Victoria Ho
Victoria Ho is a TechCrunch writer based in Singapore. She was previously the technology correspondent for The Business Times in Singapore, and senior writer for ZDNet. She was also senior journalist at ComputerWorld and CIO Asia magazines, under the IDG and Fairfax Business Media publishing houses. She has an English Literature degree from the National University of Singapore.
Crunchbase profile →Latest from Victoria Ho
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Pirate3D Printer Exceeds Kickstarter Goal By 14X
The Pirate3D Buccaneer printer has been successfully funded on Kickstarter, reaching $1,438,765 in funds—more than 14 times its original $100,000 goal. The Singaporean startup burst onto the scene in May with news of its relatively inexpensive printer. The Buccaneer cost $347 on Kickstarter, far cheaper than the Makerbot Replicator 2.0 at $2,199. For reference, the Form One, which… Read More
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Viki Moves In On Chinese Audiences With Two New Video Deals
Video sharing site, Viki, is continuing its push into China with two new video distribution deals with Chinese video-on-demand sites, LeTV and Xunlei Kankan. This move follows its first distribution deal, set up last July, with Renren—also known as the Facebook of China. That deal with Renren was Viki’s first such agreement with a third party to serve videos on an external site… Read More
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Xiaomi Launches Its Own Text Message Service
Users on Xiaomi devices will now be able to send international text messages faster and more reliably, it said. The Chinese smartphone maker just announced its enterprise international SMS platform at the Mobile Asia Expo event in Shanghai. The new service looks like it’ll rival Apple’s iMessage service in function, but is based entirely on SMS technology. That means that while… Read More
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Sociomantic Launches Singapore Office, Hires Another Googler To Run Operations
Ad-bidding platform Sociomantic is expanding into Southeast Asia with a Singapore office to be launched on July 1. The startup provides a real-time bidding platform targeted at ad buyers. When a site loads, its engine will match the highest bidder for the particular visitor’s profile and show its ad. Proponents of ad-bidding technology say it allows advertisers to show more specific ads… Read More
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Travel Search Site Wego Closes $17M Series C
Travel search site, Wego, just closed its Series C round of $17 million. The round was led by Crescent Point, a fund manager with offices in Singapore and China that focuses on investments in Asia. Wego’s site provides a metasearch across about 600 airline carriers and 400,000 hotels, and charges business clients based on referrals to travelers coming in. Earlier this year, it teamed up… Read More
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Tencent, Naspers JV Ibibo Buys Redbus To Grow Its Online Travel Empire In India
China’s internet giant Tencent and South Africa’s media powerhouse Naspers are doubling down on tech in India. TechCrunch has just found out that Ibibo, their domestic joint venture, has acquired redBus.in, an online bus ticketing company that has become a dominant and disruptive force in how people travel in the country. A formal announcement is coming out shortly. Read More
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Mud-slinging Behind The Scenes As Malaysia’s Taxi Apps Duke It Out
There is an ongoing land grab for taxi drivers in Malaysia, with taxi app startups aggressively targeting the handful of taxi drivers keen to jump on a digital platform. Two year-old taxi booking startup, MyTeksi has been busy recruiting cab drivers over to its service. When I visited its offices two weeks ago, Aaron Gill, MyTeksi’s product and marketing head, said the company ramped up… Read More
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Ooyala Sets Up R&D Center In Singapore To Chase Mobile Audiences In Asia
Video services provider Ooyala is setting up an R&D operations in Singapore, and is hiring researchers and data scientists for the facility. The company provides video technology to media companies and telcos, enabling them to stream their content online such as the Australian Open, or helping ESPN embed videos in tweets.It claims to have a collective viewership of about 200 million across… Read More
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Filipino Gift-remittance Startup Ayannah Gets $1M Angel Round
Ayannah, a gift-remittance startup in the Philippines, just received $1 million in its first angel round. The company’s service is called Sendah, and allows Filipinos working overseas to pay for products and services back home for their families through Sendah’s site. Sendah has a number of benefits over plain cash remittance. The company has worked out a number of discount deals… Read More
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Indonesian Instagram-Clone PicMix Gets Monetization Right From The Start
