Tech in Asia E-Magazine Issue #1 : 2014 by Tech in Asia

Content Highlights

(Pg. 57)

8 Tech Trends to Watch in China for 2014 (pg. 14)

(pg. 54) Valentineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Day Apps

(pg. 5) 9 Types of Entrepreneurs in Asia

Content List Editor’s Letter

Founder Story

News Articles - 9 Types of Entrepreneurs in Asia

- 7 characteristics of Silicon Valley you won’t find in Asia - How Singapore can learn from Silicon Valley’s problems - 8 tech trends to watch in China for 2014 - What I learned in my first year as an angel investor in China - 10 highlights of Indonesia’s tech industry in 2013 - 2013 was a year of booming social ecommerce in Thailand - Two Serious Problems That Plague Tech Companies in Vietnam - 4 Philippine startups that successfully raised funds in 2013 - 5 reasons why Rocket Internet graduates make good entrepreneurs - 24 of Asia’s Top Photo Apps to Take On Instagram

5 8 11

- Jack Ma’s Last Speech as Alibaba CEO - Razer CEO tells students it’s okay to waste time, get an ‘F’ - Singapore Startup Deal.com.sg Founder Shares His Starting Up Story - Streetdirectory Founder Picked Himself Up and Rebuilt

44 47 49 51

14 18

Exclusive Content

- Valentine’s Day Apps - 10 hottest startups to watch in 2014

54 57

27 30

Event List - February 2014

32 35 38

Editorial Letter

Editor in Chief Steven Millward Editor Terence Lee Contributor Willis Wee Terence Lee Teoh Minghao Paul BischoďŹ&#x20AC; Phoebe Magdirila Saiyai Sakawee Anh-Minh Do Enricko Lukman Rui Ma John Fearon

2014

2565

Graphic Designers Kevin Andrian Sutanto Andre R. G. Glenn Prasetya Production Manager Emily Goh

Up until a few years ago, nearly every story about web and tech companies in Asia looked at Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. But regular Tech in Asia readers will know that the rest of Asia has tech stories worth telling. Everywhere from Pakistan to Nepal, Thailand to the Philippines, there are entrepreneurs who are working hard to get into new tech sectors diďŹ&#x20AC;erent to the enterprise IT services that their fathers might have worked at, seeking to create compelling services and apps for a regional and even global audience. In doing so, they're challenging big-name online services like Odesk, Evernote, WhatsApp, Facebook - even Google itself.

seeking the most insights, we also wanted an E-Magazine - and this is the first of our monthly publications. The aim is that our E-Magazine is the one place anyone will need to look for the latest tech news and exclusive insights into this vast region. The first issue compiles a great series of lists, 2013 round-ups, plus founders' stories on some of Asia's tech luminaries, including words of wisdom from Alibaba's Jack Ma. Look out for two exclusive articles not before posted on the Tech in Asia site, including a round-up of the ten startups that'll be making waves and hitting headlines in 2014.

2014 is the year their stories will be heard loud and clear. We start the new year with three Tech in Asia sister sites: one in Indonesian, one in Vietnamese, and the global site in English covering the whole area. We have writers in more countries than ever, and our Games in Asia site ensures we have all kinds of gaming covered as well. For our most dedicated readers, the ones

As always, we aim to be accessible and are always keen to learn. If you have feedback, tips, or anything to discuss, you can grab all four editors by email at: editors@techinasia.com.

Media Partnerships partner@techinasia.com

Regards, Steven Millward Tech in Asia Chief Editor

Marketing Vanessa Tan Website www.techinasia.com

Advertise With Us darren@techinasia.com

Facebook http:// www.facebook.com/ techinasia Twitter @Techinasia Production 2014

Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't. So that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't. -Anonymous4

9 Types of Entrepreneurs in Asia by Willis Wee

ince we had a chance to interview and follow so many entrepreneurs in Asia, we thought it would be fun to classify them based on their characteristics.

You may or may not find your type here because some of you are probably a mix. Some of our categories don’t read as great as others, but you shouldn’t feel oﬀended should you fall under them. Just let your product speak for you! Here’s our list on 9 types of entrepreneurs in Asia:

1. The Greenhorn Young, daring, and naive They are probably fresh out of college and extremely excited about their future. They probably think they know it all until they meet some bumps along the road. Along the way, some might understand that entrepreneurship might not be suitable for everyone. Some will regret the decision of being entrepreneurs while others fight and take on whatever comes at them as a valuable experience, whether they succeed or not.

2. The Visionaries Bold, smart, great vision, and sometimes outspoken They are the people who tend to want to solve the hardest problems in the world. They are charismatic, smart, and sometimes crazy (good). They build products that have meaning to the world and put customers above their investors and sometimes, even their own employees. The companies they build usually have a very strong culture with great vision to achieve goals that somewhat seem impossible.

3. The Daredevils Bold, smart, great vision, but overly outspoken They are seen as visionaries but could sometimes be a little hard to understand. They are quick to pick a fight and will win at all costs. Even if they lose, they will not back down. It’s a good spirit, really. But the disadvantage is that people in the industry usually hate the daredevil type of entrepreneurs. They just seem too loud, cocky, and sometimes evil when they take the wrong path just to win.

4. The Exit-ers Money driven entrepreneurs The exit-ers type are those who care only about exits (getting acquired, usually). They are usually more concerned about revenue and raising money. They place investors above their customers. Because money is their key motivation, they tend to forget that customers don’t really give a shit about all the zeroes they have in the bank.

5. The Executors Our actions speak for themselves They don’t like to talk to media despite countless request from journalists. They believe their actions speak louder than words. So they are spending all the time they have to execute their vision. In many ways, the executors are similar to visionaries but are very media shy people.

6. The Posers Because being an entrepreneur is cool The posers are people who think being an entrepreneurs is cool. Deep down, they know that they aren’t cut out to be entrepreneurs but still want to live that dream. Sad.

7. The Bullshitters I can’t be an entrepreneur but I can talk The bullshitter is an upgraded version of the poser. These people usually can’t build a decent business. They also know that they can’t be entrepreneurs. Instead of spending time running their own business, they spend time sharing their thoughts about entrepreneurship, lean startup model, raising money, etc, etc. The bullshitters are detrimental to the greenhorn entrepreneurs who unfortunately might take their words seriously.

8. The Octopi Building multiple startups is cool The octopi usually have multiple companies under their command. Sure, they work hard but they are also spending limited time on each of the companies that they have founded. They enjoy wearing different hats and working on very diverse products, which is what keeps them running.

9. The Valley Dudes Silicon Valley is king Silicon Valley entrepreneur type you find in Asia are well versed with what’s happening in the US and are usually expats. They keep comparing Silicon Valley to Asia. The more they do, the more depressed they get. The smart ones can identify similar trends and hop onto the wave to create an ubersuccessful company in Asia. But the foolish ones just keep sulking about why Asia isn’t anything like Silicon Valley and unfortunately end up not putting their knowledge to good use.

characteristics of Silicon Valley you won’t find in Asia by Anh-Minh Do

fter spending a week here in San Francisco, hanging out with Valley startups, and attending TechCrunch Disrupt, I’ve noticed a few things that are rather unique about the Valley that you won’t see back in Asia. They play a huge role in what kinds of startups come out of the ecosytem. And although it’s not Asia’s heyday yet and the Silicon Valley is still the indisputable Mecca of startups, we’re starting to see the inklings of a distinct culture in Asia. Here’s seven things in the Valley you just won’t see in Asia.

1. A strong early adopter culture I was sitting with a bunch of non-tech friends the other day, when one of them whips out her iPhone. She says, “Hey guys, check out this new app I found called VenMo. It allows you to be able to transfer money to your friends after you get the bill.” I was mesmerized. You just don’t have this kind of situation in Vietnam. Most of the time, if you’re hearing such talk in Asia, you’re probably hanging out with other tech people. In San Francisco, startups have the convenient advantage of being able to assume that early adopters are in abundance. There is no such luck in Asia. More often than not, ideas die before they even get implemented because there’s no early adopter culture. It could be a great idea, but no one wants to try it. That means startups that do make it, have to work really hard to make sure that their idea actually has value to either businesses or consumers. Valley startups can work on frivolous things like UX design, hilarious marketing tactics, or as we saw at TechCrunch Disrupt’s hackathon, base ideas like TitStare.

...Asian culture is held back profoundly by not only an immaturity in how to work together but also a defensiveness in competing.

2. A willingness to share and grow together My hat goes off to Valley folks: they really care about each other in a way that I don’t see happening here in Asia. Putting Apple aside, you’d just have to spend a few hours on Quora and its startups topic and you’ll see how much people are willing to divulge about how to do startup, startup culture, and the trials and tribulations of being a founder. Valley people, nurtured in the heart of the yuppie and hippie culture of California, have grown to share and help each other. In Asia, we certainly see pockets of this, with mentorship becoming an imperative, but Asian culture is held back profoundly by not only an immaturity in how to work together but also a defensiveness in competing. If you fly around Asia meeting startup communities, you’ll slowly start to hear of all the dramas that torment each. Fundamentally, this prevents the kind of growth we see in the Valley. In the Valley there’s drama, but it’s profoundly swept away by 1) the sheer size of the community and 2) the overwhelming sense that “we should help each other for everyone to win”. It’s ultimately all about win-win.

3. Failure as a rite of passage People have been harping on this one repeatedly and it’s for good reason. Failure, across Asia, remains a stigma. As Dave McClure yelled at the top of his lungs in Japan, “someone in a high position has to publicly fail so that other people can learn how to do it”. Nobody wants to fail and it’s inextricably tied to long-held Asian culture. In other words, it’s not going away anytime soon.

4. Everybody wants to help everybody

6. Valley startups create problems to solve because they don’t have any problems First-world problems include not getting your eggs the way you want them and taking just a few more minutes to get a cab than you wanted to. If you watch American travelers going through Asia, it’s even more vivid. They shout and complain about things the locals take as normal. While chatting Kevin Chen from Technode, he remarked on a new startup that was present at Disrupt, Spinlister, an Airbnb for bicycles. “They’re looking for problems to solve.” In Asia, we’ve got more problems than we can bargain for. There’s so many low hanging fruit for startups to pick that most of them are rotten.

With almost every person I met on this trip, whether it be a startup or an investor or a journalist, everyone offered to help me in some way. And I noticed very quickly that they also offered to help everyone they met. As competitive as Asia is, offering your help to someone else can also mean doing favors for a potential enemy. But people are unable to see past that and look at the longterm benefits.

7. The ecosystem dreams really really big I was just about to write “founders dream really really big” when I remembered that Mark Zuckerberg just wanted to have a social network for college kids in the early days. And as Paul Graham stated, starting with a small problem actually pays off in the longer term. So, in a lot of ways, it’s the entire ecosystem around these founders that end up dreaming big.

5. The Valley is a land of layers Every time I come back to the United States, it looks exactly the same. The landscape hasn’t changed much except for a few new Starbucks’ and a new building or statue here and there. Offices still have landline phones and people still drive cars on the same exact highways. Everything is like clockwork. It’s this firm foundation that Valley startups can build on top of. Uber is a great example of this. It takes existing resources and people and fashions a business model that sits perfectly on top of the infrastructure that already exists. In Asia, especially developing Asia, forget about infrastructure. Forget about widespread usage of landlines and aligned highways. Asian startups are building for a land without layers; they are forced to be the layers themselves. Texting is one beautiful example of how Asia leapfrogged landlines into new technologies that the Western world has only caught up to in the last few years. And today, we’re seeing unique examples of this with payment, logistics, and e-commerce at the forefront.

