Thanks to our very own Startup Arena Competition, we have a list of Asian tech startups on our radar this week, specifically from China, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, India, Malaysia, Philippines, and Singapore for this week.
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.
When we chatted with the Indian startup PlayCez last summer, one co-founder promised that the social venue recommendation service would soon get a mobile app. And here it is. The new PlayCez app for Android now joins its HTML5 mobile website in providing listings of nearby restaurants or shops, filtered by how strongly they’re recommended by your Facebook buddies. Along with the newly-released app for Android – with an iPhone version still in the works – PlayCez’s Ashwani Gaur has other bits of good news about the progress of the service…
The Indian startup Freecharge.in has announced this afternoon that its has secured funding worth Rs. 20 crores (US$4 million) from Sequoia Capital – the second time it has been given a cash boost by the same VC firm. Freecharge allows users in major cities in India to get free coupons – either by mail, or in the form of e-coupons – when they pay via the website to top-up their mobile, data, or TV credit accounts. It’s similar to the group-buying/daily deals model – as pioneered by the likes of Groupon…
3. Mandarin Madness | Australia
Chinese characters can look like arcane codes, cryptic communiqué, that conspire to obscure the meanings of an ancient culture. But new, hi-tech tools can help anyone wrap their ears, eyes, and tongues around those swoops and shapes. The Mandarin Madness app, from the Australian startup Native Tongue, is one such tool, which aims to help total beginners grasp the simple sound and meaning behind many common characters. Plus, the app – now newly launched on iPhone and iPad – has game-ified the activity of learning, with points, flash cards, and…
Philippines-based Infinite.ly is an application built for brands and marketing managers to track social buzz about their companies (on Facebook and Twitter) all in one page. Co-founder Luis Buenaventura describes his startup as “a central hub for everything a small business owner needs to get started with their social presence.” The functions are very basic. Businesses can add in their Facebook and Twitter links and find all related @mentions on a single page. Users can also track conversations via search terms within the social sphere. I gave the product a try…
We often see vertical e-commerce sites popping up, specializing in things like bags, lingerie, or household products for example. But e-commerce startup, FlowerAdvisor.com, is going back to the basics by sells flowers online. And surprisingly it is an international venture with 24/7 service, partnering with thousands of local florists all around the world. It promises the customers that the flowers ordered will be delivered on the very same day, which is an impressive fact considering its geographic scope. Willy Thomas, the founder of FlowerAdvisor revealed that the company is functioning across 111…
In vino lucror. If it’s a truth that China’s growing middle-classes have a great taste for wine, then profit will surely follow. And so a Beijing-based startup has this month launched a nice-looking specialist B2C e-commerce site selling foreign wines. The site, Moooton, adds in daily deals and some useful search presets to make it accessible and reasonably affordable. Indeed, the wine selection on Moooton.com currently tops out at just over 1,000 RMB (US$158) for a Chateau Mont-Perat, so it’s a luxury offering that won’t break the bank. It squeezes in…
On Monday, a Tokyo-based tech startup called Wanted officially released its social recruiting platform Wantedly. The service was developed by ex-FBer Akiko Naka and her buddy Gaku Hagiwara, and it allows employers to find potential employees by showing them how they would work in the company with possible future colleagues. We had a chance to interview the startup’s co-founder and CEO Naka and asked her a little bit more about the service, as well as some of the details behind it…
Sribu.com, an Indonesia-oriented service for connecting web/graphic designers with clients, has just announced that it has received seed funding from East Ventures. We got this tip straight from the founder himself, Ryan Gondokusumo. It doesn’t really surprise me as Sribu has gained quite a lot of traction and has a clear business model. Sribu helps designers who are doing freelance jobs to earn money by creating things like logos and layouts. It also helps companies, whether they’re startups or larger enterprises, to solve their design outsourcing needs. Plus, it boosts the…
You might’ve noticed that we on PO love infographics, so Piktochart is something that makes sense to us. It’s essentially an easy way to make good-looking and interactive infographics out of tedious data, helping people to present info in a way that’s visually appealing and more engaging…
Mocku.ps is a Singapore-based startup that aims to make the lives of designers and their clients easier by streamlining the process of sharing designs. Traditionally, a designer would simply email a design image to a client; however, Aen …
Dr. Pad is a Taiwan-based startup that aims to be “a painkiller for doctors’ headaches.” In essence, it is a mobile application designed to give doctors quick and easy access to medical data on the go…
Flocations is a Singapore-based startup that aims to give adventurous travelers a new way to find and book trips through what it calls “discovery search.” Today, the team took the stage as one of our Startup Arena contestants to pitch their startup and answer questions from the judges…
I’m a big fan of research tools, but I rarely do any research on a mobile browser because the experience is just not a pleasant one. Simple tasks like word selection or copy/paste can be tedious on a mobile device. But Japanese startup Phroni aims to help solve this problem, by converting multi-step tasks and cutting the process down …
Singapore-based startup Teamie (represented by Shivanu Shukla and Ashwin Singh) presented its vision to leverage the internet to solve problems in education. While developments in social, mobile, and the cloud have revolutionized many aspects of our lives, they say, these advancements have yet to really have a great effect on the field of education. How do we improve student engagement?…
Congrats on winning Startup Arena too.
