Wednesday, November 26, 2014

10 new startups graduate Chinaccelerator’s 6th batch

BootDev

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BootDev leverages Drupal and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to create a backend as a service. Using this, companies building websites only need to focus on front end development. BootDev is code-free and provides database and file storage services. Customers can get a free trial using the AWS free tier, while paid plans cost US$199 (Basic) and US$1,599 (recommended) per month.

Clawz

Clawz New Logo
Clawz makes designer jewelry for fingernails that can be repeatedly worn and removed. Each piece is 3D-printed with metals like silver, brass, and gold, all created by professional designers. The ordering process is done entirely online. Users just pick a design and submit a photo of their nails next to a coin.

TQSurvey

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TQSurvey is a research tool for surveying customers on mobile. It claims to offer real-time feedback and real customer information at a tenth of the cost of competitors.

Kliptap

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Kliptap is a crowdfunding and video site that expands on the success of the ice bucket challenge. Each campaign gets a centralized channel where the user introduces their initiative and “taps” friends to upload their own videos promoting the cause. The idea is to trigger a chain reaction of video responses to raise money and promote the campaign.

Fancy Cellar

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Fancy Cellar is a wine importer and distributor in China. It’s website aims to simplify, accelerate, and guide the wine-buying decision using its “Digital Sommelier solution”. Fancy Cellar has a bilingual website and claims to offer “unrivaled” prices, but it’s up against a host of strong competitors in the saturated Chinese market.

OliFun

Olifun
Olifun is a location-based app that finds happy hour specials at nearby bars and restaurants. The app currently has over 300 listings in Shanghai. The photo-heavy app features personalized recommendations from local experts. Olifun is available as a WeChat public account and on the Apple App store. An Android version is on the way.
See: Want to go drinking with friends tonight? This startup will point you to watering holes with the happiest hours

Ravabe

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RaVaBe is a digital publishing tool that simplifies the process of publishing content on multiple media channels. It’s aimed at SMEs that lack dedicated social media managers. Website down as of press time.

Rumarocket

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Rumarocket is essentially a search engine that summarizes performance data, evaluations, and assessments of an individual so a company can decide whether or not to hire him or her. First, a company identifies the type of talent they want. Rumarocket then automates the process of looking through resumes and assessments to find employees with the right fit. This can be further tailored to a specific company by adding in employees’ performance data.

Wityu.fm

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Wityu is a crowd-curated music site and app where users collaborate to create playlists. Users can vote on and edit songs in the playlists. Essentially, it’s a crowdsourced Pandora. Wityu seems to be off to a good start with a solid website and music ranging from pop tunes to the Sailor Moon soundtrack, but we’ll see how well it fares when it hits the wall of licensing fees and stubborn record companies.
See: Music is an inaccessible industry for tech startups

Zhu-Lou

zhu lou
Possibly the most ambitious of this year’s batch, Zhu-Lou wants to create a Student Information System to digitize the Chinese public school system. It claims it can make it easier for administrators to manage schools and allow parents to monitor their children’s performance. Schools and parents gain access to third-party educational services and software. Chinese schools are notoriously tough nuts to crack, however, often shying away from costly new technologies.

Monday, November 24, 2014

33 startups in Asia that caught our eye

1. Kudo | Indonesia

Kudo offers consumers a new way to shop online through physical point-of-sale kiosks in public places around Jakarta. Essentially, Kudo is a hardware startup with an online component – the team builds the machines, but also curates the content within the collective marketplace.

2. ReShop.ph | Philippines

ReShop.ph, which went live on November 15, allows users to give away or sell unwanted items to people who have better use for them. The platform has a system for rating users’ integrity where users earn “green points” for every interaction on the platform and when they get others to sign up. They may use their accumulated points to redeem rewards from ReShop.ph’s partners, including businesses and individuals.

3. YouthsToday | Malaysia

YouthsToday is an online platform for projects spearheaded by youths to help young people stay away from bad company. The startup works with several government agencies and multinational corporations who target the younger crowd – such as Maybank, AirAsia, and Sony – to get their support for youth-run projects in the areas of entrepreneurship, technology, and the creative arts.

4. Orori | Indonesia

Indonesian jewelry ecommerce site Orori not only sells products such as gold, diamonds, and other jewelry. It also offers investments products like gold bars. Services also include providing a common space for users to trade second-hand jewelry, scrap gold for refinement, or simply pawn precious gems for cash.