At first glance, the similarities between PicMix and Instagram are obvious. Both apps are photo sharing platforms with simple, square Polaroid-esque aesthetics, and display photos from friends in streaming feed. But while Instagram is figuring out how to monetize, Indonesian startup, PicMix seems to have nailed it from the get-go. PicMix makes it part of the core photo posting process for users… Read More
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The Mysterious Case Of The Missing Jawbone Up
It seems a week doesn’t go by without finding out about a malfunctioning Jawbone Up band. The wearable step tracking bracelet measures how much you move each day and how well you sleep. It was relaunched late last year in the US, and came to Asia in March. Read More
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Singapore’s DealGuru Spins Out Food Delivery Business To Chase New Funding
DealGuru, one of the major daily deals sites in Singapore, has spun out its food delivery subsidiary, called FoodRunner. Prior to the new name, the service was called Room Service Deliveries, which DealGuru set up after it acquired Malaysia-based operator, Asian Room Service in October last year. The acquisition was DealGuru’s first big step into the online food delivery business. Read More
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More Exits For Asian E-commerce Firms, But Valuations Still Small
There has been a growing rate of exits happening for Asian e-commerce companies, but valuations remain small on average. Most are under the $50 million mark, according to CB Insights’ latest report. The report, which provides a broad sweep of the past three years of activity in the region, showed that most activity—unsurprisingly—was happening in the large markets of India… Read More
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Malaysia Is Poorly Marketed To Entrepreneurs, Says 500 Durians’ Khailee Ng
Malaysia is an easy place to get cheap, good, English-speaking talent, with overheads that are often far lower than in more advanced markets in Southeast Asia. But it continues to suffer the effects of brain drain. Simply put, Malaysia isn’t cool to be in for some of the nation’s brightest, and this has hurt its startup scene, according to Khailee Ng. Ng, who is from Malaysia… Read More
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With $2.5M Injection From Nexus, Indian Housing Marketplace Launches In Bangalore
Indian housing marketplace, Housing.co.in has expanded out of its home base of Mumbai into another major Indian city, Bangalore—its fifth city in the country. The company, which operates similarly to Trulia and Zillow, provides a real estate search site which displays a visual map of available housing for rent or sale. The search results are filtered by how many rooms are available… Read More
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Waygo Wins Most Promising Startup At Echelon Singapore Conference
Waygo has just won Most Promising Startup at the Echelon conference 2013 in Singapore. The judging panel of seven included Dave McClure, founding partner at 500 Startups, Edgar Hardless, CEO of SingTel Innov8 and John Scull, managing director at Southern Cross Venture Partners. Waygo makes an optical character reader (OCR) translation app which so far has focused on translating the… Read More
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Nimbuzz Offers Free Service To Hutch In Sri Lanka, Continues To Push Telco Strategy in Asia
Nimbuzz is continuing its push for South Asian dominance with its latest telco partnership. The Indian messaging startup just announced a tie-up with Hutch in Sri Lanka, offering six months of free Nimbuzz usage to Hutch subscribers. Today’s announcement is just another in a steady string of telco partnerships that the company has been striking up. In May, it linked up with Mobilink… Read More
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Pirate3D Buccaneer Hits $100K Goal In 10 Minutes
The Pirate3D Buccaneer printer hit its Kickstarter goal of $100,000 in just 10 minutes after launch. At time of writing, it’s been roughly 15 hours since the campaign was started, and it’s already hit $282,356. The 3D printer from the Singapore-based startup is pitched as a beginner’s foray into 3D printing, although it prints at a decent resolution of 100-microns (similar… Read More
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Pirate3D Buccaneer Printer Will Cost Just $247 For First 350 Backers
Get ready, get set, Kickstart. The Pirate3D Buccaneer printer is up on Kickstarter, and the first 350 backers will be able to get it for just $247—$100 off its regular price of $347. The 3D printer is targeted at home users and beginners, say its founders. One of our editors, John Biggs, had his doubts on how high-quality the printer’s output would be, noting some jagged edges to… Read More
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Collabspot’s Mentor Joins It, Pumps In $79,000 Of His Own Money
Collabspot, an email CRM startup, has just received $79,000 (S$100,000) from a former mentor, Laurent Gasser, who also joins the company as director of business development. Collabspot provides a service that layers CRM (customer relationship management) software into Gmail. It’s targeted at the SME crowd, and promises to simplify data entry by letting workers save emails into the… Read More
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