Happy 2012, folks!
As usual, we have quite a few Asian tech startups on our radar this last week, from China, Japan, and Singapore.
For folks who are interested in investing or partnering with these startups, drop us an email — hello[at]penn-olson[dot]com – anytime. No promises, but we’ll try our best to be a bridge. And if you’re a tech startup founder in Asia hoping to be featured, kindly send us your pitch here.
1. Sumally | Japan
This article about Sumally was written for WIRED Japan, and Yukari had the opportunity to translate it to English. Sumally has been covered before on PO, so consider this an update of sorts to the previous article. Sumally is an encyclopedia of all products.
2. ARappli | Japan
Augmented reality (AR) and quick response codes (QR) are pretty neat technologies. But they aren’t often used because it is tough to execute a seamless AR campaign/experience, at least from the layman’s point of view. I met up with the folks from Arara Inc. who run ARappli. Arara is a very cool company that specifically helps brands and regular people, like you and me, to solve problems using AR and QR technologies. Now, this isn’t another marketing firm that is using AR and QR for gimmicky purposes.
3. Anideo | Singapore
Singapore-based app dev startup Anideo pushed out quite a lot of apps this year. But none of them are games. So when co-founder Andrew Solimine told me that they had just released a new game, I had to dig in and check it out. Huntville is an iPad game which puts you in the role of a hunter. You can select different grade of hunters, but the higher quality ones will cost more ‘meat,’ the main currency used in Huntville.
4. Guohe | China
A Chinese startup named Guohe is getting netizens to engage in online social marketing ostensibly for no money – and giving them “free” McDonald’s food instead. It’s all handled via a brand new app for Android phones called Free McDonald’s wherein assigned promotion-related tasks are rewarded via a virtual currency system called ‘fruit coins.’ That’s somewhat ironic, as users will presumably be getting diabetes-causing junk food delicious burgers rather than fruit.
5. Yi Xia | China
I’ve said before that mobile video-sharing apps – especially ones with lots of filters and special-effects – could be big in 2012, so let’s test out one Chinese startup’s contender. Called Yi Xia Shi Pin – meaning ‘Next Video’ in Chinese – it uses the tagline “life’s for sharing” and comes with new apps for iPhone and Android. Basically, users can record video on their smartphone and then apply one of 36 filters to give it a certain look and feel, just like photos taken with Instagram.
6. Next-5 | Singapore
Interviewing people is a pain, especially overseas folks, speaking from experience. It’s hard to get the right people; and over here at our team we bootstrap and use Skype as the main interviewing tool. It works out well for a startup. But not when you need to video interview tens or hundreds of people abroad.
7. AoYouJi | China
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. – Oscar Wilde A Beijing-based startup is about to roll-out its travel journal-style service and an accompanying iPhone app – called AoYouJi – which’ll be a first on the Chinese web. I don’t think I’ve ever covered a startup before it has even properly made its debut, but I’m making an exception for AoYouJi because it looks sweet.
8. News 2km | China
News 2km is a terrible name for an app, but it does manage to communicate the basic premise of this interesting app, which provides local news based on your phone’s GPS location. Let’s start with the good: this is a pretty cool idea. It’s good to know what’s going on around you, and in Chinese cities, people don’t tend to talk to their neighbors a whole lot, so unless you follow local newspapers carefully, it can be tough to keep track of what’s going on.
9. HappySNS | China
HappySNS is a social gaming company that build games for Tencent, Facebook, and Chinese social network Kaixin001. According to the company’s statistics, it has a whopping 100 million installs, 30 million MAUs (monthly active users) and 10 million DAUs (daily active users). Its games are hosted across most major social network platforms, including Facebook, Tencent, Kaixin, DeNA, and Renren. I gave its Fishing Paradise a try on Facebook and I must say it has successfully kept me glued to Facebook for quite a while.
10. iGeey | China
There are lots of startups out there focused on making money. Aiju is not one of them. Instead, it’s an online problem-solving platform that aims to make the world a better place. Unfortunately, before we talk any more about that, we have to talk about it’s name. Aiju is the Chinese name, but tragically the English name (and the startup’s domain name) is iGeey. That is terrible.
Other startup related stories in Asia
- Paging All Entrepreneurs Interested in Startup Asia
- 2011 in Retrospect: Our ‘State of the Blog’ Address