5. Vgulp | India

Vgulp wants to help users find awesome bars and liquor stores in Bangalore, and save some dough with the deals and discounts offered to them. Currently, the startup has partnerships with over 200 bars in Bangalore, and helps over 300 customers a day, on average, bag good alcohol deals.

6. Gogovan | Hong Kong

Hong Kong smart logistics startup Gogovan has been called “Uber for logistics”; its app makes it easy for people or companies that need vans to book them on the fly. The company recently grabbed a $10 million investment from Renren for China expansion.

7. Sleepace | China

Shenzhen-based startup Sleepace developed RestOn, a sleep tracker placed under the user’s bed sheets to better quantify his or her sleep patterns. Vaguely resembling a safety belt on a commercial jet, it stretches horizontally across the bed roughly where the user’s chest lies. From there, it tracks heart rate, breathing, and movement.

8. Pikavia | Indonesia

Indonesia-based Pikavia is an online marketplace for travel tours in the region. Soft launched in October, Pikavia currently has 386 tour packages – domestic and international – from 227 tour agents. The startup does not take any commission out of any tours sold on the site.

9. GoPitch | Australia

Melbourne-based GoPitch is an online platform where startups can upload their 35-second pitch, receiving feedback and exposure at the same time. The platform has received over 50 pitches so far since launching in September, and attracted close to 20,000 unique visitors in total.

10. BitSpark | Hong Kong

Hong Kong-based Bitspark wants to skip the hassle and let users send remittances with zero required knowledge of bitcoin. The startup has just announced the first end-to-end cash remittances using bitcoin between Hong Kong and the Philippines. There’s no need for a bitcoin wallet, and the cost is less than one percent commission.

11. eFishery | Indonesia

Bandung-based eFishery is a smart feeding system for commercial aquaculture that can feed fish automatically, sense the fish’s appetite. The company has built its own hardware and software, including sensors to monitor the water motion of a pond. If sensors detect certain motions, the feeders can determine that fish are agitated and hungry, and then release food. The app lets farmers see when this is happening in real-time on their phone, and further control the system should they feel the need. The startup has just won a competition called Get in The Ring, which promises grand winners investment of up to US$1.2 million.

12. ShareOn | South Korea

Shareon is a free app from South Korea that wants to make file transfers less of a headache. It enables users to zaps photos, videos, and music files between devices. It requires a free sign-up, but after that it’s fairly simple – and a lot easier than most home networking set-ups involving routers, bridges, and goodness knows what. The app works on both Android and iOS.

13. Office de Yasai | Japan

Veggie delivery service Office de Yasai, founded by Tokyo-based Kompeito in April this year, allows even the most time-strapped desk jockey to get to enjoy a healthy snack for a reasonable price. This week, the startup announced that it has received a US$424,000 investment from ubiquitous mayonnaise producer Kewpie.
TLabs, an accelerator and early stage seed-fund in India for internet and mobile technology startups, has just revealed the five companies it has picked in the last three months.
TLabs runs an intensive four-month mentoring program. Besides that, the startups will also receive funding of INR 1.2 million (US$19,423), a co-working space, and other support from TLabs tech partners.
Since its inception in 2010, TLabs has backed 36 startups. “We have an 80 percent startup survival rate. That is one of the best rates globally. So far, 60 percent of the startups that got accepted by us went on to raise venture capital funding. The average funding raised is US$250,000,” Abhishek Gupta, who heads TLabs, told Tech in Asia at the demo day of its previous batch.
According to Gupta, the three main challenges facing startups in India are discovery, readiness of entrepreneurs, and friction in the market. Gupta himself was an entrepreneur before moving to TLabs. So he has first-hand experience dealing with these challenges.
Here are the five startups that TLabs backed:

1. Vidooly

Vidooly is an intelligent YouTube marketing and analytics suite for content creators, brands, and multi-channel networks that helps grow their channel, build audience base, and earn more revenue organically. Vidooly was also among the five startups from India picked by global accelerator program Zone Startups recently.

2. Wibe

Wibe recommends relevant videos to users while they read on the web. It is currently offered as a browser extension compatible with popular websites such as Google, Wikipedia, and Amazon.

3. Neuron

Neuron is a big data tool that examines a brand’s social presence (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest), picks up users who are interested in its products, and then uses deep learning to figure out which users are potential customers.

4. Flynx

Flynx is a floating browser for Android that makes multi-tasking effortless while browsing the web on mobile devices. It will load web pages in the background without obstructing current work-flow.

