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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
MikanMikan 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.
WovnWovn 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.
MatchMatch 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.
BizerEarly 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.
FiNCFiNC 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.
SpacemarketSpacemarket 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.jpBento (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.tvYouTube 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.
OpenLogiEcommerce 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.
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.
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
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.
