Jiepang’s first sponsored photo filter (pictured below) is made in conjunction with skincare company Neutrogena. Rather than just slapping on a logo, the clever “sunshine” filter will pull in information for the user’s vicinity to show up the location, current temperature, and the angle of the sun. All that ties into the skincare brand’s line of sunscreen products. In addition, users of that special filter will unlock a redeemable virtual badge for special discounts on Neutrogena products at one store chain (Watsons) and on the online shop Tmall.

After running this promo for three weeks, Jiepang tells us today that it has seen 70,000 pictures uploaded with that filter, and those have been shared over 250,000 times on various social networks like Sina Weibo.

Last summer we looked at how Tuding, an Instagram-like photo app and social network in China, was also rolling out branded photo filters for some of its partner brands like Adidas.

We also saw an amusing smart filter on the Chinese photo app Vida that tells you how bad the air quality is in the place where you took the photo. So if you’re shrouded in smog, you might want to try out Vida, but if you can actually see the sun (a rarity in Beijing), give the Foursquare-like Jiepang a try.

This company just exploded onto the scene today. Along with the watch and ring, these are the new Geak Eye and Geak Mars phones.

We’ve seen a lot of Chinese companies leaping on Android to make their debut as phone hardware makers in the past year. Apparently there’s still room for yet more new smartphone brands to emerge – and today China-based Geak is debuting with two brand-new smartphones and two other surprising new products. It’s as if someone at Geak said, “Hey, let’s take all those Apple rumors and just make all that shit ourselves.”

The two bits of wearable tech are the Geak Watch and the Geak Ring (pictured below). The latter is a finger ring, rather bulky, that has no external indication that it’s a smart device. Basically, the Geak Ring works with the company’s two new smartphones that were also launched today, the Geak Mars and Geak Eye.

The Geak Ring – which has a claimed stand-by battery life of 99 years – seems to have three main functions: it can optionally be used to securely unlock your Geak phone, to bump your contact details to someone with the same device, and to keep your device awake when you’re holding your Geak phone in proximity to the ring. The product page doesn’t explain which system it uses to do so (e.g.: Bluetooth?).

The Geak Watch, meanwhile, is an Android-based device with Bluetooth and wi-fi support that serves as an accessory to your phone to show details like current weather and notifications, and also serves as a fitness tracking gadget similar to the Jawbone Up or the Fitbit. Geak’s new watch comes a few months after images surfaced of an Android or Firefox OS-based smart watch from major Chinese web company Shanda.

• Geak Watch – Available July 3 for RMB 1,999 ($325)
• Geak Ring – Goes on sale August 8 for RMB 199 ($33)
• Geak Mars – Flagship phone with a large 5.8-inch screen 1080p HD screen (at 377 PPI) and powered along by a 1.7 GHz Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor. It sells on June 25 for RMB 2,999 ($487)
• Geak Eye – The more affordable of the pair of new phones still has quad-core and a 5-inch screen. Available June 25 for RMB 1,999 ($325)

Those are very lean prices, several hundred dollars less that flagship phones from Apple, Samsung, or HTC.

China’s most successful startup phone brand so far – aside from already established conglomerates like Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE – is Xiaomi, which sold over seven million smartphones in 2012 and is looking to double that number in 2013. It will likely do so despite ever stronger competition from budget-conscious new-comers like Geak.

As my colleague Charlie noted back in March, the initial unveiling of China-made Smartisan OS was accompanied by some ridiculous hype that this was China’s software saviour and it would somehow “kill off Apple eventually.” All bullshit of course, since Smartisan “OS” is just an Android skin – like Samsung’s Touchwiz, HTC’s Sense UI, or Xiaomi’s MIUI – and so it’s not some great homegrown innovation. Now Smartisan has been released over the weekend and is available to be downloaded for free to be installed onto Samsung Galaxy SIII phones in place of Samsung’s own Android overlay.

While the Smartisan ROM is available for worldwide users of the Galaxy SIII international model, all the instructions are in Chinese for now. A hands-on video of the Android skin in action has already emerged (embedded below courtesy of the Engadget China crew), showing that it does look good, but is just at an early pre-beta stage. I must say it does look a bit odd with just 12 app icons per screen and no apparent support for wallpaper backgrounds – but that’s just a matter of taste.

So what now for Smartisan? Either the startup crew will have to live up to their own hype and create some quality hardware on which to ship their Android skin – as Xiaomi has done with great success – or it’s just doomed to be one of thousands of Android ROMs out there that a tiny minority of tweakers will bother to ‘flash’ (a difficult process) to their phones.

Presumably, as with other Android ROMs, Smartisan will later be adapted for other phones.

