Most entrepreneurs in the Philippines are scattered across Manila. Some are gravitating towards the specialist Area 55, a growing cluster of startups located in Metro Manila. Bryce Maddock, the CEO of TaskUs, argues for the completely opposite approach: you should set up your office in the provinces.

Maddock did so himself way back in 2009, creating the first TaskUs office in Imus, Cavite, a province on the outskirts of Metro Manila. His reasoning at the time was industry specific. TaskUs provides customer care and back-office support to tech companies in the United States, thus making it a part of the booming business outsourcing (BPO) industry, for things like phone banking or tech support, in the country.

The perks of the provinces

According to Maddock, the BPO boom is as much a curse as it is a gift – at least if you’re headquartered in Metro Manila. Companies in the capital have staff turnover rates of 80 percent to 90 percent. “BPO employees can often walk across the street and start working somewhere else,” Maddock explains.

The TaskUs location in Cavite, was designed to prevent high attrition, Maddock says, and in turn provide stable teams for their tech clients, which now include Tinder and Groupon. The turnover at TaskUs is at 30 percent, which he claims is among the lowest in the entire BPO industry.

Bryce Maddock (top right) with a TaskUs employee and his family.

The provincial location also reduces the working hours lost to traffic, which a recent New York Times article named as one of the biggest impediments to the nation’s economic growth.

“For people working at Manila-based BPOs, commute times can be as long as two hours each way,” Maddock says. “We asked ourselves, ‘what if we brought this work to the people?’”

The ensuing experiment to have TaskUs based in the countryside has resulted in an average commute time of twenty minutes, Maddock claims. To him, the difference in commute times is important not just for its economic impact, but for the value it provides his employees.

“We are saving our employees thousands of hours every day – hours that they get to spend with their families, instead of in the back of a jeepney,” Maddock says.

Reducing the brain drain, one Filipino at a time

Of course, the provincial location is not without its trade-offs. People who believe that outsourcing takes economic advantage of Filipinos could argue that the TaskUs presence in Cavite allows them to do so with a much more captive demographic – Filipinos in the provinces have even fewer work alternatives than their compatriots in the capital.

Maddock disagrees with this idea on two accounts. For one, he cites the fact that historically most well-educated Filipinos had to go abroad to earn a good wage. The BPO industry allows Filipinos to earn a similar salary while remaining in the country, thereby reducing the brain drain of Filipino professionals to other nations. “Filipinos can now work for a successful American corporation during the day, and be home to tuck their daughter in to bed at night,” Maddock points out.

Additionally, Maddock feels that the BPO industry has brought world-class training and business practices to the Philippines, resulting in a win-win for both American companies and Filipino workers. “Western businesses get to tap into amazing talent for a fraction of the cost of hiring the same roles in America, and Filipinos get to do meaningful work for interesting companies, acquire world-class skills, and earn a good wage,” Maddock suggests.

That part about Filipinos acquiring world-class skills may sound like lip service from the CEO and owner of an outsourcing company, until you look at what some of his employees have done. Many have risen from entry-level jobs at TaskUs into upper-management positions at the company. Several have even left TaskUs to create their own BPOs or open small businesses, and Maddock only wants more of his employes to do the same.

“Nothing makes me happier,” Maddock says. “The power of entrepreneurship is incredible. If we’ve inspired this in a few Filipinos, then we have done our jobs.”

Get away from the capital

Bryce Maddock is not the only one who is bullish on doing business outside Metro Manila. The Cities and Municipalities Competitiveness Index (CMCI) report for 2014 recently ranked the most economically competitive areas in the country out of 136 cities and 399 municipalities. This report was created by the National Competitiveness Council with assistance from the United States Agency for International Development.

While Makati City, which is home to startup cluster Area 55, was identified as the most economically competitive region in the Philippines, cities outside Metro Manila had a very good showing. The CMCI ranked their economic competitiveness according to three equally weighted pillars, including economic dynamism, government efficiency, and infrastructure.

By these measures, five of the cities in the top ten most economically competitive were located outside the National Capital Region. These were Cagayan de Oro City in Northern Mindanao, Naga City in Bicol, Davao City in Davao, Ilolio City in Western Visayas, and Cebu City in Central Visayas.

Though these places are more accurately described as small to mid-sized cities rather than true rural areas, they fall in line with Maddock’s thinking that it’s better to pursue business where there is less traffic, fewer people, and not as many competing tech companies.

These cities are sprouting up early signs of tech entrepreneurship. Cebu City, for example, now has its first coworking space in Location63. Coworking spaces are often home to early-stage tech startups and to freelancers looking to eventually found one.

Davao has recently gotten a hub of the Global Shapers Community, which is an initiative of the World Economic Forum. This organization is designed to unite people looking to make an impact on their local communities, and this is often accomplished through tech entrepreneurship.

So while the support network for entrepreneurs outside Metro Manila may not be very robust yet, that is exactly one of the implicit selling points: Rather than enter into an full-fledged ecosystem, you can play a key role in building a new one.

Our smartphones connect us to the internet and millions of apps, but it is our telecommunications providers that allow the connection to take place at all. It makes perfect sense that the companies behind our handsets would be keen to aid tech startups, because people don’t just buy smartphones for specs – they buy them to access the must-have apps that keep us glued to our screens.

NTT Docomo and KDDI – Japan’s first and second-largest wireless carriers by user base, respectively (or first and third, if one accounts for group companies) – are on the front-lines of startup investment with multi-million dollar funds and seasoned incubation programs. Instead of going through traditional VCs, budding Asian startups may catch their big break at the very telcos powering the devices they cater to.

Last year, Docomo teamed up with Silicon Valley-based 500 startups to launch a US$109 million fund for mobile-focused startups. The telco has been operating an incubator, called Docomo Innovation Village, since 2012.

Just last month, KDDI announced a new US$50 million fund with an emphasis on the internet of things. KDDI Labo, the firm’s in-house incubator, also recently showed off five graduating startups at its sixth demo day. This is all without mentioning the massive US$24 million investment in Japan’s flavor-of-the-week news curation app Gunosy in June.

Get Startup Asia Tokyo 2014 tickets here. Use the code latebird before August 22 to receive a 10 percent discount.

Helma Kusuma, Indonesia country manager for Freelancer.co.id

“In terms of the number of users and projects posted, we are the biggest,” says Helma Kusuma, country manager of Indonesia for Freelancer.com. Jakarta-based Freelancer.co.id is the localized version of the international outsourcing juggernaut, and aims to capitalize on the archipelago’s vast stay-at-home workforce.

In response to a Tech in Asia article published early last week that mentioned Freelancer’s lower-than-average social media following in Indonesia, Kusuma says, “The number of twitter followers doesn’t accurately reflect our acquisition rate. At the moment, we have almost 400,000 users in Indonesia that consist of more than 25,000 employers and over 350,000 freelancers.” According to Kusuma, Freelancer.com has gained more than 12 million users wordwide. To give an idea of how quickly the site is growing in Indonesia, Kusuma adds that when Freelancer first launched in Jakarta back in 2012, it had only 60,000 registered users, less than a quarter of what it has now.

