires descent capital for the same. Forget about capital, the whole process for setting up an online store involves choosing designs, IT integration, server/bandwidth hosting, payment gateway integration, logistics sourcing including several others.

However, if you are a small business (looking to offer upto 5,000 SKUs) and need a readymade out-of-the-box solution, do give Zepo a dekho.

The Mumbai based startup helps small businesses/sellers to set-up their online stores in 5 minutes. And it doesn’t end at just creating online stores, users  can easily customize the design of their website to match their brand image and importantly Zepo extends PayTM – payment gateway for free, so that store owners can accept credit / debit card and Internet banking based payments. In addition, users can also choose any other payment gateways, which can start functioning within 10-15 minutes.

Zepo

For store owners, the platform boasts off feature such as email notifications (automated email notifications sent upon confirmation and dispatch of orders), PayPal and social media integration, third party widgets like Facebook Social Plug-in, Twitter stream /YouTube videos, advanced sort and search, detailed images multi scale zoom-in product images (to view in high resolution, and custom details about product) etc.

On pricing front, Zepo offers three plans – basic (Rs. 675), starter (Rs. 1350) and pro (Rs. 2,700). With basic plan, the company offers product display upto 100 SKUs and email notification with every placed order, Cash on Delivery offer. However, through its starter and pro plan, Zepo provides payment gateway integration for plastic card (net banking, credit and debit card) based transaction, GharPay, Cash on Delivery (COD) and PayPal integration.

Under starter and pro plan, store owners can have email and SMS notification, free tieup with logistic company – BlueDart and payment gateway partner PayTM (optional). With starter and pro plan, merchants can upload upto 1,000 and 5,000 SKUs.

The Morpheus and One97 Mobility fund backed company has powered more than 200 stores and 70% of its users are manufacturers, and the rest are retailers and ebay sellers. To know more about Zepo, NextBigWhat spoke to Nitin Purswani (NP), Founder, Zepo. Edited excerpts:

NBW: Tell us something about technology stack used at Zepo.

NP: On the back-end, Zepo primarily stands on the Java stack in conjunction with classic frameworks like Struts , Spring, Hibernate

Zepo runs upon a high end Server(multi core , high speed) catering multiple sites at a time. To take advantage of Cloud technology, we are making preparations to move on to Amazon Cloud Servers (AWS EC2 & S3).

NBW: How has been the traction so far?

NP: Its been a fun filled journey since the launch in Jan, 2012, and we’ve received amazing response. Currently we power 200 live stores. We have another 800 trial users onboard who have signed up for free trial & are in the process of setting up their stores.

NBW: How Zepo is different from Infibeam’s buildabazaar  platform? 

A true comparison wouldn’t be on the basis of features alone. The main difference lies with regard to the usability of our product & the friendliness of our customer service.

We proud ourselves on having 24×7 customer support. Someone is always available on live chat, even if you have a question at 4 am in the night! As far as the usability of platform is concerned, unlike the competition, our users don’t have to pull out their hair trying to set-up & manage their shops using Zepo :)

NBW: What’s your primary targeted audience/market and their split (live stores) across segments like offline retailers, pure-play etailers, neighbourhood retailers (grocery & provisional stores etc)?

NP: 70% of our users are manufacturers, and the rest are retailers & ebay sellers. Most of the people who love Zepo are small businesses, new-gen entrepreneurs, designers, independent artists – the creative lot. That’s why it is a lot of fun working closely with these kind of users and building a product they love.

NBW: What are Zepo’s future plan? Are you also going to extend services for travel category (targeting small agents, operators) and retailers having more than 5000 SKUs?

NP: No, we are not going to extend services to the travel category. We choose to focus on a particular problem at the moment and solve it better than anyone else has ever done.

We do have a couple of users which have more than 5k SKUs, and we customize the plan for them. But our focus would remain on serving small businesses in India and help them use e-commerce to their benefit.

NBW: What’s your team size? What has been the marketing strategy so far?.

NP: We are now a 13 member team, spread across 2 offices (in Delhi & Mumbai). And we are backed by The Morpheus and One97 Mobility fund.

