Singapore’s largest telecoms provider, SingTel, plans to set aside $1.6 billion (S$2 billion) over the next three years for startup acquisitions, it said in an earnings call (via ZDNet). It wasn’t clear on what those acquisitions would be specifically, but going by those it has made in recent years, we can expect the telco to continue focusing on digital content and augmenting its… → Read More
Pixel People, an iOS game, has raked in $700,000 over 2 million downloads in the span of three months, said the game’s maker, Lambdamu. The key to their success, according to a company spokesperson, was a distribution deal with Chillingo. → Read More
Singaporean price comparison startup Save 22 just got an investment of “mid six figures” in Singapore dollars, according to co-founder, Guyi Shen. S$500,000 translates to about US$400,000, as a reference. The three-year-old startup indexes prices of goods and displays a price comparison. Its mobile app also allows you to scan a barcode of a product with your phone, and it will display… → Read More
Prepping for its U.S. expansion, Singapore-based indoor positioning technology firm YFind has launched a broader analytics tool so that its customers can slice and dice foot traffic information in malls.
The company’s service tracks unique visitors as they move through a mall. It relies on Wi-Fi to do this, so it can track users who have their Wi-Fi active on their phones. Because it doesn’t… → Read More
LinkedIn has acquired one million users in Singapore, or 20 percent of its 5 million population, since the service’s launch there in 2011, the professional networking site announced today. This milestone means that about 70 percent of Singapore’s labor force and students now have accounts on the Web site, according to the company. → Read More
Inzen Studio, a small game startup in Singapore has just released an ambitious project called Game Show Warriors. The launch kicks off with the release of an iOS game called Amazing Studly Strikes, but the studio has quietly released the first two episodes of a Web comic, and episode three just dropped to accompany the release of the mobile game. The game app will also include the Web comic… → Read More
A Singapore clean-tech company called Gcorelab has just received $482,000 (S$589,000) in funding for a new technology that promises to control the thermal issues that have plagued lithium-ion batteries. Battery packs that use lithium-ion cells such as those found in laptops and, in larger deployments like electric cars, can suffer from cells failing. When the cells do and overheat, they can cause… → Read More
The white device here (pictured next to a phone for scale) is in the process of getting mounted on store walls in Singapore malls. When active, the device will emit an ultrasonic signal that an app can pick up, and will allow participating stores to broadcast deals and rewards to shoppers. The device is called the iSenze, and is made by a startup in Singapore called Rainmaker Labs. → Read More
Dropmysite has beefed up its site backup product with new features, as it pushes harder into the enterprise market. Its product now includes features like incremental backups, public key authentication and PostgreSQL database support, it said. Backups start at 10Gb for $19.99. The Singaporean company was started in September 2011. But it was a side project, Dropmyemail that suddenly became a hit… → Read More
Music streaming service Spotify has finally come to Asia. Today, it announced that it would be launching in the cities of Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Its premium service, priced at $9.99 per month in the US, will also be a little cheaper in the region, with Malaysians getting the lowest price. Update: after turning on Asia, Spotify posted on its blog that it now has also turned on services… → Read More
Singapore beauty e-tailer, Luxola, just raised its Series A round from GREE Ventures. The amount was undisclosed, but has been rumored to be in the region of $2 million. The company carries about 60 brands of cosmetics and beauty products on its website, and ships to countries in Southeast Asia like Singapore and Malaysia. Its site was launched in September 2012, and it had previously raised a… → Read More
After some years of languishing, BillMonk’s service and user base will be taken over by a young Singapore startup, BillPin, which provides a similar bill-splitting service. Just over six months old, BillPin pitches itself as a “Mint for groups” and offers a way for people to track how much money they owe each other. It has plenty of competitors in the bill-splitting space… → Read More
A Singaporean sushi chain has acquired a game psychology company in what looks like an acquisition of the latter’s four founders. Standing Sushi Bar, which runs three outlets in Singapore and another in Jakarta, said it bought Gametize for an eight-digit sum. Gametize has a platform called GameMaki that gives clients a way to work challenges into their customer-facing services. It’s… → Read More
When Sequoia Capital India landed in Singapore quietly in 2012, the buzz around town was that a big-name US fund being in the country was going to really jolt the market and provide serious cred to the startups here. The Indian team running operations here, however, appears to have spent the last year of its time in the island state helping startups in its India portfolio expand into Singapore… → Read More
AdzCentral, an ad-matching platform from Singapore, has received $3.2 million (S$4 million) in funding from Electric Sheep Capital and Digital Media Partners . The company provides an engine to advertisers that serves up ads based on targeted audience demographics. Companies spell out the parameters of their intended audience and AdzCentral’s ads are displayed to people based on what sites… → Read More
