There’s a lot of e-commerce on this week’s list of selections from our bloggers, plus a nice mix of inspiring founders’ stories. Let’s dive in:

Youshen’s pick: Mobile Commerce Worth $4.29 Billion in Q1 in China, But One Company Dominates

Here we see iResearch’s leader-board of China’s $4.29 billion mobile commerce (“m-commerce”) market. Note that the desktop shopping experience is still largely prevalent in China. But now that mobile shopping is a bit better established in the nation, I am personally expecting a huge leap in profits later this year with China’s upcoming 4G launch.

Steven’s two picks: Rocket Internet’s Fashion E-Store Zalora Scores $100 Million in Funding and MediaCorp Invests $40 Million in VIP Fashion Site Reebonz

I’m going to be greedy and pick two this week. That’s because we simply can’t ignore two massive rounds of funding for a pair of well-established e-commerce sites in Southeast Asia. The total amount for these two is $140 million, making it a bumper week – and a big boost – for e-commerce in the region. It’s also interesting that they’re both clothing-oriented stores. Hopefully some of the VC wealth will later be spread across some smaller startup e-stores, not just centralized on the biggest names.

Minghao’s pick: 9 Indonesian E-Commerce Players: We’re All Doing Fine!

After Multiply’s demise a while back, there was general concern about whether the e-commerce industry in Indonesia is really doing ok and if the demise will cause a ripple effect of spooking investors off Indonesia e-tailers, causing other sites to go down with it. But with Zalora’s recent $100 million round of investment and all these positive growth figures in this story, it is a timely reply to quash the skepticism.

Vanessa’s pick: SpeakingMax.cn Co-Founder: Don’t Quit School For a Startup Unless It’s Worth It

We’re seeing a lot of encouraging news in the Singapore startup scene, from Reeboz receiving $40 million from Singaporean media giant Mediacorp, to Fatfish Medialab announcing its first investments and JFDI unveiling its newest graduates.

But all these are not done without the courage of individuals who have stepped out of their comfort zone to embark on the entrepreneurial route. A first in our ‘student entrepreneurship series’, we speak with SpeakingMax.cn co-founder Jason Lin, a Singaporean student who has temporarily stopped his studies to build up his web business in Beijing.

Minh’s pick: Pakistan’s Startup Ecosystem Has So Much Potential (INFOGRAPHIC)

I love to hear more about startup ecosystems west of Southeast Asia and East Asia, so it’s nice to see an infographic that gives us a better idea of the startup scene in Pakistan. For more insight into Pakistan, I recommend you also take a look at our latest articles from guest writers here and an interesting Quora post that has surfaced over the past week.

Enricko’s & Willis’ pick: Indonesia Jatis Group Co-Founder Shares His Two-Decade-Long Startup Journey

Enricko: When is it time to say that you’re ready to move on from being an entrepreneur? Izak Jenie doesn’t stop being one even after building more than ten companies in two decades – though most of them were failures, admits Izak. Now not only has he become one of the most respected guys in the tech industry, but he is still very down to earth when telling his story. Respect!

Willis: Yes, Izak Janie’s story as an entrepreneur is refreshingly humble and inspiring. If you are an entrepreneur, give it a read – especially when you’re feeling down in your startup roller-coaster ride.

For other ways of reading us, perhaps try our tailored RSS feeds, or find us within the Flipboard or Google Currents.

In a 36kr interview with Frank (no last name was provided) who is in charge of Line expansion into the Chinese market, we got to learn that Line has 16 million users so far in Taiwan. That number is astonishing because two years ago when I was studying in Taiwan, US-based Whatsapp was the dominant chat application. Surely Line’s cutesy stickers (which I personally believe are very compatible with Taiwanese culture) and TV commercial must have done the trick. 16 million users in Taiwan also means that Line has about 70 percent of its population to use the chat application. Taiwan has about 23 million in population according to Google’s data.

This also means that Line has attracted four million Taiwanese users in the past four months. Its last Taiwan user count recorded on Tech in Asia was about 12 million in late January this year. That’s the same time that Line reached 100 million total users. Now it has 150 million around the world.

In the interview, Frank also said that he did not see Tencent’s WeChat as a competitor. He meant it in a polite way in which he says that while WeChat is aiming for the entire market, Line is only looking for “valuable users.”

In my recent interview at NHN headquarters in Seoul, Korea, we got to understand that Line’s plan in China is to target working women who are aged 20 to 30 in ‘tier one’ cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Frank also said that China, being such a huge market, could possibly have two to three social messaging players. In the same interview, we also got to understand from Kang Hyunbin, who is the head of the business office at Line Plus Corp, that Line’s cutesy stickers are catching on in China as well.

Frank was also the same person who was in-charge of Line’s impressive growth in Taiwan but is now putting more focus on promoting Line in mainland China.

(Source: 36kr)

A new S$5 million (US$3.95 million) Kickstarter fund was announced during Singapore Budget 2013 back in March to support lifestyle concepts with strong tourism potential and scalability. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing more startups in the Singapore scene competing in the travel space (think Indiescapes, Travelogy, and Flocations).

Launched last August 2012, Singapore-based travel and lifestyle reviews portal TheSmartLocal.com is the new kid on the block, boasting close to 16,000 reviews to date.

TheSmartLocal editor-in-chief Bryan Choo tells us that the team is pretty stringent on who writes the reviews on the site and they are done by invitation only. It seeks to build a community of trusted reviewers, hailing from backgrounds such as book authors, startup founders, bloggers, and people who are well-versed in lifestyle and travel. In essence, the team wants to have reviewers on board who are passionate about sharing and writing their experiences. This way, it ensures that the reviews are true to what is being written, minimizing the problem of having fake reviews or competing firms lashing out against public submissions. Bryan adds that random reviewers often lament about their bad experiences and hardly do follow-up posts, which admittedly is a very Singaporean culture (an example here).

It also has a points system in place which acts like an incentive for members to contribute more on the site. With more written comments, reviews, and postings on forums, members will get more points.

TheSmartLocal was created to aid not just travelers, but also locals to make better decisions. Common frustrations such as where to find a good photographer for one’s wedding shot, to where one should bring his or her international friends when they visit – the site aims to answer these questions. Bryan elabroates:

There are many times where we exhaust our network and still have no information about things, [often plunging] into the unknown and end up with bad experiences. We want to help people not have to go through that. [That is] our aim, to help Singaporean consumers make better decisions, [to have a better knowledge] about everything Singapore.

But the site doesn’t just focus on Singapore, and has has already expanded to Malaysia (screenshot pictured right) as well. The team of six has yet to work out details on expansion to other countries, but will look into other nations by drawing inspiration from My Destination’s model.

The reviews portal currently has 50 regular reviewers on the site, and will be launching its Android application in the third quarter this year.

Korean game studio SundayToz was founded by three friends, Kevin Lee Jungwoong, Hyunsoo Im, and Chanseok Park in 2008. Not many people may know SundayToz but I believe quite a bit of people, especially in Korea, should know about Anipang which is a hit game on the Kakao game platform, commanding a combined 12 million monthly active users (MAU) for Anipang and Anipang Mahjong. SundayToz is backed by Softbank Ventures Korea and Walden International.

Founded in 2008, the founders (while each on a full-time job) met every Sunday at a place called Toz to develop social games. As the three founders established a proper company for their venture in January 2009, it became natural to name it SundayToz. Seeing the opportunity to set up a gaming empire in Korea, SundayToz started out to publish games on Cyworld App Store. Anipang was one of the first web based social games to launch on Cyworld in 2009 which saw them getting about 450,000 users. But it didn’t take off until it was on the Kakao Games platform. Angus Lau, who is the global vice president said:

While not the first game published on Kakao, we were the first to integrate Kakao’s social features and as a result, the game and its popularity spread like wildfire.

The story behind how Kakao actually got into games is interesting. Kevin envisioned that friends and family were able to play games and connect on mobile through their address book. With the rise of KakaoTalk in Korea, it became a perfect platform to realize Kevin’s vision. Kevin shared this idea with Kakao which eventually gave birth to the Kakao Games Platform. While it is undoubtedly a popular game in Korea, Anipang was also played outside of the country. Interestingly, one of the reasons why Anipang became popular outside of Korea was due to the rise of Kpop. Angus told me:

For much of last year, there was a huge growth in Southeast Asian markets and markets where Kpop was extremely popular. There were a number of Korean Kpop bands, idols, athletes, variety TV show hosts who played the game and later posted to their Twitter and in turn read by their followers around the world. The viral growth through those social media channels helped us grow organically early on outside of Korea.

(Read also: How KakaoTalk Grew From a Startup to a Giant Mobile Platform)

Moving forward, SundayToz plans to work on new titles for KakaoTalk. For its hit game, Anipang, the team plans to go into the merchandising business in Korea and later bring it to Japan and Taiwan before looking at Southeast Asia.

On March 2013, Anipang was ranked the seventh biggest revenue-making game on Google Play by App Annie, ahead of NHN’s Line Pop and DeNA’s Blood Brothers.

(Thanks for all the entries, but now this contest is closed)

Chinese handset maker OPPO has set foot in the Indonesian market recently, bringing in its flagship Oppo Find 5. What’s so special with the phone? Specification wise, the phone is on par with high-end phones like the Sony Xperia Z, and a few will argue the OPPO Find 5 is a better phone than the Samsung Galaxy S4.

As a new player in the Indonesian market, OPPO will need to compete with the other popular brands like Samsung and Sony here. Hermanto, the digital manager of OPPO Phone Indonesia, told us that OPPO’s internationally recognized brand and high-end features would be able to attract quite a number of customers.

While on paper the specifications look really good, there are still concerns about the phone’s performance in comparison with other brands. Hermanto said that the company upgrades the phone’s firmware every two weeks to make sure the phone performs at its best.

In around July and August, OPPO will produce three new phone models and in October the Chinese company will launch another high-end device. These phones will make their way to Indonesia shortly after being available in the Chinese market.

OPPO Find 5 16GB is priced at IDR 5.5 million ($560) in Indonesia. But the best news of all is that in cooperation with online shop Lazada Indonesia, we are going to give away one OPPO Find 5 to one lucky reader in Indonesia!

All you need to do is follow these steps:

• Like Tech in Asia on Facebook .
• Give a wacky tweet on the comment section below about why you really want the free handset, while including your Twitter handle ¹.
• Tweet this post with the hashtag #OPPOFind5TIA.

We will announce who the lucky winner is at 10pm Jakarta time tonight. Be sure to follow @techinasia as we will send you a DM with your Lazada voucher code.

UPDATED at 11:00 Jakarta time: Congratulations to @dewe for getting his hands on a brand new OPPO Find 5! Now he can let his friends admire the phone all day long.

Grey Singapore seems to be riding a wave of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, with part of the team launching the Lend an Eye app for the visually impaired which we wrote about earlier. Now, the digital and social media agency Yolk Singapore (a Grey Group company) has launched PawfectPets.sg, which is an interactive website that aims to increase awareness of cruelty at puppy mills in Singapore. This is in collaboration with local animal welfare groups that hope the public will gradually switch to adopting animals from shelters instead of purchasing them.

Singaporeans browsing the web will soon see advertisements that will lead them to PawfectPets.sg (screenshot above). It then brings visitors through a video illustrating the inhumane practices and unimaginable living conditions at puppy mills. For those who are unaware, puppy mills are large breeding facilities where dogs live in dire conditions (pictured right). They are often not given the necessary food, water, or veterinary care and forced to reproduce time and time again. It hopes to highlight that the cute little puppy we fancy at the window of the pet store comes from these puppy mills.

Jun Jek Low, creative director at Yolk tells us that it aims to primarily target potential and existing dog owners so as to reduce retail demand, and also hopes to raise awareness among the general public. She elaborates:

The goal of the campaign is to educate the public that buying a puppy from the pet store is indirectly fuelling the growth of a cruel industry which allows for animal abuse. There is still a good majority of the public who are unaware of the existence of puppy mills. [Through PawfectPets.sg], we would like to create awareness that adopting a pet is the better alternative. We integrated an adoption page on our site that will lead visitors to our partners’ pages, allowing them to contact them should they wish to adopt a pet.

Some of the partners in this initiative include Animal Lovers League, Save Our Street Dogs, and the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Singapore (SPCA). The campaign was launched on April 26 and will run for two months.

I’ve personally had mongrel dogs for a long time, and have adopted them from animal shelters as well. To be honest, they can be as adorable as pure-breed dogs and make really good companions. I’ve made a pinky paw promise on the site (see screenshot above) and shared on my social media channels – perhaps you could do your part by spreading the word too!

During my stay in Jakarta, I met Andy Sjarif, the founder of three-year-old Indonesian startup SITTI. Andy is a friendly, opinionated, and eloquent guy and is the father of two young daughters. In his early forties, Andy’s passion and energy matches that of any other younger entrepreneurs I know. He is frequently invited to speak at entrepreneurial events and has a firm opinion of what Indonesian startups should work on. His startup, SITTI, is an intuitive ad network that serves relevant ads to sites and searches according to keywords used; in short, it is a Google Adsense that’s proficient in the Indonesian language. It currently has a team of 47 staff, and is invested by thirteen angel investors in Indonesia

Andy’s description of his journey in SITTI so far:

SITTI is not all a story of success, let’s be clear on that. It is a roller coaster ride. SITTI is an idea that is highly radical technologically, but it is a boring ad network business. There is no book to teach us how we should go about starting this. Nobody can teach me on how to do this right; on fundraising, creating the technology, getting the right people and other startup issues. As a result, we made many mistakes, took many wrong turns; but at same time, we also achieved many exciting results that no one told us we could.

Andy’s entrepreneurship dates back to 1997 when he was in US. He started a CRM analytic consulting firm that helped companies with segmentation and analytics of databases of customers. This startup did not last long as Andy found the business not scalable and decided to pursue his other startup ideas. But this first startup was not all failure. Through doing it, Andy learned the ropes of running a company and it opened his eyes to the opportunities of doing an ad-serving technology that serves related ads when you visit websites or search for keywords. This is similar to Google Adsense but he had the idea earlier. And this is what eventually become SITTI is today.

The central idea was to create context out of a webpage. If a page is about shoes or fashion, the ads served should be fashion related. That’s simple logic. But back then, Google’s Adsense didn’t exist so it was tough to pitch this idea to potential investors, nobody understood. As such, I couldn’t get funding for it.

Moving on to 2010, Andy was finally able to launch SITTI in its fourth iteration after amassing investments from thirteen angel investors in Indonesia. Considering the year he wrote the first business plan, he took more than a decade before finally launching SITTI. So what took him so long? Andy shared that it was a mixture of market readiness for such a product and unfortunate events such as the dot com bubble burst, the Asian financial crisis and 9-11 that delayed him. Nevertheless, this wait made him hungrier for success and his belief in the product grew.

SITTI got off to an explosive start, serving up to 22 million of ad impressions a day in its first year and being an ad network, it could monetize well. However, into the second and third year, the monetization stagnated and the team was dumbfounded as to what caused it.

At 450 million impressions a month in the first year, we were massive, we were big. We could monetize as well. At second year, we found that we had huge inventory but couldn’t monetize as it should be. This was one of the first learnings. The formula seemed to be right, to create a contextual ability to produce targeted advertising based on Indonesian language, superior to that of Google in Indonesian language. Everything seemed to be right, so what went wrong?

Actually nothing went wrong. What we failed to consider is that in the US, 74% of Google’s income comes from SMEs. Economic Impact for Google 2010 says that over 60 billion of dollars of transaction in SMEs happened because there’s Google. Google did it, why can’t’ we? Here’s what happened in the US. A tire store in a rural area of Iowa (a state in US) has a website and uses a credit card to advertise on Google Adwords; it is a natural extension. We have 52 million SMEs in Indonesia producing more than 55 percent of the country’s GDP. But how many of them are online? So what are they promoting online? And what can SITTI do for them when they are mostly not online?

Knowing this, Andy started Nurbaya Initiatives, a non-profit movement that pooled help from other local technology companies within the commerce industry and other NGOs such as World Bank to help traditional businesses learn more about internet and how they can utilize it for their business. This is certainly a noble initiative that Andy is piloting and with the statistics he spelled out, the movement will not just speed up the growth in Indonesia’s e-commerce scene, it will also bring value to the hundreds of thousands of Indonesian SMEs who may be living by the edge. Which, of course, creates more potential customers for SITTI.

So what does he think of the startup scene these days? Here’s what Andy thinks Indonesian startups should work on:

Indonesian technology startups should stop thinking about being Silicon Valley. SV is about big new breakthrough ideas, disruptive technology. I’ve been through enough to learn that technology for us in Indonesia is about sustainability and impact. So the question is not about building the most advanced technology but it should be about how technology can create an impact to our people and our country. Call me a pessimist, but I don’t see a Steve Jobs coming from Indonesia coming out with an iPod or an iPhone. I don’t see a Sergy Brin coming up an algorithm so damn complex that nobody understands it. However, I think there’s enough talent from our startup community to do something impactful for this corner of the world.

I think no one likes to be censored, and that includes me. But sometimes, you can’t have total control over everything, especially when you are doing business in another country. When it was uncovered that Line is ready with filters to prevent the sending of politically sensitive words for the Chinese version of Line (branded “Lian Wo”), the natural reaction of most people was that it is a bad thing.

I thought so too. But when you cover or work in the Chinese internet industry, censorship slowly becomes the norm. It’s common practice in China, across the internet and all offline media, that you self-censor first so that you don’t even trouble the censors. If you don’t want to follow this rule, then get the hell out of China. Run far away.

Now, let me repeat that I’m not a fan of censorship. But at the same time, after complaining about why the hell China blocks certain websites and has certain restrictions, I’ve grown to understand that every country has its own rules and you have to obey them to conduct business there. Period.

So would Line be wrong if it were to really censor politically sensitive words in China? That word filter within the Line app is not yet switched on, but it’s ready to be activated. I personally don’t think Line is wrong because the company has simply followed the rules of the country and the censorship will only apply to its Chinese app. I’m sure there are people who disagree. If you are one of them, kindly share your thoughts in the comments.

Singaporean startup incubator Fatfish Medialab has made its first ever investments in four local startups. The new program, a spin-off from the VC firm Fatfish Group that operates around Southeast Asia, has opted to back these guys, who are all still in beta and not yet fully launched:

PeeplePass

Once launched on iPhone and Android, PeeplePass promises to be Asia’s first data-driven social travel app, different to the usual travel diary or search apps.

Blazable Studio

Blazable Studio is working on a game engine to simplify the creation of social mobile games.

VDancer

VDancer is a game studio focuses on a particular niche – what it promises will be a new genre of mobile dance games.

DockPHP

Will be a SaaS business for creating business-oriented websites.

Fatfish is an iJAM-approved incubator. For those who missed the news, iJAM is a tiered funding program created by the Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore. It has experienced entrepreneurs and seasoned investors onboard to guide the startups, such as partners Chow Yen-Lu and Lau Kin Wai.