With regards to marketing, one of the greatest source of customer acquisition for us has been word-of-mouth & referrals. And that is the hallmark of a good product. We have also recently launched our Partner Program, where we share upto 30% of revenue with our Partners

NBW: Are you funded or looking to raise money?

NP: Currently, we aren’t looking to raise any funds.

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Do give Zepo a spin and share your comments/feedback.

Related posts:

1. Now You Can Also Have An Ecommerce Store – Infibeam Launches BuildaBazaar [DIY ECommerce Store]
2. MyGrahak.com – Online Grocery Store With A Backing of 350 Offline Store Network
3. Retail Chain GKB Opticals Goes Online, Integrates With Offline Store for Delivery

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“Startup, Indonesia!” shares success and failure stories to inspire aspiring technopreneurs

Two Indonesian authors have compiled success (and failure) stories in a book aimed at a general audience. “Startup, Indonesia!” aims to inspire and reach out to potential technopreneurs.

Ajeng Restituta Arjanti and Reney Lendy Mosal have decided to write a book about both success and failure stories from tech startup founders in the country, in the “latest wave of dot-com era,” from around 2006 and beyond. Written in Bahasa, the book was published by local company KOMPAS, which is fond of publishing content with social, cultural and political themes. As far as we can recall, this is the first tech-oriented book they have published.

Entitled Startup, Indonesia! Inspirasi dan Pelajaran dari Para Pendiri Bisnis Digital (Startup, Indonesia! Inspiration and lesson learned from Digital Business Founders), the 305 page book has been made available in major bookstores starting this September, after nine months of writing, a couple months of editing, laying out, printing, and getting the publisher’s approval. The 1st edition has been printed in 4,200 copies.

Ajeng Restituta Arjanti and Reney Lendy Mosal

The first few chapters discussed the digital industry in Indonesia and outside the country, with a focus on the history, mileetones and trends in the technology space, and then the era during which global giants such as Google and Apple started thriving.

In the book, we will find both writers’ portrait of this decade’s web industry in the country. Besides being packed with interesting stories of many sites were founded, it also tells the stories of digital industries in Indonesia, including digital business initiatives. The book also highlights various local startup communities across the country.

The book offers some valuable insights and motivation from a number of today’s young technopreneurs, but also rouses readers’ interests because it reads like a novel.

The choice of companies and personalities to highlight seemed a bit capricious, though. The writers have chosen to include Arief Widhiyasa, co-founder of rapidly-growing game studio Agate Studio; Willy Ekasalim, co-founder of Bistip; On-demand publisher NulisBuku’s co-counder and CTO Aulia Halimatussadiah; Shinta Dhanuwardoyo of Bubu; Main Studio’s Marlin Sugama and Sanny Gaddafi; and local social networks/communities FUPEI and SixReps’ co-founder, among others.

It seems that the companies profiled in this book were randomly selected — probably based on who the authors were able to gain access to. We can perhaps debate whether the startup details discussed in the book about the entrepreneurs are really new or enlightening.

Regardless of the choice of companies, though, what we can say is that the entrepreneurs learned valuable lessons from the 2000s’ Internet bubble bursting, and have — quite unsurprisingly — been trying to set-up groundbreaking web companies over the past few years.

Reney unveils the plan for their next book that comes down the pike next year. ”In our second book, we position ourselves as story teller like what we did earlier, turning the spotlight into the expert. Value creation in digital businesses — what, why and how — is the main topic we like to share about,” he continues.

Indeed, the writing is, at best, not too formal.  It is great as a quick and informative read for anyone interested in Indonesia’s new tech boom. The authors’ target readers are the so-called “outer circle,” in particular, as the book is clearly written for a general readership.

The post “Startup, Indonesia!” shares success and failure stories to inspire aspiring technopreneurs appeared first on e27.