According to Kusuma, in the past 12 months, Freelancer.co.id has been the third-fastest growing overseas division of the global Freelancer operation, trailing only behind the Indian and US markets (India being number one). Kusuma cites Freelancer’s grassroots engagement in local university programs and startup communities as more active than ever before.

See: 30 million of Indonesia’s internet users are teenagers

While the company has organized several local events, one of Freelancer’s highlights was a speed networking session titled Flash Perkenalan, co-organized by the Indonesia Freelancers Association (IFA) and StartupBisnis.com. Another was a local startup seminar titled “Network Offline, Hire Online: Starting Your Successful Startup 101,” held at the University of Multimedia Nusantara in Gading Serpong. IFA and StartupBisnis again helped organize the event, but this time around local digital media incubator SkyStar Ventures also got involved as a strategic partner. “Being a freelancer with us is the cheapest and fastest way to become an entrepreneur,” says Kusuma. “We want the students to start thinking about their careers before they graduate, not after.”

At the moment, Freelancer.co.id users can pay and get paid via services like PayPal and MasterCard in combination with Freelancer’s custom gateway. Kusuma says the site will soon partner with Indonesian banks like BCA to make transactions faster and easier for locals.

New kid on the block

Ryan Gondokusumo is the founder of Sribu, the hyper-localized website for Indonesian graphic designers to find freelance work. At the start of August, Gondokusumo announced his new beta product SribuLancer, a new portal following a similar business model as Sribu, but geared toward all other digital disciplines including web development, copywriting, photography, videography, internet marketing, and everything else an outsourcer can think of. Gondokusumo says, “We feel that in Indonesia if we just focus on design, the draw is there, but perhaps not as fast as if we expand to other places.”

See: Indonesia’s design crowdsourcing site Sribu gets funding for regional expansion

According to Gondokusumo, Indonesia has no shortage of people willing to work from home online, but that employers are lacking the right mindset to outsource their work to the freelancing community. Currently SribuLancer only has 700 registered freelancers, and is still strategizing on how to gain a critical mass of employers. Gondokusumo says, “We aim to have around 1,000 users before marketing SribuLancer to larger companies.”

Gondokusumo says he’s not threatened by international giants like Freelancer.co.id, saying SribuLancer’s service is indeed similar, but ultimately different. SribuLancer is aimed more at connecting job providers with the right freelancers for the individual project, he says, as opposed to the more traditional tender system that Freelancer uses where workers bid on jobs. He says, “Freelancer is also pay-per-hour, their freelancers have fixed services and amounts. We want to sort of reinvent the future of this kind of work with our approach. Also, it’s probably important for Freelancer to localize their product more for an Indonesian market.”

SribuLancer team, founder Ryan Gondokusumo far right.

If Gondokusumo’s product starts to see traction in the local market, he’ll likely be able to scale up operations quickly, as the young technopreneur previously received funding for Sribu from local venture capital player East Ventures (East Ventures also invests in Tech in Asia. See our ethics page for more information).

See: East Ventures helps Adskom raise $850,000

While Helma Kusuma’s Freelancer.co.id seems to be the dominant player in Jakarta’s self-employment ecosystem for the time being, Gondokusumo is hopeful his new site will mount a formidable offensive. Regarding payments, Gondokusumo says, “Right now we will collect 10 percent on each transaction, but as we scale up, SribuLancer will explore a subscription-based business model so that we don’t have to start from the ground up every month. The biggest challenge for now is that maybe Indonesia doesn’t have a fully developed market culture for outsourcing these jobs online, but hopefully we can change that.”

Food is central to many cultures. The Japanese are renowned for their sushi, Singaporeans revere their cheap hawker food, and Indians have, well, 36 regional cuisines to choose from.

The problem is that they’re often unhealthy. White rice has tons of fast carbs, which raise the risk of diabetes if consumed over five times a week. Coconut milk, used in curry dishes in South Asia, can make you pile on the weight.

Yet healthy food isn’t readily available in Asia. Brought up on cheap local fare and McDonalds, Asians won’t change their diet easily. The lack of demand, coupled with the relatively smaller number of health-conscious eateries, heighten the difficulty of healthy living.

Singapore startup Grain is turning this into an opportunity. Think of it as an Uber for wholesome food: it serves up ready-to-eat dishes to a taxi stand near to you, and it promises to do it on-demand.

“The moment you think about food, we want to get it to your doorstep within 15 minutes,” says Yi Sung Yong, one of the co-founders of the startup. Typical food catering services take much longer.

Grain is a young operation. It only began delivering at the end of 2013, stopped for a couple of months, and then kickstarted it again in February 2014.

They’ve tried different things. Initially, you’d tell Grain your preferences and plot out a week ahead which days you’d like your food, but that approach made operations difficult since they had to cook many variations on the same day. Customers also found it inconvenient since schedules often change. The new on-demand service is designed to better meet their needs while making the business easier to run.

Eats in a box

I decided to try Grain for myself. Here’s the downer: while it is available for lunch and dinner and recently added cold-pressed juices to the repertoire, it only delivers within the Marina Bay area for now. So if you’re hungry but residing outside its delivery zone, tough luck.

Signing up and ordering is a breeze. After creating an account, you’ll need to enter your postal code to set up your pick-up spot, which for me was the Ocean Financial Center taxi stand.

You place orders between 11am and 2pm for lunch, or 5.30pm to 8.30pm for dinner. You can pick any number of items – perfect if you’re ordering for co-workers. A main dish costs around S$10 (US$8) and juices around S$5 (US$4), which is in the vicinity of what healthy eateries charge. Payment is done via credit card only and processed through Stripe, which makes the entire checkout process a joy that’s rare in Asia.

Then it’s time to wait. Grain sends you an email to confirm the order. Once its delivery car is about to reach your building, you’ll get a notification to come down and collect your grub.

But if you’re an idiot like me who missed the call and text, you can call Grain to let them know you’re still keen to eat. I found the process rather smooth, so no complaints there.

Now on to my favorite part: the food. I picked the crab and prawn arrabiata pasta, which came to me in a plastic container slotted into a cupboard box. The nutritional information is plastered onto the box, but if you’re like me and trust the company to make decisions for you, it can be safely ignored. The package also contains a spork and a paper napkin.

As promised, the food was warm and ready-to-eat. The seafood tasted fresh, and the pasta sauce is more flavorful than what you’d find in a watered-down pasta chain. The portion was respectable but small for me, so I was hungry again way before dinner.

This wasn’t my first time tasting Grain’s food. They’ve kept up their standards, but I’m more partial towards their Western offerings, although that may be just my personal preference.