The pair created a company that caters to the needs of those customers. Imagineers makes its own 3D-printer, which retails for $1,000 and is similar to the Makerbot‘s popular Replicator model line. But that’s just the product side of their business. The other half lies in the two main services Imagineers provides.

Low-cost prototyping

The first is low-cost rapid prototyping. Chen and Gu say this market is saturated in the US, but it still has a lot of room to grow in China. On average, if you want less than 20 of something made, they say 3D printing is more cost effective and efficient compared to casting. That’s a good solution for a design firm or R&D department on a tight budget.

(See also: 3D Printer Maker Pirate3D Now Aims for $1 Million on Kickstarter)

Their second service is system integration. For example, a company can pay Imagineers to install three of their own 3D printers, one $300,000 high-precision full-color printer, and a suite of software for scanning and 3D design. They’ll even teach you how to use all of it. Chen and Gu say it only takes about five minutes to learn how to scan an object with 123D Catch and about a day to nail down the basics of Caxa, a Chinese design program. Right now, they say software is a bottleneck for the 3D printing industry because it’s not easy to use.

Eye on Chinese schools

The market for system integration includes engineers and designers, but Imagineers also found a less obvious niche: students. They’ve already worked with two high schools in China to install the above package for kids taking design courses. They even write the curriculum. While they hope to get the technology in the hands of more students, Chen admits it would be easier if individual schools in China had more control over their own funds.

Imagineers is only one year old, but they have big plans for the long term. They say today’s leading 3D printer manufacturers, Stratasys and 3D Systems, aren’t innovating anymore. Chen and Gu say the future market will shift from rapid prototyping to manufacturing final parts. They foresee big centralized 3D printing factories, where designers can remotely design and use more advanced and precise 3D printers in the cloud, what they call “intelligent processing and control.”

The pair are based at Tsinghua University in Beijing, from which they got a one-time funding of about RMB 200,000 (about $33,000) and have access to the school’s other resources. It seems they’re getting into the market at the right time. The Chinese government is throwing money at 3D printing, possibly fearing the technology could up-end its manufacturing industry. Chen says:

The Chinese government wants to promote 3D printing, but they don’t know how to do it. All they have is money.

Created earlier this year, the Beijing-based startup aims to ease your ordering process by churning out a list of recommended dishes for you, along with the average price per pax within 10 seconds. All that is required of you is to indicate if the app has accurately detected your location and how many people you are dining with. Don’t like the combination given? Just shake your phone and a new list will be generated until you’re satisfied.

And if you prefer to have some control over what is on the list and would like to remove a particular dish from the list, all you need to do is to swipe to the right and that is done (pictured right). Still prefer to have full control over what goes into your stomach? Fanqie Kuaidian also boasts full menus for most restaurants in the four cities listed above, and also indicates which dishes are most popular, so now you will know which dishes are “must-order” according to patrons who have visited the restaurant.

You can also take tantalizing photographs of the dishes and upload according to what you have ordered. It also works as a food journal (pictured right) where you can reminisce on how that piece of peking duck was roasted to perfection and melts in your mouth without having to chew. You can also contribute to the dish’s ranking by giving it a thumbs up or down.

Aside from recommending what dishes you should order, the app also includes little pockets of information to educate the diner. For instance, if you are dining at a Korean restaurant, it explains why Korean chopsticks are flat and made of metal; it also tells you what would be good to consume for the current season, as well as its nutritional value. And the app is designed in such a way that the more you use it, the more it understands your eating habits. So it will be able to recommend better dishes every single time you whip out the app to aid in your order.

The startup also claims that its creation has become one of the top recommended apps by Apple within just one month of launch, and it has been featured on third-party Android app store WanDouJia as one of the best designed apps.

So if you happen to be in those four cities in China and are spoiled for choice (provided if you read Chinese, of course) when it comes to ordering food, do give the app a go on your iPhone or your Android device.

Last week we wrote about online grocery store BenLai.com, and how it aims to be the top provider of quality groceries delivered right to your doorstep. So what’s next after you’ve bought all the grocery from there? Here’s what we’ve found: XiaChuFang (下厨房).

XiaChuFang, which means “to cook”, is available on both mobile and web platforms. It carries a wide selection of recipes, from what you can cook for both breakfast and supper to dishes for vegetarians and weight watchers. When you have decided on what you would like to make, it shows a picture of the end product, along with the ratings and the number of people that have made the dish before. Like any other typical recipe platform, it also tells you the ingredients required as well as the step-by-step instructions (pictured above).

But here’s a little detail that I really like about the iPhone app: When you tilt it horizontally, each individual step goes full screen (pictured right), and a swipe across brings you to the next step. I find it really helpful especially when your hands are all greasy and you don’t have to squint your eyes just to make out what the exact instructions are. I’m sure many who do cook would appreciate this.