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DailyDose: Apple’s pinch-to-zoom patent invalidated by USPTO

Now, invest on startups online with AngelList

Startups can now receive investments online. Individuals can invest as little as $1K and the funds are released once the company reaches $150K in commitments. This feature is currently in limited release, said the folks at AngelList on Thursday. They have partnered with SecondMarket, a registered broker-dealer, to offer these transactions in compliance with securities laws. [Source]

Apple’s pinch-to-zoom patent invalidated by USPTO

USPTO has issued a first “Office action” stating that patents claims were unpatentable. Here are the details:
Pinch to Zoom Patent Invalidated

Over 1,000 seed funded US startups to be orphaned

According to a new study in the US, more than 1,000 Seed-Funded Startups Are Destined To Be ‘Orphaned’ At The Series A Stage. venture capital analysis firm CB Insights released a new seed financing report and it says that between 1,000 to 4,000 recently-funded companies that have raised in excess of $1 billion in total at the seed stage will be “orphaned,” as in unable to raise follow-on financing, at the next level.  Looking back, CB found that around 40 percent of seed-funded startups fail to attract Series A money.[Source]

Kodak to Sell Digital Imaging Patents for $525 Million

Eastman Kodak once described the sale of 1,100 digital imaging patents as a windfall that could prop up and even save the beleaguered company. On Wednesday, the sale was finally announced, but instead of bringing as much as $2.6 billion as Kodak once predicted, the selling price was far short of that amount, at about $525 million. The buyer was a consortium that includes many of the world’s biggest technology firms, among them Apple, Google, Facebook and Samsung Electronics. [Source]
An Inquiry Into Data Brokers

It’s getting tougher to be a data broker. Companies that collect, analyze and sell billions of details about the activities of consumers for marketing purposes have increasingly found themselves under government scrutiny this year. The latest salvo comes from the Federal Trade Commission, which said on Tuesday that it had opened an inquiry into the practices of nine companies that collect and resell or analyze consumer data. [Source]

Why Keep Venture Funding Secret

Announcing how much money you’ve raised is typically considered good startup hygiene. Chest-beating about big numbers brings attention, especially from prospective hires looking for a cash-rich company to work for. Not so, said Matthew Prince, the chief executive officer of CloudFlare, which sells Internet security and infrastructure services. Providing a view into his company’s bank account could lead to threats of litigation and takeovers, he said in an interview at Bloomberg’s San Francisco office last week. And raising venture capital is not something to be proud of, he added. [Source]

Accenture’s second-quarter forecast disappoints investors

Accenture Plc’s second-quarter forecast disappointed investors as the outsourcing and consulting company’s clients deferred discretionary spending in Europe, sending its shares down 5 percent in after-market trade. Accenture forecast second-quarter revenue of between $6.9 billion and $7.15 billion. Analysts on average had estimated $7.14 billion. During the just-concluded first quarter, revenue from Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) fell 6 percent to $2.82 billion, the company said. EMEA accounted for nearly 41 percent of Accenture’s revenue last fiscal. [Source]

Related posts:

1. DailyDose: Facebook Changes Privacy Settings, Andreessen denies Internet bubble
2. India Inc. : Patent vs. Investment in Research and Development
3. DailyDose: Russia- China alliance wants more government voice in Internet oversight

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Sina Weibo’s Hottest Topics and Most Popular Users of 2012

Oh yes, it’s the most wonderful time of the year: the time when everyone starts releasing end of year lists. And while most of them are about as compelling as lukewarm microwaved pizza, it’s always interesting to see what’s going on on Sina Weibo, arguably China’s hottest and craziest social network. Sina has released the full lists and you can read all about them here, but here are some of the highlights:

The year’s hottest topic? The London Olympics, which was mentioned nearly 400 million times on the service. Other hot topics include popular memes from the year like a slang term for “loser” and the “aircraft carrier style” meme, the Diaoyu/Senkaku island dispute (mentioned 42 million times), the 18th Party Congress (17.8 million times), Beijing’s deadly summer rainstorm (which your humble correspondent very nearly ventured out into, because he is an idiot), and more.

Sina also released a list of the hottest weibo accounts, but there’s not much interesting there in my opinion — as you might expect, many of the accounts listed are joke/novelty accounts. But it also released a list of the most-discussed celebrities on Weibo, which is more interesting. Topping the list is — who else — Korean pop star PSY, but tech star Kaifu Lee also made the list at number six, with more than 37 million mentions. Blogger Han Han also made the list, with 46 million mentions. And what list of popular people on the Chinese internet would be complete without Japanese porn star Sola Aoi, with 19.2 million mentions?