Mr. Lau says in today’s announcement:

We have quite an exciting first quarter of the year with the investments we made into the four startups. We are selective in finding the right startups to invest in, but we do see a very active startup scene in Singapore. At this juncture, we believe that we will be investing into more than 15 startups over the next 24 months.

China’s first tech IPO of 2013 is still in the works as the global B2B e-commerce platform LightInTheBox seeks to hit the New York Stock Exchange tickers. Now Beijing-based LightInTheBox has adjusted its IPO plan slightly and is looking to raise $100 million dollars – a rise from the earlier scope of going up to $86 million.

Aiming to list as NYSE:LITB, LightInTheBox’s new form F-6 filing with the SEC also shows that the company, which helps small business around the world source things directly from Chinese manufacturers, hopes to debut at between $8.50 to $10.50 per share.

LightInTheBox, whose primary competitor is Alibaba’s B2B global sourcing site, says it has 2.5 million users and pulled in $200 million in net revenues in 2012.

LightInTheBox has been invested in by Zhenfund during its growth stages. It has assigned Credit Suisse, Stifel, Pacific Crest Securities, and Oppenheimer and Co as its underwriters.

China, which is crowded with numerous third-party Android app stores, isn’t generating any game revenue on Google Play since its payment system doesn’t work there. iOS game revenue in China looks healthy, though. Junde said that iOS 6, which is packed with Chinese features, has encouraged many Chinese iOS users to update its devices and in process lose their jailbreak which causes revenue on iTunes to increase.

In Japan, though, the iOS news was less impressive; game revenue from iPad isn’t great, which came to many as a surprise. In fact, only the US generates huge revenue from games on iPad.

In terms of revenue per download, no one is even near Japan’s figures which recorded $1.83 and $1.89 on iOS Games and Google Play respectively. Junde suspects that Singapore’s high iOS revenue per download figure was encouraged by the nation’s recent addiction to the game Candy Crush.

The top publishers based on game revenue on both iOS and Google Play include a number of Asian game publishers including Gungho, NHN, WeMade, GREE, and DeNA. Interestingly, Japan’s Gungho only has eight and nine applications on iOS and Android respectively, but is doing better in terms of revenue compared to GREE and DeNA, which both have hundreds of applications published on both platforms.

Gungho has done extremely well recently thanks to hit game Puzzle and Dragons which is the top revenue game for iOS and Android in March 2013. On Google Play, Asian games are also well represented, with games including Puzzle and Dragons, Anipang, Line Pop, and Blood Brothers hitting the charts.

It’s a pity that we can’t embed the entire deck into this post but we thank App Annie for the permission to include some of the slides for our readers.

In celebration of Indonesia’s biggest telco Telkomsel’s 18th anniversary on May 26th, nine local e-commerce sites will hold a one-week promotional program with special treatment for Telkomsel users like extra discounts and cash-backs. The nine participating online shops are Lazada Indonesia, Zalora Indonesia, Berrybenka, PinkEmma, Bilna, Plasa, Reebonz, LivingSocial, and FoodPanda.

While announcing this new promo campaign, a few of the sites also shared their latest data. Ladies fashion e-store PinkEmma has so far gathered more than 400,000 members in the nine months since the startup’s inception. The site attracts 20,000 daily visitors.

Babycare e-commerce site Bilna, which launched in November last year, now handles 200 to 300 daily transactions. The site records two million page-views every month and more than 450 brands have jumped onboard.

Women’s fashion e-store Berrybenka is also recording great numbers. With over 400 brands inside the online shop, the startup now garners 10 million monthly page-views and handles around 300 to 400 transactions every day. At the beginning of this year, Berrybenka raised series A investment from GREE Ventures.

Daily deals site LivingSocial also has very nice numbers. The company recorded three million monthly page-views last month. Rocket Internet’s Lazada Indonesia, Zalora Indonesia, and FoodPanda look to be doing very well too. Zalora Indonesia CEO Hadi Wenas told us last month that they now have 200,000 daily visitors. Besides doing a few initiatives like celebrity-endorsed clothing collections, the whole Southeast Asia Zalora network must be in delighted with the fresh injection of $100 million announced yesterday.

All of the team generally expect to see a three-fold to five-fold rise in transactions during this promotional program. Hadi and PinkEmma CEO Iwan Tantra told me that besides the usual sales program, the press conference yesterday is also being held to send a message to the nation’s consumers that the Indonesian e-commerce scene is looking very healthy despite the downfall of notable e-commerce site Multiply recently.

You can check more information regarding the whole promotional program with Telkomsel here. The site should be accessible on May 26th.

Chinese hospitals are, to put it mildly, a bureaucratic nightmare. Just checking into one generally involves, among other processes, waiting in line to take a number and often also waiting in another line to pay for taking that number. Monster e-commerce site Taobao was attempting to take some of the sting out of that with a new service launched earlier this week that allowed customers to book numbers and in some cases also pay online. But yesterday, after just three days open, the service was shut down in Beijing by the city’s health department on the grounds that healthcare is an issue of “public interest” and thus ‘take a number’ services should be non-profit. It also suggested that providing health information to a third party caused a potential information security risk.

That would be a compelling argument, except that many of China’s hospitals themselves aren’t even non-profit, and even in non-profit hospitals there is often a fair amount of under-the-table cash expected from patients if they want to receive good service. Perhaps healthcare in China should be non-profit, but since it very clearly isn’t, why target Taobao for making money off of the convenience of online ‘take a number’ services when for-profit hospitals are profiting daily off of their patients?

One reason may be that the health office operates its own online reservation service and isn’t interested in competition. China’s Railway Ministry has responded similarly in the past, banning competitors and convenient hacks of its own online platform, so the Taobao ban really isn’t all that surprising.

What is surprising is that there has been a bit of pushback on the decision, even in the state-owned press. The People’s Daily, for example, carried a China Radio Network opinion piece titled: “The Health Department Has No Right to Speak for Consumers” that argues:

[The Health Department has suggested there's an information security problem] But everyone who uses Taobao knows that if Taobao leaks your personal information, you can demand compensation. As to whether consumers’ interests are hard, only consumers themselves can know that, and they don’t need some government department to speak for them. When consumers are allowed to openly rate public services as good, fair, or poor [like they could on Taobao], that will be a step forward, not a risk.

The Beijing Health Department says that Taobao is violating consumers’ interests, but no matter how you look at it the department is having itself make the decision instead of consumers, and avoiding the truth that taking a number [at Chinese hospitals] is very difficult.

And the comments from the internet peanut gallery are almost unanimously on the same page. “Shutting down such a good service; Health Department are you thinking with your asses?” wondered one commenter on Sina Tech. “What a pity,” wrote another. Some commenters pointed to the recent ban on taxi apps in Shenzhen as another example of the government squashing convenience and private industry to keep a tight hold on the sectors it oversees. There are a lot of cynical comments about Taobao’s service being banned because it takes some of the money that would otherwise go to the Health Department.

But can public pushback actually lead to a reversal of the decision? It’s certainly unlikely, but it wouldn’t be unprecedented. We’ll be keeping an eye on this to see if Alibaba and the collective internet hive mind are capable of pushing Beijing’s Health Department back in the opposite direction. (But don’t hold your breath).

The partnership between the two companies will have advantages for both. Ctrip has a large userbase, a strong reputation, and a lot of money, but it needs to build strength in mobile (though to be fair the company does already have a number of mobile apps). Fast Hotel Manager gets money out of the deal, obviously, but it should also get access to more of Ctrip’s large userbase, and judging from the low number of app reviews on the iOS and Google Play stores, it could certainly use more users.

It will be interesting to see where the two companies go from here, and whether there will be any integration or cross-promotion between Fast Hotel Manager and Ctrip’s existing mobile offerings.

(via TechWeb)

The new office will work to further localize and popularize WeChat, although with one million Malaysian users the app already has a solid foundation in the country. But it will also work to introduce new Tencent products to the Malaysian market, and it could even become a new source of exits for Malaysian startups. Tencent international business VP Poshu Yeung told the Malay Mail:

Tencent has conducted a lot of mergers and acquisitions around the world and we actively look for innovation as well as expansion opportunities.

So is this good news for Malaysian startups? It’s hard to say. Obviously, more capital in the region is a good thing, but Tencent has a well-earned reputation in China of copying startups’ ideas rather than acquiring them, and then using its massive war chest to bury the original product. And to be honest, we haven’t seen Tencent make a lot of acquisitions in Southeast Asia, so if I were a Malaysian startup, I might be a little wary of the arrival of this new office.

With that said, there’s no cause for undue paranoia before the office even opens, and if Tencent is publicly announcing its intent to look for innovation and potential acquisitions in Malaysia, then the door may well be open for Malaysian startups looking for funding or a potential exit. Whatever happens, it will be interesting to see how Malaysia’s startup scene responds to the presence of the Chinese tech giant once the company has finished setting up shop there.

(Malay Mail via TheNextWeb)

Japan has long had square watermelons, and now it has Square for mobile payments too. This marks the first overseas expansion for Square, the funky iPhone add-on gadget that lets anyone swipe credit card payments.

Square’s Japan launch comes in partnership with Sumitomo Mitsui Card Corporation (SMCC) and involves both the iPhone gadget and the iPad-oriented Square Register. The company will charge a “low” transaction rate of 3.25 percent per swipe. That’s one hell of a cut for retailers to swallow, though it is lower than some of Square’s rivals. Funds from swiped payments on Square are “automatically deposited in the merchant’s bank account the next business day for participating banks and within one week for other banks”, says today’s announcement.

Square CEO and founder Jack Dorsey, the Twitter co-creator, hailed today’s launch in “a country with a rich history of design, innovation and tradition” that he feels matches with Square’s ethos.

Almost exactly a year ago, PayPal and Japan’s Softbank launched a joint venture for online payments that also brought PayPal’s triangular card-swipe gadget to the nation. In Japan’s very mature market, they’re certainly not the first, and things like Docomo Mobile Payment have been working on Japan’s complex feature phones for some time.

Aside from the US, Square has also launched over the border in Canada.

(Source: TechCrunch)

Indonesian game studio Tinker Games releases its flagship game Inheritage: Boundary of Existence today for iOS. The one thing that excites me about the game – besides the fact that it has ample amount of Indonesian characteristics inside – is the game’s size, which is 400MB. I’ve seen my share of Indonesian mobile games so far, and there aren’t a lot of huge and complex games such as this coming from the country. Let’s see how the game’s features justify its size.

As the Tinker Games team describes it, Inheritage is a horizontal shoot’em up adventure game that combines Indonesian culture, anime-style artwork, and a visual novel. It’s aimed at a global gaming audience. The game includes Indonesian cities as the backgrounds for the stages, local urban stories, and traditional weapons. The team has put an Inheritage encyclopedia inside to help explain about the various Indonesian artefacts that appear inside the game.

Of course, for a game with that kind of size, Inheritage offers a few other gaming features and details inside. For example, the game is equipped with spoken dialogue in the Indonesian language (though the whole game is playable in English), and players will be able to unlock special attacks and animal partners called Rakyans. You’ll also want to check out the game’s artwork.

Tinker Games is cooperating with local developer Touchten in promoting a few of its games. Inheritage is available as a ‘lite’ version here, or you can buy the full version for $3.99 here. The game studio is offering a 50 percent discount for the game this week only.

The century-old US luxury retailer Neiman Marcus launched in China very quietly late last year after investing $28 million in Chinese site Glamour Sales. But this week, in a major change in strategy, Neiman Marcus is closing its warehouse facility in China and scaling back its physical presence in the country.

Neiman Marcus’ Chinese site will remain online and in business, but as a Neiman spokeswoman told the WSJ, all orders will be shipped direct from America instead. The representative said this is “a better model” for the luxury retailer, and claimed not to be influenced by a recent slowdown in high-end purchases in China caused in some part by a crackdown on government corruption that makes grand displays of wealth a bad idea.

Despite the difficulties, Neiman Marcus has raised its stake in Glamour Sales at some point in the past year and now holds 44 percent of the luxury e-tailer.

The Neiman Marcus Chinese site – which stocks couture brands like Kate Spade, Helmut Lang, Valentino, and Jimmy Choo – will now ship items directly from the retail chain’s US warehouses. While that will create long shipping times and leave the site subject to currency fluctuations, it might offer some benefits. While Neiman Marcus didn’t outline what those benefits might be, it could mean actually being faster to offer new fashions and product ranges to Chinese consumers, no longer held up by local bureaucracy.

At present, the Chinese site hasn’t been updated to reflect the change in strategy and tells current customer that it ships from its Shanghai warehouse. It’s not clear when the US shipping changeover will happen.

Luxury e-commerce is a huge sector in China, principally covering couture clothing, fine wines, and curated travel.

(Source: Wall Street Journal)

Amid a stream of bad news about an executive brain drain at HTC (TPE:2498), the Taiwanese phone-maker has said today that it has sold “around five million” of its flagship HTC One phones since launch. The HTC One suffered a launch delay due to supply issues, and hit shelves a full two weeks late on March 28th.

The subliminal message from HTC is that sales are strong, despite being dwarfed by that of the Samsung Galaxy S4, which hit 10 million shipments of the S4 in just three weeks after launch. For both HTC’s and Samsung’s figures, it’s not clear how many are shipped to retailers versus actually purchased by consumers.

HTC CEO Peter Chou has vowed to resign if the HTC One doesn’t perform. HTC’s Q1 financials were grim as profit plunged 98 percent. The HTC One, the company hopes, will boost its Q2 earnings.

HTC has been roiled this month by top-level executive departures. HTC Asia CEO Lennard Hoornik is confirmed to have quit, while chief product officer Kouji Kodera is believed to be gone as well. CNET notes that other outgoing executives include global retail marketing manager Rebecca Rowland, digital marketing director John Starkweather, and product strategy manager Eric Lin. Mr. Lin has even urged others to “just quit” and “leave now” via Twitter, implying a grim and unhappy corporate atmosphere at the struggling smartphone maker.

HTC stocks have just closed at TW$282.50 per share in Thursday trading, which is the second-lowest dip taking it to one of the lowest levels for the stock price since 2005 (Updated: Changed wording and added graph below).

(Source: The Verge and WSJ Stream)

Singapore-based incubator JFDI.Asia today unveils its seven startups that have graduated from its 100-day accelerator program. It is down from the original eight that was first announced last February, but it’s still a strong line-up. The seven are:

1. Scrollback: A micro-forum platform for open communities.
2. Collabspot: A sales email platform that integrates customer relationship management (CRM) with Gmail, and aims to simplify data entry, increase CRM adoption, and increase productivity.
3. Krake: This is a data harvesting engine that brings benefits of big data to individuals, helping them to compare market positioning, analyze reputation and sentiments, integrate content, and grow customer base.
4. Klinify: Cloud-based patient record management platform that fits clinics’ workflow, where patient information can be accessed anywhere and on demand.
5. Duable: Uses computational linguistics to customize learning language, allowing you to learn and read effectively according to your language capabilities.
6. OurHealthMate: Helps you book and pay for your family’s health checkup, on top of giving detailed feedback straight from doctors about your loved ones’ health conditions.
7. UserScout: This one is an end-to-end research process management tool.

The startups pitching are collectively made up of 30 percent Singapore citizens and permanent residents, with others entrepreneurs hailing from the United States, Taiwan, the Philippines, India, France, Vietnam, and New Zealand; but all startups are incorporated in Singapore.

The demo day will be held on June 3 at the Joyful Frog Innovation Campus at 71 Ayer Rajah Crescent. It is also sponsored by Japan’s Global Brain, and will see more than 100 investors attending to listen to the pitches by the seven startups. Some of the seed stage investors who will be attending include Golden Gate Ventures, Jungle Ventures, TNF Ventures, and Wavemaker Labs, on top of institutional funds that include Vertex Venture Holdings, Temasek, and Sequoia Capital.

JFDI alumni, both Fetch Plus and Startup Arena Singapore 2012 finalist Flocations will be returning to their alma mater to share their progress after a year. The presentation, sponsored by Global Brain, already has over 100 investors confirmed to attend including 500 Startups ‘Geeks On A Plane’.

See you guys at its demo day on June 3!

Beijing’s air: Think of the kids (Image: Alamy / Guardian)

You’re an entrepreneur or working for a startup. You’re young. You’re about to have a family that you want to bring up in a nice, safe place. But you don’t have much money. For startups in China, Beijing is still the main tech hub – and that’s bad news. A report by a Chinese think tank this week called the nation’s largest cities “barely livable” in terms of general quality of life and the ecological environment.

Beijing ranked 74th among Chinese cities in terms of livability and 119th in terms of the freshness of its environment. Often cloaked in a smog of lung-wrecking particulates from the surrounding low-tech industrial belt, it’s a grim place to be starting out in life or with a young family. Other large cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen also scored badly in the list. The only large (called “first-tier”) Chinese cities to be deemed reasonably livable in this report are Hong Kong and Macao.

The capital adds to the woes of a young entrepreneur with a mandated car license plate lottery that makes it difficult to get your first ever car on the road. And for a roof over your head, you’re looking at rental or purchasing prices that are more than double that of smaller but equally well developed cities across China. To get on the property ladder for the first time, a small-ish two-bedroom apartment outside of the centre of Beijing will cost RMB 2.5 million ($404,000), which you’ll have to somehow buy on your startup salary of anywhere between $800 to $1,600 dollars per month.

Think local

The alternative to all that lies in China’s smaller “second-tier” cities where the population is just a third or a quarter that of Beijing and Shanghai, and where property costs are half (or lower) than the nation’s top cities. They make for a better place to recruit and keep twenty-something tech talent. In terms of creature comforts, these other cities are not lacking in any way – many have subways, Starbucks, Louis Vuitton stores – and offer fresher air and more greenery for families.

These cities – such as Hangzhou, Chengdu, Xiamen – also have business environments that rival Beijing. Admittedly, it wasn’t always that way. Kerry Sun, a senior partner manager at Pinguo, the startup that makes the hugely popular photo app Camera360, lives in Chengdu in south-western China’s Sichuan province. That’s where the young company has always been based. Kerry says that startup life over 1,700 kilometers from the capital is getting easier now:

Several years ago we found some problems being outside Beijing or Shanghai, such as how to get the latest IT information and where to finding experienced staff. Now everything is getting better. More programmers are coming back to Chengdu because of increasing pressure in Beijing or Shanghai.

Recently the Sichuan government keeps introducing policies to attract startups, such as no tax for the first five years or rent the office to them for free.

While Pinguo didn’t get it that easy, such smaller cities are now more receptive to entrepreneurial web firms. The Camera360-making team is now based in Tianfu Software Park in Chengdu alongside other notable local companies such as game studio Tap4Fun. “In my opinion, Chengdu will be another Silicon Valley in the southwest of China,” adds Kerry, who can also count tech giants like IBM, Intel, Huawei, and Tencent as neighbors in that area of Chengdu.

Bye Bye Beijing

Where are China’s startups? Click to enlarge.