Conclusion: the bubble and the ocean Everything in this world is a double-edged sword. Silicon Valley’s bubble is also its greatest asset. All of these elements come together to make the Valley the engine it is today. Our friend Loo Cheng Chuan, Head of Singtel’s Local Life and Group Digital Life had some penetrating insights into where the Silicon Valley has an edge over Asia, and it’s all too true. On the other hand, the Valley’s bubble leaves it a bit isolated. After all, when Americans think of the World Series, it’s really just the States and Canada. With Asia, its time is coming. there’s only about four Asian cities that are globally significant in the worldwide startup ecosystem. But the foundation is compelling. Asian startups are forced to swim in an ocean to survive. It’s the ones that can swim fast that make it.

How Singapore Can Learn From Silicon Valley’s Problem By John Fearon

In recent times, Singapore’s burgeoning startup scene has been constantly compared to Silicon Valley. There are plenty of similarities: the presence of clusters of game-changing startups, heavyweight tech corporations, and wealthy investors. While it is playing catch up, Singapore is in a great position to learn, grow and hopefully avoid the pitfalls of its more illustrious counterpart. Singapore is a prominent hub for startup activity around the world. As a predominantly English-speaking citystate, it is usually a springboard into the wider region of various languages and cultural barriers in Southeast Asia. With a stable, honest and prointernational business government, Singapore is the easiest country in the world to setup a company. It possesses excellent technology and infrastructure to grow tech businesses. The country has one of the highest internet and smartphone penetration

populations in the world. With continuous plans by the government to improve the networks, the adoption of tech will not be hindered by lack of bandwidth. The big players in tech are touching down and setting up shop. Bigwigs like Facebook, Google and Yahoo have been here for a while. The money is here with venture capitalists like Sequoia, incubators and accelerators like Pollenizer, funds and angels like Eduardo Saverin based around the island. Even the local large corporations are getting into the tech investment game like SingTel’s Innov8 fund. Rent is inexpensive. Well, not everywhere – Singapore’s premiere location in the Central Business District is ranked eighth in the world. However, if you do not need to be a stone’s throw away from The Merlion, try demarcated startup areas like Blk71 or the coworking spaces around the island.

Dark clouds over Silicon Valley One thing lacking in Singapore, of course, is the elusive billion-dollar startup. However, 2013 alone has seen numerous six-figure investments and even a 9-figure exit for Viki. Yet, there has been nothing like the pedigree of success in Silicon Valley. Billion dollar companies and million dollar exits are signs of a healthy startup ecosystem. Just like the Paypal mafia that led to creation of Tesla Motors, LinkedIn, Yammer and more, great startup exits mean creating more jobs and transferring knowledge to the next batch of startuppers. Those who reach the finishing line don’t end there, they start again. Silicon Valley’s success is not without its problems – there’s the issue of insuﬃcient talent and high rent.

It lacks highly skilled American tech workers and has to import people. “Immigrants have founded 40 percent of companies in the tech sector that were financed by venture capital and went on to become public in the US, among them Yahoo, eBay, Intel, and Google,” writes Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior VP of People Operations, “In 2012, these companies employed roughly 560,000 workers and generated $63 billion in sales.” With a quota system of only 65,000 H-1B visas per year in a country of 320 million, it is usually snapped up within days of its release. This low supply of internal and external talent is slowly stagnating the industry. Having one of the largest concentrations of tech companies in the US in a 30-mile radius that is Silicon Valley means limited and expensive oﬃce space. Palo Alto hovers around at a five percent vacancy rate with approximately $70 per square foot yearly – and rising rapidly. Many startups are forced to pay a ransom to be closer to the action, where VCs and other startups are. This exertion on the limited funding a startup has can cause the fledging business to stress, contract and even fail.

Leveraging on Silicon Valley’s failures These crises are significant opportunities for Singapore to learn from. To encourage more risk takers and visionaries to come to the island, the reasons for its current success should be built upon. Singapore has an opportunity to attract the foreign entrepreneurs being rejected by the H-1B quota in the US. It is the best place in the world to set up a global startup, thanks in part to the Entrepreneur Pass, Singapore’s open business environment and moderate tax rate. By bringing in more startup founders, it will spice up the economy with new additives and seasoned entrepreneurs. Instead of the failed quota system of Silicon Valley, Singapore should continue giving visas to those with the right qualities, skills and experiences. For more basic roles, companies can outsource to regional development hubs in Vietnam, Cambodia and Philippines.

To help more people into the entrepreneurial scene, I believe in making more office space available just for startups. The Block 71 initiative by MDA to house tech companies is seeing the space being filled to the brim. With many startup offices in the area, it is easy for out-of-town investors, business partners, media and recruits to visit several companies in one trip. This is a step in the right direction and startups are looking forward to the expansion of the cluster. Continual improvement on the talent and office spaces can be the catalyst that sees Singapore startups become billiondollar corporations that spawn others.

Patrick Linden | Co-founder of Dealguru Holdings

“It is important for entrepreneurs to stay ﬁrm to what they believe in. And if you need advice, go to the right people who have been there and done that rather than those who don’t fully grasp the reality of entrepreneurship.”

by Paul Bischoff The new year is a time for reflection, but it’s also a time for looking forward. In this regard, we’ve taken a broad look at some of the budding trends we expect to continue in China in 2014. In an ecosystem growing as fast as China’s tech scene, anything is possible within a year, but here’s a few predictions we think will change the country’s landscape.

Weibo will go out of style Weibo was still growing as of Q3 2013, and revenues were up, but we still predict the service’s popularity will taper oﬀ. Many reasons factor into this. WeChat has taken over as the dominant social network of choice for most Chinese users. Sina has reached out to overseas Chinese in international markets, but will fail to get much traction among local populations outside the domestic market, mainly because it has to compete with Twitter, Facebook, and any number of local social networks. Government scrutiny of “Big Vs” and censorship has risen over the past year. Sina Weibo will still be around, held up by China’s growing internet and smartphone penetration, but any growth will be minimal, especially if it keeps punishing and deleting thousands of accounts. It’s biggest hope is its marriage with Alibaba, which could lead to some e-commerce tie-ins. WeChat has already covered ground there, though.

Baidu will continue to decline in search Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) is already starting to lose it’s once-unshakeable hold on the Chinese search market. The biggest threat to the company’s dominance is Qihoo‘s (NYSE:QIHU) 360 Search, followed by Tencent‘s (HKG:0700) Sogou. Despite gradually losing market share, Baidu has managed to hold onto its place at the top, but if trends continue, it won’t be long before it dips below the 50 percent mark. In August 2012, Baidu accounted for 80 percent of all search queries in the city. By September 2013, it held 66 percent.

Fewer bitcoins After the central bank’s two tough blows restricting bitcoins in China this month, the world’s most robust Bitcoin market has been severely stunted. Bitcoins cannot be used as currency by payment or financial institutions. All bitcoin-based businesses must register with the government, as well as bitcoin users. Third-party payment companies have been barred from letting users purchase bitcoins at exchanges, which led to BTC China, the world’s largest exchange, no longer accepting deposits in RMB. Bitcoin’s outlook in China, which led the cryptocurrency to it’s peak just one month ago, is now bleak, but some still remain optimistic.

4G-enabled services and devices China’s nationwide 4G network finally received government approval and started rolling out on December 18. As the three major telcos flip the switches on for other cities over the next year, smartphone users will want to take advantage. China Mobile plans to sell 100 milllion 4G smartphones in 2014. That means more money spent on data plans, which in the past were often limited to just 300MB per month. As HD video, live video chat, online multiplayer gaming, and other services become available, consumers will have to pay for the devices and data plans to use them. For the world’s largest carrier, China Mobile, that means a closing a deal with Apple for a TD-LTE-enabled iPhone.

Console gaming Of all the trends on the list, this one perhaps deserves the most skepticism. We’ve been let down by rumors of China lifting it’s 13-year-old console ban in the past, but this looks like the real deal. A company CEO close to Microsoft’s partner in China has publicly stated the Xbox One will be released in China in September 2014. But even if that really happens, will Chinese gamers be keen on console gaming? We have a feeling they won’t be.

More decentralized consumer finance This could be the biggest trend of 2014, and it covers a lot of ground. For the first time in recent history, Chinese people can choose online, nongovernment options for financial services. These include savings and investment in funds like Alibaba’s Yuebao and Baidu’s Baifa, microfinance and peer-to-peer lending, insurance from companies like Jack Ma and Pony Ma’s Zhong An Insurance, and e-wallets – either standalone apps like the Alipay Wallet or those built into apps like WeChat. More of these services will be rolled out in 2014, along with more supplementary services built around them.

Electric Vehicles China’s EV industry has more or less been a failure to date despite heavy government subsidies and market demand. This February, Tesla Motors will start selling imported Model S sedans on the mainland. Perhaps directly faced with a foreign adversary, China’s fragmented auto industry will get its act together. It looks like China might reconsider fully electric vehicles and go down a hybrid path, instead. Besides private vehicles, China has also been updating its taxi and bus fleets with electric and hybrid motors.

More high-quality Chinese brand smartphones China is no longer the land of cheap knockoffs (although they are certainly still around). Led by Xiaomi, both old and new companies are entering the low-cost highperformance mobile device space. It’s a chance for them to shake off the made-inChina stigma and start making headway into international markets. Oppo has been making its way to the US, Europe and Southeast Asia with the N1, although it’s not exactly a budget model. To compete with Xiaomi, prices will have to come down. Huawei just started taking preorders for the Honor 3C, a direct competitor to Xiaomi’s cheapest smartphone Hongmi. In November, Baidu invested in mobile supply chain manager Digione, which is likely to make a Xiaomi competitor as well. We expect even more smartphone models fitting this profile in 2014. Even the cheap knockoffs will start seeing upgrades. We predict sub-$100 quad-core smartphones will hit the market before the end of next year.

0 1 4

What I learned in my first year as an angel investor in China By Rui Ma

I made one of the best decisions of my entire adult life. In the beginning of 2013, I jumped headfirst into early stage technology investing by joining the hybrid startup accelerator and seed stage fund called 500 Startups as their Greater China venture partner. I’m no stranger to tech companies, investing or China, but being in charge of a massive region including China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong and having to dig deep for quality early stage investments. I’ve also done fundraising and participated in and organized numerous community events which were, to say the least, challenging. Here are some of my key learnings.

Be in Beijing According to this 2012 Cyzone report on angel investing (summary is free, full report costs 500 RMB), Beijing received more than two times as much investment as Shanghai (21 percent versus 9 percent), which ranked third behind Shandong. If you are like me and do not spend time evaluating gaming companies, it feels like Beijing is 3 to 5 times as active as Shanghai. If I had to break it down, Beijing incorporates all the newest tech trends, Shanghai is mostly consumer-facing content and media with some advertising mixed in, Hangzhou (of Alibaba fame) is China’s e-commerce headquarters, Shenzhen is a mix of e-commerce and gaming and some hardware-software startups, and rest of China is either some variation of gaming or outsourcing, or gaming outsourcing, as the folks at the largest “incubator” in China will agree. The talent is here in Beijing, because there’s a real ecosystem in several “generations” of successful founders and early employees. Furthermore, long-time mainland residents know that if you are looking at employees with a few years of experience, who are mostly married with kids, they just don’t have the ability to move to other cities because it’s prohibitively expensive to do so. I spend quite a lot of time outside Beijing, but that’s because I’ve been living in this city for the past 4.5 years. If you are new to China, be in Beijing.