5. Mobapper

Mobapper creates native iPhone, Android, Windows, and Blackberry apps for your WordPress website instantly. No coding is required. It can seamlessly integrate with your existing website and fetch content automatically.

In the previous batch, TLabs backed FashUppGhar360GreedyGameParallelDotsSpayee,Vidgyor, and Take Zero

TechCrunch brought its flagship conference to Tokyo for a two day conference full of keynotes, panel discussions, founder stories, and lots of startups. 12 of the best startups, culled from an application list of over 120, entered the Startup Battle to vie for the JPY 1 million (US$8,500) prize. All entrants are less than three years old and none of them are subsidiaries of listed companies.
Winning pitch contests is never a guarantee of success, but previous winners like Whill and Ringshow that a strong performance here has at least some correlation with future success.
AgIC took top prize this year. Since the summer, AgIC has been making the rounds in Tokyo’s pitch contest events. It most recently won the Btrax sponsored Japan Night semi-final last month. The startup makes it possible for home printers to produce electrical circuits.
As explained in its Kickstarter campaign, “Recent advances in material science have made it possible to manufacture magical conductive ink. The ink contains tiny tiny silver particles whose size is less than a hundred thousandth part of a sesame seed! The ink dries in a few seconds and conductivity emerges instantly when the traces are drawn on our photo inkjet printing paper. You can make circuits exactly as you use a printer using ordinary ink at your home and office.”
TechCrunch senior editor Ryan Lawler handed over the award. “[AgIC is a] great company that can help innovation not just in Japan but around the world for makers to build their products,” he said.
AgIC also won sponsor awards from Intel and PR Times.
The rest of the competitors are listed below. Additional awards are also indicated.
Mikan
Mikan claims to be the app that will finally solve the difficulty of learning English. Instead of taking months to learn 1,000 words, Mikan users should be able to learn 1,000 words in a day. Swipe to the left to indicate the word is known, to the right for words you don’t know. Unknown words will continually appear until the user gets them right. After running through the list of vocab, there is a short test to hammer home the words.
The app has found some early fans. It was downloaded 100,000 times within its first five days of release.
Winner of the Amazon Web Service sponsor award.
Closet 
Closet wants to take advantage of what it calls an underutilized resource – closets. The app allows users to take pictures of the clothes in their closets. Then they mix and match outfits using the clothes of other users and buy the items they want from certified retailers.
It launched two months ago and has collected 72,000 items, or about 28 clothing items per user. Looking forward, the company intends to grow in both B2B and B2C directions.
Akerun 
Akerun is wants to save you the wasted time, money, and stress that comes with a lost key. The device affixes to a door lock and connects to your smartphone. While that creates a whole new set of issues if you lose your phone, there are some notable benefits.
With Akerun, users can use social networks to temporarily and remotely transfer the right to open a locked door to a trusted friend or loved one. Other potential uses are remotely opening the door to accept a delivery or syncing Akerun with internet-enabled household appliances so when you open your door, your entire room comes alive.
Winner of Global Brain sponsor award.
Wovn
Wovn wants to eliminate headaches stemming from website translation. Placing a simple line of code into your website lets you translate an entire website page in an instant.
Winner of Microsoft and Paypal sponsor awards.
Match
Match wants to make studying fun, so it designed a virtual world where users can travel to different lands, each representing different subjects. Upon arrival you can engage in knowledge contests with other players. Questions come in multiple choice as well as visual puzzles like identifying the correct picture of a historical figure.
After being released in August, the game has garnered nearly 10,000 downloads. It is the first step on the company’s journey to fulfilling its goal of seeing a user get into the top-ranked Tokyo University using only this game as a study tool.