While Beijing’s awful livability index doesn’t dint its business or intellectual prowess (plus, Beijing residents are fantastically friendly, which adds to the enjoyment of visiting), the new report (from the National Academy of Economic Strategy under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) will give more momentum to a gradual shift away from starting tech companies in the capital. From 2011 to 2012, the percentage of Beijing-based startups listed on the comprehensive 17Startup directory went down from 49.7 percent to 43.9 percent. We’ll add up the numbers again later this summer when we expect to see that figure shrink again.

Instead of starting up in the same city where an entrepreneur graduated – or in the city with the most prestige – it’s increasingly fine for someone to return to their native province in China. Being outside of the hub is not a barrier to getting significant funding in China either. Pinguo’s Kerry admits that CEO Xu Hao needs to fly to Shanghai or Beijing from time to time to meet investors, but that distance is no deterrent for VCs. Kerry says, “I’ve worked in three IT companies so far [in the region] and all of them got investment from VCs”. Pinguo itself has attracted funding from Singapore-based Gobi Partners and US-based Matrix Partners.

Increasingly, big business is heading out to the provinces as well. Next month, the Fortune Global Forum 2013 will be held in Chengdu.

Perhaps we should have seen this coming much earlier. China’s most profitable web company is Alibaba, the e-commerce and e-payments giant. It is based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province – about one hour out of Shanghai on the new bullet trains – which is a pleasant city wrapped around a famously beautiful lake with a population of just nine million (just medium-sized by China standards). Why that city? It’s the hometown of founder Jack Ma, who decided to stay put in the city when he quit teaching to build his e-commerce business. Being far from Beijing was never a hindrance for Alibaba, and now the firm’s presence and status is causing more e-commerce startups to launch in the city. Plus, the city scores highly in terms of livability and the environment, with tree-lined streets and a fresh breeze always blowing across the lake.

While those working in Shanghai and Beijing do get double the wages of workers in these second-tier cities, the pay off is not really worth it. It’s fine for those on corporate jobs who can avoid some of the rougher aspects of Beijing’s over-population and griminess, but for the average white-collar worker at a startup, it’s a miserable start to one’s 20s.

Huang Hui, a 27-year-old software engineer from Beijing told the China Daily, after reading about the report:

Beijing has the best medical, academic resources compared with other cities, but it’s not necessarily the best choice when it comes to being habitable. I’m proud of the cultural diversification in the city, but it’s a pity that Beijing sacrifices the most basic essentials, air and water, simply in exchange for all the rapid development.

But with 13 percent of Chinese startups being based in smaller cities in Zhejiang, Sichuan, and Jiangsu provinces, some have already found that the grass is greener if you avoid China’s usual tech hubs.

The department has not officially announced this move and declined to comment for the Southern Metropolis Daily story, but the newspaper received numerous reports of deletion orders from cab drivers in Shenzhen. Drivers were mostly notified of the change by their companies, but the article says that the reporter was shown a memo originating from the Shenzhen Department of Transport that says local cab companies must:

immediately begin thorough self-directed inspection and resolution for all drivers, order all drivers that have installed ‘cab finder’ software to uninstall it, and not to continue using it. If there are drivers who continue to use it, their dishonesty will be noted in their files and they will be entered for a quantitative evaluation.

The Department of Transport has also apparently been asking software developers to stop promoting these apps, according to one technology company in Beijing that said it had 4,000 drivers using its app in Shenzhen before the order came down.

The reason for the ban, apparently, is that the government is concerned these apps could “destabilize” the industry, leading to drivers refusing passengers or driving by them on the way to pick up app users. Since both of those things are fairly common anyway (despite the fact that they’re illegal), I can’t say I sympathize much with the Department’s reasoning, and it’s obviously quite a blow to app developers that have put time and money into promotions in the city.

In fact, this is just the latest in a line of anti-technology, anti-consumer decisions from Chinese government bureaus that seem to be more about protecting the status quo than serving citizens or making life more convenient. China’s Railway Ministry, for example, has a long history of banning apps and services that attempt to make purchasing train tickets online easier, despite the fact that its website is terrible and its mobile app still hasn’t surfaced.

This is ridiculous. While I can understand why the Shenzhen Department of Transportation might want to regulate taxi apps, banning them outright without offering any kind of alternative is needlessly stubborn and backwards. In an age when many city dwellers have devices in their pocket that can pinpoint their location and the locations of nearby cabs, why should people be forced to rely on luck and arm-waving to track down an empty vehicle? And why should cab drivers have to drive around randomly in search of a fare when their phones could be notifying them of all the available nearby customers with pinpoint accuracy in real time? Wanting to regulate this technology is understandable, but shunning it completely is just idiotic, especially for a city that’s generally considered one of China’s most technologically developed. Shenzhen, what are you thinking?

(Southern Metropolis Daily via Sina Tech)

Some crazy things happen in the world of Chinese gaming. Rather than giving each its own article, from now on we’ll be trying to do a semi-weekly roundup of the craziest stories so that you can find all the madness in one place. Here’s what went down this week.

Chinese Model Battles Japanese Porn Star Sola Aoi for the Hearts of Chinese Nerds

How do you win the hearts of China’s otaku community? Step 1: Be super hot. Step 2: Pose naked with a giant rubber duck. That’s the approach Chinese model/actress Gong Yuefei took for the photo shoot pictured above, which she said in an interview is part of her campaign to eclipse porn star Sola Aoi in the, ahem, hearts and minds of China’s gaming community. Gong says that as a homegrown “Calabash Baby” she should easily be able to defeat foreign “Ultraman” Sola Aoi.

Unfortunately for Gong, her ploy to play to the hometown crowd seems to be a bit too on the nose, and in the comments on QQ games several readers point out that it was porn videos, not sexy photo shoots, that originally won Sola Aoi the adoration of Chinese gamers. And while Gong’s photo shoot is pretty damn porny (so much so that the link below is probably NSFW), she can’t go so far as to do actual porn because that’s illegal in China.

(via QQ Games)

Gamer Attacks Owner, Police After Being Told He Can’t Live in Internet Cafe

Mr. Wang was on a gaming binge, and after three or four days straight in an internet cafe in Shanghai, taking naps by putting his head on the desk, he apparently figured why not just cut to the chase and set up shop permanently? He left and came back a few hours later with a pillow, comforter, and some daily necessities in hand, intending to become a more permanent fixture in the cafe. The manager, concerned that this would drive away other customers, immediately stopped him and asked him to take his sleep breaks in a local motel rather than on his keyboard.

Wang wasn’t into that idea, and immediately began arguing with the manager. The argument escalated to a shouting match, and then a physical fight as Wang began to hit the manager in the head with his fists. The manager fled to call the police and Wang went back to his game, but when the police arrived, they too suggested that Wang couldn’t live in the internet cafe, starting another argument. Wang refused to cooperate, and when an officer told him that if necessary, they could bring him by force to the local police station for questioning, Wang grabbed the man’s scrotum (seriously, you can’t make this stuff up) and pinched it, causing a minor injury.

Needless to say, the police subdued Wang and brought him back to the station for questioning. Ultimately, a judge decided that due to the injury he had caused during his attack on the police, Wang should be formally arrested. Luckily for Wang, he won’t need to carry around his pillow and comforter anymore — I’m pretty sure the prison will provide that free of charge.

(JusticeNet via QQ Games)

Gamer Fakes Kidnapping to Cover Up Card Overdraft

Earlier this month, Chongqing police were utterly baffled by a kidnapping case they just couldn’t seem to figure out. Over the course of a ten-day kidnapping that apparently involved taking the victim to an ATM and forcing him to withdraw cash, the kidnappers somehow managed to completely avoid appearing in any surveillance camera footage.

Ultimately, it turned out that this was because they actually didn’t exist. 23-year-old gamer Liu — the supposed victim of this kidnapping — had gone on a binge playing an online game called Shen Wu, and after charging 6000 RMB ($952) in the game and withdrawing another 6000 RMB for life expenses, Liu discovered to his horror that he now had an overdraft of nearly $2,000. He didn’t have the money to repay this on his own — he’d been skipping work to play the game — so he knew his only option was to go to his parents. But he also knew they wouldn’t be pleased to learn he’d blown so much on a computer game, so he invented the kidnapping story.

He didn’t expect that his mother would drag him to the police station and force him to report it, but that’s exactly what she did. And Liu’s rather specific story, which implicated a classmate named “Li Hongwei” in the crime and ended with Liu’s daring nighttime escape on May 12, fell apart under the scrutiny of a sustained police investigation. Needless to say, Liu is now in police custody.

(Chongqing Morning Post via QQ Games)

A week later, that question remains unanswered, as GREE’s proposed settlement has left many employees unsatisfied. One worker told the Beijing Times that part of the problem is that many employees put in massive amounts of overtime with the expectation that this dedication would be rewarded in the long run, and that GREE’s compensation plan doesn’t account for that. But a company spokesman told the paper that dissatisfied employees were a small minority of the total staff at GREE China.

But the real trouble for GREE from a PR perspective is that one of the laid-off employees is eight months pregnant. According to her, the loss of her job means the loss of access to pregnancy insurance she’s been paying into for ten years in addition to a maternity leave allowance, and GREE executives and the company’s lawyer have reportedly said they will not be offering her any additional support. (We’ve contacted GREE to see what they say about this and will update this post when we hear back from them). The woman says she has already filed a labor dispute with the relevant authorities in Beijing. A Beijing-based lawyer told the Beijing Times that GREE’s refusal to offer her additional support may violate Chinese labor laws, which make it difficult to terminate the contracts of pregnant women without offering significant additional compensation.

Whatever GREE ultimately decides (or is forced by the law) to do, the report has already damaged the company’s reputation. On weibo, the pregnant woman’s story has been reposted hundreds of times, and almost all the comments are in support of her rather than the company. It’s hard to believe that GREE couldn’t have seen this coming.

Frankly, whatever the law says shouldn’t matter much one way or the other; GREE stepping up to help out this woman ought to be a no-brainer, and I expect we’ll see it do that soon. Even if the law is on your side, it’s never good to bully a pregnant woman, and if paying for one birth and some extra months of maternity leave is what it takes, then GREE should just chock that up as part of the cost of shutting down its China office rather than trying to fight it in the legal system (and destroying its own reputation in China in the process).

(Beijing Times via Sina Tech)

Instead of requiring someone to be next to a blind person to assist them, the app allows the user to launch Lend an Eye app and calls a volunteer via voice activation or by double tapping on the screen (screenshots below). The volunteer then picks up the call and would be able to see exactly what is around the user and guide them, as the phone would be hung around the neck, with the camera facing out.

You might be concerned that the live streaming video would be inverted since the camera is hung upside down, but there will be a button for volunteers to invert the video back. And upon accepting the video call, a map will appear along with the live streaming, making it even more effective for the volunteer to guide the user (screenshots below).

Lend an Eye empowers the blind to be able to move from one location to another and also helps them to make simple daily decisions, such as deciding which flavour of soft drink they should get from the convenience store, all without someone to be physically next to them to help them. It also makes micro-volunteering a much easier task, so people would still be able to do some good during the pockets of free time that they have, without having too much time commitment.

As mentioned, this is a CSR initiative and Grey Singapore has no plans to monetize but would like to give this product to a non-profit organization or government organization to use. As to how many volunteers it currently has on hand and how it chooses its volunteers, Deng Yingzhi, one of the core team members of this initiative tells us:

We’re just done with our testing. At the moment, we’re exploring different ways of making this a reality. [Our] immediate plan is to approach organizations like the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped (SAVH), and work with their volunteers. The volunteers will be screened and registered, of course.

This app has also been tested with visually impaired people and have received much positive feedback. That’s important because most of the time, as the blind would require help from strangers to perform simple tasks, some choose not to get out of the house. This app can give them the confidence to be able to step out the comfort of their own homes without much supervision and complete simple tasks they previously were unable to accomplish.

And this awesome initiative was created by a small team of six, which includes Ali Shabaz, Joseph Cheong, Deng Yingzhi, Sudhir Pasumarty, Sandeep Bhardwaj, and Karn Singh from Grey Singapore, taking time off from their normal working hours to embark on this.

If you would like to find out more, you can visit the website here.

Things have been evolving quite a bit for Zalora since it entered Singapore. Last year, there was some controversy over customer service, but this year the fashion e-store hit over one million monthly visitors in March and last week it delivered to its one millionth customer.

Now, Zalora is continuing to step up its game in Singapore by offering customers a cash-on-collection option at local 7-Eleven stores across Singapore. That means it’s even easier to pay for your e-commerce clothing purchases starting from today. This is all part of Zalora’s play to make customer service as good as they can get it. It’s in stark contrast to last year’s mishaps.

Singaporeans can select the 7-Eleven payment option on the Zalora checkout page, which will allow them to check their preferred store to pay at. Zalora will then SMS the customer to notify them when their package has arrived at the designated 7-Eleven. Then they would go to the 7-Eleven, cash in hand. After paying in cash at the 7-Eleven of their choosing, they’ll be able to get the package.

According to Amanda Eng, marketing director for Zalora Singapore:

This is an exciting step for us as it can help those still apprehensive about online shopping get over that initial barrier. We hope that this collaboration can help us grow the market by increasing consumer confidence in e-commerce efficiencies.

Currently, the 7-Eleven cash-on-collection plan is only running in 19 stores in Singapore, but the Rocket Internet-backed company is hoping to expand that to all the 570 stores across the island.

Paying for items that you buy online at a mini-mart is certainly not a new thing in Asia. We’ve seen examples of using convenience stores to pay for online goods in China, Thailand, and 7-Eleven-loving Taiwan.

Twitter is fun, but it’s not a very visual medium. Japan’s TwitCasting is trying to change that with its video broadcasting platform that’s tied very closely to Twitter. Today the startup has revealed that it now has US$640,000 in seed funding from East Ventures and various angel investors to help it grow. (Disclosure: East Ventures is also an investor in TechinAsia).

TwitCasting now has more than 2.4 million users, of whom 80 percent are in Japan, 10 percent in Brazil.

Yosuke Akamatsu, CEO of Moi Corporation, the startup company behind TwitCasting, says in the announcement:

TwitCasting is seeing ‘hockey stick’ growth since last summer,
and we were behind the speed of the growth in terms of human resources
and system infrastructure. This funding will enable us to rapidly deliver a good
communication platform and acquire core team members.

TwitCasting has both viewer and broadcaster apps for Android and iPhone. There’s also a web app, where you can also choose to view streams that are radio only, music only, or full video. You can view live broadcasts where available, or dig through archived videos.

The service can be used for events and other useful stuff, though most of the videos on the site seem to be just people rambling on about stuff. A lot like YouTube.

With this investment, Taiga Matsuyama, a partner at East Ventures, will take a seat at on MOI’s board of directors.

Disclosure: East Ventures is also an investor in TechinAsia. See our ethics page for more information.

Indonesia Digital Byte (IDByte) 2013 has found its 12 startup finalists derived from four Indonesian cities. I caught up with Khailee Ng (pictured right) from social news network Says.com, one of the judges who selected those finalists. All the way from Malaysia, he saw and scored the startups who made their pitches at the Yogyakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, and Jakarta roadshows. I asked him what the startups could specifically improve based on what he saw at the competition. These are his thoughts: (Disclosure: Tech in Asia is a media partner of IDByte 2013)

First, he addresses the fact that there’s a good amount of tech talent in Indonesia, as can be seen by the number of startups who pitched at every city, and that they have the ability to execute their products and services well. “Not many markets have the abundance of tech talent I saw on this roadshow,” says Khailee. He adds, “The founders here are also incredibly passionate about their products. And this passion will help them evolve to realize their potential.”

Second, Khailee saw opportunities for startups to do better pitches next time around. He identified four common pitching mistakes during the roadshow:

1. Not indicating traction at all.
2. Not giving a clear idea of what the product actually is.
3. Not building the case for market potential.
4. Spending way too much time trying to tell the world how the internet is awesome or mobile is huge. With only five minutes allowed for each IDByte pitch, some startups spent 1.5 minutes on this topic where they should really be saying how big their startup can be.

On the bright side, all of the above are an easy fix. The startups can read up more information about good pitches online and get more feedback on their pitches. Khailee noticed that there were a few really good pitches, and he noticed that many came from Founder’s Institute. Of course, the pitching problem and advice above are applicable not only to Indonesian startups but also to startups in general.

(See also: 5 Interesting Startups That Pitched at IDByte Jakarta Roadshow)

Third, he believes that more tech entrepreneurs should seek more connections with people from the other industries, even build startups together with them. These people have a lot of good connections too, and have access to funding. Furthermore, they also want to connect with more tech talent. Khailee quips:

The business crowd complain there’s no tech talent. The tech crowd complain there’s no funding or marketing help. But these two groups co-exist right in front of each other. It’s about time they got out to more events and said hi!

Khailee’s company, Says, recently agreed on a merger deal with Malaysian giant Catcha Media Berhad to develop a digital advertising business together. He founded a company that was acquired by Groupon and now he is an entrepreneur-in-residence at 500 Startups as well as being an active angel investor.

The 12 startup finalists will make their pitches in front of venture capitalists including Dave McClure from 500 Startups in June. It will be broadcast on national television.

Rocket Internet’s fashion e-store for Asia, Zalora, has raised a truly massive round of funding. The sum is an eye-watering $100 million – yes, one hundred million dollars – coming from best buddies and returning investors Summit Partners, Investment AB Kinnevik, Verlinvest, and Tengelmann Group.

Michele Ferrario, the managing director of Zalora, said in today’s announcement:

Our company is one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in Southeast Asia and has bright prospects. It is an honor for us that investors of such great repute have invested into an e-commerce company as young as Zalora. Our goal is to continue serving up world-class products and services, so everyone in Southeast Asia can benefit from the wide selection of products at Zalora, the convenience of our e-platform, and the speed of our delivery.

Zalora operates in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan.

After launching in March 2012, Zalora attracted funding from JP Morgan last September, then scored $26 million just two months ago from German retail company Tengelmann Group.

The fashion e-commerce site already employes over 1,000 people and delivered its one millionth order last week to a customer in Singapore.

Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU) already has a search engine and Alibaba already has a product search engine, so it makes sense for the two to work together. And that’s what they’re doing.

The tie-up between the two Chinese web giants effectively gives Qihoo a new shopping search option on its 360 Search site, which exploded onto the scene in China last summer. Thanks to Qihoo’s huge traffic from its established web browsers and web portal, Qihoo’s 360 Search instantly became China’s second largest search engine last year.

Basically, it looks to be just Alibaba’s existing eTao shopping search ported over to Qihoo’s site. That’s even evident in the URL 360.etao.com. So it’s not fundamentally new. But it means that Qihoo’s originally spartan search offerings (initially it had just ‘news’, ‘web’ and ‘video’) have now expanded to 11 options.

This partnership gives Qihoo access to everything on eTao, which is perhaps China’s most comprehensive product search engine. Though Alibaba itself has numerous e-commerce companies, eTao indexes content from nearly all of China’s e-stores, not just Alibaba’s own properties. It also gives Qihoo a big boost relative to its nemesis Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), which arrived alarmingly late to to this shopping search battle, only launching its own dedicated portal in February this year. ETao and other such sites have been running for years.