China is one gigantic accelerator… for accelerators The country that quintupled its GDP in thirty years has mastered the art of exponential growth. To quote the plans of Tsinghua University’s x-lab, an accelerator program which launched in April 2013, the site will expand from 100 sqm to 500 sqm within the year (mission accomplished) to 5,000 sqm (that’s 50,000 sq ft!) within three years. When I spoke to one of the advisors in October, more than 80 teams were already in the program. It was much the same news at Virtue Inno Valley, a Tsinghua-affiliated accelerator located right below Innovation Works, which hoped to invest in 500 startups in three years(on pace with my employer, coincidentally). Even “startup cafes,” such as the kind pioneered by Cheku and 3W in Beijing, essentially coffee shops plus co-working spaces plus startup event spaces, have grown like mushrooms throughout the country. My “China Startup Cafes” Wechat group began with a few dozen but now has 285 members. Even third-tier cities I’ve never heard of have their own startup cafes. In this investor’s humble opinion, it’s a flawed business model (successful startups aren’t built on top of a steady flow of cheap coffee, and coffee isn’t all that cheap in China anyway!) but it is growing like a weed because it is often heavily subsidized by an enthusiastic government. Which brings me to my next point:

“

Even “startup cafes,” such as the kind pioneered by Cheku and 3W in Beijing, essentially coffee shops plus co-working spaces plus startup event spaces, have grown like mushrooms throughout the country.

“

The Government is all in The Chinese government has always had a soft spot for hightech, and in its attempt to foster home-grown innovation, is investing in the sector in a big way. Perhaps this is its solution to the perpetual high unemployment among college grads (even the oﬃcial statistics are in the high teens, 17.5% in 2011). But whatever the reason, the results are that there are numerous grant-making, equity-taking, and space-providing institutes, industrial parks, innovation centers, coworking spaces, incubators such as this onefor college students, or this one targeted at returnees. Any enterprising entrepreneur can generally, if he or she is not too lazy and has the patience to jump through the hoops, get a cool $10,000-$30,000 worth of grants, some of which are only reimbursable, but some of which can be received upfront. Even investors can benefit, as I know of at least one local investor who utilizes the 1,296 RMB (about $200) in government stipend per university student intern from the Shanghai government to recruit “free” deal-sourcing help. In fact, I know of at least one accelerator who has sneakily changed its business model after a few lackluster batches to be that of primarily a “financial advisor” to startups seeking capital, taking an introduction fee on funds raised and leveraging its close relationships with some government agencies to enable its recommendations to “more quickly” receive cash disbursements. While I don’t generally look to these funds for deal flow, as their KPIs generally revolve around some irrelevant metric such as number of patents, PhDs or Chinese Academy of Sciences scholars on board, they are nonetheless powerful indicators of what industries the government plans to get behind in a big way – and so after the cloud computing craze of 2011/12, it is clear that two of the bigger trends of 2013 were internet finance and wearable gadgets.

Solo investor rounds are the norm While syndicates are all the rage in the United States to the point of becoming institutionalized, they are uncommon in China. At a local Chinese angel investor dinner last month in Shanghai where I was the only “cross-border” representative, the hosts asked the dozen or so angels there if we had co-invested in any deals. None of us had. I was surprised given the amount of overlap in interests and geography (all Shanghai-based, mostly consumer mobile internet, particularly social, and a little bit of digital health). The truth is, angel investing, as a formal process, is only two to three years old in China, and rounds are also lower (with 2-3 million RMB or less than $600,000 being a common seed round). In this nascent market, investors are able to extract more upside from inexperienced entrepreneurs who don’t know enough about screening for value-added investors and expertise. And yes, the relative supply-demand imbalance (the ratio is something like 26,000+ tech startups versus 750+ angel investors) has something to do with it too. This often leads to rounds where only one or two investors participate, as opposed to the sometimes double-digit numbers in the US. I may be biased by 500 Startup’s entrepreneur-friendly business model, but I think this approach to investing ultimately hurts entrepreneurs because they’re getting very limited perspective and advice.

China is watching you To anyone who thinks that there are Chinese people waiting to clone your product as soon as you enter China, you are dead wrong. The Chinese will clone your product long before you enter China, usually as soon as they hear about you – when you launch, when you get any traction, when you raise a round of funding. You will get cloned because the amount of information flowing into China vastly exceeds the amount of information flowing out. The Chinese are like a sponge — waiting to absorb the best business ideas worldwide, but most especially Silicon Valley. New (relatively speaking) dedicated tech news sites such as 36Kr, Huxiu, ifanr, iheima, as well as old-hand CSDN all regularly report on original content but also translate a good deal of articles from overseas. In fact, I can distinctly remember a handful of instances where I saw the Chinese translation first (thank you Wechat public accounts!) before I encountered the original English article. The turnaround is that blazing fast. So if you are a business with any sort of notoriety (particularly in the press) in the developed world, know that you are being watched here in China, and most likely dissected and reassembled to fit local tastes. Most of your clones will be instantly recognizable and most will die, but a few, such as this Uber lookalike, will thrive.

And China is coming to you Besides watching, Chinese investors and entrepreneurs are actively going overseas. Innospring was early to the scene as the first Chinese-US crossborder themed incubator. Innovation Works has set up shop in San Francisco, and even Cheku Cafe has a Bay Area location and GMIC Silicon Valley is drawing a few thousand attendees now a year. But in an even more active way, Chinese entrepreneurs and investors are regularly forming groups to go abroad (still the Valley, mostly) to learn and to network. While I am privy to a lot of these trips because our picturesque headquarters in Mountain View is often a must-see destination and awesome event space, there are plenty of smaller interest groups that visit on a quarterly basis. Such organized “tours” have even become a business model of sorts for certain angel investor groups, who tout this as a key benefit of membership. In fact, some investors were so often in the US that a year ago, there was a serious Kickstarter-type campaign going on in Wechat led by PreAngel where people were signing up for up to $100,000 commitments to crowdfund a house in the South Bay (complete with the latest high-tech gadgets and of course a Tesla automobile). Compared to Beijing housing prices, the three or four

bedroom house they were quoting was a relative bargain. The residence was to be operated on a timeshare basis, with vacancies filled by Airbnb rentals and any profits paid to investors as dividends. I don’t know if that idea ever found legs, and I’m skeptical of the value of such “learning tours,” but then again, if I weren’t a China-born, Silicon Valley-raised brat, I would probably be resorting to the same. I know what you’re thinking – “Nice list, chica, but has any of this made you a better investor?” I would like to think so. Without giving away any confidential or sensitive information, I’m happy to report that this year can be deemed successful. I’ve got one or two Series As in my pocket, more than my share of nice plump Series Seeds, and no imminent blowups (to my knowledge). I spend most of my time in Beijing, but frequently drop in on Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Taipei. I keep tabs on the booming accelerator scene, but know that the model (and thus outcomes) are very diﬀerent from what we have created at 500 in California (and Mexico), and so I mentor the accelerator managers as much as I try to help their companies. I check in with various government entities directly from time to time,

although I mainly benefit indirectly from the trickle-down eﬀects of their startup-embracing policies such as free event space and the occasional honorarium. I spend my time educating entrepreneurs on the importance of putting together a quality syndicate ofvalue-add angel investors and hope that idea starts sticking soon (so far so good!). I will look seriously at sophisticated and thoughtful clones but generally seek out less sexy, crossborder (where we add distinct value), and more capital eﬃcient business opportunities such as this one in logistics or this one infactory employee retention. I try to be helpful with the Silicon Valleybound learning tour groups as best as I can and I’m always on WeChat, whose many investor groupchats (most with 50-250 highly curated members) and tech media public accounts are the absolute best source of information flow and bears the most (albeit still limited) resemblance to the sort of open ecosystem that has flourished in the US. And in another year, I hope to have quite a few more startups in my portfolio, and many more learnings to share with you.

by Enricko Lukman Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s look back at what the Indonesian tech industry went through last year. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just a history lesson, as it also points the way forward to new trends in Indonesia in the new year. Indonesia now has 74.6 million internet users, and Jakarta citizens are now getting a taste of 4G speed. That will encourage more people to get online. Here are ten other tech highlights that we saw in 2013.

1. Indonesia gets more chatty

2. More blood in e-commerce

3. Big three telcos reach out to startups

2013 was the year when messaging apps battled it out for the throne in Indonesia. Japan-based Line was the first-mover among the new wave of chat apps that are aiming to replace old and staid BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). China-made WeChat and Korea’s KakaoTalk also entered with a bang, spending big money on celebrity-filled TV ads to lure in young Indonesians. Israel-based Viber launched its Indonesian language version last year, but it could lose out due to the aggressive marketing strategy employed by its Asian rivals.

It all looked rosy for Multiply in December 2012. The team was looking forward to its rebranding and transition to become a fully-fledged marketplace site. Fast forward a few months and the team was disbanded and the site shut down. This shows how ruthless and rich its investor, MIH, must be. Multiply’s investor decided that they would rather allocate the funds to its other portfolio company, classifieds site TokoBagus.

In the past few years, Indonesia’s telcos competed with each other over prices and the usual services like calls and SMS. They all decided that there’s new battlefield in the OTT (over-the-top) segment (or as we know it, stuff that uses a mobile web connection). Telkomsel – the nation’s biggest telco – launched its Teman Dev initiative to reach out to tech startups, Indosat worked together with Mountain Ventures to launch its accelerator program called Ideabox, and XL Axiata reportedly plan to open a local app store soon.

Line now has 14 million users in Indonesia while KakaoTalk has 13 million. WeChat hasn’t revealed any numbers for the country but it’s growing pretty strongly thanks to its visibility boost from the joint venture with local media conglomerate MNC. Of course, BBM, which is now available on Android and iOS, will also be looking to fight back in Indonesia. While the future of BlackBerry’s phone business is still uncertain, its BBM app has been well received here.

Japan’s e-commerce giant Rakuten had a rough year in 2013 with its local joint venture partner, MNC Group. The pair split up and Rakuten went alone. Rakuten is still running its e-commerce venture in Indonesia, while MNC Media turned its attention to its aforementioned project with China’s internet giant Tencent.

It seems the nation’s telcos finally understand startups, and how consumers want to use more apps on their phones. In a related note, XL Axiata acquired another telco, Axis, to become Indonesia’s second biggest telco. That meant it has leapfrogged Indosat.

4. More payment solutions

5. Marketplaces everywhere

6. BlackBerry no longer king in Indonesia

Indonesia – as with many other developing countries – still have problem with its online payment infrastructure. While we have local players like Indomog, UniPin, Doku, Veritrans, and Ipaymu, there are still more of them arriving in the form of BBM Money, CIMB Niaga’s Rekening Ponsel, and Mandiri E-Cash.