Grain has gathered some culinary firepower to work the menu. It engaged Isaac Tan, who was formerly the group chef for WWW Concepts, which runs restaurants like Mariko’s and Bartini Kitchen. It recruited Terence Chuah, who previously worked at fine dining establishments Jaan and Les Amis. He also did stages at top overseas restaurants Mugaritz and Narisawa.

See more: iChef is bringing startup savvy to Taiwan’s new class of food entrepreneurs

Can Grain sustain itself?

The food delivery business is intensely competitive in Singapore. Aside from traditional food caterers, a group of enterprising young Singaporeans are now putting their own spin on serving lunches to busy executives. Unlike incumbents and online food delivery giant Foodpanda, these businesses have done away with minimum delivery – you can order for a party of one or the whole office.

They share a common goal: make meals as convenient as possible by allowing customers to avoid insane lunch crowds. Lunchbox works with restaurants to deliver meals to customers in under an hour, but it might struggle against Foodpanda, given the latter has a similar value proposition and business model but more variety and island-wide delivery.

Feedex also acts as a middleman between restaurants and consumers, except that it has a brick-and-mortar collection point where people queue up to collect the food after ordering it online. Aside from the inconvenience of walking to the place, high property rentals in the Central Business District can drive up costs for the startup and slow its ability to scale.

Grain faces its own set of challenges. On-demand delivery is ambitious, and sometimes even large restaurant chains like McDonald’s and Pizza Hut struggle to make it work. Besides mastering logistics and coordinating collections, Grain has to contend with running a central kitchen – not easy for a new outfit.

The business model does have advantages though. Plenty of startups are doing it in Silicon Valley, and they’re picking up steam. Grain is what venture capitalist Chris Dixon calls a “full-stack startup”. Examples include Uber, Tesla, and Warby Parker. He writes:

The full stack approach lets you bypass industry incumbents, completely control the customer experience, and capture a greater portion of the economic benefits you provide. The challenge with the full stack approach is you need to get good at many different things: software, hardware, design, consumer marketing, supply chain management, sales, partnerships, regulation, etc. The good news is that if you can pull this off, it is very hard for competitors to replicate so many interlocking pieces.

So while the ride may be rough for Grain at the start, it can speed away from the competition once it goes past a certain point. By managing both the kitchen and logistics, it could drastically bring costs down in ways that pure online platforms can’t.

Grain also has a branding advantage. Right now, healthy food commands a premium, which means it could attract a niche group of eaters who won’t mind paying more. And once it builds customer loyalty and rides this wave to a certain volume, it can start mainstreaming.

“As we scale, the price should be brought down. That’s the long-term vision,” says Yong, echoing Uber’s playbook of expanding beyond premium limos to plain Corollas which cost the same as city cabs.

But to get there, it’ll need Uber-sized funding. While the startup is bootstrapping, Yong intends to raise money when it’s time to expand to a second kitchen.

Fortunately, the floodgate has opened in Singapore for startup investments, and Grain is in the right place at the right time.

JD.com, China’s second largest ecommerce site, today received a US$17.2 million investment from Singapore state-owned investment firm Temasek, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The investment would translate to a stake of 0.06 percent for Temasek, according to Bloomberg data.

This comes hot on the heels of the ecommerce company’s US IPO earlier this year in May, where they raised US$1.78 billion. Temasek’s backing will no doubt further boost investor confidence in JD.com. At the same time, Temasek put US$12.8 million into Chinese security software firm Cheetah Mobile.

“In terms of region they are increasing their exposure to China,” said Song Seng Wun, a Singapore-based economist at CIMB Research, in a report on Bloomberg. “In terms of investment themes, they are buying consumer-oriented assets which helps them go beyond financial assets in the country.”

It is worth noting that Temasek is also an early investor in Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba, a close competitor to JD.com, who are currently gearing up for one of the most anticipated internet IPOs in history. It invested US$1.6 billion together with three other partners, and the IPO could double that investment value.

In April, Temasek had also invested in one of China’s largest warehouse developers, Shanghai Yupei Group.

See: Despite running at a loss, JD valuation jumps to $15.7 billion ahead of US listing

(Image credit: Flickr user Province of British Columbia)

The Twitter-esque Sina Weibo (NASDAQ:WB) is now up to 156.5 million monthly active users (MAUs) – of whom 69.7 million are active each day – according to the company’s Q2 2014 earnings.

Despite the onslaught of WeChat, which rose to 438 million MAUs, Weibo is still growing its user-base, albeit slowly. Its MAUs are up 30 percent in the past 12 months.

The social network is still losing money, however. Weibo revenues grew to US$77.3 million in Q2 – up 105 percent year-on-year – but that was ruined by a net loss of US$15.4 million. At least the losses are narrowing. Weibo’s loss is 56 percent less than in Q2 2013, and down from the US$47.4 million loss in Q1, which was Weibo’s first earnings report after the April IPO that valued Weibo at about US$3.4 billion.

Weibo’s share price is pretty stagnant since its debut. It closed the very first day of trading at $20.24 per share, and now stands at $21.46 at the close of Thursday’s markets.

Xiaomi’s batch flash sales in India seem to have settled into a repeat routine. Mi 3 stocks have been flying off the shelves in mere seconds each time. Though the Chinese company hasn’t yet divulged exact numbers, it’s likely to have sold about 40,000 units since it launched in India last month.

Right from day one, the disruptive young phone-maker made no secret of its plans to take on Korean giant Samsung on Indian turf. Spec by spec, the power-packed Mi 3 was compared to Samsung’s higher-priced devices, leaving Indian consumers salivating over the value-for-money buy. This is now starting to hurt the smartphone leader – not just in India but globally.

According to Fitch Ratings, the rising competition in emerging markets will eat 25 percent of Samsung’s global smartphone market share by the end of 2015. Lower-priced phones from local competitors are the cause, its latest report says. Samsung won’t be the only global giant bearing the brunt. Thanks to Xiaomi and other new brands, Apple too will see a decline of 14 percent in its market share globally.

The report says:

We expect the big two’s combined smartphone shipment volume to stagnate at around 450 million to 460 million units in 2014 (2013: 467 million), even as the global smartphone market rises by around 20 percent to 1.2 billion. Local handset makers, including China’s Xiaomi, Lenovo, and Huawei, as well as India’s Micromax, are the principal large competitors for Apple and Samsung.

Cheaper challengers

Last year, Samsung led smartphone sales globally with a market share of 31 percent. India was no exception. According to data from an IDC report, Samsung led with a 35 percent market share in the first quarter of 2014. Micromax followed at 15 percent, Karbonn 10 percent, Lava six percent, and Nokia four percent.

And now Xiaomi has entered the battle too. If the initial reception is anything to go by, it has forced market leaders to rethink their value propositions. Samsung launched three smartphones in India, all of which are priced under INR8,000 (US$130), shortly after Xiaomi’s debut. Motorola reacted as well, announcing a US$32 price cut for its best-selling Android phone, the Moto G; it’s the first cut since the model launched five months ago.