For Alibaba, this should be a big shot in the arm for eTao’s traffic and visibility.

Price comparison and shopping search sites are a big battleground in China, covering numerous startups and some other major web portal companies as well. Last year the startup site B5M raised over $7 million in series A funding to grow its own product.

(Hat-tip to Sina Tech (article in Chinese) for spotting this)

Continuing our series of posts on Pakistan’s internet industry we have created an infographic that shows how and why Pakistan could be on the cusp of huge internet growth. With a population actually much greater than the reported 180 million, and with fast-growing mobile and mobile internet usage, Pakistan has a large body of users who are getting comfortable using online services.

As this trend continues and the community continues to strengthen its bonds by hosting startup events such as the recent hackathon where entrepreneurs came together to beat corruption, these opportunities will lead to collaboration and a larger community in which to share ideas. This community of mentors and investors can then help entrepreneurs like Faizan Buzdar to grow their startups in Pakistan so that world-class startups such as Convo start in Pakistan, rather than in Silicon Valley.

Here’s our infographic that includes demographics, co-working spaces, leading VCs, and some stats for early successes like Rozee.pk and Pakwheels.com. Check it out:

(Photo credit: Water and Sanitation Hackathon Pakistan on Facebook)

Disclosure: Adam was one of the first employees of Daraz.pk and its former product manager for over six months. Please see our ethics statement for further information.

For more fun graphics like this one, check out previous entries in our infographic series.

Last September, the second Startup Weekend was held in Ho Chi Minh city here in Vietnam. Not to be outdone, here comes Hanoi’s first ever Startup Weekend. The event starts on June 14th (starting at 6:30pm) and spans until June 16th (to 10pm) and will be held at FPT University in Hanoi.

This year’s theme is “No Talk, All Action” and will focus on getting teams together to come up with ideas that have a strong business model, understanding of the market, product, and customer. So far, the event already has 250 sign-ups who want to participate, with 35 percent of them with more than two years of experience in engineering, design, and web development. They’re expecting 400 total sign-ups and have 14 mentors to guide the teams. So if you’re in Hanoi and you want to join, you better do it soon by signing up here.

Thus far, Ho Chi Minh city’s Startup Weekend events have been relatively successful in producing new startups like Keewi, so this will be an opportunity for Hanoi to get in on the wave. Although Hanoi has always had a smaller startup community with fewer events, I’ve noticed that startups coming out of the capital city to be quite robust. There are certainly more startups in Ho Chi Minh city, so perhaps the first ever Startup Weekend in the north of the country next month can help balance things out.

Mixi has ploughed over $700,000 into CloudStudy, whose main product is StudyPlus, a social learning management platform. The other investment, explains the Startup-Dating blog, is in Reventive, a young company that has so far made three social apps. It hasn’t been revealed how much Reventive got.

StudyPlus

CloudStudy’s StudyPlus platform helps students to record their study times, subjects, and content. Students can then share this progress with contacts inside the app, or to social networks like Facebook (yes, Mixi’s main rival).

After starting up in March 2012, it has now grown to 100,000 registered users, though CloudStudy’s CEo concedes that only about 12,000 of those learners are active on the service. But those who are active do post a lot each day. It’s accessible in a web app as well as on apps for Android and iOS.

Reventive

Reventive’s main product is a Path clone called Close (see the GIF demo), which is on Android and iOS. Whereas Path lets you have over 100 buddies within the app, Close lives up to its name by restricting you to just nine close friends. So perhaps it’s somewhere between Path and so-called couples’ apps like Between.

The same startup is also working on a location-based group dating/hangout app called Gocon which is still in the works.

Mixi mixing it up

While Mixi hasn’t acquired the startups, that might happen later if one really takes off. A few months ago, Mixi acquired the startup company Kamado, which makes a host of sites and apps.

But Mixi has also shut down a lot of things that don’t work. Its subscription fashion e-commerce service Petite Jeté was launched last September, but it was killed off by January of this year.

Mixi has been hovering – a polite way of saying horribly stuck – at about 15 million active users for two whole years while Facebook has grown strongly in the same time period. Also, social media trends have moved towards social messaging apps like Line. Line now has 150 million global users, with about 45 million of those based in Japan.

(Source: Startup-Dating)

UniPin is a four-year-old Indonesian payment startup that aims to make payment for online games easier. It has around 30 staff working on UniPin, more than 100 games on its platform, and around 300,000 monthly active users who utilize it to buy gaming credits. Unipin is also able to draw strength from the exclusive partnership it established in its starting year with Indomaret, Indonesia’s largest chain of more than 6,000 minimarts, as points of sale for UniPin credits.

UniPin co-founder Ashadi Ang said:

The co-founders are online gamers ourselves and we understand the pain of buying game credits with vouchers in Indonesia. Previously, every game publisher had their own unique vouchers that they put in cybercafes for sales. This resulted in cybercafes selling many different types of vouchers from various publishers. The voucher is a physical good and cybercafes can’t keep too much stock. As a result, the problems of stocks running out and getting the right voucher for the right game at the value you want became a common pain point among gamers.

UniPin’s partnership with over 6,000 minimarts solves that problem by making gaming credits easily available throughout Indonesia. Gamers need just go to the minimarts and tell the cashier staff the amount of credit they want to purchase, make their payment, and they will be issued a receipt with unique codes which they need enter into their UniPin account to top up their credits. This effectively removes stocking issues and gamers can buy any amount they want.

On the game publishers front, UniPin will work with any game publisher to have UniPin’s payment API plugged into their game. Gamers can then use UniPin for any in-game purchase. This effectively solves the issue of too many types of gaming vouchers being offered by different game publishers, and it also allows the publishers to do what they are best at: making and publishing good games.

UniPin is also actively looking to get more game publishers to use its payment channel. In the near future, Ashadi shared that UniPin is looking to enable purchase of credit through ATM and bank transfer.

Earlier in the month, MOL Points, a new entrant to Indonesia with similar services, announced a collaboration with Alfamart, Alfamidi and Lawson, another chain of minimarts in Indonesia. It is worth noting that Indomog, another key player in this business of selling of gaming credits through physical stores has similar partnership with Alfamart, Alfamidi, Lawson, Carrefour and 7-Eleven in Indonesia. With more payment companies helping to make game credits easily available to end users, it only spells good news for game developers and publishers who long had difficulties monetizing their content.

The Indonesian tech scene will be followed closely in the coming years. With more companies eyeing the huge market potential here, it is no wonder that this has caught the attention of quite a few venture capitalists. I met with one of the youngest VCs in Indonesia, 26 year old Aryo Ariotedjo, the managing partner and founder of Grupara, to talk about his company and how he selects his portfolio companies.

Grupara is arguably one of the most active VCs in Indonesia this year. This year the company has announced investment in two startups: Maskool.in and Lolabox, and Aryo told me that they still have plans up their sleeves for this year. So what kind of startups is Aryo looking at? He said the kind of startups who can bring in cool products that he would want to buy when putting himself in the consumers’ shoes. He added that the people behind the company are very important too; he likes the founders to be smart and dedicated folks.

What Aryo means by dedicated is that the people are focused on growing their one startup, and not losing track by developing another startup at the same time. I’ve seen quite a number of entrepreneurs doing that here, and Aryo argues that when that happens, then the progress of one of the businesses will be hindered. He added that having founders with unique traits helps too; for example, he mentioned founders who have very likable personalities and who are very well suited to be the face of their companies. The very well-groomed founders of Lolabox are good examples when it comes to good representation and branding of their beauty box business.

When it comes to approach, Aryo likes to think that he is a “hands-on” person. This is done through the three-month incubation that he enforces for his portfolio companies. Those first three months are intense, but after that, Aryo won’t intervene with the business that much, but said that he will constantly help and challenge the startups to get to the next level together. Besides Aryo, there are a few guys from outside Grupara like Rocket Internet’s Stefan Jung and Weekend’s Richard Fang that will help coach the startups.

When I asked what Grupara’s strengths are, Aryo answered that his connections to offline businesses might be one of the company’s advantages. Aryo has quite a few connections in industries such as energy, food and beverage, consumer goods, entertainment, and government. He added that if he doesn’t have a particular connection that his startup needs, he takes it as a challenge to get acquainted with that person. He likes the idea of connecting the industries together.

Isn’t Aryo a bit too young?

The question of Aryo’s age has time and time again been raised (especially in Asia) to question his expertise at running a VC firm. This is the same guy who – as Aryo himself admits – was virtually unknown in the tech world just two years ago. What in Aryo’s background makes him a good VC for people to consider?

The first reason is quite obvious. Being backed by several investors including energy company Medco, Grupara has good amount of cash to be invested on startups, from the incubation phase to Series A funding. The fact that Aryo commands the trust of Medco at his age is already impressive.

Taking a look at Aryo’s background, he said that he was a businessman. He started his first company, Grupara Energi, trading natural resources in the energy industry, at the age of 21. While still in his university years, he has connected with a lot of people beyond his age and brokered many successful deals. At one point he found that the tech industry is a place where he could help build value-added products for Indonesia. The country needs more world famous products and the tech world can be a good place to start.

Being a new kid on the block, Aryo went to the USA to learn the trade of the tech VC world. He connected and received guidance with some notable big tech players in Silicon Valley and Boulder Colorado. This happened throughout the year of 2012, and now Aryo is one of an accredited VCs in the US.

Aryo said that his coworking space Freeware helps him build his tech connections. In that place he met numerous tech entrepreneurs – like Veritrans’ Ryu Kawano and Koprol’s Fajar Budiprasetyo – that are interested to join his cause of building the tech ecosystem in Indonesia. They became coaches as well as friends to the startups making their trade at the office.

Aryo stresses that Freeware is a neutral place for everyone. Although the place was pioneered by Grupara, now 80 percent of the office costs are being covered by the 12 startups there. Some of the startups making Freeware their home include Ideosource’s Kelir TV and Project Eden’s Telunjuk, neither of which are Grupara portfolio companies. But of course, Aryo is open to the possibility of making an investment in the startups at Freeware one day.

But Aryo isn’t the only young VC running around Asia. We recently wrote about another young CEO running a VC firm in South Korea. He is 32-year-old Jimmy Rim.

The many faces of Jack Ma.

Apparently retirement isn’t doing much to keep former Alibaba CEO Jack Ma out of the limelight, or out of the center of controversy. In a recent interview with China Entrepreneur, Ma was asked why banks are afraid of Alibaba, and this is how he responded:

Why are banks afraid? Because we’re doing it right. If [we] weren’t doing it right, what would they have to worry about? If you’re doing things wrong, you can do whatever you want, the bigger the better; either way it’s no threat to me. Am I worried about about what [Jingdong CEO] Liu Qiangdong is doing today? I’ve never even met that guy, he can do whatever he wants for all I care. If the banks start to target you, it’s because you’re doing something right. Ma Yuhua’s thinking on web finance is very true; it’s better to embrace than to resist, because you can’t resist the future. [Resisting e-payment] is like the cart drivers of old Shanghai smashing the taxi cabs when they began to appear. Did that work?

In other words, Ma is saying that Liu Qiangdong’s Jingdong (the artist formerly known as 360Buy) isn’t a threat to Alibaba at all. And while he didn’t put things very nicely, it’s hard to deny that what Jack Ma is saying is true. Alibaba services like Taobao and Tmall dominate the ecommerce market on the web, on mobile, and Jingdong is even further behind many of Alibaba’s other offerings, like payment service Alipay or music service Xiami.

(China Entrepreneur via TechWeb)

Image via Reuters

Like I said last week, it never seems to be good news for Huawei and ZTE, does it? The companies already stand accused in the EU of taking unfair subsidies from the Chinese government, and now the EU has opened second line of investigation in the form of an anti-dumping probe into the two Chinese companies.

Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng has already responded to the news, giving an interview to state wire service Xinhua in which he says the move would inevitably harm the interests of both sides and making finding a solution more difficult.

Elements on both sides are hoping to deescalate the situation with continued talks, but that looks increasingly unlikely, and the Telegraph quotes EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht as saying: “We have already had three rounds of negotiations, but without any satisfactory outcome. It is better for the whole world economy to come to an amicable solution, but you need two to tango.”

But if a trade war is on the way, European companies may find they don’t like the way China does the tango. Late last year after ongoing negotiations seemed not to be shifting public opinion, China responded to American concerns about Huawei and ZTE and the potential security risk they pose by blasting American company Cisco in a full-on attack on the company in Chinese state media. It’s the trade equivalent of an eye for an eye: ‘if you smear our companies for security flaws, we’ll smear yours for the same thing.’

So if the EU really does levy trade duties on the Chinese telecoms and launch a full investigation into whether they’re violating anti-dumping regulations, is China likely to respond in kind? Very possibly. Several Chinese commenters on the Xinhua article have already pointed this out. “If you tax others, do you think they’re not also going to tax you in return?” wrote one. “No one takes a beating without trying to hit back,” wrote another. And there are several European telecommunications companies with interests in China that might be vulnerable to new trade duties or whatever other form of retribution China plans to bring to bear. Ericsson, Alcatel, and Siemens all have operations in China that could now be at risk.

The EU seems poised to fire the first shot, but whether or not the battle over Huawei escalates into a trade war will depend on where things go from there. At this point, China’s government is unlikely to ignore attempts to restrict or penalize Huawei and ZTE, but when it responds and comes to the aid of the companies it further reinforces the idea that they have closer ties to the government than they let on in public. Even so, China is unlikely to stop defending its largest and (in the case of Huawei) most internationally successful tech companies. And so, although no one really wants a trade war, one seems to be in the offing.

I wrote about this problem a while ago in the context of Huawei’s troubles with the United States; I think the mutual suspicion and distrust is so deep at this point that conflicts like this one are virtually inevitable. Huawei, ZTE, and China’s government have proved fairly unwilling to accept that other countries do have legitimate reasons to be concerned about some of their practices; at the same time, though, most other countries are so wary of China that any Chinese company looking to move abroad already has a significant competitive disadvantage. As time goes by, both sides seem to be willing only to dig further in, so I expect the high profile disputes like this to continue. That’s bad news for Chinese companies, and bad news for foreign companies wanting to do business in China.

The phone is, once again, rumored to be pretty powerful especially at its paltry $320 price point. In fact, if the leaked benchmarks are to be believed, the phone will once again be one of the most powerful handsets in existence. That probably won’t surprise Xiaomi fans too much, but music fans will be glad to know that the latest round of rumors also suggests a new “Mi Hi-Fi” feature. Exactly what that means or what it will do isn’t clear yet, but it’s meant to cater to music fans so if you listen to a lot of music on your phone it’s likely to be a neat new addition.

If leaked photos (like the one above) are to be believed, the new phone is also a tiny bit bigger and boxier than previous versions. But of course, all of this information should be taken with a sizeable helping of salt until we’ve heard the official word from Xiaomi about the new device.

(iMobile via TechWeb)

Developed by Japanese gaming company DeNA, Blood Brothers is a popular mobile game that has hit number one place in 33 countries. It is also a mobile game played across most parts of the world except for China, Africa, and Japan.

Tetsuya Mori, managing director of DeNA’s Singapore office, said at today’s Casual Connect conference in Singapore that Blood Brothers is an important case study for developers because it is one of the few games that has won without special device leverage (like Nintendo had in the past) or a Japan-first success (like Rage of Bahamut). Mr. Mori added:

Blood Brothers is interesting because we didn’t even release the game in Japan. We just released the game in the global market and won the world. For that reason, it matters to us [game developers].

While most Japanese game publishers know how to make money in their local market, Mori says that not many know how to repeat the success in the global market. So what is the reason for Blood Brothers‘ success? Mori explains that in-game events have made the major difference.

The secret sauce: Games inside a game

As explained by Mori, events are “games inside a game.” They are usually set within a limited time and gives players rare items. Such in-game events usually double the average revenue per user (ARPU). Examples of an event could be a player versus player (PvP) event, boss raid, or special dungeon mission. Understanding that events are important, Mori shared five key design points on planning an event:

1. Leader-board: A way to spur gamers to climb the ranking ladder.
2. Separation into groups: To create a sense of belonging among gamers. But sometimes a group too big doesn’t provide that sense of belonging. “Divide the pyramid small enough so that players feel they have control,” says Mori. He also shared that a 10-person pyramids are what DeNA finds most effective for Blood Brothers but the team keeps evaluating and optimizing the group based on data they find.
3. Incentivizing effort: Blood Brothers gives one point for the first reward and provides increasing returns of points as users get higher.
4. One day, one match: Developers shouldn’t do events too frequently to ensure that events stay fresh and exclusive. Don’t make gamers exhausted.
5. Rewarding effort: Top players usually feel comfortable being at the top of the pyramid. To keep them working, Blood Brothers provides negative incentive from time to time to keep them on their toes.

Mori also shares the “five don’ts” when designing Blood Brothers:

• Don’t play, get lost.
• Don’t get players overwhelmed.
• Don’t get them bored.
• Don’t get them exhausted.
• Don’t let top players feel too secure and comfortable.

Actively managing games as a service

Mori says that a lot of game developers see a game as a product and leave it there once it is developed. But for DeNA, it is all about actively managing games as a service. “[A game] is art, yes, but it is more science than art,” said Mori (see slide 13).

Part of the work for Blood Brothers is done at DeNA Hanoi, the Vietnamese branch formed through the Punch Entertainment team it acquired 18 months ago. He ended his keynote saying:

Tokyo HQ studios rely more and more on the Hanoi studio. We have another
game called History Attacks. Just through this experience, we are making active transfer of our core competency to Southeast Asia. Not only in Hanoi, but we also set up a studio in Singapore.

UPDATE: To make it clear, Blood Brothers is available in China (on mobage.cn and mobage.tw) and Africa (on Mobage West Network)

Indonesian game developer Touchten today released a soccer app for Android that’s proving to be quite a head turner. This soccer game is quite special because it is developed together with legendary Brazilian footballer Zico. For those who don’t know who that is, Zico is the 1980s equivalent of Cristiano Ronaldo. Zico has also made a name for himself in Japan, earning the nickname “God of Soccer” there.

The brand-new game, which is titled Zico, is a casual 3D free kick game that also tells the story of Zico’s footballing career. There are three big stages inside the game located in Brazil, Italy, and Japan, countries where Zico played professional football. For now the only available stage is the first one, with Italy and Japan being released later.

How did an Indonesian game developer get the chance to work with Zico? Touchten CEO Anton Soeharyo said that they were introduced to NDV Consulting’s Fernando Vasconez by a Singaporean friend. They had chemistry straight away and immediately agreed on the deal. The Zico game is made in collaboration with Brazil’s 213 Sports.

During the game launch today, Zico has also made a video greeting to Indonesian soccer fans, particularly those from Indonesia’s largest online community Kaskus, which is Touchten’s launch partner. The game itself will be heavily promoted by Zico in his home country Brazil, including during Brazil’s Confederations Cup, World Cup 2014, and Olympics 2016.

The game will be pre-installed on eight to 10 million mobile devices in Brazil in preparation for the sporting bonanza in the country in the next few years. Zico is first launched in the Japanese market in commemoration of the 20 year anniversary of the J-League.