Anyway, the full lists are here, and I expect we’ll hear more from Sina over the next few weeks about how the year went for Weibo. Incidentally, if you’re interested in what people were talking about on Sina Weibo in China this year, this is a great alternative list with some things on it that Sina probably wouldn’t want to advertise people were talking about.

[via Sina Tech]

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GREE Releases Mobile Chat Application in Selected Regions

The folks over on Techwave are pointing out this morning that Japanese mobile social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has now joined the mobile chat application frenzy that has been so popular in Asia this year. It’s new GREE Messenger application now joins the likes of domestic rivals Comm (from DeNA) and Line from NHN Japan, not to mention Korea’s KakaoTalk and China’s WeChat.

All of these apps have aspirations for the global market, and and GREE Messenger looks to be no exception, as the company has quietly released it in just a few regional app stores as far as I can see. Currently the iOS app is available in the Australia, New Zealand, and India app stores, so if you’re in one of those locations, you can take it for a spin. It’s available for Android, but with some apparent geographical restrictions as well [1].

While I haven’t tested it out yet due to geographical restrictions, the chat app looks very much like others in the category, with the same sort of cute cartoon stickers that we have seen from Line and Comm. It can import contacts from your phone book or from Facebook, and it also has group chats as well. The app is free if you’d like to check it out, but you will need a phone number to register.

Given the success that Line and KakaoTalk have seen with distributing their games via their chat messengers, both GREE Messenger and Comm are efforts from Japan’s gaming giants to not get left behind. Although neither company has said so yet, I think we can look forward to seeing both GREE and DeNA bring games into their messengers in 2013.

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1. I couldn’t install it from Japan, but I see that it’s a featured app on Google Play for India.  ↩

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Airbnb Focuses on Southeast Asia, Expands into Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia

While you were sitting in your room doing nothing the past couple of months, Airbnb was busy renting your room to other people, because that’s what they do. And although the company has been a bit slow in coming to Southeast Asia and is running behind some competitors, over the past couple months, the company has made serious moves to expand into the region, expanding operations into Thailand, Indonesia, and most recently Malaysia. As a reflection of this new focus on Southeast Asia, the company has even established a new Asia Pacific division that will be managing these regional operations.

Along with the launches, Airbnb shared some statistics about its progress in each country thus far, and frankly, it’s all pretty impressive. In Thailand as of November there were over 1,300 listings, and hosts were making around $2,000 annually, which is pretty great for supplementary income. The service has also become more popular for Thai people looking to travel abroad; Airbnb says its Thai travelers increased by 270% in 2012.

Indonesia has more than 1,800 listings, with most of them (unsurprisingly) centered around the tourist haven that is Bali. If you’ve got a full apartment to rent out, you can make some real money renting with Airbnb in Indonesia; the company says people who rent full apartments or houses make an average of $5,000 per year. Not too shabby!

Malaysia is Airbnb’s newest addition, and unsurprisingly it has fewer listings (around 800 at the moment) than Indonesia or Thailand. But the company says that travelers from Malaysia using the services are up 350% this year.

At present, there is one big downside to anyone considering listing their property in Southeast Asia: Airbnb’s $1 million host guarantee (which protects hosts in the event that guests cause damage to their space) doesn’t yet cover any Southeast Asian country. But with the company’s increased focus on Southeast Asia, we’re certain that’s something that it will be looking to rectify in the coming months. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how Airbnb’s competitors, especially local competitors, respond to the company’s increased focus on Southeast Asian markets.

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Gobi Ken Xu: Mobile Internet is Far from Clear Yet

Ken Xu, partner of Gobi Partners, a Chinese early stage venture capital, recently shared his thoughts on Chinese startup and investment fields with local media PEDaily, we did an excerpt of the interview here to give you more sense about the Chinese startup and VC world from an investor’s perspective.