Bizer
Early stage startups are so focused on growing their business that back office concerns like human resources or press relations get pushed to the side. For a monthly cost of a about US$30, Bizer’s platform lays out all necessary tasks you need to handle for a given area of the back office.
The company says that most young CEOs spend an average of three hours of searching for the right answer or approach to an issue like procuring health insurance for employees. Since its launch six months ago, Bizer has helped 300 companies reduce that search time drastically.
FiNC
FiNC crowdsources nutritionists and trainers so you can finally diet successfully and easily. After sending the firm a tissue sample from your mouth, you will be set up with the right experts for your particular goals.
The process can be hands-on, with the nutritionist inspecting food pics and engaging in lengthy consultations, or just simpler ten-minute sync ups.
Winner of Gurunavi sponsor award.
Spacemarket
Spacemarket is trying to make a splash in the event space much the same way Airbnb stirred up the travel industry. Users can find a wide variety of regular and unique spaces to hold meetings, parties, study sessions, and the like. Spaces range from basic meeting rooms to jazz cafes to movie theaters. Sea-loving individuals can also rent a boat.
Bento.jp
Bento (named after Japanese lunch boxes) is a food delivery startup servicing the Tokyo area. Though there are several competitors in this space, the firm has earned some loyal customers. All orders are JPY 800 (a little under US$7) and 47 percent of first time users order a second item – 80 percent of those users come back for at least a third time.
Future users can expect to find they can order coffee and simple sweets as well.
Ytuber.tv
YouTube might not be as prevalent in Japan as in America (60 million users vs 180 million) but Ytuber.tv claims Japanese have a far higher usage rate. To address the interest, the startups collects online videos and turns them into 24-hour programming.
OpenLogi
Ecommerce is booming in Japan but OpenLogi says that the logistics of shipping products remains a major bottleneck. Compared to shipping on Amazon which the takes 14 steps, OpenLogi has simplified the process.
The company links up to established logistics companies and arranges the fine details with them so the user only has to share basic info like shipping address and shipping company.

3rd place: Bringers

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Bringers targets people living overseas who miss their home and would love to find something to remind them of their hometown. Sadly, these things are mostly local and it’s hard to find them elsewhere. With Bringers, homesick expatriates can ask someone to find these items and bring them back.
Bringers is a simple platform where users can list the items they need, and how much money they are willing to pay for it. On the other side, if somebody is flying overseas and wants to make extra cash, they can browse the listings according to their destination.
All the transactions will be handled online in the Bringers platform. Acting as an escrow, the money will only be wired to the sender after the receiver confirms that he/she has acquired the promised items. Bringers plans to charge a 12 percent commission on each transaction.
However, this isn’t entirely a new idea. Another Indonesian startup by the name of Bistip has done it since 2011.

2nd place: Nanny Advisor

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Admit it. As much as you love your children, it’s a bit tough taking care of them when you want to go travelling. This is true especially for those who enjoy extreme sports like hiking and rafting. While hotels may provide a nanny service, they may not really have a professional nanny on board, but rather a housekeeping person willing to fill in.
Although it’s not an everyday situation, the folks behind Nanny Advisor want to ensure that you can get the best nanny for your loved ones. During Startup Weekend, Nanny Advisor was able to create a website and prototype for the mobile app. With them, you can browse the nannies based on location and see their detailed profiles.

1st place: Cash for Trash

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Littering is a huge problem everywhere in the world, especially in developing countries like Indonesia. While educating people not to litter can only go so far, the team behind Cash for Trash believes that people can adopt the habit of throwing away and recycling trash faster if there’s an incentive. The incentive Cash for Trash team came up with is – you guessed it – cold, hard cash.
The Cash for Trash team targets youngsters aged between 12 to 22 years old, most of whom are savvy smartphone users and might want to make extra money, albeit just a small sum. The startup would need to go to schools and universities to promote the Cash for Trash smartphone app and hand out trash bags.
Then Cash for Trash would routinely send in garbage trucks to schools, and pick up the trash bags with students’ names written on them. The startup weighs the plastic bag and allocates some credit to the student, which can be redeemed for cash. The startup plans to earn revenue from recycling the trash.
Unfortunately, the startup didn’t explain clearly how much money the students can earn from their efforts.

Beside the three winners, Startup Weekend also commended DecaShop and Instagator. The former is an online marketplace for home furniture, while the latter is an app to connect people in co-working spaces online.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Infinite Web shelf space sparks a surge of food startups