There are also little tips that guide you to achieving better results. You can also leave comments, suggestions, complaints, and upload pictures of your completed product too. And it also recommends what other dishes you can cook to go with the ones you’ve picked, along with other related recipes they think you might like. And if you like a particular user’s dishes, there’s an option to follow them too.

You can also choose to “collect recipes”, making them into a collection so you can look back and give it a try while standing in front of the fridge racking your brains over what to cook. Another feature that I find really useful is that you can add the ingredients to the “shopping list”. Once you’re done shopping for that particular ingredient, you can cancel it off with just one tap (pictured below).

However it is still a little buggy and at present does not allow you to upload your own step-by-step instructions via the app itself yet. You can do it on the website, but I would think it would actually be more convenient if it supports mobile upload. There is definitely still room for improvement, but I think the app is pretty clean and easy to navigate, and is especially useful for when it gets really messy in the kitchen.

And yes, the best way to know what’s really going through that digestive system of yours is to take control of what is being added during the cooking process. If you do cook often and would like to give the app a try, you can visit its website here, or download on your mobile device, which is available on both iOS and Android platforms.

With a claimed 10 million registered users right now, Chinese online education company Alo7 has wrapped up a third major round of funding. The sum is the usually vague eight-digit figure, so it could be anywhere north of $10 million. The lead investor is American chipmaker Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), with participation from UMC Capital and Vickers Venture.

Aside from having lots of Chinese parents paying up for Alo7’s online courses, the well-established Shanghai-based startup also has partnerships with hundreds of English language training academies, public elementary schools, and kindergartens across China. Clients include the troubled New Oriental (NYSE:EDU) chain of language schools.

Alo7 was started up in 2010, but the parent company Saybot, which makes learning-oriented voice recognition software, has been around since 2004. It was founded in Boston, US, in 2004 by MIT graduate Dr. Pengkai Pan. After some initial support and seed funding from architect and MIT luminary Nicholas Negroponte (founder of the One Laptop per Child Association), the educational startup moved back to mainland China to target the huge demand for English language learning there. The entire ‘English as a foreign language’ (EFL) market in China is said to be worth over $2 billion – and inevitably more of that is going to move online.

The first funding round for Alo7’s parent company was worth $8.2 million back in 2007, led by CID Group.

(Hat-tip to Sina Tech (article in Chinese) and Marbridge Daily for spotting this)

Despite all the hype that Bitcoin is some magical new non-governmental global currency of the future, not many people are really, actively using it – and there are even fewer places where they can be spent. But if you’ve got Bitcoins burning a hole in your pocket, you could shop for new threads at Bitfash. It’s a new fashion e-commerce site created by a startup team of three people spread across Australia and China.

For the moment, Bitfash stocks men’s and women’s clothing from three affordable to mid-range fashion brands: Zara, Forever 21, and Net-a-Porter’s ‘Mr. Porter’. More will be added in due course [1]. Most of the site’s customers are from the US and various Asian nations.

Bitfash co-founder Chris Woods tells us that the team first contemplated Bitcoin and then considered a niche to fill with this currency:

We started following the Bitcoin news late last year and in doing so, tried to get across as much detail as we could to understand firstly what the currency was all about, but also the outlook and potential to undertake an entrepreneurial venture in this space. Our idea to link fashion with Bitcoin came from the observation that numerous users were sitting on considerable wealth in Bitcoins but had no specialist place to purchase fashion using their Bitcoins – we sought to fill this niche and meet the demand in the market in this respect.

Chris says that he and his startup are all believers in the digital currency, and they both hold Bitcoin and use it for goods and services.

Bitfash will add a fourth fashion brand very soon. Since starting up in April this year, the startup e-store has been evaluating which retailers fit their niche whilst also receiving lots of offers from online boutique retailers who want to come onboard the site.

Expats in China who want to buy some home gadgets with their Bitcoins could check out Iwannabuy, a Beijing based e-commerce site that we featured a while ago.

Dolphin Browser took the Android world by storm and achieved 50 million downloads in two years. “It’s much more than 50 million now,” reveals Edith Yeung, Dolphin Browser’s head of corporate strategy. Hailed by Lifehacker as the best browser for Android, MoboTap has since launched Dolphin Browser for iPhone, iPad and a HD version for Android tablets. (Fun fact: it’s also my 60-year old dad’s favourite browser). After this initial success, the next step is to tap into the hundreds of millions of new smartphone owners across Southeast Asia.