With Multiply out of the way, it looked like it might be a two horse race between e-commerce marketplace sites Tokopedia and BukaLapak. But then new rivals emerged. Now there are three more players in this eshopping segment: Rocket Internet’s Lamido, eBay’s Blanja, and XL Axiata’s Elevenia. 2014 is going to be tough year for all parties involved, battling for merchants as well as shoppers. Amusingly, all three sites appeared in November 2013.

All the signs were there: BlackBerry didn’t launch any new phones in 2012 in Indonesia, while more affordable and more fully-featured Android phones were surging into the Indonesian market. The launch of the all-new BlackBerry 10 phones last year didn’t help much as there were no longer the long queues you’d expect to see in Indonesia for a new BlackBerry device. The magic has gone.

BBM Money is an e-wallet service that requires its users to have a bank account at Permata Bank, so that doesn’t really solve the core problem. What’s awesome about Rekening Ponsel and E-Cash is that both those e-wallet services don’t require users to have any bank accounts. We’ll see if the three of them can help change Indonesia’s payment infrastructure for the better in 2014.

Research firm IDC then made it official. BlackBerry is now third in Indonesia in terms of phones shipped in Q3 2013, pushed down by Samsung and local telco and phone brand Smartfren. BlackBerry still has about 15 million users in Indonesia. We’ll see if 2014 is a better year for the company there. Maybe its new phone codenamed ‘Jakarta’ can help spark a revival in Indonesia. The tech scene in Indonesia is maturing as we speak. More big players – locally and internationally – are starting to realize how important the Indonesian market is. 240 million people can’t be ignored, especially with many being so young and so eager for smartphones and new web services. We look forward to see what things will unfold this year.

7. Anonymous Indonesia gets angry The Anonymous collective in Asia Pacific got busy last year, including in Indonesia. It was sparked by revelations that Australia has been spying on Indonesia. That led Indonesian hackers to vent their frustration by hacking over 170 random Australian sites. The issue got a bit tense as Anonymous Australia warned Indonesian hackers to focus their anger towards the ones truly responsible for the far-reaching surveillance: Australia’s government. The two Anonymous collectives ended up working together to take down Australia’s Secret Intelligence Service website.

8. Bad business for CDMA 2013 was a terrible year for CDMA network services in Indonesia with all of them recording consistent losses that took them to new lows. Telkom Flexi and Indosat’s StarOne have announced their plans to shut down, while Bakrie Group’s Esia recorded huge debt, and Smartfren isn’t making any profit either. It appears likely that Smartfren may well be the sole CDMA network survivor by the end of 2014.

9. Change of leadership at Kaskus Kaskus is Indonesia’s biggest online forum with 600 million page-views from 40 million user visits every month. Its leaders – Andrew Darwis and Ken Dean Lawadinata – have become an inspiration for many tech entrepreneurs in Indonesia. The duo brought Kaskus back from the US to Indonesia, overcoming its bad reputation for sleazy content and changing it into a clean website. It ended up the best at what it does in the country. Andrew and Ken are now the advisor and chairman of Kaskus, respectively. Sukan Makmuri is now the CEO. All eyes are on Makmuri to see if he can take Kaskus to the next level. We have high hopes that he can do well to answer that challenge.

10. More Chinese services coming in 2013 was also the year where we saw three Chinese internet giants – Tencent, Baidu, and Sina Weibo – entering the Indonesian market. Tencent is still very much focused on developing WeChat in Indonesia, while Baidu came in prepared with eight products readied for the archipelago. Sina Weibo plans to go after Indonesian users too.

by Saiyai Sakawee 2013 was a year of booming e-commerce in Thailand. Thanks to more 3G coverage, the 131 percent mobile penetration rate, and about 52 million internet users in the country, more people than ever shopped online. In fact, the Thai E-Commerce Association expects that e-shopping and online businesses will have grown by 30 percent this year, up from THB 119.64 billion ($3.65 billion) spent in 2012. In Thailand, this boom was boosted by newer kinds of e-commerce, things that have evolved from more established channels such as general e-stores and consumer-toconsumer selling via forums. Here are four emerging social e-commerce trends weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve seen in Thailand in 2013.

F-Commerce Now that Thailand has 24 million Facebook users, it’s only natural that people are taking advantage of the crowded social network for things other than sharing. This trend is ‘Facebook commerce’, or f-commerce for short. In Thailand, f-commerce sellers often focus on women’s products, ranging from accessories to clothes, skincare products to make-up. However, merely creating a page to sell something is so 2012; in 2013, merchants actually started using promoted posts and other types of Facebook advertising. This made the business a lot more social.

And so we saw things like Page365, Instapps, and Bentoweb emerge as services dedicated to building solutions for Facebook vendors in this region. Those all offers an analytics dashboard for sellers to monitor their customers’ behavior, product requests, purchases, and view how items are being shared socially within Facebook. In some cases, these Facebook stores in Thailand are making over $100,000 per month in revenue.

This new trend – across Asia as a whole, not just Thailand – was also a chance for startups to offer services to these sellers.

Instagram Commerce In heartening news for Mark Zuckerberg, Thai people love Instagram as much as Facebook. There are about 1.4 million Instagram users in Thailand right now. This year, the most Instagrammed location in the world is a shopping mall in Bangkok. With the success of Instagram, people embraced the photo sharing app and made it into a popular marketplace. Basically, instead of posting personal photos, some Thai people turn Instagram accounts into shops selling everything from clothes to vitamins. Of course, using Instagram as a marketplace is a global thing. But merchants in Thailand aren’t doing it in the normal way – like using hashtags to promote items – and are instead slipping links into the comments of

photos posted by celebrity Instagrammers. In Thai, it’s called “fag-ran”. Yes, it’s spammy. So it’s common to see celebrities pleading “Please don’t fag-ran” on their Instagram profiles. What’s lacking in Thailand, though, is the tools that manage these transactions. Something similar to Statigram. That’s something for regional startups to work on.

M-Commerce Mobile commerce is an undeniable trend across the region – but 2013 is when we saw it explode in Thailand. The mcommerce king right now is Line, the popular messaging app. Line is the platform that most regional companies choose for online sales promos. This might due to the fact that Line has 230 million registered users, of whom 18 million are in Thailand. That makes the country the second biggest Line user-base after Japan.

Mobile Commerce

Big brands such as online e-store Rakuten Tarad.com have used Line for social commerce projects this year, and global names like make-up brand Maybelline joined in as well. Line itself joined in the mcommerce fun this year too.

Specialist E-Commerce “Find one thing that you’re passionate about and go for it.” That’s a motto that many startups stick to. It has proved to be good advice for some specialist e-stores this year. In 2013, quite a few interesting new startups were born to tackle niche ecommerce areas. One good example is Pomelo Fashion which focuses on street chic fashion, bringing trends from NYC, Korea, and Japan to a Thai audience. Another is 500Trends, an e-commerce site that’s a combination of Instagram, Pinterest, and Amazon and that only sells items that are up-voted. Also this year we checked out WhatsNew, a startup that wants to be the Quidsi of Thailand, spawning numerous new specialist estores.

We can expect to see more brands joining this bandwagon next year.

There are a lot of causes for optimism in 2014. This year we also saw huge interest in events like the CyberWeek sales blitz in Thailand, and strong growth for ecommerce related companies providing useful services to the industry, such as aCommerce and TrustedCompany. They’re working on solving some of the remaining issues that held back e-commerce in Thailand this year, such as poor uptake of e-payments, and a lack of trust in online sellers.

Specialist E-Commerce

Two Serious Problems That Plague Tech Companies in Vietnam by Anh-Minh Do

ver the last six months, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been talking to a lot of people across the tech and startup industries in Vietnam, and after a while, you start to hear the same things . You start to hear a signal in all the noise. And two resounding complaints Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve heard in the last few months is that computer engineering is going down, and design sucks. This all may come as a shock to many who view Vietnam as a rising engineering hub and an outsourcing leader, but what we see today are the seeds of a growing trend in Vietnam: bad design and lazy engineering.

Engineers in Vietnam are getting increasingly lazy

When some people compare computer engineering in Vietnam five to ten years ago to now, things have changed. And they’ve changed for the worse. But the biggest change people see is that younger engineers are lazier than the older generation. And the key problem has been that there are way more resources online than there were a decade ago. There are way more libraries, repositories of code from past engineers. This has created a generation of engineers who are more knowledgeable but are weaker coders. In the past, engineers were forced to figure out the code themselves, and they would have to write it themselves too. This forced engineers to become better thinkers about how the code works and how the software fits together. Now, engineers can just cut and paste code whenever they need it.

FEED ME PLZ

Another hurdle that faces Vietnamese online startups is design. And it’s a completely different beast from engineering because it has to do more with aesthetics and ethos than with the laziness of engineers. It’s also my personal opinion. But, I won’t point any fingers here, if you look at all of the startups that I’ve written about from Vietnam in the past six months, you’ll find that many of their sites are just plain ugly. And that doesn’t even include the big news sites that everyone frequents.

This trend is even more so reflected in the products being produced by this generation. The products now aren’t as technically strong. I’ve talked to several leaders in the startup industry off the record, and they’ve said that when you look at websites these days – like e-commerce, online products, etc. – you can see that the products aren’t that deep. They’re easy to make. All in all, this means innovation is impacted heavily. If engineers don’t know how to tinker, how can they innovate? Now, I’m not sure if this is just the usual older generation looking down on the green and fresh younger generation, but I’ve talked to a handful of companies, and this is a trend that CTOs have mentioned to me as well.

Vietnamese websites are f*cking ugly

Take a quick click through Alexa’s top sites in Vietnam, and you’ll see a bunch of ugly sites. This is bad for two reasons: 1) without a strong design aesthetic it’s very difficult to compete globally where, in some cases, a beautiful design makes or breaks user acquisition, and 2) it means entrepreneurs and web developers are not thinking about user experience and user interface. It’s not good for Vietnam, and a design revolution is desperately needed.

Dealing with the two hurdles

So far, the only solution I’ve seen to this problem is education, something that Vietnam is struggling in, but something leaders in the community are working to address in workshops and events. In fact, those issues are two key reasons why people are getting so involved in doing events. But the wheels are in motion and it’s going to take a serious and widespread addressing of the problem – and that doesn’t look to be coming anytime soon. The issues are systemic. On the other hand, this could signal a shift in focus. If libraries and code are easier to do, this means entrepreneurs can focus more on business and solving problems. The trouble with this argument is that engineering and design are inextricably connected to create an excellent product for the consumer market.

Philippine startups that successfully raised funds in 2013 by Phoebe Magdirila

ast year, Tech in Asia noted how accelerators have increased their presence in Asia. But this year has been special for a diďŹ&#x20AC;erent reason: Several Philippine startups received funding. The startup scene in the Philippines just started to really blossom in the past year or two. So seeing Philippine startups getting recognized by global investors is a good sign. As the year comes to a close, we decided to do a quick annual round-up of the startups in the Philippines who caught the attention of investors.

