Echelon 2013, Singapore’s flagship technology startup networking event, organized by local media company e27, gets underway in the first week of June. As in previous years, the run-up to the event kicked off March 30 with the Indonesia satellite. The satellites are regional outreach initiatives through which finalists are chosen to pitch at the main [...]
Jakarta-based online design crowdsourcing platform Sribu, which we introduced to you last September, has since grown to a community of 25,000 designers, delivered 135,000 design portfolios and crossed 1 billion Rupiah in payouts to designers on its platform. The company is announcing that it has achieved monthly break even. It is currently also in the [...]
Singapore-headquartered email, website and database backup solutions provider Dropmysite has raised an undisclosed amount in investment from 500 Startups, the Silicon Valley-based seed fund and startup accelerator. The stage of investment has not been disclosed. Dropmysite joins South East Asian startups PayrollHero and Viki in the 500 Startups portfolio. “It’s (Dropmysite) a great cloud-based business [...]
Luxola, a Singapore-headquartered online cosmetics and skincare store, has raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding from GREE Ventures. The company will use the funds to expand into new markets such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. It had earlier raised a S$740,000 round from Singaporeʼs National Research Foundation, Wavemaker Labs and private [...]
After spreading its wings in Silicon Valley, Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) has set its sights on a bigger presence in Israel. It has teamed up with Amdocs, an NYSE-listed provider of customer experience systems and services, to set up a joint development center, dubbed SingTel L!feLabs, in Israel. The move signals SingTel’s formal entry into the [...]
Manila-headquartered PayrollHero, a software company that offers a subscription-based cloud software for payroll management, has raised CAD$1 million (about US$ 1 million) in seed round funding from 500Startups, LX Ventures, The Futura Corporation and 8capita Partners and a bunch of angel investors including Ryan Holmes (CEO of Hootsuite), Dan Martell (CEO of Clarity), Benjamin Joffe, [...]
SoftBank Capital, a venture capital investment group affiliated with Japan’s SOFTBANK Corp, has closed of its $250 million SoftBank PrinceVille Investments Fund. The new fund will help growth stage technology companies to expand their presence to Japan, China and other parts of Asia. Apart from SOFTBANK itself, other investors in the fund include Chinese online [...]
NTT DOCOMO, the Tokyo-headquartered mobile operator and provider of integrated services centered on mobility, announced today that it will establish a 10-billion-yen ($109 million) venture capital fund and a related operating company in late February to accelerate development of new businesses for smartphones and tablets. DOCOMO will also launch an incubation program to support startups [...]
Singapore-headquartered email backup solutions startup Dropmyemail has inked an extensive partnership with GMO Cloud KK, part of Japan’s all-in Internet services conglomerate, GMO Internet Group, to expand the presence of its solution in Japan. The strategic alliance will also see GMO Cloud invest capital in Dropmyemail, resell Dropmyemail to its hosting customers and jointly develop [...]
Singapore-based startup accelerator JFDI Asia (JFDI is acronym for Joyful Frog Digital Incubator) has formalized a strategic alliance with seed stage investor Golden Gate Ventures to offer early stage digital start-up companies access to substantial pre-Series A funding. Golden Gate Ventures co-founders Vinnie Lauria, Jeff Paine and Paul Bragiel will join JFDI.Asia’s ‘bootcamp’ accelerator program [...]
Accelerator to angel to VC flow still struggling to find equilibrium in India
I had fun moderating the panel on early stage financing at India Internet Day. VCCircle has an interesting article. The key issues are as under: 1. Too few deals are progressing from accelerators to angel, and from angel to Series A. Only five per cent of deals going from accelerators to Series A might not [...]
The early ecommerce marketplace pioneers: eBay class of 2000-2005
TechCrunch recently published an article I wrote about how the eBay class of 2000-2005 helped shape ecommerce in Silicon Valley and continues to innovate and move the sector forward. By understanding what shaped this class’ experience and examining where these alums are today, we identified the most important industry trends and start to see a [...]
The founder’s guide to surviving the Series A crunch
The Indian entrepreneurship and venture capital ecosystem is fast maturing. Today we have more early stage funds than ever. This fund availability will only improve, aside from the temporary blips caused due to macroeconomic ups and downs. We are in one such ‘crunch’ today, where even though seed and angel funds are writing cheques with [...]
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