 

On Investments in this year

When speaking of the inactivity in investment market this year, Ken noted that dollar funds this year wasn’t as active as RMB funds for several reasons. Firstly, in China dollar-investments still involve very complex administrative procedures and require approval from the authorities. Sometimes it takes a whole year to get one investment case approved. Secondly, small projects are far enough from attracting dollar funds. For example, you probably won’t see too many US$ 2-4M investment out there in the market. Thirdly, since last year, investors have been swarmed into too limited fields, e-commerce for last year and mobile for this year, for instance. “But in the short term, we are still unsure about their business model except for some game companies. ”

He also mentioned that for tool apps, if they made it to the Top three within its territory, normally they’ll be valued at between US$20 and 30 million, or even up to between US$50 and 100 million.

In Gobi Partner’s case, the capital invested into 13 portfolios this year which is more than last year’s while the total amount actually is lower than that of last year.

 

On Incubators

Innovation Works, the once aspirational Chinese YCombinator wannabe has transformed itself from incubator to actually an early-stage VC firm. In addition to this, there aren’t many successful incubators in China, what is the wrong with Chinese incubator?

Ken’s thought on this is that, incubator is anything but no-brainer; incubator with industry expertise would be the next step forward for the remaining ones. For now, many incubators are sponsored by local governments.

Drawing on his own investing experience, the advantage of incubator is that it provides added value to startups. “Gobi aims at projects valued at US$2m to 5m, while most incubators put in RMB“, said him.

 

Gobi’s Early-Stage Only Strategy

Gobi has an investment philosophy of only looking at early-stage projects and investing in Series A round. The firm invested more than 50 startups, all in Series A round. “Based on our own situation, like team strength, experience and fund size, we think early-stage is the right thing for us”, Ken said. He also acknowledged that this strategy also have its disadvantages for it teases investors patience.

GobiVC website homepage

 

On Going Social

“Right now in China everyone wants to step into the social area, the red sea. ” Even some tool apps are trying to add a social layer into themselves. Ken wasn’t quite optimistic about it. In his opinion, a social community cannot be built by simply copying mobile users’ contact list, and it’s not always necessary for tool apps to build their own community. If need be, they can always leverage on existing offerings like Renren and Sina Weibo.

 

On VC Industry

To many now is the worst time for VC industry. Ken, on the other hand, thought it was still OK. He actually pointed out that investors should stop rushing into the same territory just because they saw similar deals and were worried about losing cases to their peers. That’s what leads to the turmoil in the trade.

To wrap up the interview, he made some comments on various industries. Bubbles in TMT industry still concern a lot, mobile industry is hard to tell yet while deeds like app-ranking manipulation is a big problem. The only spotlight in this year, fell under consumer space.

 

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[LeWeb] Will the third wave of the web come from The Internet of Things?

The theme of LeWeb conference, that just ended and whose acquisition by Reed Midem has just been announced, was “the Internet of Things”.
It’s not a huge surprise that Loïc and Géraldine Le Meur chose this theme. With the development of collaborative funding platforms such as Kickstarter, we have seen the appearance of some fantastic projects in this sector.

What we don’t perhaps appreciate from the start is that this theme encompasses a wide range of concepts!  For instance, in The Internet of Things, you will find platforms (Sen.se, SmartThings, Ninja Blocks), gaming and leisure (Sphero, Ubooly and Team Blacksheep), Quantified Self (Withings, Fitbit and Inside Tracker) and home improvement as well (Nest, Lifx, Lockitron, Koubachi and Natatmo).

Through the presentations made by speakers such as Brian Solis of Altimeter Group and Dalton Caldwell of App.net plus the fifteen demonstrations that took place during the conference, it became obvious that all these technologies have two major things in common:

Things create data
According to a study carried out by Cisco, in 2008 the number of things connected to the internet exceeded the number of human beings on Earth and they predict that 50 billion things will be connected between now and 2020!
Every day these connected things (computers, Smartphones, sensors, televisions, etc) generate 2.5 quintillion bytes!  Imagine how much this generate 10 years from now with five times more things and each thing sending more data!  The growth is simply exponential.
In his speech, Dalton Caldwell explained that one of the challenges in the future will be to make use of all this data.  In other words: it’s really easy to create data with The Internet of Things, but what are we going to do with it then?
Caldwell thinks that The Internet of Things will benefit from the incredible progress there has been on the social web, in particular the ability to insulate the signal from the noise.