PayrollHero Funding announcement: February 2013 Before PayrollHero oﬃcially launched, it pitched and won second place at Tech in Asia’s Startup Arena Jakarta. It shared how it promotes employees’ work productivity and happiness through its web- and mobile-based biometrics. Then, early this year, the startup successfully raised around $1 million seed funding from international investors such as 500 Startups, LX Ventures, The Futura Corporation, and others. It also revealed plans to expand in Southeast Asia. PayrollHero continued to earn recognition this year as they emerged as one of the winners in the annual pitching competition ON3. It is also continuing to develop its platform. One of the additional features it added to the platform this year was analytics, through which both the administrators and employees can track attendance patterns during diﬀerent weather

Ayannah Funding announcement: June 2013 Founded in 2010, Ayannah is a gift-remittance service for unbanked overseas Filipino workers. Cash remittance services are one of the mainstream options for overseas workers outside the Philippines. This is exactly the reason why Ayanna stood out. Through Sendah and Sendah Direct, overseas workers can now send cash and physical goods such as toys, gift packs, medicines, gift certificates and even phone credits to friends and family back home. Its service is already deployed in around 7,000 retail outlets in the Philippines and it has processed over one million overseas transactions. Just this June, it received a $1 million round of funding led by Siemer Ventures and Golden Gate Ventures. Following the funding, it set its sights towards expanding to new markets and maintaining revenue growth in the domestic Philippine market.

situations. It also considers itself the king of selfies, with over 700,000 photo captures as of this month. Given the rate of PayrollHero’s progress – it’s been active just over one year – we sure expect more surprises from the startup next year.

Lenddo Funding announcement: October 2013 Since its establishment in 2011, Lenddo has changed the process of getting loans in the Philippines. It has put micro-lending online and used social media and big data as a gauge with which to approve loans. Lenddo uses a Lenddo score as a benchmark of its trustworthiness, in which social media accounts and friend circles on Lenddo play an important role. Lenddo CEO for Asia Richard Elridge admits that success wasn’t easy. But the team’s dedication to the project helped keep Lenddo afloat to this day. Last October, Lenddo was able to raise $6 million from Philippine incubator Kickstart Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures, Skype co-founder Toivo Annus, and others. This year’s funding is Lenddo’s second round of funding as it raised $8 million of series A funding last year.

Kalibbr Funding announcement: December 2013 Kalibrr started in 2012 with a platform to teach Filipinos the right skills to get a job in a business process outsourcing (BPO) company. In 2012, it had around 700 users. This year, the startup raised $1.9 million of funding from global investors Omidyar Network (co-founder of eBay), Siemer Ventures, Learn Capital, Kickstart Ventures, and several other angel investors. Along with the funding it received, Kalibrr announced that this year the team has been working on a platform that will change the recruitment process in BPOs in the Philippines. Through its recruitment platform, applicants can create a profile, indicate skill sets, and take examinations without needing to go directly to the the employer’s office. This can streamline the recruitment process for the human resources staff. Kalibrr’s success with this new platform is something we will look forward to next year as it becomes available commercially.

Lenddo already has more than 350,000 registered users globally and has expanded its operations in Colombia. We’re just looking to see where Lenddo plans to go next in 2014.

reasons why Rocket Internet graduates make good entrepreneurs 35

e’ve seen our share of ex-Rocket Internet employees rocking the startup scene in Asia lately. They helped build companies like Zalora, Lazada, FoodPanda, and OfficeFab from the ground up. But they parted ways and went on to build their own startups. And boy, do they have a good success rate in attracting investors and making waves in the industry. We talked to five Rocket Internet “graduates” based in Indonesia to find out more about this phenomenon. We found five underlying reasons Rocket Internet helped them in their startup journey so far:

1. Falling into entrepreneurship Adrian Li, former managing director of Rocket Internet GmbH is now running social dining directory Qraved. He believes that Rocket Internet indirectly enabled non-entrepreneurs to become entrepreneurs. The salary for those working at Rocket Internet portfolio companies is not too bad. This reduces the relative risk of people who come from their high paying jobs but want to have experience in starting a company. There are some drawbacks, of course. You don’t really have full control over the company and when it comes to equity, yours is quite marginal. But the benefits are good enough to motivate and get people to take a leap to entrepreneur life. Kevin Aluwi, current Zalora Indonesia head of business intelligence who is now preparing to launch his dating site Setipe, says: “I can’t speak for everyone, but one thing you realize from working at a Rocket company, from the beginning, is that the

prospect of starting a company is less intimidating than it might seem.” All the lessons above are relevant to the core members – the ones who took part during the early days of each Rocket Internet company. Mario Suntanu, a former vice president of Rocket Internet GmbH Indonesia and current co-founder of luxury ecommerce site Bobobobo, says that Rocket Internet recruits those with entrepreneurial traits for the initial development phase of its companies. They are the ones most likely to benefit from the learning process.

2. Executing things, Samwer style Ken Leaver, a former CEO of Groupon Ukraine, wrote an article about why Rocket Internet operates so well under the leadership of the Samwer brothers (pictured above). They have an excellent management system and employees can learn from it. Li seconds that by saying (via PandoDaily) “there’s a lot any entrepreneur can learn from Oliver Samwer, who is incredibly focused and knows the right questions to ask. He’s also very numbers and data driven,

which is key to Rocket’s scary efficiency.” Christian Sutardi, former FoodPanda Indonesia manager who is now running beauty box startup Lolabox with another ex-Rocket Internet employee Cynthia Chaerunnisa, explains the three most important things he learned from the Germanbased company: •The quality of execution makes or breaks a company. •The speed of execution determines your success. •Data, Data, Data -> Collect and analyze every data set you can collect.

Both Sutardi and Li stress this point of how much they benefit working from such a data driven company. It lets them learn a lot about local customer behavior and the market. The caveat is, the rigorous execution of Rocket Internet has also served to tire employees and even caused some to flee. It’s a learning experience with a stressful price.

3. Learning how to (or how not to) build company culture One of the things that make or break a startup is its company culture, and this is a learning curve people get to learn from Rocket Internet. Bede Moore and Susie Sugden, both former managing directors at Lazada Indonesia, and are now working together on ecommerce services firm Vela Asia, explain that Rocket Internet provides its employees with a great amount of responsibility, it lets them learn by doing. They add:

This thought is shared by Sutardi: “I joined Foodpanda on day one and I learned much more than I’ve ever expected. It’s just amazing to work with all these former McKinseys, BCGs, Bains, Goldmans, JPMorgans – who went to school in Harvard, Yale, or INSEAD. You automatically learn new things every day, no matter how smart, experienced or educated you already are. There are always smarter people around you – there’s no way not to learn. I think Rocket Internet’s advantage are the employees exceptional background paired with aggressiveness, motivation and discipline.”

gone through the hardship of running the company under the stern Samwer brothers, and learned a lot of things in between. This huge experience has its own appeal when pitching to investors. This is perhaps why we are seeing numerous funding announcements from the graduates’ startups recently. Qraved managed to raise investment from high profile investors including 500 Startups and Skype co-founder Toivo Annus, while HotelQuickly raised $1.16 million last week.

Interestingly, folks can also learn a thing or two about how not to build company culture. I think that can be seen with the high turnover rate of Rocket’s portfolio companies, especially with the higher ups. Li believes that a long lasting company needs to build morale that is going to hold the team through the rough patches. Something Rocket, in its quest for efficiency, doesn’t do very well.

So far things are looking good. Rocket The best thing about this network, is graduates and Rocket Internet are indeed that it can be beneficial to all Rocket raising funds. But until they stop burning Internet employees in the long run, cash and even when they there really aren’t a lot of options for turning a profit, have parted somebody hungry to learn e-commerce to we’ll hold our ways. These go to for a guaranteed world-class judgement on people, who “education” except for Rocket. whether they know each other are successful from the Rocket Internet days, are entrepreneurs. Time will tell. drawn by similar experiences, with stories to tell from each of them. They The above five reasons might explain are now linking up and making waves why we are seeing people quitting together in the startup scene. their jobs at Rocket Internet and starting their own entrepreneurial These contacts can be used to find careers. It’s a healthy combination of good partners or employees when entrepreneurial experience, building new startups, like in the case knowledge of Asia’s markets, and thirst of last minute hotel booking app for startup. No doubt, there’s more to HotelQuickly, which employs a lot of come. ex-Rocket Internet employees. Vela Asia, Bobobobo, and Lolabox are also founded by ex-Rocket folks. Their startups are also linking up too. Rocket Internet has indirectly become a “good matchmaking service” says Li.

4. Valuable networks

5. Bigger credibility to investors

Aluwi says that the most highly paid and talented people in Indonesia usually end up working in telcos, retail giants, mining, and other big industries. Rocket Internet manages to bring that pool of talent into the ecommerce industry. He adds that “there really aren’t a lot of options for somebody hungry to learn ecommerce to go to for a guaranteed world-class “education” except for Rocket.”

With all the progress of Rocket Internet so far. It indirectly puts credibility onto its employees who contributed to its explosive growth. They are the ones who have been handpicked by Rocket Internet, which means they’re at least a good candidate to begin with.

“This is one of the unusual features of the company, and one of its best. The Samwer brothers created a culture of performance by encouraging people to be proactive and think for themselves. I think that’s what makes working there such a positive learning experience for so many people.”

If you’re one of the guys who started one of Rocket Internet company portfolios, that makes you look even more special. This is because you’ve

By Anh-Min Do

24 of Asia’s Top Photo Apps to Take on Instagram

With Instagram getting acquired by Facebook for $1 billion, there is no question that photo apps are a very hot place to be for startups. I think they’re still ripe for disruption, Instagram has only about 100 million monthly active users. There are still hundreds of millions of untapped smartphone users out there who could easily be swiped away from Instagram. Here’s a look at the best out of Asia. (I’ve excluded popular folks like Instagram or Tuding because they weren’t built here in Asia, the latter being from Finland though mostly used in China).

But the truth is, it seems users don’t even care about filters, more than half of Instagram users don’t even use filters. I think most of the draw of Instagram has been the social network that’s built and ease of use. Some of the apps below do a good job of that, others not. The nice thing about these photo apps, is it gives you a good idea of how each of these countries is innovating.

Most of these Chinese apps are feature-packed filter machines. I think the only one that currently interests me is Photo Wonder since it’s so thorough. Some have social networks attached, while some are standalone funky filter apps. CHINA Camera360 (iOS, Android) – One of the most popular apps with over 80 million users. It’s chalk full of features on top of the obvious Instagram-like features (it’s got way more than Instagram). Users can decorate photos with stickers, edit photos, upload photos into the cloud and even create puzzle patterns with the photos. Lemeleme (iOS) – A super simple app that doesn’t innovate much on what Instagram already does. It basically allows users to take pictures and post them to emails or social networks. It doesn’t have its own social network so I’m not sure how it’ll fair in the near future.

PaPa (iOS, Android) – An interesting concept that we’ve written about before, basically users can add sound to their photos. Japan’s Voicepic also does the same thing. It’s a cool concept but it might get steamrolled by the new wave of video apps coming to the fore.

Photo Wonder (iOS, Android) – Acquired by China’s mega search giant, Baidu, it actually allows users to see the filter before taking the picture, which is lightyears ahead of Instagram’s post-filter feature. But that’s not all, Photo Wonder also has an edit, collage, and allows users to download extra features like stickers and frames. PIP Camera (iOS, Android) – This photo app departs from the traditional filteroriented apps and has none of the usual filters you’d see in apps. PIP Camera focuses on framing your photos in diﬀerent things like glasses, umbrellas, and computer screens. Fun, but a bit overwhelming.