Anton said at today’s launch event that he wants to show that Indonesians can do something on the global stage. He thanked everyone including Zico and the other Brazilian partners for making this project come true. The Touchten team is actively pursuing other intellectual property products with famous people like Zico.

Zico comes at a price of US$0.99 on Android. You can download it on Google Play. The iOS version will come soon.

Parineeti Chopra and Varun Dhawan add star power to WeChat in India.

Early last month we mentioned that WeChat, the China-made messaging app, had 40 million users outside of the country. Today Tencent (HKG:0700) tells us that this global overseas number has now risen to 50 million registered users beyond China’s borders.

That 50 million figure is from a registered total WeChat user-base that will soon exceed 400 million. Of all those, the company said last week that 195 million are active on WeChat each month. It’s not clear if these overseas users are more or less likely to be active on the social messaging app.

While WeChat is growing pretty well overseas, its outside-of-mainland-China user-base of 50 million is still dwarfed by that of Whatsapp (200 million active users, most of whom are not in mainland China), and by Line’s approximate 105 million registered users outside of Japan (from a total of 150 million signed up to the Japan-made app).

Tencent indicates strong popularity in the iTunes, Android, and Windows Phone app stores in Singapore, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico and the Philippines.

WeChat is being marketed pretty aggressively across Southeast Asia by Tencent, with markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, and Indonesia being targeted with the help of local pop and movie stars in each nation.

The clear market leader for mobile-based shopping in China is Taobao, the iconic consumer-to-consumer shopping mall from Alibaba that’s been rocking China for a decade. In terms of the value of mobile purchases among Chinese consumers, Taobao leads with 75.1 percent market share. Some of that is from the parent company’s B2C marketplace Tmall.

In second place in this sector is Jingdong (formally called 360Buy), which is also China’s second largest B2C e-tailer. Its share of the mobile sector is a lot lower than its share of the overall China B2C shopping market, suggesting that Jingdong – and, indeed, all other such Amazon-like brands – needs to seriously sharpen up its mobile strategy. I notice that, if we again compare mobile spending share with overall market share, it’s only two fashion e-commerce companies that are punching above their weight when it comes to mobile shoppers – own-brand clothing e-store Vancl and specialist handbag site Maibaobao.

Here’s the market share pie chart:

A fairly slow shift to m-commerce

iResearch estimates that Q1 2013 will see Chinese mobile netizens spending a total of RMB 26.6 billion ($4.29 billion) in all of these e-commerce companies. That indicates that 2013 will indeed be the biggest ever year for mobile commerce in China – possibly exceeding the research firm’s earlier estimates of $15.7 billion for the entire year:

In Q1 2013, we see that PC-based shopping still dominates the country’s e-commerce sector , but mobile is rising fast, anticipated to reach 7.6 percent of purchases in the first quarter:

If you can handle any more massive numbers you might like to know that China’s entire e-commerce industry looks set to be worth $177 billion in 2013. Keep an eye on our ‘e-commerce in China’ tag to get more news on this massive market.

(Source: iResearch)

Last Saturday and the Saturday before, Vietnam held its third ever Mobile Day in the country to throngs of people. All told, over 2,500 people attended the events with 1,500 in Hanoi and 1,000 in Saigon. To say the least, there’s a big buzz for mobile in Vietnam and the industry is only going to get more crowded. Some of the presentations were pretty cool, so I’ll give you a quick taste of a few that caught my eye.

Presentations covered some very key concerns for mobile developers in Vietnam, like memory management for Android applications; four secrets to success for app monetization; building an online community and getting to the top of the App Store and Play Store; launching a mobile game in just three months; the issue of mobile payments. We’ll embed the slideshows of three of the many informative presentations here. You can click on the links below for more.

12 things you can learn from mobile products made in Vietnam

Zalo challenges foreign chat apps

Another interesting talk came from VNG’s Dao Ngoc Thanh who covered many of the technical aspects of Zalo and its growth over the past year from just a few users to over two million:

Going mobile and embracing mobile ads

Nguyen Minh Quy, from NovaAds, also gave some interesting insights about mobile ad networks. His presentation showed some really interesting numbers on the growth of mobile and what the opportunities are:

Next year, the event is sure to be even bigger with mobile growth growing even faster than last year and more companies jumping into the Vietnamese market before it’s too late.

There were plenty of other really awesome presentations at the event from across the board, but most of them were a bit more technical, so the slides in these will give you a quick good idea of the mobile landscape in Vietnam. You can find all the links to presentations from Hanoi and Saigon on the Mobile Day homepage.

In my first interview as part of our new student entrepreneurship series, I speak with SpeakingMax.cn co-founder Jason Lin (pictured right) on his thoughts of stopping school to create a startup. He tells us of his journey as a Singaporean student venturing into Chinese waters and gives words of wisdom from what he’s learnt thus far.

Tell us more about yourself.

Jason: I am the co-founder at SpeakingMax and am also in my final year at National University of Singapore majoring in political science, with a minor in technopreneurship at Tsinghua University under the NUS Overseas Colleges Program (NOC). I took an additional year off on top of my NOC program to embark on SpeakingMax.

What does SpeakingMax do, and what is your role?

Jason: SpeakingMax is a new and unconventional English language learning tool. Our team aims to revolutionize mobile English education and pioneer the future of mobile english learning in China through the use of unique content and innovative learning methods. Users, through thousands of recorded real-life situations, would be able to learn how to speak close to how a native American would.

Also [being] the VP of product at SpeakingMax, I manage almost all aspects of product development, from day-to-day operations, website management, business development, to fund-raising.

SpeakingMax.cn was also one of the finalists at Beijing’s Global Mobile Internet Conference G-Startup Growth Stage competition (pictured right).

What were the challenges faced at SpeakingMax?

Jason: There are three problems faced while penetrating into the Chinese online education market (SpeakingMax.cn screenshots below):

1. Chinese habit of learning online. Most users are used to a classroom education and think that one-to-one and face-to-face would be the most effective way to learn. The general perception of online education is that it cannot be seamless and effective online. Until they are in contact and exposed to the idea of online education, they will not realize how effective it can be. In fact, the Chinese market for online education is still in its infant stages. Korea turned to online education back in 2008. Offline language education firms such as Wall Street English have been constantly fighting a price war but are now eventually losing their Korean market share to online players.
2. Online paying habits and trust issues. Most Chinese do not have the habit of paying large amounts online for intangible goods, services such as ours. Also, people tend to be more wary when it comes to paying online due to the high number of fraud cases in online transactions. We do get calls time to time asking if we are a real operating company, and if there’s the possibility that the company could close down. Also, it gets difficult to make payments online. There are too many different restrictions and conditions for credit cards, such as the amount you can pay per day for different banks. It is also not a habit to pay online using credit cards.
3. Slow internet speeds. All I can say is, welcome to China! Slow internet speeds and bad 3G networks. But we are looking forward to better improvements in internet speeds in the future.

How are your user demographics?

Jason: Our users are mostly white-collar professionals in the bigger cities within China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. There are three reasons for this: One, such cities tend to be more cosmopolitan and have a greater influx of foreign talents. Hence there is a higher demand and need to learn the English language. Two, they tend to have higher spending power, and are more willing to spend on self-enrichment courses which they believe will give them an edge over others in the future. Three, the internet conditions in these cities tend to be better. They tend to be the early adopters or early majority within the adoption curve, and are more receptive when it comes to trying out new technology.

What is your revenue model?

Jason: It is a subscription-based model, which averages out to about RMB 2,000 (US$326) to RMB 3,000 (US$489) per year.

What are the upcoming plans at SpeakingMax that you can share with us?

Jason: We are focused on expanding our user-base in Mainland China before moving to other markets. We will also be expanding our product line, adding a variety of online teaching tools to learning english.

Was it difficult navigating the Chinese waters as a foreigner?

Jason: Yes and no. Ultimately, I am a Singaporean Chinese and look just like anyone [there]. I also have Singapore’s bilingual education system to thank for being fluent in both English and Chinese. In fact, if your Chinese is good enough, they will see you just like one of them.

But the way they do business is still very different. Singapore, as a whole, is still very much influenced by the West. So there is definitely a learning curve in terms of the business culture. It is pretty much a taboo to have confrontations. People hardly say no upfront and in your face.

As much as foreigners may hold an advantage knowing a different language, often the Chinese market is so big that firms do not have to expand overseas in order to be successful. Many of the local firms here are looking to expand within the Chinese territory even before thinking about international expansion plans.

But of course, being a foreigner gives a different slant and fresher perspective on matters, which might blend into a nice fusion of new and innovative ideas to solving problems.

Not to forget, dealing with business in China, as cliché as it may sound, depends on guanxi (关系), which means the connections and networks that you have. As a foreigner, you may not have those kind of renmai (人脉) and contacts, so it is really helpful if your co-founders have that for a start. Be careful never to close doors on people and keep your options open, because you will never know one day you might just need it.

Perhaps one thing I learned that I’d like to pass to the readers at Tech in Asia would be one given to me when I first arrived in Beijing in 2011. A taxi driver said this to me: 办法总比困难多. Short and simple, but it meant a lot to me. It means there are many ways of solving a problem, and one should always think of different methods should one not work. We as Singaporeans are often too used to being black and white, in its absolutes. But we need to acknowledge that there are in-betweens, or what we call gray areas. It depends on the context to the way we solve problems in China, but I guess that should be applicable even in other countries as well.

I understand you are still a student. What made you decide to stop your studies temporarily for this venture?

Jason: Two reasons for this.

One, it was an opportunity that came knocking on my door. The market, when we first entered, was just timely and might be one that if we miss it, it will never come again. Coincidentally, a couple of days back, my team and I were looking back on the past efforts and realized that we had it spot on. We’re pretty glad we entered because the industry is currently at its peak.

Two, I wanted to be part of the early development phase of the product, where I could participate in all aspects of the business from scratch. Most of the my other partners (team pictured below) were much older and more experienced, and I saw it as a privilege and an exponential learning opportunity where I could obtain much from this stint. It saves a lot of trouble since they have “been there, done that”, where I can easily learn from their mistakes.

Would you encourage other students to stop school temporarily, as you did?

As I mentioned earlier, there’s no definite yes and no. It depends on the situation.

For my case, I am left with a semester to complete at school, where I can make sure that the business is smooth before completing my studies. I think the team that you’re going to work with matters as well. If you are not contributing much and will be very much replaceable, then there’s not much point.

Whether one should leave the comfort of his or her home to embark on an entrepreneurial pursuit overseas, depends on your personal goals and [from] weighing the opportunity costs.

Would you give up your studies for this?

Jason: No. I thought about it before, people have been saying I will lose an opportunity if I don’t give up my studies for this. On the contrary, I see it as a lost opportunity if I give up my studies for this.

Yes, there are a few successful cases, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, but there are also many examples out there who have quit and failed are not being taken seriously. For every successful entrepreneur, there are at least 10 out there who have failed. Why look at the one, and not the millions?

In my opinion, getting a degree isn’t just a piece of paper. The entire process of learning, co-curricular activities, and being in a strong student network are part of the package of a student life. For instance, being on the NOC program at NUS has put me in this opportunity to take my career further. Without this platform, I would not be exposed to such opportunities. You will only be able to take part in such programs which are uniquely available to students.

Would you encourage others to give up their studies to pursue entrepreneurship?

Jason: This might sound a little unrelated, but I would think that finishing what you started comes as a form of responsibility to your parents. How I would put it is that a society is made up of many basic family units. Fulfilling my role within a family unit is a good indicator as to how I would fare within the society. Hence, no. I will not encourage others to give up their studies to pursue [entrepreneurship].

Having the perseverance to complete the degree, to me, is also a form of mental endurance which I think is a skillset required during the startup journey. So when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

This is part of Tech in Asia’s series on student entrepreneurship.

Credit: TheGlobeandMail.com

Path, a social network that is only accessible through iPhone and Android devices, has been growing in popularity in Indonesia for its more-private circle of friends (unlike Facebook it limits its users to 150 friends).

Credit: InternetWorldStats.com

But what about Facebook? Indonesia is famous for its Facebook frenzy; as the statistics above show, almost all internet users in Indonesia are Facebook users too. Some people say that Indonesians like to have as many connections as possible, which explains Facebook’s popularity, but Indonesian today are increasingly getting overwhelmed by the unknown brands and ubiquitous ads and promotions on their Facebook walls.

So when Path introduced its more private social network to Indonesian consumers, it is not surprising that Indonesians responded to it. When I asked friends what features they like most on Path, most of them said they liked to post photos and add what they are listening to, as the app’s “smart journal” concept easily lets users choose one of the following moments (photo/video, people, place, music, thought, sleep/awake) to share. That really is something new and different from Facebook.

But really, what makes posting a photo on Path so different from posting a photo on Instagram? Will they stop using Instagram, Foursquare,Twitter, Line, and Facebook once they start using Path?

Not really. In my experience, avid users of social media in Indonesia on average still have four to seven social networking apps installed and used actively on their smartphones, and indeed there are four social media services among Indonesia’s 30 most popular smartphone apps. Adopting one app doesn’t mean abandoning others. With that said, it’s not uncommon for Indonesian trends to shift rapidly, and that shapes the ubiquitous usage of multiple social media apps on their smartphones. Indonesian youth simply like to enhance their interactions with friends, colleagues, even their own parents in new ways. So when an app becomes trendy, everyone installs it to see what their friends are saying there. But by the same token, if it becomes passe, that’s when it’s going to get uninstalled.

With the great number of social media users in Indonesia and the ingrained culture of Indonesian consumers installing new apps as their friends do, there is no doubt that Path can continue to grow here in the short term. The challenge for Path, and other emerging social apps, is to retain all these Indonesian users once it has got them and to prevent itself from being discarded when the next trendy social media site comes along and people’s friends start to move there.

Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma singing at Taobao’s 10th anniversary celebration

With founder Jack Ma stepping down from the role of CEO, skeptics will doubt whether Alibaba can continue to grow strongly without its founder’s leadership. It’s perhaps normal to have such a reaction given that the founders are usually the most important people in a company.

Ma has been an inspirational figure for folks inside and outside of the company. Alibaba without him in the CEO’s seat just doesn’t feel complete. But is it going to have a major impact on Alibaba? I don’t think so. In fact, I believe Alibaba’s future is brighter than before. Here are four reasons why that’s true:

China hasn’t reached its full potential

With over 1.3 billion in population and 564 million internet users (about 42 percent penetration) China’s internet is still considered young. Alibaba has grown with China’s internet boom and will continue to grow because there’s still so much room for growth in China. Though the annual growth rate for e-commerce market size in China is expected to slow year by year, Alibaba should experience healthy growth over the next two to three years. Emarketer forecasts that by the end of 2013, there will be 271 million Chinese spending $265.1 billion on B2C e-commerce platforms and by 2016 there will be 423 million online shoppers in China spending a total of $457.6 billion on B2C platforms. Note that this doesn’t count C2C platforms like Taobao. The Economist also wrote that “by 2020 China’s e-commerce market is forecast to be bigger than the existing markets in America, Britain, Japan, Germany and France combined.” I think you get the point; China is big now and it will only get bigger.

State-owned news agency Xinhua said recently that the growth of other e-commerce giants like eBay and Amazon has plateaued and thus implied that Alibaba could face the same problem. But both companies originate from the US, which already has a matured internet ecosystem with a 78.2 percent online penetration rate back in 2011, according to World Bank data. Even though eBay and Amazon have already expanded outside of the US, their combined sales still can’t match Alibaba’s.

Alibaba’s Taobao has only just started thinking international so the potential is surely there. Plus, the local Chinese market remains lucrative as more internet users jump on board and become more affluent. The market conditions seem great for strong growth for Alibaba.

Forward thinking, international ambition

Alibaba has invested in some high-potential companies that could fuse well with its e-commerce business. In recent months, Alibaba has invested in China’s popular microblog Sina Weibo and also mapping service company Autonavi. Surely, Alibaba must have thought about how to bring e-commerce to the next level, be it social commerce or location-based commerce. My colleague Charlie has penned his opinions here and here on why the deal makes sense and I encourage you to give them a read.

As a PC first company, Alibaba has had to adapt to mobile, and has done so fairly early and well. Taobao, for example, is extremely dominant not only on PC-based shopping but also on mobile. Plus, the company is extremely data driven and continues to invest and make decisions based on data. A lot of people perhaps don’t know that Alibaba is sort of like a combination of services of Amazon + eBay + Kakaku, which is Japan’s most popular price comparison search engine. It runs a series of e-commerce and online services including Alibaba.com (B2B), Tmall (B2B2C), Taobao (C2C), Alipay (e-payment), Aliyun (cloud computing), and eTao (price search). That covers a lot of bases, and they all translate easily to mobile.

While fighting to stay at the frontline in China e-commerce, Alibaba also has ambitions of going international. Its initial strategy to bring Taobao abroad is clear: target Chinese users outside mainland China. Naturally, Hong Kong and Taiwan are the markets that it has started to expand into without facing too much of a language barrier. Malaysia and Singapore are next with the latter serving as a testbed for how it will deal with an English audience. Many Chinese in Southeast Asia are excited to be able to buy things on Taobao.

The company mission, values, and culture

I have been following Alibaba’s progress closely for the last two years. The company mission is “To make it easy to do business anywhere.” One of its values puts the customers first. However, I was initially a little skeptical.

But watching the company long enough I came to realize that its actions reflect its message. I was mostly convinced after watching Porter Erisman’s documentary film Crocodile in the Yangtze, a movie documentary on Alibaba through Porter’s lens during his eight-year stint at the company. The mission that Jack Ma set in 1995 in his failed China Pages venture remains consistent up to today. Ma wanted to build a company to help China’s internet industry grow. Today, as internet becomes more mainstream, Alibaba wants to be the online platform to make doing business easy for people.

That culture seems to be sticking. Jonathan Lu, who took over from Ma as CEO this month, communicated the same idea in his first speech as CEO: to make customers the company’s number one priority. I have had the chance to visit the company several times myself and I’m fairly confident that without Ma, the company will still be guided by the same mission, values, and culture.

Jack Ma isn’t going anywhere, yet

Even if Alibaba were to go off course, Ma will be there to steer the course right as chairman. I’m not sure how involved Ma will be, but I’m betting that he will be very active to ensure that the company he founded is safe and sound under Lu’s leadership. At least in the short term, I suspect Ma will still be sticking around to help make strategic decisions.

Admittedly, Lu didn’t give a convincing speech during the closing part of Taobao’s 10th anniversary celebration earlier this month. I’m not sure how Alibaba’s employees felt after his speech, but I do know that people were leaving a couple of minutes into it, with many deciding to leave after Ma’s speech. Lu’s oratory skills pale in comparison to Ma’s. But then again, Ma personally picked Lu as Alibaba’s CEO. He may not be a great speaker, but he probably can lead and execute well. The future will tell.

Conclusion

All in all, I believe that the market conditions are right for growth and Alibaba has an admirable mission and set of values that has guided the company to success over the last 14 years. It should continue to do well, even without Ma as CEO.