It’s not often that we see entirely new ideas in the ecommerce space. I mean, building an online store for your products typically doesn’t allow for much variety in presentation. But Panoplaza, a startup from Japan, has come up with a real-life inspired way to let you browse shops. It implements beautiful panoramic photos of actual store spaces…
“We’re about helping women to achieve orgasm.” That’s not the usual startup pitch, but then Vibease has a deeper purpose than most smartphone apps. With its own vibrator hardware at the business end, and the app in hand, it wants to help couples have a healthy and fulfilled relationship – and make out – …
The CloudyRec team, in their pitch here at Startups in Asia, points out that it’s a huge hassle for mobile app developers to power their own back-ends. And so the Singaporean startup has taken it and automated it, giving app devs a cloud-powered engine for push notifications, Facebook support, and all those other mobile backend essentials. …
Public wifi is often a nightmare for individuals, made to jump through ridiculous hoops by telcos, venues, or other providers. The Korean startup Waffle wants to make the process easier and more social for users, as well as actually profitable for businesses that need to provide wifi. Waffle, founded by Lee Min-ku, is a platform …
Marketing promos, especially social ones, are practically de rigeur for clued-in businesses these days, but they can be tough to implement. With this is mind, the Singaporean startup Gspot wants to give brands an easy way to do this. From its simple dashboard for companies, they can run social promos that give users discounts, keep them…
SecQMe – pronounced as ‘secure me’ – is a Malaysia-based startup that wants to help you protect yourself. Founder and developer James Khoo pitched the app to the audience and the judges at Startup Arena. SecQMe is a mobile app for Android and iPhone that allows users to ensure others are aware of their whereabouts whenever they’re feeling unsafe. Let’s say …
Gushcloud pitched a social media marketing solution for businesses (in particular, app developers) to help raise awareness of their brand online. The startup’s co-founder Vincent Ha identified a number of ‘pain points’ that currently exist in online marketing: 1) Facebook ads can be costly, 2) Google ads can be slow, …
With an iPhone app and browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox, Justaple is a Taiwanese startup that aims to surpass the likes of Delicious, Instapaper, and Read It Later as a very connected, social bookmarking service. Justaple rips and saves your entire saved page – with the addition of videos in a future update – so that …
Innova Technology is a Singapore-based startup that’s focused on a pretty common problem: losing stuff. CEO Rick took the stage at Startups in Asia (Singapore) today to explain how he plans to make losing things a thing of the past. Unlike many of the Startup Arena companies, these guys make hardware; a wire-thin black card that CEO Rick says is “the …
Drinking parties frequently result in regrettable information or pictures being shared, and that can be a problem sometimes. Japan-based Sakebii wants to solve that problem by creating a limited, closed social network that includes only your ‘first degree’ drinking buddies. If …
SpellDial is a startup from the Phillipines that aims to make finding friends and businesses on your phone easier by using names rather than numbers. Founder Nicole Macarasig pitched this new method of calling to the audience and the judges of the Startup Arena competition this afternoon. The SpellDial team began by addressing a problem: phone numbers are hard to remember. …
Start Now is a Singapore-based startup that hopes to simplify the volunteer-NGO relationship by providing would-be volunteers with an easy way to find service opportunities, and NGOs and other organizations a simple platform for finding volunteers…
27. Acheevit | Singapore, China
Acheevit aspires to provide real-time performance information and feedback to sales teams. There’s a clever gamification aspect at work here too, insofar as employees can earn trophies and medals at every step, working towards sales goals. Users sign up with their company email, and can see what…
Other startup related stories in Asia
- Moscow-Based Venture Fund Ru-Net to Invest USD50m in SEA Market
- Bernard Leong on Internet Trends and Entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia
- A Final Roundup of Startups in Asia Singapore