As we approach the biggest eating week of the year, I’ve noticed a growing number of entrepreneurs in Boston trying to figure out how to get onto your shopping list and into your fridge. And investors are trying to figure out how to get a piece of the next Annie’s Organic (acquired by General Mills for $820 million this fall) or Vitaminwater (acquired by Coca-Cola for $4.1 billion).
“Vitaminwater was like the Google of the beverage business,” says Gad Liwerant, who this fall launched a line of packaged smoothies called Applause. “Their success provided motivation and inspiration for a lot of people.”
It’s an interesting moment for the food and beverage industry. Big companies in search of the next big taste are nurturing and acquiring startups. Social media is making it cheaper to build consumer awareness. And hustling to get shelf space at the local Shaw’s may not matter much longer.
“When Amazon gets its same-day delivery of products nailed down, there should be a flood of new consumer products” delivered straight from a warehouse to your doorstep, says Sung Park, founder of Greater Good, a Cambridge beverage company.
All those factors are creating a surge in startups, and the variety of different food ventures around Boston would make for a very strange Thanksgiving meal.
Motto is a sparkling drink made with matcha green tea, packaged in what looks like ginger ale bottles. Six Foods raised $70,000 on the funding site Kickstarter this year to crank out tortilla chips and chocolate chip cookies made with ground-up crickets (it’s high in protein).
Needham-based Purple Carrot delivers ingredients and recipes for vegan meals. Buen Sabor in Newburyport is making all-natural empanadas, rice and beans, and tamales.

Much of this is driven by consumers’ desire for healthier and more convenient foods. At Applause, Liwerant says he wanted to create a smoothie made with “100 percent fruits and vegetables, that was exactly what we like to eat at home,” but without the prep and cleanup. Sold frozen inside brightly colored bags, Applause’s smoothies are priced at $3.25. (A bag makes two servings.) They started appearing at Target stores in September

Supporting the scene are shared workspaces like CropCircle Kitchen, the Food Loft, and Hope & Main in Providence, which make it easier for foodie founders to share advice and kitchen equipment. Even investors who traditionally backed high-tech or health care businesses are branching out.
“The two biggest stocks that have gained the most over the last decade were Keurig” — the Massachusetts maker of coffee pods and brewers — “and Monster Energy drinks,” says Jeff Fagnan of Atlas Venture in Cambridge. “We are seeing a plethora of food deals.”
He says the firm is still undecided about investing in the field and hasn’t so far. But Fagnan has made personal investments, including in Avion tequila, a high-end brand run by his sister that was acquired this year for a reported $100 million.
In Cambridge, Flagship Ventures plans to increase its investing in food and nutritional products, said spokeswoman Lauren Digange. Among its investments are Quantum Designs, which collaborated with Stonyfield Farms to develop WikiPearls, a frozen yogurt bonbon packaged in an edible “skin” instead of a plastic wrapper.
In June, chef Adam Melonas opened an incubator for food products on the edge of Central Square, Chew Lab. Melonas works with consumer products companies on rather stealthy product development efforts — like “redefining breakfast so kids beg you to eat it,” he says.
Melonas has a staff of 11 food scientists, chefs, and product developers. He hopes to put together a $10 million or $20 million fund to make bets in the food and beverage business.
Kitchen manager and chef Brooke Kravetz sliced apples at Chew.
MICHELE MCDONALDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE
Kitchen manager and chef Brooke Kravetz sliced apples at Chew.
Melonas, who cooked at restaurants in Australia, Spain, and China, came to Boston in 2010 to help launch a new candy brand, Unreal; he left that company last year to start Chew Lab.
Unreal took a dramatically different approach than most startups, which scrape together cash to get a product onto store shelves, and then hustle to get people to notice. The founders of Unreal included Michael Bronner, an entrepreneur who started businesses like the digital marketing agency Digitas, and his two teenage sons, Kris and Nicky.
Unreal had one of the splashiest launch campaigns you can imagine; its endorsers included Matt Damon, Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, and Bill Gates. The Boston company aimed to “unjunk” junk food, selling chocolate bars and peanut butter cups with less sugar and fewer artificial ingredients.
The 2012 launch put Unreal products into about 30,000 stores nationally. But sales slumped after an $8 million first quarter, and retailers started sending product back. Unreal’s packaging was confusing. It was hard to see the brand’s name or figure out what it meant. The company also was paying big bucks for placement on shelves next to Hershey’s and other mainstream candies.
Unreal, which has raised more than $50 million, shut down production late last year. It reformulated its products, focusing on peanut butter cups, with added ingredients like quinoa and coconut. This fall, it began a narrow launch in the natural foods sections of about 900 grocery stores of the Kroger chain. They’re relying more on word-of-mouth and “mom bloggers” instead of paying for public relations and mass media.
“You’ve got to start small,” says Steve Konczal, Unreal’s chief executive, a veteran of Heineken and Unilever. “You want to minimize the cost of learning what works.”
As my grandfather liked to tell us when we learned something the hard way: Sometimes you’ve got to pay for an education.