That said, what I suspect might be poisonous to its culture is the eventual IPO that Alibaba Group is probably preparing. With Wall Street pressure on higher margins and profits, I don’t have total confidence that the company can truly stick to its values by putting its customers first.

Nonetheless, it will be great to witness Alibaba, a made-in-China internet company, publicly listed – in a massive offering that might value it as high as over $100 billion – as it marks another milestone for China and the company. It will also provide the long-awaited returns for its investors and employees who have put in so much trust and perspiration to make Alibaba the great company it is today.

A few months ago we spotted that Tencent’s WeChat app was censoring certain ‘sensitive’ political words. That turned out to be temporary, but the company was clearly capable and ready to implement such blocking. Today it emerges that Japan-made Line app is primed and ready to censor users of its social messaging service as well.

Line app contains a string of code that looks for “bad words” and connects back to a server to cross-check those terms with a list of politically sensitive words. That directory contains a lot of inconvenient truths that Chinese authorities would like air-brushed from history, such as recent revelations about the personal wealth of Party leaders, and historical incidents such as a certain something that happened at Tian’anmen Square.

The Line censorship machine was found by Twitter user @hirakujira and detailed by TheNextWeb this morning. The word filter is currently not activated, but as with WeChat’s it seems all ready to be turned on at any moment. If it were turned on and a sensitive word were to be sent via the app, it would be blocked and the user would see an error message saying “Your message contains sensitive words, please adjust and send again.” @hirakujira was able to hack the app to replicate that scenario:

This is what the code looks like within the app (and here’s the current list of banned words):

Watching you chat

Made by NHN (KRX:035420) by teams in both Japan and South Korea, Line currently has just over 150 million users worldwide. Line launched officially in China in December last year with the Chinese name ‘Lian Wo’, but there are no statistics available for its progress in the country. On the plus side, this bit of censorship shows that NHN Line is serious about succeeding in China, because that kind of suppression is a fact of being an online or offline media business in the country.

The findings seem to suggest that Line app is monitoring all of its users around the globe despite the filter not being turned on. That’s likely the case with WeChat as well. So while WeChat and Line are not technically censored at present – not even in China – it’s clearly ready to do so. Note that in both apps it applies to Chinese text only.

For users in China who have signed up for either Line or WeChat via SMS, it means that authorities can easily piece together your full identity. That’s because purchasing a SIM card in the country can only be done (in theory) by showing your national ID card or passport, which is then recorded.

China’s most heavily censored social network is undoubtedly Sina Weibo, which is hit with directives from authorities almost daily on what it should erase from the Twitter-like service.

(Source: TheNextWeb)

Izak Jenie (right) with other Nexian Selular Group Directors

At 43 years old, Izak Jenie is still talking about new business ideas and starting projects. He just can’t stop. This is a man who has started more than ten companies in Indonesia, beginning at age nineteen. Most of them failed, but those that survived are renowned companies in Indonesia today and are generating tens of millions of dollars in yearly revenue. Some very successful companies Izak started include Jatis Group, Jatis Mobile, and Metrotech Makmur Sejahtera (MMS).

Coming from an average income family, Izak was hungry for success. His first startup was a computer graphics company launched in 1989 during his university days. Computers were not widely available then and there was no internet. Izak was lucky enough to get a PC at home and he subsequently taught himself digital graphic design. Being one of the first few guys in Indonesia with this skill, he got lucrative projects from advertising firms. He was able to pay his tuition fees with some cash left over to treat friends for meals. However, competition grew and his margins thinned. He got out of the business in its fourth year.

The early web

After graduation, his friends were able to get high-paying corporate jobs quickly, but it took Izak nine months to get a job as a graphic designer because most companies hired based on academic results. He worked for one year but realized that he didn’t like the routine corporate job. While at the office, Izak would often work on other tech projects that interest him. One was called the Free World Dial-Up service, it would allow people to call overseas using the internet and save on overseas call charges. It’s basically exactly what Skype does today, but Izak was working on that concept in 1995.

That same year, he read a book titled Going Digital by Nicholas Negroponte and it made him realize the world was going to change. He quit his job and started an online bookstore. Concurrently, he also started a few other companies with different partners. These startups all failed. Poor timing and partnership disputes were the causes of their demise; for example, the online bookstore flopped because there weren’t many people online in the mid-nineties and almost no one did their shopping there.

Despite failing numerous times, Izak never gave up. Together with Jusuf Sjariffudin and Ishak Surjana, he co-founded Jatis Group, an IT consulting company in 1997.

One of his early employees there said:

Before joining Jatis, I asked Izak why this (Jatis) will be a success? Izak answered nonchalantly that he had failed in so many previous companies and in each failure, he learnt something from it. As such, he had already learnt how to fail. Jatis will not be a failure.

And indeed, Jatis became a hugely successful company. It provides IT solutions to banks, telcos, payment companies and other corporations. Its products include internet banking, mobile banking, and tax systems. At one point, more than 80 percent of Indonesia’s mutual funds traders were using Jatis’s trading platform. The company started with ten employees and eventually grew to over 500 by the end of the third year. In the same year, it also received $10 million from 3i, a well established VC firm from the UK, for it to expand regionally to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines.

Going mobile

In 2002, together with Erik Ridzal, Izak started Jatis Mobile, a subsidiary company under Jatis Group. Jatis Mobile deals with ringtones, location-based services and mobile content. As he already had good partnerships with local telcos through their work with Jatis Group, Jatis Mobile was able to make lucrative partnerships with telcos and was profitable from day one. Jatis’ group revenue had already hit $40 million.

In 2010, Izak started Metrotech Makmur Sejahtera (MMS). MMS’s core business is to build a messaging application on Nexian mobile devices, which are hugely popular in Indonesia. Izak brought in Nexian’s owner as a partner and together they launched Nexian Messaging. The platform attracted five million users in eight months, half of which were active users. Now, it is recording more than three billion messages sent per month and is still growing twenty percent month-on-month. In 2011, Singapore’s Si2i acquired a majority share of Nexian Group for $175 million.

Advice for young entrepreneurs

Izak says his failures are the cornerstone of the success of his latest three companies. Some key things he learned from those failures:

Getting good partners for startup is crucial. I like Warren Buffet’s investment theory for this. If you know from the outside that there may be trouble, then don’t get involved. Because once you get in, it’s difficult to get out. Similarly, in finding partners, if you foresee potential problems in working with them, then don’t get started.

I wish I had mentors in my early days. That way, I could have avoided some failures and attained success earlier. After going through so much, I can now easily think through the whole business cycle and identify potential pitfalls and opportunities. That comes from experience and it is what young entrepreneurs lack.

Managing expectations and cash-flow is important. You should always discuss with the team about the business outlook. Whether it will reach profitability in six months, one year or three years, we need to discuss it upfront. With expectations set, people are then able to plan their finances and focus on the actual work. If not, financial problems can be brought back to the family and cause tension among the team and their families. If you cannot meet your expectations and you make families suffer, then you should stop and go back to a corporate job.

When starting on something, I always like to think and work on something new. It’s a bit risky but that is what entrepreneurship is all about. If you do it right and if you are focused enough, you will get somewhere. Nobody is stupid enough to start a business to fail, if you fail you are not focused enough. Many entrepreneurs already know the plan to succeed, but along the way, they fall for distractions to make quick money. In my twenty-plus years of experience as an entrepreneur, I met all kinds of entrepreneurs: the very calm ones, the very aggressive ones, all kinds of them. Regardless of the style, those who got somewhere are those who are highly focused.

Izak is currently still the main man at MMS. Despite the success, he just doesn’t seem to stop; he co-founded a new startup, M-saku, a mobile payment system for Visa cardholders in Indonesia. The kind of resilience he has shown when times are hard, and the passion he has exhibited through his 25 years of entrepreneurship, are exemplary. This is what young entrepreneurs in Asia should learn from: to see entrepreneurship as a long-term journey rather than gunning for a quick exit. To help younger entrepreneurs, Izak dedicates some of his time to be a mentor at Founders Institute Jakarta.

Izak Jenie (third from right) with some of the Jatis team during a dinner.

But among other things, the company seems to be troubled by the apparent personal problems of its CEO. Sohu head honcho Charles Zhang only this year returned from a yearlong sabbatical taken for personal reasons. In an interview published by Bloomberg last week, Zhang said of the sabbatical:

I missed out on some things, but that’s life. My goals in life have changed, and work is very important now.

But investors could be forgiven for wondering how focused Zhang really is on work when just a couple months ago (well after he returned from his sabbatical) he told an interviewer:

I think there’s something wrong with me. I truly have everything, and yet I am so miserable. Happiness is totally unrelated to how much money you have.

He also spoke about how success had changed him into a perfectionist and maybe even made him a little crazy — he says he thought he could live to age 150. One has to wonder, then, what exactly happened between March, when he gave that interview, and this month when he talked to Bloomberg. Has he really gone from being totally miserable and worried about success to being focused completely on the business and success again? It seems hard to believe, and it also makes you wonder what Zhang will be saying a couple months from now.

You also have to wonder where Sohu and Sogou are going to be in a couple of months, if the latter even still exists. Bloomberg’s report suggests that Sogou is looking for strategic investment to challenge Baidu more strongly in the search and advertising markets, but the Chinese press has been full of rumors that the company is on the verge of being bought out by Baidu or Qihoo (something that no one seems willing to directly deny).

So is Sogou about to use the $500 million it has in cash to take a shot at grabbing a larger slice of the search market, or is it about to get absorbed by competitors? Is Charles Zhang back and ready for action again or is he still fighting whatever personal demons led to his sabbatical and his more recent admission to being “so miserable”? I have no idea.

I do know, however, that it would be foolish to write off the company given that it came up with what’s probably the most unique search product I’ve seen in the past year. Unfortunately, it seems search input hasn’t yet caught on the way I think it could — and perhaps should — but nevertheless it’s a revolutionary idea and a company that can produce this kind of innovation may have a good shot at grabbing a bigger slice of the search engine market over the long run. I’m not sure what the heck is going on behind closed doors at Sohu, but even so, I wouldn’t bet against it.

It’s an issue that seems to pop up for every developing social platform that doesn’t spell things out clearly at first: who owns all the content that’s posted to the platform? That’s a question that Chinese WeChat users — especially users of WeChat Open Platform — have been asking since last week, when Open Platform user Wu Hanqing posted on Sina Weibo about the following clause he’d discovered in WeChat Open Platform’s user agreement (our translation):

The intellectual property rights for the content provided by Tencent on this platform (including but not limited to websites, text, images, audio, video, charts, etc.) belong to Tencent in their entirety, but users of this platform already have an exception to [this] IP law prior to posting their content.

If you didn’t completely follow that, well, neither did anyone else. It sounds a bit like Tencent is saying that it owns all content posted to WeChat Open Platform, but that content creators have an exception that allows them to use the content they create, too. It’s vaguely-worded enough that even in the original Chinese, people have had trouble figuring out what it means. “Does this imply the IP rights of the things I’ve written all ultimately belong to Tencent?” asked Wu. “I naively thought the content I was working so hard to write belonged to me!”

Surprisingly, Tencent doesn’t seem able to offer a clear answer either. An IT Times reporter contacted the company for clarification, and was told (this quote is from the article, not necessarily a direct quote of what the Tencent representative said):

The clause primarily concerns the intellectual property that Tencent provides as [the operator of] the platform. As to users’ legal rights to the intellectual property of their content, Tencent protects its legal rights.

Obviously, this doesn’t really clear up the question of who ultimately owns WeChat content. We’ve contacted Tencent for clarification as well, and will update this story when we hear back, but we also thought it might be prudent to check the terms and conditions for WeChat globally. These may differ from the terms users of the app must agree to in China, but the global terms don’t seem to address the question of who owns the content users create and transmit through WeChat one way or the other. Hmm.

The one thing that is clear is that users overwhelmingly (and unsurprisingly) think they should own the rights to the content they create. In a poll conducted on TechWeb, more than 80 percent of respondents said users should own their own WeChat content, and only 6 percent feel the content should belong to Tencent.

China tech watchers may recall a similar debate about Sina Weibo unfolding after a magazine stole a writer’s weibo posts and republished them without permission. That scuffle went all the way to the courts, but ultimately led to the decision that Weibo posts are the sole property of their creator.

And ultimately, the law may decide who owns WeChat content too, at least in China. Legal experts contacted by the IT Times suggested that under Chinese law, the clause in question might well be considered unreasonable and thus unenforceable, even though users have agreed to those terms. With that said, no one has actually taken this to court yet, so there’s no way to be sure how a judge would rule.

It’s also not clear how international users fit in. Tech in Asia has its own WeChat account; does the content we post there now belong to Tencent? I’m genuinely not sure, but I can tell you for certain that if it does we’re not going to be posting there much longer, and thats why I suspect that whatever Tencent originally intended, it will soon come out and say that all content posted to WeChat by users belongs to the user who posted it. To do anything less would be to sentence its own monetization plans to an early death. After all, who the hell is going to post news or games on the platform if that means sacrificing exclusive IP ownership rights? Absolutely no one.

(IT Times via TechWeb)

With China Mobile thought to be keen to launch its 4G network nationwide later this year, the behemoth telco is prepping its biggest ever city-wide 4G trial to start soon – this time in Shanghai.

But of the metrpolis’ 23 million inhabitants, only 5,000 Shanghai citizens will be selected to take part in China Mobile’s (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) trial, which will begin on June 1st. The telco already has 700 outdoor TD-LTE base stations in place across the city, complemented by 300 indoor ones focused on transportation and business hubs. That should cover most of the sprawling city.

Shanghai-based testers will either make use of 4G-equipped smartphones or 4G mobile wifi dongles.

Sun Yun, the product manager of that telco’s local subsidiary, Shanghai Mobile, told Chinese tech blogs that while the company is not ready to reveal 4G tariffs for users, “4G rates will not be higher than for 3G, and they could be cheaper”.

China Mobile has been doing trials in smaller cities for the past couple of years.

Since China Mobile is using the country’s homegrown TD-LTE band, the carrier’s 4G network is not compatible with any current iPhone or iPad models. But TD-LTE will be rolled out by other carriers worldwide, so there will be more and more quality smartphones available that support the network in due course. Those include handsets from LG and Huawei, with Nokia, Samsung, and perhaps even Apple likely to support the protocol in future.

As we reported earlier this month, China Mobile will invest US$6.7 billion to build 200,000 4G base stations that will cover 344 Chinese cities this year. Though there’s no clear date from China’s tech ministry, MIIT, on a nationwide rollout, it seems that China Mobile is being given an unfair advantage and a head-start in rolling out its TD-LTE services; rivals China Unicom and China Telecom will likely not receive any permits for their FDD-LTE networks until months or possibly even a year after China Mobile.

(Source: New Business Daily – article in Chinese)

Earlier this month I wrote about Tappxi, the Android app that makes taking a taxi in Vietnam safer and easier. This week, let’s look at Aloxeom. It’s a web-based service that connects passengers with motorbike taxi drivers for a ride in Hanoi, Vietnam. “Alo” means hello, and “xe om” are the Vietnamese words for motorbike taxi (literally meaning hugging vehicle).

So the service is like this, if I step out of my house and I need a ride to the supermarket, but I don’t want to take an expensive taxi, I can call the operator or via the website at Aloxeom and they’ll send the nearest motorbike taxi guy straight to me. Such motorbike taxis in Vietnam are everywhere, and they’re on most of the street corners of the main streets of Vietnam.

The problem with getting a moto-driver is that sometimes, when you’re off the main streets, it’s harder to find them and it’s always a hassle to haggle on the price. You never know how much it costs to get to the next district or five kilometers away. Thus Aloxeom solves this in two ways: the service has over 800 motorbike drivers in their database. All of the drivers are mapped out on their system along with their phone number, so if you tell the Aloxeom operator where you are, the Aloxeom database will send the closes moto-driver.

The cool thing about the service is that Aloxeom doesn’t actually employ the drivers, it’s an add-on service that allows drivers who already have their own personal business to tap into another network and avenue for revenue. But Aloxeom also guarantees quality and reliability. It’s sort of like the taxi-booking apps we’ve seen spring up around the world.

Aloxeom’s own people have interviewed every one of the 1,000 drivers that applied to the service and after a few months they had to remove a few from the system to keep the quality high. Aloxeom makes sure that every ride is VND 6,000 ($.30) per kilometer and sends an SMS to the driver and the passenger to confirm the right pay. Aloxeom takes 15 percent of the cut for every ride.

I talked to founder and CEO of Aloxeom, May Huy Mao, who told me that:

In the past, there have been companies that have tried to enter this space by putting GPS machines on the motorbikes or other extra services, but they didn’t gain much traction. We’re focused quite simply on making it easier to catch a motorbike taxi and calculating the cost without being taken advantage of.

The team of five has only been working on this project since early March and is looking to grow it into Ho Chi Minh city and Danang by the end of the year. I’m excited, and I’ll certainly use it the next time I’m up in the capital.

We’ve also written about a similar startup in Indonesia, called Go-Jek.

Hong Kong-based social fashion and commerce platform Viss has received a round of strategic seed investment from Clive Ng and Christian Remrod via their company 8 Plus Holding.

Clive Ng is the chairman and founder of AsiaContent, MTV Japan, China Cablecom, and Fashion Networks International. While Christian Remrod is the managing director of Fairchild Fashion Media (Conde Nast Group) and the founder of Fashion Networks. No financial details of the funding were disclosed.

Founded by Ivy Wong and Leo Ku last September, Viss has recorded 2.8 million monthly unique visitors (MUV) and 18 million monthly page views to date. It also has apps for iPhone and Android (pictured below). When we last reported about the startup back in January this year, it had only 600,000 unique visitors and 3.5 million monthly page views. This means that the startup has grown by more than over 400 percent in terms of unique visitors.

Perhaps that’s due to the well-made and sleek product produced by the team which got featured on Apple App Store’s ‘New and Noteworthy’ and ‘What’s Hot’ sections in 14 Asian countries.

Ivy Wong, founder at Viss shared more of her thoughts today:

Viss aims to rewire the connection between curated user-generated content, brands engagement, and commerce. This is extremely powerful as we are hitting the sweet spots on generating brand awareness and engagement and conversion.

With the new funding and key connections, Viss plans to expand its geographic reach, work with brands for engagement and commerce partnerships, and also establish global media partnerships. “Not only we want to make it super fun and easy for fashionistas to share their looks and stories, we also want to reward them with both exposures and brand partnership opportunities,” Ivy added.

One other such social fashion app we looked at recently is Zoolook, which is made by a team split across Tokyo and Hong Kong.

Get the Viss apps for iOS or Android.

EatAds, the Singapore-based startup that’s an online platform for buying and selling offline adverts, has today revealed that it has entered the Indian market. Just as the online ads industry has been revolutionized by such services, EatAds aims to do the same for outdoor and out-of-home (OOH) media.