In emerging markets, cost is relatively more important than brand value or even cutting-edge technology. But when companies like Xiaomi are aggressively offering top-of-the-line features of phones from Samsung and Apple at half price or less, consumers are more than glad. In the second quarter of 2014, Xiaomi took the lead in China with 15 million smartphones with a market share of 15 percent – ahead of Samsung’s 12 percent, shipping 13.2 million units, the Fitch report noted. Data from Canalys for the same period confirms that Xiaomi is now China’s top smartphone brand, a mere three years after it launched its first ever phone.

“We want to be an Indian in India”

Xiaomi has made it clear how important India is in its scheme of things. At the very outset, it rolled out 36 service centers across the country, as well as an R&D centre to Indianize MIUI, Xiaomi’s Android skin and software ecosystem.

“We realize that Indian consumers make decisions based on service. And we want to do that better than anyone,” Xiaomi vice president Hugo Barra said during the India launch. “We don’t want to be a Chinese company in India. We want to be an Indian in India. And we are putting our best step forward.” So it’s not likely to get any easier for Samsung and Apple.

For consumers, these are happy days – or “achche din” as Prime Minister Narendra Modi reminded people on India’s Independence Day today.

Just before police raided Kuaibo’s offices in April, the CEO of the company that makes the notorious QVOD streaming video app fled the country. Wang Xin was on the run for 110 days, and was arrested on August 8, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

While the QVOD app is probably China’s most popular app for streaming pirated movies and TV shows, Wang was officially charged for disseminating pornography through it. He’s been under investigation since 2010.

Wang Xin; Image credit: QQ Tech

A warrant for his arrest was issued by Interpol. It’s not clear which country Wang was in when apprehended.

In June, QVOD was fined US$42 million – the largest penalty for piracy on record in China.

As of press time, QVOD is still available for download via its website. According to Who.is, the Kuaibo.com domain is registered under Wang Xin’s name.

(Source: Xinhua via Netease Tech)

With ecommerce sales in APAC set to reach US$525.2 billion this year, surpassing the US, more and more merchants and entrepreneurs from the region will be looking for ways to earn income by selling goods online. As a result, companies from all over the world have come up with tool sets designed to help vendors set up virtual shops. The three-man team behind Shopline is but one firm hoping to get Asia’s shopkeepers onto mobile webstores, and it just earned admittance into California-based accelerator 500 Startup’s latest batch.

Shopline lets vendors design a storefront webpage, upload images of goods, receive orders, and manage payment transactions. In short, it’s quite similar to Shopify, the Ottowa-based startup that’s raised more than US$100 million in funding to date. Raymond Yip, co-founder of Shopline, doesn’t shy away from name-checking his company’s high-profile analog. “We’re basically trying to be the Shopify of Asia,” he says right at the start of his elevator pitch.

That’s all well and good, but why can’t Shopify be the Shopify of Asia? Well, for one thing, not every T-shirt vendor in Taiwan reads TechCrunch every day. Popular as Shopify is, Yip believes that there’s still opportunity to be the first aggressive mover for streamlined ecommerce tools in Asia. In the eyes of the Shopline team, earning that place entails building a product that’s even more simple than Shopify in an effort to educate a customer base that’s not as ecommerce savvy as the average Shopify user.

“If you think about Shopify, it’s super powerful and super awesome,” says Yip. “It’s almost too much for a merchant to handle if it’s their first time to go online. For us, we’re kind of not throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the system. We just want just the essentials.”

Comparing Shopline’s features and pricing scheme with Shopify illustrates how the Hong Kong team is aiming for the bare bones. Features spread across Shopify’s three pricing tiers include analytics, discount code engines, two different tiers of analytics (“professional report” and “advanced report builder”), and most importantly, a number of apps and plugins that vendors can use to customize their store management. Shopline tries to keep it simple by offering only a customized domain name, unlimited listings, and a few other perks to customers who pay NT$599 a month (about US$20). Vendors who opt for the free version can still set up shops on Facebook, mobile, and the web, they just have limited product listings and can’t snag that shiny domain name.

Building a shop is just one side of Shopline’s mission. The team is currently building out a consumer-facing iOS app available in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where shoppers can browse multiple Shopline storefronts, like products, and share goods with their friends.

Quick at the starting line

Shopline’s hypothesis that a fast-moving startup can conquer small Asian markets quicker than Shopify (or Europe’s Tictail, or Taobao, or Taiwan’s PCHome for that matter) thus far shows signs of holding weight. 500 Startups managing partner Rui Ma tells Tech in Asia that the company is “fast and lean, even by Silicon Valley standards” and the numbers don’t lie. Four months after its official launch in February this year, 4,000 merchants in Taiwan and Hong Kong have created online stores using Shopline.

As for the “lean” side of “fast and lean,” only two other teammates work alongside Yip to help manage the thousands of merchants that rely on Shopline for business. Tony Wong, who met Yip at a Startup Weekend event in Hong Kong last year, manages all things code for Shopline, while Fiona Lau, who used to work for Goldman Sachs, handles customer service. Yip divides his time between fundraising and design.

Despite how the three of them are each first-time founders, the team’s skeleton structure makes it easy to test and execute quickly. It also helps the team add a personal touch to its customer outreach efforts, which in turn builds trust.

“Taiwan is very active on Facebook, so we’ve just been marketing on Facebook, and it’s worked out quite well for us,” says Yip. “I think what our merchants like about Fiona is that she can actually answer their questions, take their feedback, and implement changes. In the middle of the night, Fiona will be on WeChat or WhatsApp, talking to our customers directly.”

Even with strong growth at the starting line, Shopline faces a bevy of well-funded competitors. In addition to Shopify, Texas-based Volusion and Bigcommerce, along with LA-based Magento (which eBay acquired) have each racked up a sizeable customer base within the English-speaking world. In greater China, Hong Kong’s Bindo has recently launched mobile stores for its partner merchants, but that company’s core remains point-of-sale services for brick-and-mortar stores. Taiwan’s MeepShop also provides a similar service.

Editing by Steven Millward, thumbnail image via Flickr user refractedmoments

An estimated 16 million babies are born each year in China. Although those little bundles of joy have no spending power, they’re effectively new consumers. China’s booming ecommerce industry has not overlooked this, and that’s why there are plenty of estores dedicated to baby-ware, kids clothing, and provisions for new mums.

Two of these specialist sites have secured funding in the past couple of days. BeiBei (which means ‘baby’ in Chinese), has just received RMB 150 million (US$24.4 million) in funding, reports 36Kr. The investment for this very new estore comes from parent company Mizhe, which is a site that aggregates ecommerce store discounts; IDG and Banyan Capital also participated.

The other is Lamahui, which pulled in RMB 90 million (US$14.6 million) series A funding from SAIF Partners, DT Capital and TRVC, according to China Money Network.

Both BeiBei and Lamahui have an array of Chinese and local children’s brands covering clothes, accessories, toys and more, including Disney, Barbie, and Hello Kitty.