Smartphones are at the heart of The Internet of Things
What is quite astonishing about the connected things that we have seen is that most of them have the Smartphone as the principal user interface.
Thus our whole lives will become “drivable” from our Smartphones.  When I get up in the morning, I turn on the light with Lifx, I adjust the thermostat with Nest, I can watch my weight with Withings or monitor my physical activity with the Fitbit sensor fitted to my belt.
The Smartphone is becoming the universal remote control for the things around us, even if each thing currently has a specific application.

So will The Internet of Things be the third wave of the web?
The presentations I attended during this conference have convinced me of one thing:  The Internet of Things is not the future, we’re already living it and this is just the beginning.
However, we might ask ourselves whether this connected world, as it’s currently presented to us, will happen soon.  For example:  I leave the office, my car tells my house to run me a bath and turn on my favorite radio station…
The future of The Internet of Things is not about what can be technologically achieved and what cannot, it’s about how it will seamlessly integrate itself into the way we do things to become unobtrusive and change our behaviors.
If entrepreneurs manage to take up this challenge, I think that The Internet of Things will be the third wave of the web.

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Cooliris Photo App Comes to China with Renren integration

Cooliris announced today its first international expansion move with the launch of a localized social photo discovery app for Chinese market. The app, partnered with NYSE-listed Chinese social networking service Renren, is customized for Chinese users and integrates photos from Renren. Users of the app can access all of their Renren photos and share them privately in group or one-on-one Cooliris conversations.

When asked why choose China and Renren as the company’s first move of overseas expansion, the company said: “looking at China’s large smartphone growth, we need to work with local partners like Renren. With their easy access to APIs and commitment to work with partners like us, we decided to bring Cooliris into China with Renren. “

Cooliris believed that there’re a lot of demand for personalized content from different countries while partnering with Renren, one of the largest social platforms in China, is the company’s first step to satisfy that demand and they’re looking to working with partners to deliver the Cooliris experience to more people in Asia and around the world.

The Cooliris app for iPad and iPhone is a modern way to browse all of the photos from various sources all in one place, and selectively share them with customized audiences in private groups. With the new Renren integration in Cooliris, Chinese users will be able to experience and share all of their photos privately from their mobile library, Instagram, and Renren in the immersive Cooliris 3D Wall. The new release will also include a local-language experience for Chinese readers, according to the company.

screenshot of Cooliris

“With China quickly becoming one of the world’s largest smartphone markets, we’re thrilled to launch our first international version of Cooliris with local content in China. Now, Chinese users can enjoy all of their personal photos in the Cooliris experience”, says Soujanya Bhumkar, Cooliris CEO and co-founder.

The new Chinese version of Cooliris is available for free on iPad and iPhone in China iTunes App Store.

Cooliris is a free iPad and iPhone app that brings all of your photos together from various sources in one place, and enables users to selectively share them with audiences of their choice. It has reached a #1 iPad app ranking in 75 countries for Lifestyle and 250 million photo views in the app, The company is staffed by 14 scattered around in Palo alto, Berlin, Singapore and Taipei.

 

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China Unicom Picks Up Another 3.2 Million 3G Users in November

In news that should surprise precisely no one, China’s 3G market continues to grow like hotcakes. Or, rather, grow like a weed. The market is growing like a weed and 3G plans are selling like hotcakes. Whatever, people, you get the point: 3G in China is growing fast.

For the lastest in the mountain of evidence supporting that assertion, here are some numbers from China Unicom’s November: 3.25 million new 3G subscribers, bringing the company’s total 3G subscriber number up to more than 73 million. The company also picked up 78,000 new 2G clients, bringing that total up to 162 million. The company also picked up 44,000 new broadband accounts and, unsurprisingly, lost more than 170,000 wired phone accounts over the course of the month.

The post China Unicom Picks Up Another 3.2 Million 3G Users in November appeared first on Tech in Asia.

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Which Asian Tech Companies are Patenting Innovations?