It enters India with one major company already onboard in the form of Times OOH, which is a local powerhouse in outdoor, road-side and landmark advertising. EatAds already has over 100 media owners listed in Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Thailand, and now India as well. The platform has over 6,000 outdoor ad listings.

EatAds co-founder Nigel Hembrow says in today’s announcement:

Being such a large and fragmented country, we had always suspected a need for EatAds in India, and over past months all the India buyers and sellers we have met here have validated this need. We’re excited to be working with our Delhi- based partner to grow our user base in India.

You might recall that EatAds raised seed funding last December. The startup got back into action in October 2012 after remaining dormant for a while as co-founder John Fearon was focusing on building Dropmysite and Dropmyemail. Now EatAds’s expansion is beginning all over again having previously scrapped some of its earlier overseas moves.

After today’s India launch, EatAds is teasing more expansion in the region which will be announced soon. I get the feeling it’ll involve Myanmar and Cambodia or some other market where the outdoor ads industry is fragmented, under-utilized, and somewhat chaotic.

The core EatAds team: Nigel (left) and Dhruv.

Food delivery site Foodpanda has been making headlines a lot recently. First with a $20 million financing round and then a rebrand in Vietnam. Today, Foodpanda has announced a merger with former rival Singapore Dine, though the terms of the deal haven’t been made public.

The Rocket Internet-backed startup claims to be “the market leading food delivery company in Singapore” with this merger.

Kiren Tanna, CEO Asia at Foodpanda in Singapore, said about the merger:

The merge with Singapore Dine makes us by far the market leader in the Singaporean food delivery market. Customers who want to order at Singapore Dine will be redirected to Foodpanda.sg in future to access the broadest culinary variety from more than 200 restaurants delivering island-wide. We are very happy that we can offer the leading and best food delivery platform in Singapore.

Singapore Dine started up in 2010, promising to offer “the widest index of eateries in Singapore, including buffets, coffee places, hawker centers, restaurants and more.” All those delivery options now transfer over to Foodpanda.

Foodpanda operates in nine countries across Asia.

Meituan’s T-shirts for gay couples.

Today and tomorrow is a sort of Chinese Valentine’s, so it’s an apt time for couples to be thinking of one another. That explains the timing behind China’s most surprising daily deal being offered by a Groupon-style site. The homegrown deals startup Meituan is offering a free trip to Vancouver, Canada, for one gay couple to go get legally married in that country.

The deal is being offered for free (see it here) to one Chinese gay couple. While Canada has legalized same-sex marriage, China hasn’t, so the resultant marriage certificate will be just a fancy piece of paper once the couple returns to Big Red.

Meituan’s free deal will cover travel expenses and one night of accommodation for the couple in Vancouver. Only one couple can win, with a draw to be held tomorrow to choose a winner. So far, nearly 80,000 people have entered to win.

As the site points out, same-sex couples do not need a Canadian residence permit or any such paperwork in order to get hitched there, and it can be done in a “very convenient” way on a tourist visa. Other cities and nations have been encouraging gay tripper tourism like this. I’m not sure why Meituan chose Canada over the US, but perhaps it’s because maple syrup is awesome – or because a wedding day can be rather ruined by being shot in the head.

As a sign that China’s youngsters are a lot more open than the traditionalism displayed by authorities, Meituan’s deals page hails “true love, regardless of gender” and calls on gay Chinese to “bravely get married”. Last year Meituan gave out free rainbow T-shirts for the two Chinese Valentine’s days. Today is the day for men to profess their love, while tomorrow is for women to reciprocate.

Meituan is China’s largest indie deals site right now with 13.1 percent market share in the highly fractured market. It pulls in over $150 million per month in transactions.

(Hat-tip to @bokane for spotting this)

For those of you who are curious about the frontiers of Vietnam’s startup scene, an interesting place to start is the landscape of incubators, co-working spaces and communities. But as my buddy Chris Zobrist says, “I guess it depends on how you define ‘incubator’“. So I’ve got a relatively broad definition so that you can get a feel for what are the organizations, places, and people that are fostering the startup scene in Vietnam. Of course, there are a lot of projects I’m not aware of, and I’ve heard from some that there are more than that in Vietnam – some say that there are at least 20. I’ll just focus on ten here.

Of course, if you’re looking at Vietnam’s startup scene, you’ve got to separate it into two: Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city. I’ve already written a bit about their different characters last week.

By the way, there are quite a few that are hush-hush and aren’t announcing their presence on the market yet, like Hub.IT, which will be opening around July. There are others I can’t announce at present, but I’ll keep you posted. Also, it’s worth noting that CyberAgent Ventures is incubating in both Hanoi and Saigon (along with coordination with Vat Gia, the major Vietnamese e-commerce company). They’ve got a real cool model with their hands-on approach to investment and incubation. We’ll be hearing more from them next week.

So let’s get down to it this list of ten split across two cities:

(Many thanks for Pham Minh Tuan from Topica for his data on incubators in Hanoi!)

Hanoi: Relationships, government, and carefully crafted startups

Topica Founder’s Institute: You can’t go to Hanoi’s startup scene without thinking of Topica’s Founder’s Institute. The training course has been around for a little over two years and gets new startups into a 15-week program, and invites leaders from successful startups in Vietnam to come and train the newbies. It just graduated 11 startups late last year.

5Desire: 5desire is an incubator and consulting firm that’s focused on accelerating startups in various sectors in terms of business and resources. They choose startups to participate in their program and they’re also running a co-working space.

Hatch.vn: A new player on the scene. The crew organizes monthly events, attempting to connect startups across various sectors and is building up to a big startup fair.

FPT: Vietnam’s biggest technology company is also in on the incubating fun with an incubator called FICO, which is actually more targeted at students.

Saigon / Ho Chi Minh city: Business mindset, international connections, and money

The Start Center and Saigon Hub: Originally, started out as just the ‘Start Center’, this co-working space has overflowed to necessitate opening up Saigon Hub, where workshops are given along with mLab and the vision is to get more events and support for startups that need space, acceleration, and possibly funding.

Egg Agency: This unique enclave, huddled up outside of Saigon’s city center, is equipped with a spa and gym. But the real value addition is that it’s a growth hacking incubator that brings in new entrepreneurs and runs them through laps of real business to build experience for their own projects. A pretty unique model.

mLab: The newly arrived mLab, with support from the World Bank, is attempting to unite the startup scene in Ho Chi Minh city with events connecting all the right people together. They’re also running hackathons and competitions to incubate in co-working spaces that they are coordinating with others in the sector.

Skynet: Skynet specializes in building a network of expertise and managers inside of their own company while incubating and accelerating companies that come to them. In a way, it’s like in-sourcing, instead of outsourcing.

Quang Trung Software City: This industrial park is dedicated solely to fostering the Vietnamese tech industry and hosts several technology universities as well as big outsourcing companies. They’ve also got an active incubator.

Conclusion

Outside of this quick list of incubators, there are also government programs that are staying more incognito at the moment. And there’s plrenty of private incubators that are flying below the radar. A new model that I’ve been seeing lately is an outsourcing company that also incubates and fosters new projects on the side. Although some have protested that outsourcing professionals have trouble thinking in terms of product, it’s still an interesting use of engineering experience.

Note: Please let us know if there are any incubators, growth hackers, and co-working spaces that we missed and we’ll add them to the list.

Qihoo’s new search engine emerged nearly one year ago.

China’s Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU), a software maker and web portal turned search engine, has reported its Q1 2013 financials this morning. The company hailed a record number of users across its services – a total of 457 million active users in March 2013 – but saw mixed financial numbers.

Revenues were up slightly quarter-on-quarter to $109.9 million (up 58.6 percent in the past year). Operating income fell to $6.8 million in Q1, nearly half that in the previous quarter (and down from $14.4 million a year ago). Operating expenses crept up yet again to hit $89.2 million in the first quarter, nearly double the expense of Q1 2012.

Qihoo, which launched its search engine last summer to capitalize on all the traffic from its web portal and Windows PC software, also revealed a bunch of updated numbers:

• Total monthly active users of Qihoo’s products and services reached a record 457 million in March 2013, compared to 411 million in March 2012.
• Monthly active users of Qihoo’s ‘360 Browser’ across PC and mobile reached a record 332 million in March 2013, compared to 273 million at same point last year. User penetration of these web browser apps in China hit 69.6 percent.
• Average daily unique visitors to Qihoo’s “personal start up page” (hao.360.cn) of paid links rose to 94 million. That web portal generated approximately 489 million clicks.
• Paying users of Qihoo 360’s web game platform were approximately 281,000 in Q1.

Qihoo’s report made no detailed mention of the progress of its search engine (said by CNZZ to be at 12 percent market share in China), nor made any reference to all the company’s iOS apps being banned by Apple. Those issues will surely come up in the conference call later.

Qihoo expects a stronger second quarter with revenues between $142 million and $144 million.

See the full earnings report on the Qihoo IR homepage.

Singapore-based luxury private flash sales site Reebonz (pronounced ‘ribbons’) has completed a $40 million (S$50 million) financing round led by Singapore’s media giant MediaCorp.

Other investors in this round are Vertex Asia Investments, Granite Global Ventures GGV Capital, Intel Capital, Matrix Partners China, and Infocomm Investments, the venture arm of Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore. This financing round values Reebonz at about $200 million (S$250 million).

Reebonz offers short-duration, online private sales events, which are exclusively open to members only. Registration to Reebonz is free. Sales events are for both women’s and men’s brands and are modeled around the concept of ‘accessible luxury’ with up to 70 percent discount.

MediaCorp CEO Shaun Seow told his own network, Channel News Asia (CNA):

We see great alignment between what Reebonz does and what MediaCorp has – audiences, content targeted at the luxury market and our star power. We are confident that by collaborating closely with Reebonz, we’ll see even more breakthroughs from the retailer

Reebonz was founded in March 2009 by Samuel Lim, Daniel Lim, and Benjamin Han who haven’t been speaking much to the tech press recently. Many Singaporean entrepreneurs and investors have long thought of Reebonz as one of the most promising internet companies in the nation. Besides, Reebonz.com, the founders also run Kwerkee.com, a store for designer-created items that was started in April 2012.

Reebonz’s success is built upon layers of experience. Prior to Reebonz, Samuel founded Fusion Mobile in 2000, a mobile content business that was later acquired by a Malaysian listed company in 2007. In 2004, Samuel founded Fusion Direct, a company that did database marketing, and that was acquired by a Singapore listed company in 2010.

Samuel, who’s the CEO at Reebonz, told CNA that with this investment he wishes to “build a world-class billion-dollar Internet commerce group out from Singapore.”

Dr Lim Kuo-Yi, CEO of Infocomm Investments, echoed Samuel’s mission and told us:

We are excited to be working with Samuel, his team, and fellow investors in growing Reebonz as the top online luxury retailer in Asia. It is our mission to support our Infocomm startups to expand internationally, and we are confident Reebonz will show it is possible to build a great startup from Singapore.

Prior to this MediaCorp-led financing round, Reebonz has also received funding from Vertex Asia Investment and Intel Capital. Headquartered in Singapore, Reebonz has regional offices in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, Shanghai, and Korea.

(Source: CNA)

Antivirus products and services have been a renewed battleground in China in the past couple of years, enveloping several of the country’s top web businesses. According to rumors in the industry heard by TechinAsia, that battle is now taking the form of these companies vying to acquire NetQin (NYSE:NQ), a China-based expert in mobile antivirus apps. Both Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) and Tencent (HKG:0700) are thought to be in the running, but the market value of NetQin is proving to be a bone of contention.

NetQin executives even addressed the rumors late last week in the earnings call after revealing their Q1 2013 financials. Directly alluding to the suitors, NetQin co-CEO Omar Sharif Khan said during the call:

Over the past several months, NetQin has been approached by both strategic and financial investors for potential investment opportunities with us, while we appreciate this interest. We remain focused on delivering shareholder value to successful execution of our strategic planning initiatives. We will not fail on delivering shareholder value.

A few minutes before saying that, Khan lamented “a significant gap that exists between the market valuation and our business results”, which could well be the sticking point in negotiations with potential major investors or acquirers. NetQin is currently at $8.25 per share with a market cap of $363 million. Khan elaborated on this pricing:

We’ve also always believed that if we continue to deliver stellar results and growth, the market valuation of the company would appropriately reflect the fundamentals of the company. As both the shareholders and executive management of NetQin, we are not at all satisfied with a significant gap that exists between the market valuation and our business results. Frankly, it’s unacceptable. I want to be crystal clear, we are absolutely committed to creating shareholder value and we will put in a relentless effort to closing the before mentioned gap.

Asked by Oppenheimer analyst Andy Yeung about a 100 percent acquisition, Khan declined to reveal more except for saying that “multiple parties” had shown interest in both financial and strategic investments.

We’ve reached out to Baidu and Tencent about these rumors.

Tencent began pushing strongly into the antivirus market in China in 2010, setting themselves up on a collision course with well-known software maker Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU). After Qihoo launched a search engine last summer, Baidu has retaliated in recent months with antivirus products for Windows PCs aimed at both Chinese and overseas consumers.

Acquiring NetQin would propel Baidu into mobile antivirus products on the Android and iOS platform (where it currently has nothing), and would boost what Tencent already has in terms of mobile antivirus offerings.

NetQin shares fell 14 percent from Wall Street seeing its Q1 financials on Wednesday night to close of trading on Friday. That’s despite revenues rising to $33.2 million in Q1, with operating income up to $2.3 million.

Imotiv (previously called NuffnangX) is the Nuffnang’s founders’ latest startup. The mobile reader app is built because the founders realized that very few people are reading blogs on mobile, stating that only about one percent of a blog’s traffic comes from mobile.

The reason why, Timothy Tiah believes, is that there isn’t an easy way to follow blogs on mobile. Thus, Imotiv was built to help more bloggers get discovered on mobile. Timothy shares with me more on his latest product:

What’s special about Imotiv is that an algorithm crawls through an entire blog and picks out the one most interesting line to the reader. While readers like Summly try to summarize content, our approach is not to summarize but just to find the line that has the most emotion in it.

The algorithm, Timothy says, is special and the team has filed patent for it. “It’s not perfect yet. Works 70 to 80 percent of the time but it will get more accurate as time goes by,” added Timothy.

Good mobile reader, worth trying out

I’ve tried Imotiv over the weekend and I generally like it a lot. Here’s why:

• One sentence summary: Most of the sentences are spot on. A handful of them are kinda meh. But in general it catches the gist of the article.

• Fast and smooth: The app loads fast. It’s quite lightweight.

• Discovery: If you don’t know what blogs to follow, you can select the category you like — for example design, technology, photography etc — and Imotiv will feed you with content you might like.

• List: When you’ve become flooded with content, you can create lists to group blogs together.

Unfortunately, not all blogs are mobile friendly so for some of them it takes a while to load. Imotiv is also missing some blogs that I’d like to add. But all these are in the works, I believe.

Imotiv is run by an independent team under Netccentric (which runs Nuffnang, Jipaban, ChurpChurp, and more) and Timothy says that monetization isn’t a priority at this point. He added:

If it really takes off in a big way and we have an opportunity to raise a big round then yeah we might spin it off after all. But for now we wanna focus on fixing all the bugs and building a product people love.

If you need a mobile reader, you can download Imotiv on your iOS or Android device (and click here to follow Tech in Asia). For bloggers, you can claim your blog here.

(Also read: The Nuffnang Founders’ Story)

Here we are again with our weekly startup list! Remember, for startup tips and story suggestions, feel free to email us. Alternatively, you can send tips here and/or tell us about your startup here. Enjoy this week’s list:

1. KreditAjai | Singapore

Singapore-based Loan Garage, a startup that aims to help people get loans online, announced that it has launched its Indonesian platform KreditAja.com just two months after Loan Garage made its full launch in Singapore. The Indonesian counterpart has also secured a partnership with Indonesia’s Ministry of Economic Coordination (KUR) to distribute loans and microcredit.

2. Videogram | Japan

Developed by Sandeep Casi at Cinemacraft in Japan – before moving to Silicon Valley as part of 500 Startups – it’s about helping people discover videos by displaying them in a sort of comic-book format (think of Flipboard) where the size of the frames is determined by how important Videogram’s algorithm thinks they are.

3. Kpaper | Vietnam

Kpaper is the first of its kind in Vietnam, and it’s an iOS and Android mobile app that allows users to read local magazines online, instead of having to download them.

4. Reep | Japan

Japan’s Reep is a mobile app that remembers the photos you took a year ago. It syncs with your iPhone camera folder, Instagram, Facebook, and Flickr to help sort your images based on dates.

5. Money Lover | Vietnam

Vietnam’s Money Lover is a finances and expenses manager application for individuals that enables users to track their spending over time and manage monthly or annual budget.

6. Zoolook | Japan

Zoolook is a Japanese app that has focuses on the social and photography side of clothing, and is made up of a social network where people can share and tag their favorite looks. It also has the presence of top fashion labels who have virtual “showrooms” within the social network.

7. HaivL | Vietnam

HaivL is like the 9gag of Vietnam and is a platform for users to throw up funny content that they found or created, and other users can like or comment on them. Presently, Haivl users are uploading between 3,000 to 4,000 photos daily.

8. ChatPerf | Japan

Currently still a prototype, Japanese ChatPerf is a hardware add-on for your iPhone that can actually emit smells – such as the smell of burning rubber in a racing game, the scent of coffee to wake you up in conjunction with an alarm app, or to blast some soothing incense as you use a yoga app.

9. CocCoc | Vietnam

CocCoc is a Russian-financed Vietnamese search engine that released of a new browser called Corom this week in their bid to take on search google giant Google.

10. W-Locate | Singapore

Singapore-based startup W-Locate recently announced that it has successfully raised a pre-series A funding, led by TNF Ventures under Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF) Technology Incubation Scheme (TIS), and has two core products- FIND and XimLoc, which are both location technologies that help manage companies’ vehicle fleets and workforces respectively.

11. PicMix | Indonesia

Indonesian-made photo app PicMix revealed this week that it passed the 10 million user mark last month, around three months after the app reached eight million users.

12. Muse & Co | Japan

Launched in February 2012, Muse & Co is a VIP flash sales site targeted at Japan’s savviest and most stylish shoppers. This week, the startup announced that it has raised series B funding for its fledgling e-commerce business with primary investors from Itochu Technology Ventures, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and Infinity Ventures Partners (IVP).

13. Indiescapes | Singapore

Singapore-based Indiescapes is a curated marketplace dedicated to wanderlusts who seek out local, authentic travel experiences and to find experiences that are different from what normal travel packages from travel agencies can offer.

14. AppAnnie | China

App Annie is a mobile app store data provider with its headquarters in Beijing, China but it is operated with an international team and vision led by founder and CEO Bertrand Schmitt. Read about the story behind this startup!

15. Rumahku | Indonesia

Launched in February 2011 during the property boom in Indonesia, Rumahku is an online property portal which aims to help Indonesians find their desired properties online.

16. Wooz.in | Indonesia

Wooz.in is an Indonesian startup that incoporates NFC and RFID into its three different business models that utilizes online connection (such as Facebook and Twitter) in the offline world.