BeiBei’s funding is separate from Mizhe’s US$30 million series B injection, which happened in May. IDG and Banyan Capital also provided the cash for that.

Toy money

While China’s ecommerce industry is still exploding – growing from an estimated value of US$180 billion in 2013 to US$274 billion this year – it’s not an easy ride for specialist estores. Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall still dominate online shopping in the country, and numerous similar rivals in this kids clothing and accessories space, such as Miyabaobei, are also battling for the cash from the pockets of new parents. Miyabaobei nabbed US$20 million in financing last month.

Even the anticipated two million extra babies per year from China’s relaxed one-child policy won’t guarantee an easy ride for a startup in this sector.

(Sources: China Money Network; 36Kr – article in Chinese)

Anton Soeharyo, right, at TouchTen’s office in Jakarta

You may not have heard of TouchTen Games, but if you’ve spent an idle moment or two browsing through the iOS App Store, you’ve probably come across one of their titles. Sushi Chain, Ramen Chain, the Flappy Bird-inspired Amazing Cupid, and other casual games have brought in a sizeable fan base for the Jakarta-based company. Last May the startup revealed it raised a series B round from Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures, marking the startup’s first cash injection from a major foreign investor, and the VC’s first investment in a mobile game firm.

How has that fundraising round helped TouchTen grow? How has its relationship with CyberAgent changed the way the company operates? If casual games are a hit-based industry, how can a team of hardcore game-lovers ensure that they produce a hit that reaches millions? These are some of the issues that Anton Soeharyo, CEO and cofounder at TouchTen Games, will cover during his speech at this year’s Startup Asia Tokyo 2014, on September 3 and 4.

Time is running out! Get your tickets for Startup Asia Tokyo 2014 here, and do it now, now now! Use the code latebird before August 22 to receive a 10 percent discount.

See: 3 reasons why CyberAgent Ventures invested in TouchTen

Social media startups tend to go for user acquisition first, and then think about monetization later down the road. That can lead to some awkward attempts at making money from an already established user base. That’s what’s happening today as China’s top flirting and dating app, Momo, adds location-based ads for businesses.

A new update to Momo’s app for iOS heralds the arrival of the startup’s mobile advertising platform. It brings ads and promos for nearby stores into the location-based listings, mixed in with the men or women that you’re trying to mingle with. Businesses who advertise also get a profile page within the app. Here’s a screenshot courtesy of 36Kr:

The question is whether this will be considered an unwelcome intrusion for Momo users. The app has over 150 million registered users, of whom 52 million are monthly active users.

Momo first ventured into monetization with a social gaming platform late last year, emulating the strategy of messaging apps like Line and WeChat.

However, Momo’s new ads are not as out of place as they first seem. The startup added in special interest groups and Foursquare-style check-ins in 2013, so the flirty app has already evolved into a broader social network revolving around what’s happening nearby. Momo’s recent online ads show a bunch of friends larking around together in a field, and there’s not much suggestion that it’s a dating app any longer – though it’s questionable whether people still see it mainly as a hook-up app.

Momo was under pressure earlier this year over the number of prostitutes allegedly using the app. The exposé by state news agency Xinhua came amid a nationwide crackdown on pornography on the web.

JD (NASDAQ:JD), China’s second biggest ecommerce company, saw RMB63.0 billion (US$10.2 billion) in consumer sales [1] in Q2 2014, the firm revealed today in its newest earnings report. That expenditure by its users is up 107 percent on Q2 2013. That came from 163.7 million fulfilled orders during the three-month period. About 24 percent of those came from mobile shoppers.

Ecommerce spending in China hit a grand total of US$74 billion in Q1 2014 – which is up 27.6 percent year-on-year.

JD, which raised $1.78 billion in its US IPO in May, pulled in RMB28.6 billion (US$4.6 billion) in revenue during Q2, which is up 64 percent in the past year. However, JD’s huge operating expenses once again resulted in a net loss – this time it lost RMB582.5 million (US$93.9 million) in the most recent quarter, which is up exponentially from much slimmer losses of US$1.9 million 12 months ago.

JD is a lot like Amazon. Most orders are shipped direct to consumers from its own warehouses, but it also has third-party merchants on an open marketplace. Its primary rivals are Alibaba’s marketplaces, Tmall and Taobao. In the business-to-consumer (B2C) sector, Tmall and JD collectively dominate with over 70 percent market share, according to data from iResearch.

JD now has 38.1 million active customers, which has nearly doubled in the past year.

Chinese web giant Tencent (HKG:0700) took a 15 percent stake in JD in March ahead of the IPO. That means JD now benefits from integration into WeChat, Tencent’s hugely popular messaging app that has nearly 440 million monthly active users.

GoGoVan, the Hong Kong-based startup that helps consumers and businesses get their stuff delivered quickly, revealed today that it has raised US$6.5 million in funding. Centurion Investment Management led the round, with several unnamed Singapore-based angel investors participating.

GoGoVan chairman Gabriel Fong tells Tech in Asia that the team will use the funding to ramp up its expansion efforts. The team intends to enter Taipei, Melbourne, and Sydney by year’s end.

GoGoVan is like Uber for cargo in urban areas. Users who need stuff moved – whether it’s the old sofa in the living room, or 100 pizza boxes to Paisano’s Pizzeria before the lunchtime rush – can log on to the app, specify the pickup and drop off location, and summon a driver. GoGoVan will set base prices depending on the delivery route, which users then give to the driver in cash. Of course, it’s through the pizza box deliveries that GoGoVan really adds value to its users – for businesses that need cargo shipped immediately, going through an app is, in theory, quicker than making a phone call to a dispatch center.

See: ‘Uber for logistics’ is already happening in Asia, and Uber is getting left behind

When we last caught up with GoGoVan, the startup had just expanded into Singapore. Since then, the company has begun making inroads towards monetization. One month ago it launched GoGoFuel, a special card that provides its drivers with discounted gas prices at select fuel stations. By partnering with major fuel providers in Hong Kong, GoGoVan can rally for bulk prices on fuel purchases, and then keep a cut of the total fuel purchases for itself. It’s not the most intuitive method for monetization – GrabTaxi, for example, monetizes its taxi-hailing app in some markets by charging drivers SIM card-esque top-up fees.  But GoGoVan’s scheme imposes fees on neither the driver nor the customer, which might ensure loyalty among its repeat users.

GoGoVan faces competition from EasyVan, a like-minded competitor also based in Hong Kong. When we checked back in June, GoGoVan had 18,000 vans on its network, while EasyVan had reported 8,000. GoGoVan currently claims it has generated more than 1 million transactions since its launch in July 2013, generating an aggregate transaction value (not to be confused with actual revenues just yet) of HK$120 million (over US$15 million).