IEEE Spectrum has released its yearly “patent power” scorecard, a rundown of the which companies had the most impressive US patent portfolio over the last year. The scoring is complicated, and the fact that it’s limited to US patents means that only major Asian multinationals are really capable of competing strongly enough to make the list, but even so, it’s worth taking a look at to see who is innovating on a global scale from Asia.

In the Communications/Internet Equipment rankings, China’s Huawei is one of the only international companies to even make the rankings, though it clocks in at a relatively lowly number 17. Remarkably, the company filed 415 patents in the US this year.

In Communications/Internet Services, there were more Asian players on hand. From Korea SK Telecom made the number 14 spot, and KT Corporation was ranked nineteenth. Japan also had two companies on the list; in the number 15 and 16 slots were NTT and its subsidiary NTT Docomo.

Perhaps tellingly, the computer software category was almost completely dominated by US companies, with Japan’s Sony the only Asian company to rank (and, at number 20, it just barely made the cut).

Computer systems, in contrast, was like a big Asia party, with Asian companies making up nearly half the list. Japan had Fujitsu (number 2) and NEC (number 6), and China had Lenovo at number 7. But the big winner was Taiwan, with Asus (number 8), Micro-star (number 11), Acer (number 19) and Compal Electronics (number 20).

You can check out the full scorecard here for more details (the list for electronics patents will also be of some interest to readers) and for each company’s innovation ranking, but in general, it’s telling that Asian companies are much more dominant in the hardware arena than they are in software. This is not to suggest that Asian software companies aren’t innovating, of course, but since these rankings are based on US-filed patents, it does suggest that they aren’t doing as well globally as their compatriots in the hardware businesses.

I expect that to change fairly quickly though. Given the number of Asian companies in gaming and mobile software especially that are pushing out globally, I expect that in five or ten years’ time, the Software patent rankings could look very different.

The post Which Asian Tech Companies are Patenting Innovations? appeared first on Tech in Asia.

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Facebook Expands With Purchase Of Instagram

When Instagram started about two years ago and eventually expanded to a team of about a dozen employees, the company certainly did not figure that it would be associated with Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook empire. Well apparently that vision has come true and on Monday it was announced that Zuckerberg and Facebook purchased Instagram for the sum of $1 billion. The news of the purchase set off a frenzy across the business world as perspective Facebook stock buyers seen dollar signs in their eyes and word that Instagram’s 30 million users being upset over the deal.

When the news came out that Facebook had purchased the young Instagram, a site that allows users to take pictures and let users to send them to fellow users in unique formats, the first thing that came to people’s mind was that Facebook stock will be more lucrative when it becomes an initial public offering later on in the year. Instagram users though have taken a different approach and made their voices known on Twitter and said that with the purchase by Facebook that it will ruin the format that Instagram is already known for and there have even been some Instagram users that are saying that they are closing their accounts and they do not want to have any association with Facebook and any kind of merging with that site.

Facebook CEO Zuckerberg was quick on the defensive about the purchasing of Instagram and he stated that there will not be any kind of merging of the sites and that he plans on keeping Instagram the way that it is and that the two sites will be two enitriely different entitites. Instagram users though are thinking different and are blaming Zuckerberg as a money hungry businessman that is trying to take over the internet. Only time will tell as to whole this will all play out.

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Silicon Straits

Some of you may have learnt about this from my LinkedIn profile changes, but I’d like to begin with an announcement that Neoteny Labs (Pte Ltd) has been renamed to ...
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WeChat App Implicated at Trial of Pedophile in China

The trial of a sexual predator in Guangdong province in southern China has implicated the smash-hit messaging app WeChat as the way that the man lured in underage boys. The accused, Li Jun, a former official at a Civil Affairs Bureau in the province, is said to have used WeChat – known in China as Weixin – to befriend and ‘groom’ 160 boys, some aged under 13, who were living nearby.

The ‘drift bottle’ feature in WeChat.

Li did this with a couple of WeChat location-based features, says the China Daily today, called ‘Drift Bottle’ (pictured right) and ‘Look Around’ to connect with strangers – specifically young boys – in his area. The court heard how Li somehow persuaded at least three of the boys to have sex with him, and the man faces “up to five years” in prison.