Related startup stories

• CyberAgent Gets Into the Crowdfunding Business in Japan
• Zalora Delivers 1 Millionth Order to a Customer in Singapore
• TMI Invests In 3 Taiwanese Startups: CitieSocial, Driving Curve, and Peeridea
• With Only Digital Business Growing, SingTel Sets Aside $1.6B For Startup Acquisitions
• How InMobi Grew From a Startup to a Giant Mobile Ad Network
• Jimmy Rim, The Youngest CEO Running a VC Firm in Korea
• Singapore’s Too Small? More E-Commerce Businesses Look Abroad
• Malaysian Mobile Game Dev Nexx Snags $250k from Crystal Horse Investments 

Events

Our upcoming Tech in Asia Meetup in Vietnam this 23 May 2013 (Thursday) in Ho Chi Minh City is officially sold out. However, we have another one upcoming. Join us on 9 June 2013 (Thursday) in Bangkok, as we have 500 Startups‘ Dave McClure with us to share about what he sees in Southeast Asia. Click here for event and free registration details!

Like RSS? There’s always our Asia startups RSS feed!

We all know why we’re here: to get a taste of the top stories Tech in Asia covered from across the region this week. But before we do that, let’s all take a second to breakdance in celebration of the weekend. Ready? GO! …OK, here’s the news:

Charlie’s pick: Jack Ma’s Last Speech as CEO

Although I’m sure we’ll still see him around, it’s the end of an era at Alibaba with founder Jack Ma stepping out of the CEO’s chair to take a more background role at the company. It’d be hard to understate the effect Ma and his company have had on the development of the Chinese internet over the past decade, so I think his last speech is worth reflecting on.

Steven’s pick: Confirmed: GREE Shuts Down China Branch

GREE’s big international push in the past couple of years hasn’t always gone smoothly. The Japanese social gaming behemoth has badly lost momentum with OpenFeint after acquiring it, and its game development offices haven’t produced a blockbuster in a while. But it was still a surprise when we learnt that GREE Beijing has suddenly shutting down this week.

Youshen’s pick: BBM No Longer Shackled to BlackBerry Platform: Will Indonesians Rejoice?

It seems to me that BlackBerry has adopted a new direction as a software company. With BBM (BlackBerry Messenger)’s availability on other platforms (Android and iOS), BlackBerry looks set to focus on software penetration. I would like to make reference to Volvo’s historical move to make its three-point seat belt design an open ecosystem in the interest of general safety. Could BlackBerry be repeating the same footsteps, but in the interest of BBM’s user community?

Willis’ and Andrew’s pick: SingTel Sets Aside $1.6B For Startup Acquisitions

WIllis: SingTel will be setting aside $1.6 billion for investment over the next three years. If that’s not big news, then I don’t know what is. Project Magellan could be part of the grand plan. But I’m guessing that SingTel has much more stuff under its sleeve.

Andrew: Wow! Singtel setting aside $1.6 billion for future investment. That’s quite a sum of money and we can probably expect them to go onto a shopping spree over the next three years. It’s good news I would say because exits here in Singapore are rare.

Emily’s pick: Alibaba Working on a Set-Top Box to Bring E-Commerce to Your TV?

Although it hasn’t been confirmed yet, the rumour of Alibaba coming up with their own set-top box is still juicy! It’ll definitely be interesting to see if indeed there will be a decision to bring e-commerce onto the television!

For other ways of reading us, perhaps try our tailored RSS feeds, or find us within Flipboard.

This week we saw all kinds of interesting stuff happen in China. A king stepped off his throne, we talked about 1970s pornography, and QQ got a makeover that made everyone sad. So what are the top stories this week? They are these:

1. Jack Ma’s Last Speech as Alibaba CEO

The king of Chinese e-commerce stepped off his throne after one final oration, and while we’ll still see Jack Ma around, I think it’s definitely worth reflecting on. Also worth checking out the first speech from Alibaba’s new CEO.

2. China’s Top Chat-App Gets a WeChat-Like Makeover, But Everyone Hates It

Well, people like chatting with their friends, and people like WeChat, so making QQ Mobile more like WeChat is a great idea, right? What could go wrong?

3. GREE Shuts Down China Branch

In news that could also go in the Japan This Week list if that was something we actually did, GREE’s China office will shut its doors for good next month, bringing GREE’s China dream to an end.

4. Huawei and ZTE Face More EU Scrutiny: What Are They Doing Wrong?

It’s never good news for Huawei and ZTE, is it? Following the latest news that the EU has threatened the companies with trade duties for illegal subsidies from the Chinese government, we take a look at what has gone so wrong with their overseas ambitions.

5. How China’s Top Video Site Battles the Pirates

Chinese video sites used to be known as a haven for piracy, but these days sites like Youku take piracy very seriously. But how do you stop pirates on a site that gets tons of videos uploaded every day?

6. Netease Planning the World’s First Crowd-Designed FPS Game?

It’ll be hard to know for sure until the game comes out, but I think this post didn’t get the attention it deserved. This is really a unique approach to game design from Netease, something I’ve never seen before at any major developer, and it has the potential to pay off big time in the long term.

7. Tencent Posts Rocketing Profits, Sees 195 Million Active Users on WeChat

If Tencent is making boatloads of money for its other business, it means that it has the needed fuel to pump up WeChat, which now has over 195 million monthly active users.

That’s all for this week, folks. For our full spread of China coverage, you can click here or subscribe to our China RSS.

Beijing’s App Annie is growing rapidly with over 80 team members located at Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo, San Francisco, and London. Today it serves over 220,000 apps with 85 percent of the top 100 iOS publishers using its service.

App Annie is largely serving clients from the US, Europe, China, and Japan and hasn’t really gotten into Southeast Asia yet. But the team just might start to look at Southeast Asia as it is seeing growth in this region. Vice president of APAC at App Annie Junde Yu said in an email:

Google Play is growing very fast in terms of downloads in the region, especially in countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, where downloads are much higher than iOS.

Even though Android downloads are much higher, revenue from iOS is still higher in Southeast Asia. Junde also commented that things will get exciting when Google Play manages to establish local payment options as it has done in South Korea and Japan. He added:

Additionally, despite of the growth in downloads, most of the apps downloaded in the SEA markets are published by foreign publishers. There are local publishers, but most of them have more of an international outlook for content and distribution as opposed to local. It will be interesting to observe the rise of the local players for the local markets, as the local markets grow in downloads and revenues.

(Also read: The Story of App Annie)

A Singaporean in China

Junde takes extra interest in Southeast Asia since he was born in Singapore, which is part of the region. Having worked in China for several years now, Junde says that he still has much more to learn from both markets. But from what he has observed, he sees great connection between China and Singapore, noting that SingTel Innov8 (who also invests in China startups) and ACE Beijing Chapter have done a great job bridging the two regions. In China, he sees Innovation Works and the Great Wall Club (which runs GMIC) also having links with Southeast Asia and Singapore.

Junde says people often mistakenly think that Chinese aren’t paying customers. He notes that iOS revenue isn’t significant even with huge downloads because most iOS users in China do not own a foreign credit card to pay Apple. “It is also inconvenient to use local bank cards to top up their iOS credits,” he added.

For Android, Junde says that most revenue-making apps make their bucks from second and third-tier cities, supported by carrier billing that makes paying just an SMS away. He explains that consumers in these cities do not spend much on entertainment outlets like cinemas, pubs, and clubs and thus they are very much content to spend on mobile content.

If you are very serious about the Chinese market, you need to be physically here. If not, you can also work through a distributor/publishers; there are good options available, like iDreamsky, Yodo1, Cocoachina etc.

Coincidentally, Junde will be back in Singapore for the upcoming Casual Connect conference on May 21 to 23. He will be speaking on the topic “Global Trends in App Store Monetization” on May 22, 11.00am where he will be sharing the latest trends about the app store economy and also interesting tips about marketing mobile apps in Asia.

While his work and heart is now mainly in Beijing, Junde does plan to return to Singapore someday to start a game studio, a pub, or a chicken rice franchise.

(Image credit: Startapp.com)

Samsung (005930:KS) co-CEO Shin Jong-kyun has today hailed the company’s new Galaxy S4 phone as its fastest ever selling gadget. It’s expected to hit 10 million in sales next week, a mere three weeks after it first launched. JK Shin also told The Korea Times:

We are confident that we will pass more than 10 million sales of the S4 next week. It is selling much faster than the previous model S3.

He added that the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy S4 could ultimately reach 100 million units sold, a feat which would represent double the global sales of its predecessor, the Galaxy S3, which reached 50 million sales. Indeed, the S3 took 50 days to pass the 10 million sales mark.

The Galaxy S4 went on sale in South Korea on April 26, and promptly landed in the US, China, and India the next day ahead of a massive global roll-out backed up by major offline and online marketing. The big-screened S4 launched in Indonesia on May 3rd.

Samsung is the top smartphone brand in China, where it sold 30 million phones across various models in 2012.

(Source: Korea Times; via The Verge)

In this day and age when a lot of people are connected online through popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter, one might ask if they can utilize that connection in the offline world. Some have come up with ways to do that like using NFC and RFID, so let’s look at an Indonesian startup which is focusing on the latter feature called Wooz.in ¹.

CEO Ario Tamat tells us that the company has been around since 2011, connecting around 40,000 offline users online for its corporate clients. He explained to me that Wooz.in has three business models, the first – which is Wooz.in’s original product – is applying RFID features into clients’ offline events and projects. These projects include making a bracelet with an RFID chip installed in it (pictured below), and the bracelet need to be scanned first if users want to use certain products inside the event like photo booths or games. When the bracelet is scanned, it automatically updates the user’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. The data gathered during this event can also be beneficial for the client.

Second is applying the feature as a loyalty program for SMEs. One of the companies taking part in Wooz.in’s program is restaurant chain Holy Cow. The RFID chip for the restaurant comes in the form of a necklace, which will earn users a virtual flag for every scan on Holy Cow’s premises. A few functions like automatic updates to users’ social network accounts and data mining work similarly here too. How much would it cost for SMEs to use Wooz.in’s services? It could be as little as IDR 1 million (US$100), depending on the number of users and usage frequency.

Third is licensing Wooz.in’s service to agencies abroad. Ario says that they now have two overseas agencies using Wooz.in’s licensed services. In this way, the overseas agencies can offer Wooz.in’s RFID expertise to their clients.

Regarding competitors, Ario said that he has seen quite a few other companies replicating Wooz.in’s technology. But he believes that replicating technology alone won’t be enough to beat Wooz.in because there are other factors that need to be put into consideration such as execution and idea innovation. Ario explains that they consistently offer new approaches to clients when using RFID, so there’s definitely huge potential to be explored from using the technology. Replicating them alone won’t be enough to beat Wooz.in, he believes.

With the vision of connecting the offline and online world, the team is now working to implement NFC chips for future projects. Ario says there are other ways to connect the offline and online world too, like face recognition tech. Of all those possibilities, NFC will be the team’s first priority this year.

Indonesian consumers are brimming with confidence as high as the sky right now, the highest in the world according to the latest study by Nielsen. This extends, of course, to properties. In that sector, Indonesian property portal RumahKu (meaning “my home”) is looking to help Indonesians find their desired properties online.

RumahKu was first launched in February 2011 during the property boom in Jakarta, says co-founder Robert Adrian. Back then, the existing property portals were still deemed unsatisfactory by the founding team, and because of that they decided to partner up and build RumahKu to help other people who are also looking to buy a place.

What makes RumahKu special compared to its competitors today? Robert says that the startup is doing its best in providing top notch customer service as well as building the back-end engine so that it can bring the most relevant results to users. He details a few more unique features of RumahKu, such as a way to put old listings back up, unlimited photos for each listing, unlimited listings for property agents, sales reports that calculate commission for agents, and traffic reports.

RumahKu records 360,000 monthly visitors on average with close to 40,000 premium registered members who most of them are from property agencies. What’s impressive, according to Robert, is the growth as the site’s monthly visitors grew by a factor of three compared to the same time last year; memberships grew 85 percent. At the moment there are around 38,000 property listings on the site, with most of them located in Java and Bali. The startup has gained quite a number of Facebook fans too, with 300,000 so far. From time to time RumahKu holds offline events like expos at popular malls across Indonesia.

RumahKu earns its revenue from premium memberships and banner advertising. The startup is fully self funded and is planning to jump into the e-commerce business model too in the future. The startup is facing stiff competition from rivals Rumah123 and RumahdanProperti (both acquired by Singapore-based IPGA). People who are looking at investing but not moving in could also make use of property crowdfunding site CrowdBaron.

Since I posted an article on HaiVL on Tuesday, it has raised eyebrows for two big reasons. First, the 9gag-like HaiVL community caught wind of the post, and then many people didn’t like my statement that “content in Vietnam is a wasteland”. So let’s take a closer look at the state of online content in Vietnam.

A key issue: generating content that lasts

First, let me get something out of the way. The content in Vietnam itself is not “bad” or “good”. The issue is organizing the content. Organizing it into a way that lasts and is easy to find and digest for new users on the web.

The forum model is as outdated as Geocities and Altavista. It was slowly driven out by blogs and then into even newer more sophisticated models. We’re way passed Web 2.0 by now. Certainly, in the US, forums are still used on company websites for questions and answers that are very specific, but the majority of internet users have flocked to new sharing and linking models. People have moved onto Wikipedia, Quora, Reddit, Digg, Stack Overflow, Pinterest, Facebook, Craiglist, Tumblr, 9gag, 4chan, and more. Each site has its own unique niche and user experience idiosyncrasies, but they all excel at one thing: user generated content.

How does this work in Vietnam?

A large amount of content in Vietnam is generated on news sites and forums. Forums like Tinhte and Webtretho publish news and allow users to start their own discussions. On Alexa’s web rankings, you can see that among the top 20 sites in Vietnam, at least 10 of the websites fall into this category.

These old models lack two things:

• The initial content is generated by publishers, not by users. It’s a news-based forum.
• It is not organized in a user-friendly way. Some of the best comments are embedded deep within the discussion.

If you look at these two things, in a way, it looks like Vietnam hasn’t even entered Web 2.0 yet. Has it missed the boat? I mean, Vietnam’s Pinterest clones all haven’t gained traction (including Rocket Internet’s attempt as well). But no, there are obviously enclaves of the twenty-first century web out there, like LinkHay, Zing Me, and obviously Facebook is growing in Vietnam like crazy. But Vietnamese users outside of these spaces are mostly sifting through Web 1.0. Why?

Is it because of Vietnamese users?

It’s always a senseless comparison, but startup scenes across the world are always comparing themselves to Silicon Valley. And one of the key things we envy in the Valley is the early adopter culture. Open up a new, random over-rated social media website like App.net and people flock to it. You may not be successful but at least you got a ton of user feedback in the interim. This doesn’t exist in Vietnam. Not only is the internet population (35 percent) relatively small but it’s so fragmented that most websites don’t get critical mass. For example, Linkhay, an awesome Digg lookalike, has been sitting under 200,000 users for years.

And it’s not an anomaly. Several of my sources working in search engines across Vietnam for the past few years have found that Vietnamese content is lacking (the 13th most populous country in the world and it’s not even on the map). This is why CocCoc and NHN Naver are looking to work with content industry professionals to get more Vietnamese content online. Only in the past year or so has this improved. It’s hard to find the best doctor online, or find out where the best place to buy a specific type of cloth is. Is it because Vietnamese users are unwilling to participate?

What did HaiVL, Foody.vn and others do right?

I think Vietnamese users are still getting accustomed to generating content on their own. This is why I really do think HaiVL is a pioneer. Because they’ve out-executed lots of other Vietnamese companies in the content space. The interesting thing is, as Dave McClure would say ”it turns out all you gotta do is copy great shit 99 percent then innovate one percent every month and you can beat the crap outta most people.” To win in Vietnam, it’s not just about cloning the right model, it’s about cloning very well. It’s about adapting a model we see somewhere else and executing it really well. And what HaiVL has done is get people to freely give content. So the problem isn’t with the users, it’s with what people are building.

One of the key things that HaiVL did was to perform really well on Facebook – not everybody can do that. And Facebook has only recently hit Vietnam, so upvoting and prioritizing best responses isn’t commonplace yet. What HaiVL is basically doing is educating the masses in a new way of interacting with content, in the same way that Nhom Mua and Rocket Internet are educating people on e-commerce.

To me, the country’s users are ready now, it just takes a few startups like HaiVL to take it to the next level. After all, HaiVL has great topics and fun material, and everybody needs comedy in their life. Next, who can take the success behind HaiVL and apply it to different niches of the content market?

Note: We’ve tried our best to cover a lot of the websites in this space and key aspects of the field, but we know we may have missed many, please let us know in the comments.

App Annie is a mobile app store data provider with its headquarters in Beijing, China but it is operated with an international team and vision led by founder and CEO Bertrand Schmitt.

Not many people know but App Annie was actually first started by an offshore outsourcing development company in Beijing called Exoweb in March 2010. Unfortunately, the Exoweb team didn’t have any idea on how to monetize it. But Bertrand saw the potential, he spun-off the company from Exoweb (they remain as minor shareholders), and took over App Annie’s operations in April 2010 with around five people in the team. He told me:

The people at Exoweb are friends of mine. App Annie was a free product. They were focusing on other stuff, software products, and not working on App Annie. I was also very frustrated with the lack of market data on the stores. So I felt as a marketer, I was missing a lot of information about what are the most interesting markets, how much are others doing in terms of downloads etc.

Bertrand who has been in the internet and mobile industry for 14 years also said that the early version of App Annie, though it only had basic data, could serve as a base for premium market data in the future. It first started tracking iOS applications but it now also tracks other app stores such as Google Play and Amazon.

While other data providers provide SDKs to track what’s happening for apps in terms of usage. At App Annie, Bertrand says that things are done different because it is connecting to the backend of the stores to get the data. To put it simply, App Annie works with Apple and Google directly.

For its premium product, App Annie has developed a statistical model with 90 percent accuracy that estimates an app’s revenue opportunity, market share etc and is today used by companies such as Gameloft, Microsoft, Nokia, Google, Tencent, and more. Bertrand assures that the top ten apps are well-measured since they are used by most users.

Today, the App Annie team is made up of about 85 people across 16 nationalities. 70 of them are based in Beijing who largely focus on the product. The others are in San Francisco, Japan, and London who focus on sales (Update: SF is a secondary headquarters for App Annie’s sales, marketing, and market insights.). The App Annie team uses English across all team members and that includes its Beijing headquarters. When asked why China, Bertrand said:

We like it in China and China is a fast growing market. It is hard to get into the market so starting in Beijing is easier.

Despite being a fast growing market, the large publishers who are willing to pay for App Annie’s products are mostly still international companies. 90 percent of App Annie sales are generated outside of China with US and Japan its biggest markets.

To date, App Annie has raised $7 million of venture capital in total and is already cash flow positive. Over 220,000 apps are using App Annie with 85 percent of the top 100 iOS publishers using its service.

“At some point, we’re also interested to do digital content, not just apps,” said Bertrand.