Today, India is celebrating its 68th independence day. What better day than this to celebrate India’s startup heroes, the trailblazers who are inspiring thousands of other young entrepreneurs with their global success. They triggered a mindset shift towards software products, and made a strong case for bootstrapping, which is also a form of independence. Here’s a list of five innovative tech startups which do India proud.

Zoho: online office tools for easy collaboration

Zoho has over 25 applications that power online businesses, productivity, and collaboration, serving the technology needs of more than nine million customers worldwide. From customer relationship management (CRM) to mail, invoicing, and web conferencing, companies use Zoho Applications to run their business processes and manage their information effectively. Zoho has received won awards, including TechCrunch’s Best Enterprise Startup in 2007. Founder and CEO of Zoho Sridhar Vembu stuck to bootstrapping while building the product in spite of pressure from competitor Salesforce. Vembu holds a PhD in electrical engineering from Princeton University and is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras.

Quick Heal: security tools for computers, phones, and servers

Quick Heal Technologies, founded by Kailash Katkar, offers cloud-based security and machine-learning-enabled solutions which stop threats, attacks, and malicious traffic before they strike. They have customized products to suit individual users, small businesses, government establishments, and large corporate houses. Katkar started Quick Heal from a one-room space in Pune with his brother Sanjay Katkar. Initially, the brothers reverse-engineered computing devices to understand the security issues, and then came up with solutions. They took loans from banks to build their software and grow the business. Sequoia Capital only came on board years later in 2010 with an investment of about US$10 million.

FusionCharts: interactive JavaScript charts

FusionCharts helps you create smart charts with exciting animation, snazzy designs, and rich interactive elements. Businesses can use them to create beautiful dashboards in their products and drive more sales. The startup was founded in 2002 by 17-year-old Pallav Nadhani, who was looking for ways to make more pocket money. He wrote an article on making animated charts for web applications, and FusionCharts sprang from there. It hit a US$1 million revenue mark in 2006, and crossed US$5 million in 2011. Now FusionCharts has 23,000 customers and 500,000 developers in 120 countries.

RateGain: tech solutions for hospitality and travel industry

RateGain helps hoteliers, travel websites, airlines, and corporate travel players with technology solutions in everyday tracking, updating, analyzing, and smart decision-making. This SaaS startup, founded by Bhanu Chopra, is headquartered in Noida, India, and has offices in the UK, US, Turkey, Spain, the UAE, and Thailand. He bootstrapped the company with US$100,000 in 2004, and within years built it to a multi-million dollar company.

Kayako: customer service tools for businesses

Customer support startup Kayako was founded by Varun Shoor, a 17-year-old in Jalandhar, Punjab. He used to be part of online coding communities, where he came across a company selling customer support software for US$2,000. He saw its product and felt he could easily better it. He dropped out of college to start Kayako in 2001. It has not received any funding from external investors till now and is profitable. In 2009, Kayako launched a unique community license program, providing free helpdesk software to charities and open-source projects. So far, it has donated software worth US$100,000 to different causes.

BootUpINDIA

There are many more bootstrapped heroes in India, and the numbers are growing with startups springing from all nooks and corners of the country. Independent of external funding, these startups might not all turn into billion-dollar companies, yet they play a key role in positioning India as an innovator in information technology and not just an outsourcing and services back office of the world.

They need support during their toddling years. For this, industry think-tank Indian Software Product Industry Round Table (iSPIRT) launched an initiative called BootUpINDIA awards today. iSPIRT promises the winners industry validation, structured mentoring, discounts from its partners like Amazon Web Services, FreshDesk, and Zoho CRM, and access to its other programs. The application process for BootUpINDIA will close on September 15, and iSPIRT will announce eight winners on October 2, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi.

(Top image: Flickr user Dinesh Cyanam)

Star Zest Home Tuition was the first to face the wrath of Singapore’s newly minted Personal Data Protection Act, which officially took full effect on July 2. Now, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi could be next in line. According to a report by Wall Street Journal, a Xiaomi device user has lodged a complaint with regards to receiving unsolicited telemarketing calls from abroad. The source and content of the calls were unclear.

Hugo Barra, Xiaomi’s global vice president, has reached out to the Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Commission to put out the fire. Earlier this month, another user complained on a Chinese language web forum that his Xiaomi smartphone was “secretly” connecting to a server in Beijing, causing him to believe that the company was transmitting all his data without his permission. Barra was able to turn away allegations of privacy violations then, and informed Wall Street Journal that the server in question in Beijing did not store user data. It connects to users’ phones for services such as downloading themes and apps only.

Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Commission is now looking into the case. If found guilty, the smartphone maker may be directed to stop collecting or revealing data, destroy the data, provide access to the data, and may face a financial penalty of up to S$1 million (US$800,000), according to a commission spokesman.

The China-based smartphone has been very popular in Singapore. The launch of the Redmi Note last month saw all stocks being snapped up within 42 seconds. With data privacy a massive concern globally now, Barra and his team will have to act decisively in order to retain their popularity.

See: Xiaomi set to expand into 10 more countries this year, including India, Indonesia, and Brazil

Derrick is the first employee at Kicksend, a Y Combinator-backed startup based in Silicon Valley.

Last month, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) launched Accreditation@IDA, a scheme designed to “accredit promising and innovative Singapore-based technology product start-ups to establish credentials and position them as qualified contenders to enterprise buyers, including the Singapore Government”.

A Closer Look

While Accreditation@IDA certainly sounds promising in theory, I am skeptical about its effectiveness. As seen in its terms and guidelines:

Objectives

We set up the Accreditation@IDA to help startups win real projects from government and industry buyers, where accredited companies will be considered first for various innovation-focused government projects and industry collaborations.

[The initiative aims to] build an innovative technopreneur ecosystem to drive economic growth, inspire the younger generation, and build more innovative products and technology companies that can scale overseas.

Requirements

The company must have:

• an innovative enterprise product, with focus on software
• a financing and/or fund raising plan going forward to sustainably operate
• the capabilities and resources to support its business plan
• a sizeable addressable demand for the product to support its business plan
• strong management team with established track records and low key-man risks

Evaluation

The parameters evaluated are benchmarked using Industry testing best practices such as TMMI and ISO/IEC 25010 standards for Systems and software Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE) and includes the functional, reliability, performance, portability, compatibility, security, usability and maintainability of the product. IDA may also require access to the source codes of the product and the company’s staging servers for penetration tests in the event IDA deems that security testing is necessary.

The company shall keep the version of the product that is accredited available for sale in the enterprise market throughout the validity of the accreditation status.

IDA shall charge the company such fees as it may from time to time determine in relation to an evaluation conducted under clause 5 and/or the EPC’s participation in Accreditation@IDA.

Nope.

Accreditation@IDA describes IDA’s ideal “startup” — a company that has found product market fit, precision engineered systems, and a roadmap to guaranteed success. Companies that do indeed fit that criteria do not count as startups.

I would advise real startups to steer clear of Accreditation@IDA. You will waste your time.