Vida (iOS, Android) – In addition to adding pollution data to images, Vida is a fully packed app that allows filters, and sound. It’s even got its own social network. Unfortunately, you have to have an account with a Chinese social network to use it.

JAPAN Camely (Android) – A cutesy app that, according to Rick, is “almost like Instagram if it were force-fed estrogen supplements”. Most of the filters are pretty femaleoriented and pink, which makes for a particularly cutesy set of pictures. Download it for your girlfriend.

Japan’s been pretty innovative with photo apps, especially with apps that mangafy pictures. Fun for friends hanging out. JAPAN Snapdish (iOS, Android) – Another interesting niche take on photos is Snapdish. It’s all about photos and food, the ideal app for food-lovers, and they’re big population, half of my friends take photos before they eat. Snapdish puts this all in one place and connects food-lovers with each other, thus socializing food.

Cameran (iOS) – Cameran’s got an interesting take on decorations. It’s all about allowing users to randomize their decorations. Click on a flower decoration filter multiple times and you get to see diﬀerent flower arrangements. It also comes from a rather famous Japanese photographer.

DecoAlbum (iOS, Android) – Another photo app centered on females, DecoAlbum allows users to create photos with text, backgrounds, glittery virtual stickers, and more and even allows you to assemble your photo collections into albums. It’s one of the few apps that actually prioritizes making albums.

Decopic (iOS, Android) – This app takes decorations to a whole new level. From adding customizable resizable decorations to hearts and stars painted across the pictures to artsy frames around your picture, Decopic a nice app, if you’ve got time on your hands.

Line Camera (iOS, Android) – Since it’s released by NHN, you just know this camera app is going to be feature packed. It’s 600 stamps, over 100 frames, 14 diﬀerent filters, 156 brushes, and more. It’s Line’s flagship photo app, and nicely integrated into the chat app. Since it piggybacks on the Line platform, there’s lots of users.

Manga Camera (iOS) – With One Piece and Naruto being the world’s most widely read comic series’, of course Japan would come up with Manga Camera, an app that would literally turn you into a cartoon. You can even add in decorations like Japanese “wow” text.

Million Moments (iOS, Android) – Produced by Sony and primarily focused on photo viewing, Million Moments is a nice though possibly useless departure from the other apps in this list. It allows you to assemble small slideshows so that you can view with your friends. I’d rather view photos on my computer or TV though.

JAPAN Voicepic (iOS) – Possibly the progenitor of PaPa from China, this app also allows you to add sound to a picture. It also allows you to add various filters on top of your sound-enabled pictures. I’m not sure how this is catching on though, especially with services like Vine gaining popularity.

SOUTH KOREA Pudding Camera (iOS, Android) – Despite the odd chocolate-like name, don’t be deceived, this app’s got the usual Instagram-like features plus a cool panorama feature. A panorama feature is not something most apps in this list have.The app annoyingly posts to Twitter, but can be circumvented.

Cymera (iOS, Android) – This photo editor app is a bit complicated and not so much fun, but it’s got lots of options for editing your photos. It takes quite a few clicks and touches to get to what you want to edit, but the result it really nice since you can do so much.

Southeast Asia Since Southeast Asia is particularly fresh to the game, there’s not too many apps from each country, but certainly some worth noting, strong unique contenders to their East Asian counterparts. SINGAPORE Babygram (iOS) – Have you ever been sick of all the baby photos you get barraged with on Facebook from your friends? Well, never fear, Babygram is here. The app is very specifically about sending baby photos into a timeline for yourself and your close family. Very cute and cuddly.

Fotobook (iOS) – Forget taking photos and posting them to a separate social network, this entire app is dedicated to browsing Facebook photos from your friends. It makes it really easy to look through all your friends’ photos. Other than that, not much to it.

PixaRoll (iOS, Android) – A concept rather similar to KeepShot from Vietnam, you take pictures and you can have them sent to people in other countries. Great for travelers who are on the go and don’t want to have to carry an extra pen and camera. Why buy a postcard when you can just get your photos sent straight to people?

MALAYSIA Nostalgio (iOS) – One of the simplest framing collage apps out there, which basically has a set of 20 basic collage frames and 6 borders to choose from. Nostalgio also has filters to give your collages a little more eﬀect. It costs $0.99, though.

VIETNAM Fuzel (iOS) – An Apple Editor’s Choice photo app for 2012’s best photos apps, this swanky app from Not A Basement Studio makes stitching photo collages together really fancy. You can select from a host of readymade collage patterns as well as customize your own, and then directly post to your social networks.

KeepShot (iPad only) – Not A Basement Studio newest iPad app allows users to create, edit, and assemble photo albums together. Then it lets users print the beautiful physical photo albums and delivers them straight to users’ doorsteps. It’s like Pixa Roll for albums, unfortunately, currently the service only ships in the USA.

INDONESIA PicMix (Android, Blackberry) - Indonesia’s feature-packed PicMix is awesome. You can edit photos with captions, filters, frames, and text, and following Instagram it’s also got a nice snazzy social network to post to. In February this year, PicMix has hit the eight million milestone with more than 108 million photos posted so far.

Firdhaus Akber - Founder of Streetdirectory -

"Entrepreneurs need to understand that they may not be successful on the first time, most arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. One needs to learn to pick themselves up and try again when they fail."

FOUNDER’S STORY

Jack Ma’s Last Speech as Alibaba CEO by Willis Wee

ast Friday in Hangzhou, China, Alibaba celebrated Taobao’s tenth anniversary. But it didn’t feel like it was really entirely a celebration for Taobao. I’m sure that while enjoying the songs and dances at this concert-style event, at the back of the mind of everyone at the stadium was that it was Jack Ma’s last day as CEO. True enough, Jack Ma’s speech reflected that. It felt a little more like a goodbye speech from the founder as he moves on to become chairman. It was a speech that paved the way for Jonathan Lu to take over his position as Alibaba’s CEO.

FOUNDER’S STORY

Small businesses are where most of the Chinese dreams live After a couple of hours of music and extravaganza – including Ma himself singing – he gave his speech to the roaring stadium audience of over 20,000 employees, merchants, and guests. Below is our unofficial translation of Jack’s speech. I do hope it captured a large part of what he communicated: “In the last ten years, there are many people who have paid a big price to live this dream. For our dream, we have walked ten years. I have been thinking, even if someone had removed 99 percent of Alibaba’s assets, we are still worthy. We have no regrets. We have our team, our partners, and friends. What is the thing that has made Alibaba what it is today? What is the thing that has made me what I am today? I have no reasons to succeed. Alibaba and Taobao have no reasons to succeed either. But today, we have walked so far and for so many years with so many aspirations for the future. I believe, it is trust that has made us walk this far. ”When no one believes in the future, we chose to believe… we chose to trust... that 10 years later, China will be better. We chose to believe that our colleagues will do better than myself. I believe, the younger generation of Chinese will do better than us. I’m very thankful that my colleagues have trusted me. It’s tough to be a CEO but being a CEO’s employee is even tougher. At times when trust was doubted, people actually bought things online, even when they haven’t even seen the items before. Over thousands of kilometers, through an unknown person, the goods fall safely into your hands. Today’s China has trust and belief. Everyday, there are 24 million transactions on Taobao signifying China’s trust. “I’m proud to be everyone’s colleague and working partner. Even after life, we will still be colleagues. Because of you, it allows this generation to see hope. All of you are building a new kind of trust. This trust helps to make the world more open, more transparent, and more responsible. I feel proud of you. Today’s world is ever-changing. 30 years ago, we didn’t expect what would have happened today. We didn’t expect China to be a manufacturing giant. We didn’t expect computers to be part of everyone’s life. We didn’t expect the internet in China could grow so rapidly. We didn’t expect Taobao can rise. We didn’t expect Yahoo could become what it is today. We’re in a rapidly changing world. We didn’t expect we can all sit together today to celebrate and look forward to the future. “Computers are fast, the internet is even faster. When we haven’t really understood what is mobile internet, big data comes along. Times of change are for the younger generation. Today, a lot of young people think that big companies like Google, Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba took all of your chances to succeed. Ten years ago, when we saw numerous giant companies, we were also once lost and worried. Do we have a chance? But ten years of determination, we have walked to today. If it wasn’t a time of change, the younger generation would not have a chance. We don’t need a rich father to succeed. What we have is determination and a vision. A lot of people hate change, but because we have embraced this change that’s why we have a future. The next 30 years, this world and China, will have even more change. This change is an opportunity for everyone. Grab this chance.

FOUNDER’S STORY

Jack Ma, Chairman at Alibaba “A lot of people complain about yesterday. We have no power to change yesterday. But this very day, 30 years later, is what we can control and decide. Change yourself, take baby steps, and stay determined for ten years. I thank the times of change and everyone’s complaints. Because when everyone is complaining, that is your chance, an opportunity. It’s only in times of change that someone can be clear of what he has and wants, and what he needs to give up. “Building Alibaba for 14 years, I’m honored that I’m a businessman. As we enter the modern age, it’s a pity that business people don’t get the respect they deserve. Business people in this age aren’t just doing business for profits. I think, we are the same as any artist, educator, and politician who’s doing our best to make this society complete. 14 years in business made me understand life, hardship, determination, and responsibility. It also made me understand that when other people succeed it means we have succeeded as well. What we look forward to most is the smile on our employees’ faces. “After today, I will no longer be a CEO. From tomorrow onwards, business will not be my sole focus. 14 years into business, I feel proud. In this world, no one can say that they will not age – make no mistakes, and be undefeatable. To make sure a company doesn’t age and make no mistakes, I chose to believe the younger generation. By believing in them, you also believe in the future. So I will not return to Alibaba as CEO. There’s no use for me to return because all of you will do better. “Building a company to this size, I feel humbled and proud. But what we have contributed to society is only just a start for Alibaba. What we achieved today, has greatly surpassed the efforts we have put in. This society, at this time, for Alibaba to continue to prosper, we have to solve problems in society. There are so many problems in society and these are opportunities for everyone. If there isn’t any problem, then there’s no need for all of you. All people of Alibaba, please continue to serve small businesses. Because small businesses are where most of the Chinese dreams live. 14 years ago, we set a mission that there will be no business too hard to do, helping small enterprises to grow. Today, this mission lies in your hands. People say e-commerce and the internet created an unfair advantage. But my understanding is that the internet created a truly fair platform. “Moving forward, I will be doing things that I’m interested in, such as working on education and the environment. Besides work, let’s work hard together to improve China. Let the water be clear, the sky be blue, and the food be safe. Everyone, please! (Jack Ma kneels down to the audience). “I’m very honored to introduce you to Alibaba’s future leader and team. They have worked with me for many years and understood me better than myself. Jonathan Lu worked for 13 years at Alibaba and has been through multiple positions and hardships. I should say both tears and smiles are equally the same. Taking over Ma Yun’s (Jack Ma’s) position is very difficult. I can walk till today all thanks to everyone’s trust. Because of trust, it has made the journey easy. I believe and I also urge everyone to support and trust Jonathan Lu and the team as you have always supported and trusted me. “Thank you everyone! From tomorrow onwards, I will live my own life of choice. From tomorrow onwards, life will be my work.”