The case prompted the state-run paper to warn of the danger of such smartphones apps, which is something we’ve heard in the country earlier this year too. Criminals could also use these social apps with location-based tracking to find targets nearby for thefts, fraud, or for touting illegal services. The paper adds:

Police from Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, said they have observed an increase in reported thefts and sexual assaults coinciding with the popularity of [such apps on] high-tech gadgets. […] The Hangzhou police said they have seen some 20 Weixin-related theft and fraud cases since last December. Their counterparts in Beijing, where specific data are currently unavailable, confirmed seeing a similar increase.

WeChat’s ‘Drift Bottle’ and ‘Look Around’ are features that are turned off by default, and require the user to turn them on in order to be found and receive messages from strangers. Both those features are plug-ins (sort of like browser add-ons), so they can be uninstalled if a user wishes. Most people use WeChat – and other apps like Line and KakaoTalk – to talk with friends and family. The makers of WeChat, Tencent (HKG:0700), expect its mobile-only messaging app to surpass 300 million users next month.

Dangers lurk, of course, in any form of contact with strangers, so these messaging apps – even flirty ones like Momo – are mostly safe, and it’s up to developers to build in safeguards, and for users to be wary and exercise common sense. Parents, too, need to be aware of what kinds of apps and social services their own kids are using.

The court has yet to reach a verdict in the Li case.

[Source: China Daily]

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Foxconn postpones US$10B Indonesian plant investment due to regulatory requirements, labor concerns

Mobile device manufacturer Foxconn has postponed its planned investment into Indonesia, citing the need to comply with regulatory requirements and the concern for local labor issues.

Foxconn is among today’s biggest manufacturers of smartphones, being a manufacturing partner of Apple for the iPhone. The company, registered in Taiwan as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., has seen aggressive expansion worldwide, due to the growing demand for mobile devices. While Foxconn has earmarked a US$10 billion investment in Indonesia, however, the manufacturing giant has had to put their investment off due to “several requirements the firm had to meet,” Industry Minister M.S. Hidayat said on Monday. The Minister declined to explain further, as negotiations and discussions are still ongoing, reports local English newspaper Jakarta Post.

Aside from regulatory requirements, the terms and conditions set by local partners — PT. Hartono Istana Teknologi, INTI and Telkom — are also another reason behind the “three to six months” deferment.

Foxconn (Credit: NYTimes)

In the investment plan revealed this August, Foxconn would invest up to US$10 billion in Indonesia, spread over five to 10 years, in building facilities that occupy 500 hectares of land area. This investment was reportedly going to create up to one million new jobs in the country. This year, Foxconn was supposed to have started with developing 50 hectares, with a capital outlay of US$2 to 3 billion. If his had pushed through, the planned industrial zone “Modern Cokande Industrial Estate” located at Serang may have begun to operate and to assemble a planned 3 million handsets per year.

For Foxconn, the goal in Indonesia is to take advantage of the skilled labor force and relatively low wages (one of the cheapest in Asia), raw materials, energy, services, and perhaps a tax holiday given to new investments.

Since then, officials and executives from both sides, such as Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan and prominent entrepreneur Sofjan Wanandi and Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou have been meeting in Taiwan and Indonesia to develop the plan.

On the other hand, Indonesia has witnessed a series of labor strikes over the past two months, and protesters were demanding an increase in wages. Take Jakarta, for instance. In November, the governor agreed to increase the minimum wage about 40% to IDR 2.2million (US$ 231), which is at par with Thailand, but still two-thirds of China’s, as Asian Development Bank (ADB) data shows.

From the cheap labor point of view, we can safely say that Indonesia is still attractive for foreign investors in establishing their plants and factories, mindful that labor cost is one of the pull factors to achieving profit. Opportunity loss and costs due to factory shutdowns as a result of strikes can threaten this balance.

Sofjan graced a discussion at a local TV program in his capacity as chairman of the Association of Indonesian Entrepreneur. He admitted that the strikes will continue next year until the presidential election of 2014. However, there is hope that Foxconn will stick to their plan of tapping a duty-free zone of some 600 million consumers after all the necessary requirements have been fulfilled and the terms and conditions met.

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