The effort you spend getting accredited as a startup is worse than raising funds, or even an enterprise sales cycle. There is the added unknown of a non-transparent panel digging through the guts of your company.

Working on singular government or enterprise projects typically requires your team to extensively customize your product, which detracts from your product vision. You end up building a time-sink solution for just one client. That does not count as product-market fit.

And should you decide to pursue the long windy road of government contracts, you will only develop the highly specific knowledge of navigating government red tape.

Startups have to focus on growth and product refinement, instead of accreditation processes. Build a product that lends itself to scale; create a solution that many organizations can adopt with easy onboarding and minimal customization. And if you are an enterprise-focused company, develop translatable sales expertise.

The fact that Accreditation@IDA acts as a “seal of approval” is a double-edge sword too. An unaccredited company could conceivably be assumed as less trustworthy and second-class by government and enterprise buyers out there, which harms the industry as a whole.

Let’s say a foreign, enterprise-friendly “startup” like Dropbox — who are unaccredited — decides to market heavily to Singapore-based enterprises, where they face local, accredited competitors. In such a scenario, who does Accreditation@IDA truly help?

What can be improved?

As we have seen, Accreditation@IDA is clearly not geared towards startups, but companies with the manpower and runway to undergo such tedious processes. And IDA should be extremely clear about this in their marketing. Instead of proclaiming blanket, lofty marketing speak like “building an innovative technopreneur ecosystem to drive economic growth, inspire the younger generation”, IDA should narrowly market to their real target audience — larger companies.

If the true objective of the initiative is to increase the exposure of startups to the government and enterprise, startups would be better served by a lighter-touch approach; stop imposing such company-warping initiatives upon the ecosystem. IDA should also recognize the increasing consumerization of enterprise IT, and adjust government software procurement policies to reflect that.

Accreditation@IDA  —  as with many entrepreneurship-focused policies in Singapore  —  once again suffers from questionable execution, despite good intentions. It’s about time we start getting better at this.

This article is republished with permission from Derrick Ko’s blog.

Only about 10 percent of Myanmar’s population have a mobile phone right now – and even fewer have a smartphone or tablet. While Myanmar is an exciting, new, and sizable market, it’s still very early days.

One startup based in Yangon is keen on gaining traction in this formative stage. A team of app developers recently released its first educational iPad app, called Phew (pictured above). It’s designed to help kids learn how to write the mellifluously flowing characters of the Burmese language. The Brahmic script, like Thai or Tibetan, is quite hard to write.

Myo Myint Kyaw from Revo Tech, the startup behind Phew, says the team has a lot more educational apps in the pipeline. “It’s one of the first – if not first – educational apps for Myanmar,” says Kyaw. The next app will be based on Myanmar numbers, which also uses the Brahmic script, not the Arabic numerals we’re used to.

Myanmar gets 3G for the first time today with the rollout of Qatar’s Ooredoo (LSE:QTED) network. It comes nearly 14 months after both Ooredoo and Norway’s Telenor (STO:TELO) won the multi-billion dollar deals to build mobile networks across the country.

Phew is free for iPad, but requires a US$1.99 in-app purchase to unlock the whole alphabet.

Here’s a brief demo video showing Phew in action.

Fast food giant Jollibee recently had to shut down 72 of its 2,244 stores in the Philippines due to a problem caused by their new IT system. While this glitch was a costly one – estimates put their daily losses at US$4 million per day – it is not without value. The rise of the Twitter hashtag #ChickenSad, which is a play on Jollibee’s popular menu item Chicken Joy, is a lesson learned for the chain and a case study for Philippine entrepreneurs on the importance of transparency in the age of social media.

Image courtesy of the Jollibee Facebook page.

Is it #ChickenSad or #ChickenMad?

At first glance, Jollibee’s brand has taken a beating via #ChickenSad. Philippines is a social media capital of the world, and it has gang-filled online ghettoes and down-on-your-luck neighborhoods where no one – not even a fast food giant – can walk out unscathed:

Why do I have this feeling that #Jollibee will soon increase menu prices (if that system upgrade is true) #ChickenSad— Ruth dela Cruz (@ruthilicious) August 8, 2014

How big of an impact will #ChickenSad be to Jollibee’s stock price over the next few weeks? @stocksmartsph #PSE— marvin germo (@marvingermo) August 11, 2014

Dude, 72 stores temporarily closed? This #ChickenSad drama is fo real…— John Paul Manahan (@misterjpmanahan) August 8, 2014

Despite this outpouring of #ChickenSad sentiment, Jollibee has been mostly mum. They issued a short statement to the Philippine Stock Exchange reassuring their investors that the firm has an ample supply of raw materials. They did not add anything on social media, continuing only their promotional posts, in addition to a few canned responses that they used over and over again:

@beavelazco Rest assured that we are committed to having all our products available again within a few days in all our affected stores.— Jollibee (@Jollibee) August 15, 2014

Jonha Revesencio (pictured below), a digital marketer from digital publishing platform RebelMouse, says that company has a responsibility to publicly acknowledge the problem in detail. Their lack of a thorough response, Revesencio says, gave birth to #ChickenSad and fueled its rise.

“For every action, there is always an equal and opposite reaction,” Revesencio quotes, before adding, “or social media overreaction.”

According to Revesencio, consumers are free of blame. She thinks that Jollibee’s current silence is emblematic of a larger problem. “Whenever you look at any major brand’s post, the story is still the same,” she says. “They’re still stuck in one-way conversation, constantly finding ways and opportunities to promote and not to listen.”

But lucky for us, Revesencio was listening. Using a sentiment analysis tool, she found that the overall sentiment expressed via #ChickenSad was negative, but that’s only because of the way it classifies the various emotions.

“Most netizens expressed that they’re ‘sad’ as opposed to ‘mad’,” Revesencio says. “When you’re going to analyze the sentiments, the word ‘sad’ is automatically considered as a ‘negative’ sentiment by the system by default.”

What’s more surprising is that some of the sentiments were positive. “You will find loyal customers craving and raving even more about a product that’s not available but they have always loved,” Revesencio says.

Revesencio compares the current situation to what happened when the first Jollibee store opened in Singapore, which has a large population of overseas Filipino workers. “Filipinos were disappointed with the lack of space and not being able to eat in their ‘favorite fast food store,’ and that has only served to increase their appetite (all pun intended) for the brand and its products.”

A page from the Buffer playbook

In a great example of unintended consequences, Revesencio claims that the 72-store snafu will actually help Jollibee in the long run. The people who tweeted their thoughts via #ChickenSad had a strange, modern epiphany: something as ubiquitous as Jollibee (2,244 stores nationwide!) can actually be taken away from them, and that’s not good when you like their burgers and chicken. Now who among these people would ever take Jollibee for granted again?

Revesencio did not mince her words. “I stand firmly in my belief that while the mishap has caused sales to decrease for Jollibee and its shareholders, the mishap has actually helped shape and strengthen the love for the brand more than ever.”