PayPal phases out donations to foreign non-profits and charities from Singapore accounts starting tomorrow, the 21st of March, and will complete this by the end of the month. This decision is a result of PayPal failing to get a remittance license in the country from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. PayPal was able to offer remittance services over the years, till the governing body issued an… → Read More
Chope has raised $2.5 million (S$3.2 million) in Series B funding. The round was led by local publishing house, Singapore Press Holdings, which now owns 27.8% of the startup, valued at $1.4 million (S$1.81 million). Chope operates a similar service to OpenTable, and allows restaurant bookings through its website and mobile apps. It provides a restaurant booking backend system licensed from a UK… → Read More
Jungle Ventures, a VC in Singapore, has added Alon Sobol as an entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR). Sobol was up till last year head of mobile partnerships for Facebook in Asia, and has been an advisor for Asian startups, Mobikon and Viki, in the past year. In Jungle Ventures, he will mentor the VC’s existing portfolio companies in its space, and work together with the company’s other partners to… → Read More
SAP just opened another co-innovation lab, this time in Singapore. The lab is its 21st globally, and the fourth in the Asia-Pacific region. The German software giant hopes it will allow member organizations to have a space to experiment with different hardware and software combinations, and provides its cloud infrastructure to them to back this. The aim, it says, is to encourage the creation of… → Read More
iCarsClub, a service that allows people to rent out their cars by the hour just got a seed round of almost half a million, a little under three months since its launch. The Singapore-based startup provides a service similar to Zipcar, except car owners rent out their own vehicles and iCarsClub doesn’t own or provide the cars. The company will install a piece of hardware in members’… → Read More
Singapore-based short term home rental marketplace, Travelmob is pushing steadily into the space with new features on its site. Today, it released a way for home owners to list last-minute discounts to travelers. This follows an earlier feature released last year which allowed travelers to find listings by descriptive tags. The company is yet another in the quickly crowding Airbnb-style space… → Read More
Handy, a smartphone rental service out of Hong Kong, has launched operations in Singapore. The company offers smartphones for rent to travelers at $9 (HKD 68) a day—$12 (S$15) a day in Singapore—and the price includes unlimited 3G data and international calls. The Handy brand comes under its CEO, Terence Kwok’s startup effort called Tink Labs, and is its first and only project thus far. The… → Read More
Russian phone maker Yota Devices will start making its first dual-screen e-ink YotaPhones in Singapore. The company has signed with Hi-P, a manufacturer in the country, to have it mass-produce the devices. Yota’s COO, Lau Geckler, told us that he is also in Singapore to help set up Yota’s Asian sales office and the company’s second R&D facility. Its original R&D center is… → Read More
A Singaporean fashion retail site has secured $1.6 million (S$2 million) in funding from a government-backed group of VCs. When it launches next month, the e-tailer, called Inverted Edge, will carry a consignment of goods from 36 Asia-Pacific designers, according to CEO, Debra Langley. The funding it received was from the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF), Incuvest, Accel-X and four… → Read More
Singaporean media outfit, e27, has raised about US$615,000 (S$760,000) through a funding round with investors in the region, and plans to expand into Southeast Asia. The round was raised with B Dash Ventures from Japan, Pinehurst Advisors in Taiwan, Ardent Capital in Thailand and Dan Neary in Singapore. e27 has been around since 2006 and runs a news site on tech startups in Asia, and organizes… → Read More
JFDI.Asia, the incubator program that seeks to “innovate in Asia, for Asia,” just announced the eight startups that will be part of its accelerator program. The competition, which pushes teams to take an idea to investment in 100 days, begins on Feb. 21 at JFDI.Asia’s new purpose-built facility in Singapore. → Read More
Singapore-based maritime technology company Ascenz has received $482,000 in funding from technology incubator Red Dot Ventures as it sets its compass towards China. → Read More
Founded by a former Microsoft lead, The Stakeholder Company’s aim is to help organizations maintain their public image by streamlining research. The Singapore-based startup uses patented software to make decisions quickly and prevent potential PR nightmares before they happen. → Read More
Top Southeast Asia VCs Golden Gate Ventures and JFDI.Asia have announced a new strategic alliance that will focus on supporting early-stage digital start-up companies as they transition from concept to substantial pre-series A funding. → Read More
Twitter has hired another Google employee, and this time it’s someone with a heavy focus on business and sales. The Googler is Aliza Knox, who ran Business and Sales for Shopping, Offers and Wallet across Asia Pacific as Managing Director of Commerce. Knox has confirmed this with TechCrunch this evening. → Read More
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