FOUNDER’S STORY

Razer CEO tells students it’s okay to waste time, get an ‘F’ By Terence Lee

an Min-Liang, the Singapore-born CEO and creative director of gaming hardware Razer, is like a mini Steve Jobs. Besides emulating the Apple visionary’s dress of black top, blue jeans and sneakers — except that he replaces Job’s turtleneck with a V-neck and doesn’t tuck in his shirt — Tan also shares the same obsession for product design and cutting-edge, premium gadgets. A former law student at the National University of Singapore, Tan transformed from a lawyer into the head of a California-headquartered company that employs about 500 people in ten cities. When people in startup circles are asked about outstanding entrepreneurs, his name is often thrown into the hat.

Tan has an undeniable stage presence, evident as he spoke in his baritone voice to a group of students from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in August this year. Here’s what he shared.

FOUNDER’S STORY

Tan with Razer Blade Razer CEO Tan Min-Liang (center) at a cosplay event in the Philippines. Yes, he gets to take lots of pictures with hot chicks.

At every point of time I was wasting my time I was learning something, doing something really constructive for the future.

It came to the point where if this went wrong, it will take down the company. But we went ahead because it’s fun.

Some of the most talented engineers or lawyers work well in a silo. They’re also insanely intelligent.

It’s fine to waste time

It’s okay to get an ‘F’.

Don’t work too hard.

Gaming as a hobby does not always have a positive connotation. Tan was told all the time that computer gaming is horrible and it’s an activity that won’t amount to much. It turns out that this hobby became his most valuable asset.

Tan observes that people can be too caught up with results and artificial metrics. In schools, students are told that they have to pass examinations, and failing will destroy their lives.

“I’m one of the laziest bastards you’ll see in any place,” he said. At NUS, he coasted through lessons that he wasn’t passionate about. He finds that if you’re struggling to work really hard at something, it either means that you don’t like what you’re doing, or you’re not very good at it.

But in the greater scheme of things, nobody cares, especially when you get an ‘F’ in something that’s not reflected in the work you want to do. Tan brings this attitude over to Razer, where they frequently design crazy products at the risk of failure. The company entered the laptop business as Tan couldn’t find a great gaming laptop for himself. The decision made no business sense, and they lost money with every unit they sold. But with each iteration, the laptop got better, and the latest version received positive reviews.

Tan enjoys spending his time designing products, getting the perfect color, angle, and precision from his creations. It’s not work for him, it’s fun. While being a CEO involves taking care of aspects of the company that he doesn’t like, it also gives him the luxury to hire people to do the stuff that he isn’t passionate about. Tan makes sure that his company has the right role for every person it hires. Not everyone is cut out to be a founder or manager; there may be some engineers who want to focus on purely technical roles, so Razer tries to cater for that. 48

FOUNDERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S STORY

Singapore Startup Deal.com.sg Records $50 million Yearly Revenue; Founder Shares His Starting Up Story by Teoh Minghao

atrick Linden is the co-founder of Dealguru Holdings, whose services include a daily deals site Deal.com.sg, an online food delivery service Room Service Dealivery as well as a recently launched curated marketplace for fashion, beauty products and electronics that operates mainly in Singapore and Malaysia.

Patrick grew up in Germany and came over to Singapore six years ago. Patrick is very knowledgeable in the e-commerce industry and knows Southeast Asia well. While sharing his startup journey with us, he also gave us his perspective about the industry and urged entrepreneurs to stay firm in what they believe in and not be easily swayed by antagonists. So what has he been through on his voyage?

FOUNDER’S STORY During his stay in Singapore in 2007, Patrick co-founded iHIPO, a startup that functions like a Linkedin for students and undergraduates who are looking for overseas internship and graduate opportunities. He grew the platform for two and a half years to 50,000 monthly active members before selling it off to Potentialpark AB in early 2010 – and it is still active today. Right after the exit from his first startup, Patrick and his co-founder, Jan Croeni, noticed a trend that’s blazing in the US and Europe. He explains: “We had the intention to take a sabbatical for a while but we saw that group buying was developing into a megatrend in the States and Europe. It was one of those intuitive feelings that this concept would definitely work in Asia. Even though market research data basically stated that consumer ecommerce, apart from ticketing and hotels, was virtually non existent at the time in most of the SEA countries we decided to go ahead. ”We were absolutely convinced that the combination of attractive deals, high discounts, time sensitivity would present a very exciting online shopping experience for Singaporeans. When you go to a website, sometimes, you don’t really know what to get, then you see something cool, you buy it.”

Building Deal.com.sg, quickly With the strong gut feel of the opportunities present, Patrick and Jan put together a few developers and set up the website in the span of four weeks. “I think the importance for us was that we were the first (deal site in Singapore) in the market to go live. In the first two weeks, Jan and I went on a crazy schedule. In the morning, we went to businesses to prospect for fresh deals, and in the afternoon till late night we are back to work alongside the developers and also helped with customer service. There wasn’t much time for sleep during that period.”

Deal.com.sg went live in May 2010 and what happened in the next half a year was crazy and something every entrepreneur desires. Firstly, investors flocked to them. Among all those, the team decided to go with Rebates Networks, a Germany-based A-list VC whose specialty is in e-commerce, to be their seed investors. When the investment was wrapped up, the site was barely two months old and it was operating with just three full timers: the two co-founders and one developer.

fueled growth. At that point, Dealguru had raised just around $3 million dollars funding, had a team of 126 employees’ wages to support and – as is the nature of a deals site – saw cash-flow fluctuating wildly; so any wrong move in pivoting could cause negative cash-flow and the company could be in trouble.

Next, the online deals buying craze enveloped Singapore. This caused exponential growth at Dealguru. Traﬃc and revenue were doubling month on month. In its first month, it attracted just 20,000 unique visitors and $7,000 in revenue. By end of its first year, its monthly unique visits exceeded a million and it was generating more than two million dollars in monthly revenue.

This startup’s climb to the top wouldn’t have happened had Patrick listened to erroneous advice during his founding days. He spoke to many people to get advice before starting up, from entrepreneurs to corporate climbers and established local VCs. Looking back, he felt that the best advice and understanding of opportunities came from experienced entrepreneurs; others were often less positive and more skeptical. Here’s his advice for young entrepreneurs:

Fortunately, everything went well and Dealguru is now a profitable company with revenues of $50 million last financial year and now employs over 250 staﬀ.

When acquirers come calling… The third crazy thing came at the end of 2010. Just half a year after starting up, Dealguru was facing the prospect of an exit when leading international acquirers expanded into this region and spoke to the top three players. Patrick indicated that it was a testing moment for the team as there was this fear of missing out on this exit which would mean them fighting against resource-rich global companies rather than the local competitors.

It is important for entrepreneurs to stay firm to what they believe in. And if you need advice, go to the right people who have been there and done that rather than those who don’t fully grasp the reality of entrepreneurship.

However, after discussion with investors and other founding members, the team felt that there so much more to accomplish before gunning for a quick and relatively unattractive exit. Eventually exits did happen with some of the other leading deal sites such as Groupon acquired Beeconomic as well as Bigdeal to NTUC. Another defining moment for Patrick and the team was to gear the company to achieve sustainable growth rather than investment-

FOUNDER’S STORY

Forced Out of His Own Company, Sued by a State-Owned Firm, Streetdirectory Founder Picked Himself Up and Rebuilt by Teoh Minghao

uring Startup Asia Singapore a month ago, I met Streetdirectory‘s founder, Firdhaus Akber and learned about his entrepreneurial journey. From my perspective, it was one hell of a roller coaster ride: one that involved the excitement of seeing exponential growth in traﬃc, the promise of an IPO and him being courted by flocks of investors; and the low times of being forced out of his own company before scraping his way back in, and getting sued by a Singapore government agency in a lawsuit that lasted more than a year.

FOUNDER’S STORY

StreetDirectory is a Singapore startup that was founded back in 2000. It is a portfolio company of Hong Kong’s JDB Holdings, whose portfolio also includes JobsDB, 88DB, Openrice, Cozycot, FlowerAdvisor and SgCarmart (which was recently acquired by SPH). Streetdirectory has a team of around 200 staﬀ across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Hong Kong and boasts more than 1.2 million registered users and 1.3 million apps downloads.

Connecting the Dots Firdhaus started his first full time job before starting university. He worked as an instructor at a fitness club and did enough to convince his boss to entrust him with managing the club. He deferred school to focus on the job. Then he moved to join an event company as a salesperson. He also worked at an IT company at a job that involved him handling brands, building relationships and making sales. Reflecting on his entrepreneurial journey, he attributes what he has achieved at Streetdirectory to the many skills he picked up in these previous jobs. He has found that despite the diverse industries he has worked in, it all connects. “Unknowingly, the diﬀerent exposures in my previous jobs helped me greatly in running Streetdirectory. When I became a boss, all these pieces came together. I got the experience of managing a team in the fitness club; I got the skills of doing sales from the events company and the skills of developing relationships with important clients through my work at the IT company.”

The Roller Coaster Ride Firdhaus started Streetdirectory with three other co-founders in 2000. Previously, they had approached him on numerous occasions about the idea of building an online map. But he rejected them every time as he was skeptical that people needed an online map and he didn’t see how it could be monetized. But they were persistent and eventually he decided to give it a shot.

In the beginning, the founders funded the startup themselves. In 2000, there was no other online map company in Singapore. The idea was to get maps from a government agency, Singapore Land Authority (SLA), and put them online. The business took off almost immediately. “After operating for a while, people started knocking on my door. These people were venture capitalists. Suddenly, I realized Streetdirectory is actually in the dot com arena. I didn’t realize that. I started researching and understood more about it. Shortly after the VCs’ visit, HSBC bank also came and offered to bring us to IPO. During this period, something was happening to our site. On a daily basis, our traffic jumped without us doing anything. If today’s traffic is 3,000, next day will be 6,000 and 12,000 day after next. This 100% daily growth rate continued for a while and there was never a day traffic didn’t grow.” Being traditional business people and not the typical dot com founders (who value traffic more than dollars), the founders saw this phenomenon growth as a liability because the server cost is expensive. Cash was the main problem for their business then. They started to do consulting projects for governments, schools and get SMEs to advertise on their sites. The consulting projects involved helping government agencies and schools to map out their campuses and also listing them on the street directory maps. Through these projects, they were able to bring in revenue to balance their books. They also raised a million Singapore dollars from angel investors at that time. During the third year of operations, things got dramatic. Firdhaus was voted out of Streetdirectory as the board felt that he wasn’t contributing enough to the company. At this point in time, Streetdirectory had already grown to become the leading online map portal for Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia and sales were doing well. Firdhaus went off to do consulting work on his own. He re-joined the company only a year later, when one of the co-

founders wanted to cash out and move on; Firdhaus bought back his shares and came back. Firdhaus’s roller coaster ride did not stop there. Due to copyrights issues, the SLA sued Streetdirectory and wanted it to take down the maps. This would effectively put Streetdirectory out of business, as maps are fundamental to its business. Firdhaus took on the lawsuit and fought it for over a year, incurring huge legal fees. During that time, shareholders and directors pulled out of the business, leaving Firdhaus as the remaining shareholder. Surprisingly, during these troubled times, a Hong Kong investment group still choose to put faith in his team and backed them. The group advised them to develop their own maps and not fight a losing lawsuit against the state-owned agency. Adversity brought out the best in his team and the remaining members of the team fervently re-created their own map. Interestingly, despite having its service suspended for three months, the traffic for the re-vamped site (with the new in-house maps) did not show any decline. Looking back at his own experiences, Firdhaus advises entrepreneurs to be resilient.