In other words, Jollibee was not in the wrong for going silent, but because they failed to realize that #ChickenSad was an opportunity. They could have played into how much Filipinos missed their food and deliberately driven their brand’s status even higher. This kind of approach – that of a company transparently discussing its mess ups – can be taken directly out of the Buffer playbook.

Buffer is a social media tool that allows people to schedule their posts in advance. When the company was hacked in October of 2013, the startup provided constant status updates to their customers. They made it clear that transparency and communication was just as important to them as addressing the issues that the hacking revealed and upgrading the security systems, which Buffer did in short order.

“Obviously providing constant updates requires more logistics and different layers of communication for major corporations,” Revesencio concedes. “However, the main thing is that they should strive to achieve the agility, flexibility, and transparency that smaller companies excel in without risking their organization’s processes.”

As an example, Revesencio defers to the concept of brand loyalty. Every brand has its loyalest followers (or what others might call “fanboys”), and a crisis like the one that Jollibee experienced is the quickest way to identify them: they will be the ones cheering you on in the darkest hours.

You should find ways to reward them for their support. According to Revesencio, doing so has two simultaneous benefits. “You can identify core advocates and loyal customers, and reverse the spotlight to them instead of the situation.”

Revesencio says that the “rewards” can be as simple as genuinely responding to them on social media. For example, she recommends that brands retweet the support from their ardent followers to increase their advocates’ exposure and simultaneously increase their brand’s love.

If Jollibee wants to take it a step further, they can bring the online conversation into the real world. This is a favorite tactic of Samsung, which gave one netizen the only customized Galaxy S3 in Canada for – wait for it – engaging the company in a friendly drawing exchange on Twitter that went viral on Reddit (the man drew a dragon breathing out fire, while Samsung responded with a hopping kangaroo).

“They don’t need to go as far as give them free products (since they’re in scarcity, remember? Giving them Chicken Joy will only add salt to the ‘injury’),” Revesencio says, “so maybe another way is to give them gift cards, and throw an exclusive #ChickenSadNoMore party when all this #ChickenSad issue is over.”

Revesencio says that these activities are more than PR politicking. To her, it’s a genuine way to find and connect with your unofficial ambassadors on social media, who, more often than not, can be game-changers for a company. “The people who tweeted were not necessarily ‘influencers’ but common consumers who speak about an issue that many people feel so strongly towards, making each tweet easily amplified.”

Revesencio thinks there are no influencers or thought leaders when it comes to disasters. “There are only common users who are easily empowered unless brands step in,” she says. “Instead of trying to control the conversation, brands need to find a way to be part of it.”

The past century hasn’t been an easy road for Indonesia. Since the liberation from the Japanese in 1945, and through the rise and fall of the oppressive Soeharto regime (lasting for nearly three decades), Indonesians as a people have learned to “suck it up and soldier on” so to say. 16 years ago, the capital was inches away from tearing itself to pieces in the wake of riots and anarchy-filled streets. But from the rubble and chaos, Indonesia was able to quickly pull itself up by the bootstraps and march forward once again. As one of the youngest democracies in the world, it has also been forced to grow up faster than some of its other Southeast Asian counterparts. So in that sense, it’s fair to say the nation is maturing quite quickly.

With a new president elect, an educated young generation is increasingly hopeful about international business opportunities and domestic policy. For the first time in 100 years, Jakarta is electrified with exciting innovations and flourishing startups. The internet has played a vital role. Increased global communication the world over has helped slingshot the country into an economic expansion. Faster web speeds have also put Indonesia in a position to solve some of its own problems and foster a one-of-a-kind identity. In light of Indonesia’s Independence Day today, here are five tech products that you’ll only understand if you live in the world’s largest archipelago.

LewatMana

Jakarta is one of the world’s most notorious cities for debilitating traffic. It’s not uncommon for locals to show up hours late to a luncheon because they were fighting congested roadways. While the real solution will need to come from an infrastructure overhaul, LewatMana is an app that can help ease the transition in the meantime. LewatMana helps Indonesian commuters dodge traffic with live CCTV feeds during travel times. Singaporeans may not understand the utility of the app, as they simply board their clean and air-conditioned MRT. But ask an Indonesian who has ever sat on the back of a motorbike, inhaling black smoke from a Kopaja bus on Jalan Sudirman, and they will assure you LewatMana is a life-saver. Users can effectively get updated with traffic conditions in real-time without needing to buy a GPS kit. LewatMana is available on Android (Lite version), Blackberry, iOS, and Windows Phone.

See: 11 mobile apps that make commuting easier in Indonesia’s biggest cities

GO-JEK

Another way of coping with Indonesian traffic is by letting someone else deal with it for you. Motorcycle taxis (aka ojeks) are a convenient way to get across town quicker than you could in a car, provided you don’t mind sweating and smelling like gasoline for the rest of the afternoon. But unlike traditional taxis, and true to the Indonesian way, this is a completely unregulated industry. Often, shady individuals will lean against trees and “cat-call” for potential customers. GO-JEK brings safety, reliability, and accountability to the ojek experience. The site not only lets users easily order an ojek anywhere in Jakarta, but also provides an instant courier service along with home delivery for groceries and takeout meals. The site is currently in the process of developing a mobile app with several new updates and features.

HijUp

HijUp is Indonesia’s fashion ecommerce site for Muslim women. One of the only local players bringing new chic style to traditional Islamic apparel, HijUp has hit the Indonesian market over the head with a sledge hammer. Last year the site recorded between 45,000 and 90,000 daily pageviews (1.3 to 2.7 million per month), and had the 12th most popular Indonesian YouTube channel.

Qerja

Indonesians are curious cats. Gossip is a big part of the culture here in Jakarta, and as such, locals want to know how high of a salary their neighbor is earning. Qerja is giving us something to talk about. This fresh new company is emerging from the Ideabox accelerator and acts as a localized version of Glassdoor, the famous US startup that lets users compare average salaries and benefits of working for any given company. Indonesian locals can now refer to Qerja to set their own personal working and payment standards. The founders are keeping low profiles (as the site is still in its beta version), but the service is disruptive to say the least.

See: Who’s invested in Indonesia’s site similar to Glassdoor

Kawal Pemilu

For those of you who don’t know, Indonesia is blatantly rife with corruption, with a long history of cheating and alleged political fraud. For these reasons, and with all the media coverage in recent months, locals are hailing the creators of Kawal Pemilu (English translation: “Election Guards”) as the nation’s new wave of tech patriots.

Kawal Pemilu is a 700-person team of volunteers who counted the 2014 presidential vote tally documents manually and released the results online in real-time. Although the Indonesian elections are over, and the winner has been announced, locals can expect to see Kawal Pemilu in a more sophisticated form come future elections. Having been referred to as a team of tech freedom fighters, Kawal Pemilu galvanized voters this year, and redefined what it means to to live in an Indonesian democracy.

Image of Jakarta crowd via Flickr user Ardy Hadinata Kurniawan.