Entrepreneurs need to understand that they may not be successful on the first time, most aren’t. One needs to learn to pick themselves up and try again when they fail. What I learned from my Hong Kong investors was their nonchalant attitude towards failure. Why be so concerned about failure? If you fall down, pick yourself up and try again. Just keep trying, there’s no one who will fail forever.

“Figure out what is the real problem and it’s always the hard problems. Be very clear on what you want to do with your company before you even build it.“ Paul Srivorakul

Serial Entrepreneur

By Emily Goh We know Valentineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Day is just round the corner, and we have specially curated for you some really useful apps that could make this annual occasion a little more interesting and memorable!

couples Pairy

Between

LoveByte

Tokyo-based Pairy is a social network app for couples to record relationship moments and communications with their significant others so they don’t have to sort through their social media accounts. Similar to Between and LoveByte, Pairy includes sharable albums, chat, calendars, and a date planner

From South Korea, Between is a couples-only app that aims to create a one-on-one ‘intimate space’ to share chats, photos, videos, and emoticons between lovers.

Singapore-based LoveByte is another popular mobile messaging app for love couples, which also allows users to create albums, save dates, and even add milestones like the first date. A cool feature that the app has is allowing users to send each other scratchcards with secret messages, which makes digital loving all the more fun.

iOS

Google Play

Android iOS True Love Tester Smart Bra

Designed by Japanese lingerie retailer and maker, Ravijour, this high-tech smart bra can only be unclasped by “true love”. Linked to a mobile app, the sensor on the front clasp will detect the heart rate of the wearer, and will automatically unclasp itself once the heart rate reaches a specific point. Though the function seems almost like a chastity belt, this bra could certainly inject some fun on Valentine’s day.

Vibease

The Vibease sex vibrator, hooked up to an Android or iPhone device, can be controlled by either the women on her own, or her lover. If alone, the lady can view a downloadable ‘fantasy’ on her phone, essentially a moodaltering video that buzzes the vibrator in sync with the vid. If with her partner, the pair can engage in a bit of foreplay in the app – in a Whatsapp-style interface – and the app can be controlled remotely.

Android

Find a Date Avalable

Noonswoon

Paktor

Avalable is a social dating app that helps singles locate compatible matches within their own city, using GPS on their smartphones. It also uses personality equations, optionally taps into friends of friends on Facebook, and can use Facebook interests as means to match people.

Noonswoon, an online dating app from Thailand, aims to introduce singles to at least one match a day – at noon, to be precise. Instead of introducing singles to other singles based on GPS locations on their phones, the app establishes a private connection between you and a friend of a friend on Facebook, but only if they’re also using the app.

Paktor, which is Hokkien Chinese for “going on a date” runs with the tagline “All it takes is 15 seconds.” The app is designed to replicate the bar or nightclub experience, that is, one based primarily on first impressions. Users can flick a photo left if they don’t like what they’re seeing. However, it lessens the sting of rejection using a double-blind concept: Both parties won’t know if they’re being flicked into oblivion.

The app also provides a “nonavailable” dating status for those who have found someone already but still want to use the app. These “taken” people can still participate in the singles community but their profiles won’t turn up in matches.

iOS

Android iOS

Android

Love Out Loud Asia

iOS

Android Love Out Loud Asia is a Singapore-based dating platform that recently shifted from web to mobile app. The app encourages singles to break out of their shell, post their date ideas online, and then get oﬄine to go on dates. It has a formula that sends a perfect match to you based on your history, Facebook and profile information, facial features, and your date ideas.

iOS

Android

10 Hottest STARTUP to Watch in

2014 By Steven Millward, Terence Lee, Paul Bischoﬀ, Josh Horwitz, and Enricko Lukman 2013 was a vintage year for Asian startups, launching into a huge variety of sectors and showing the adeptness needed to grow in their markets and even expand into other nations. A numbers of those are the startups to watch in 2014. They’re the ones who have traction to get real results this year, attract funding, and perhaps even acquire rivals so as to consolidate the market. And they’re in all the right areas: e-commerce, locationbased service apps, mobile commerce, online investment, hardware, and more. They’re not just making gimmicky apps in over-crowded segments - they’re really crafting great web businesses. Here’s a list from the four editors at Tech in Asia of 10 Asian startups that will be making headlines all year.

Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache (China) On-demand transportation apps will be worth watching worldwide as more people get used to hailing rides at the press of a button. In China, of the swarm of taxi-booking apps to emerge over the past two years, two have emerged as frontrunners and arch-rivals. Didi Dache, which is backed by a $100 million investment and a blessing from Tencent, rules Beijing. Kuaidi Dache, backed by e-commerce titan Alibaba, sits at the throne in China’s southern metropolises. Didi and Kuaidi are worth following for two reasons. First, despite widespread adoption, neither company has monetized, partially in fear that doing so will interfere with China’s tightly-regulated taxi industry. That’s an obstacle that doesn’t bode well if either two firms hope to operate profitably independently, but acquisition by firms that are better equipped to challenge the government - Alibaba and Tencent, namely - remains an option in the future. Second, San Francisco-based transportation firm Uber is aiming for nothing less than a world takeover, aiming to penetrate every major city on earth. The company has already set up shop in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and is recruiting for talent in Beijing. Uber has made it clear that it doesn’t identify itself as a luxury-product, but a serious competitor to any on-demand transportation startup including ones that work with limos, taxis, and non-commercial vehicles. Since Uber is so new to the market it will likely take time before it can go head to head with Kuaidi and Didi. But if Uber thrives enough to emerge from below the radar, watch and see if and how the Chinese government reacts.

LeTV (China) A lot of people talk about companies who can bridge the gap between hardware and software, but video portal and smart TV maker LeTV adds content to that dynamic. After closing a $32.5 million funding round, the company acquired its own production studio in late September 2013. By November, LeTV rose to be China’s second-most popular video portal and posted big profits. On the hardware front, its upcoming 70-inch smart TV is both voice- and motion control-enabled.

Wandoujia (China) Wandoujia has a Silicon Valley brain with a Chinese heart. The “mobile content search engine” functions as China’s second-biggest Android app store. Its Android-to-Windows management software now searches, downloads, and organizes all types of mobile media free of charge, from TV shows to photos to e-books. While it might face greater challenges internationally, it still has tons of room to grow in China where consumers demand a variety of app stores for their Android devices. With its latest $120 million in funding, the company has big things in store for this year. To make money, Wandoujia licenses its technology to help other companies make their own app stores.

Demohour (China) The online grocery store got oﬀ to a roaring start this year by announcing Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin as one of its investors. E-commerce has taken oﬀ in SIngapore, but it requires plenty of funding and commitment to be successful in this area. Redmart has both, and they’re using the money to build their own infrastructure to deliver the goods for their customers.

RedMart (Singapore) Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are now tried-and-tested way for startups - especially those making hardware - to get funding in order to launch. But Chinese consumers are a bit more wary and conservative, and are proving slow to trust companies they've never heard of. That's why crowdfunding is growing slowly in China. But 2014 is when it'll take oﬀ. Demohour is sitting ready to be China's top platform for crowdfunding. It already has millions in funding.from Matrix Partners China and Intel Capital, and seems to be attracting some of the best projects in the nation.

CrowdBaron( HongKong) A number of people are investing in property as a safer bet than stocks or gold. But it's only a wealthy elite that can aﬀord to snap up entire properties. That's why CrowdBaron is aiming itself at a wider mass of individuals who'd like to see a solid return on their cash from much smaller stakes in real estate projects. After a very strong start in 2013, CrowdBaron now has funding to help it grow. It's part of a new wave of crowdinvesting. People can invest as little as one percent in a real estate project, and can hedge their bets by taking small stakes in various building projects around the world.

PriceBaba (India) E-commerce is really taking off in India, but in a nation where fewer than 20 percent of people have access to the web, it's proving hard to get people to buy stuff online. That's why Pricebaba is taking a hybrid online-offline approach with its web listings of gadget prices at brick-and-mortar stores across India. It's a sort of Yelp for gadget shops. After steady growth in 2013 with minimal funding, Pricebaba started 2014 with a bang by getting funding from 500 Wallah, the Indian branch of 500 Startups. Right now it covers retails outlets in six cities across India, with up to 900,000 visitors each month to its site.

Pirate3D (Singapore) After completing the most successful crowdfunding campaign in Singapore’s history ($1.44 million raised) comes the big test: getting the printers manufactured and shipped out. There’s also the matter of meeting customer’s demands. While many similarly hyped startups have fallen under the weight of expectations, there’s hope that Pirate3D can be diﬀerent.

Avalable (Thailand) Touted as “Facebook for singles”, this Thai startup is aiming at a young, global audience for its sophisticated dating app. After growing well inside Thailand with v1.0 of its app, v2.0 now supports 15 languages, with an initial focus on expanding across Southeast Asia. The app helps singles locate compatible matches using GPS, “personality equations”, and an algorithm matching interests that are indicated on Facebook. But beyond matching, Avalable is a social network, a platform for people to meet and follow one another’s timeline. There are quite a few apps out there that give users one curated match per day, but Avalable provides users with 30 daily matches. For 2014, the app is working on new ways of matching people - for example, around horoscopes - and also on social gaming that its flirty users can play together within the app.

Traveloka (Indonesia) This flight search engine startup in Indonesia is one of those businesses that prefers doing rather than talking. Traveloka doesn’t do much PR, but the word on the local startup scene is that the team is doing very very well. Traveloka is the first Indonesian startup to receive investment from Samwer brothers’ Global Founders Capital. All three founders have work experience in Silicon Valley, and they ought to make sure they can increase the 200,000 daily flight searches made on Traveloka in September. Look out for big numbers in 2014.

Event Listing: February eCommerce + OmniChannel Strategies Conference A 2-day conference to capitalise on Asia’s eCommerce growth and synchronise the buying experience across all customer touch-points to drive business profitability.

26 February Tech in Asia Meetup : Japan 27 February Tech in Asia Meetup : Vietnam

(IN) Weekend Ventures 54 Hours part 2 (MM) Barcamp Yangon 6:00 PM Network at Enterpreneurs Corner, level 6 at SMU Admin Bldg

(SG)Tech in Asia Meetup: Singapore 09:00 AM (SG) eCommerce + Omni-Channel Strategies Conference

(IN) Weekend Ventures 54 (MM) Barcamp Yangontur

>> 05:00 PM (SG) eCommerce + OmniChannel Strategies Conference

6:30 PM (SG) Network at Enterpreneurs Corners at SMU

(JP) Tech in Asia Meetup: Japan

(IN) Nullcon Goa 2014’ International Security Conference

(VN) Tech in Asia Meetup: Vietnam

(IN) Nullcon Goa 2014’ International Security Conference

(IN) Nullcon Goa 2014’ International Security Conference (SG) Asia Leader Summit 2014 09:00 AM (MM) Barcamp Mandalay

(IN) Nullcon Goa 2014’ International Security Conference (SG) Asia Leader Summit 2014 >> 05:00 PM (MM) Barcamp Mandalay

2014 09:00 AM (HK) eCommerce + OmniChannel Strategies Conference

05:00 PM (HK) eCommerce+ Omni-Channel Strategies Conference

Hit Me..

1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111