How it started

Yongzhi Yang, CEO of MoboTap (the company behind Dolphin), shares with us that he was previously a software architect at Microsoft and… well, he got bored. He was sorely disappointed at the stock browsers available on mobile phones and saw this as an opportunity to develop something smart, elegant, and innovative. This saw the birth of MoboTap in 2009 and the start of the development of Dolphin browser. What’s behind the name? Dolphins are smart – they learn fast and are easily trainable; and that’s Yang’s goal for the browser, that at the end of the day, it will be smart enough to learn each user’s needs and adapt to them to give users the best browsing experience they could have on their own mobile phones.

Though both hail from China, Edith and Yongzhi have spent a good portion of their time in the USA as well. Edith mentions that MoboTap has never considered themselves as a “Chinese company” – instead, their plan was always for international expansion, and indeed, it has taken off.

Different approaches to different markets

With Dolphin Sonar, you can use your voice to search, share and navigate your mobile web browser.

Besides packing a punch in features – lots of extra gestures for things like closing tabs, bookmark sorting, and voice command options – Dolphin is also working on social features coming in the near future. Furthermore, Dolphin is easily customizable with a number of add-ons, including Dolphin Webzine, which displays web content in a magazine-like format, and a web-to-pdf plugin that allows you to save entire web pages as PDF files.

MoboTap tailors its browser to suit the demands of different markets – this sets them apart from some rivals and has contributed to Dolphin’s success. Dolphin’s user interface in each of the countries it has a very strong foothold – China, USA and Japan – is vastly different, catering to the different internet consumption habits of people in each market.

For example, the interface targeted to the Chinese market resembles a phone homescreen and looks a little more cluttered. According to Yang, the Chinese are used to browsing and absorbing a lot more information at one time, and for extended periods of time. The interface targeted at the American market is much cleaner and simplified, in line with the flat UI trend right now. On a related note, it’s interesting that gestures are used much more in America, and Sonar, Dolphin’s aptly named voice control feature, is used more in China – it usually takes longer to write a word in Chinese.

Bonding with users

Edith tells me that within six months of launching, the browser hit one million downloads without any marketing effort – everything was based on word-of-mouth endorsements, attesting to how well the product worked and resonated with users. The team rolls out releases and fixes weekly. Yang attributes the startup’s winning culture to making the right hires:

We’re constantly on the lookout for people with the right DNA that fits in with our company culture. It’s fundamental that every employee is smart and responsible. Most importantly, we look for people who are passionate about the product, and take ownership of their projects.

Another factor would actually be Dolphin’s own users. Yang says:

We receive up to 20,000 emails a day from users that consist of regular feedback or crazy ideas. Some of them actually help us a lot, in terms of building themes and localizing our product.

Dolphin’s next step: conquering Southeast Asia

Yongzhi Yang (left), Edith Yeung (Right)

Yang explains that their focus will be on Southeast Asia for the next three to five years.

“Southeast Asia is huge – hundreds of millions strong. The uptake of smartphones is growing, and it’s not as saturated as it is in the US, so there is definitely room for growth,” says Edith. They hope to replicate their success in other countries with the same strategy – capturing a nascent market and working with strategic partners to achieve success; but they know this is not going to come easy.

Just as MoboTap has experienced in China, the Southeast Asia market has plenty of strong rivals, such as China-made UC Browser, Google’s Chrome, Opera and Opera Mini, Firefox for Android, Tencent’s One (the global version of its QQ browser), and interesting startup apps like Japan-made Sleipnir.

“It’s scary, but exciting. Each market in Southeast Asia has different nuances, so it’s definitely going to be a challenge,” Edith explains. MoboTap hopes to use Singapore as a springboard to the rest of Southeast Asia, and is looking to hire marketing hands and are on the lookout for potential partners. If you’re interested, feel free to connect with Edith on LinkedIn or Twitter

Established just last year, the Beijing-based online grocery store saves locals a trip to the supermarket. BenLai provides goods that range from locally-grown organic vegetables to imported baby milk powder from America and salmon from Norway. They even offer monthly plans for your standard grocery needs, saving the hassle of you picking what to buy each time. For the latter deal it delivers twice a week for a total of four weeks.

To ensure that the quality of food is high, the service is only offered in Beijing and promises to deliver in 24 hours for areas within the sixth ring road. The startup also assures that the time from stuff being packed to the point of delivery takes a mere eight hours; and during that eight hours the food is being kept at optimum temperatures according to the individual needs of each item so that it stays fresh.

So as long as you place your orders right before midnight, your grocery shopping will be delivered the next morning. It supports both online and offline payments; for orders above RMB60 ($9.80) delivery is free and orders below that will require a RMB10 ($1.60) delivery fee.

So why is BenLai doing this?

I mean, having access to safe food is a basic human need isn’t it? The team at BenLai has a couple of reasons for its existence: One, to be able to enjoy safe food, to the company, is a basic right. Two, the name Ben Lai (本来) when translated means, “originally”. The team feels that the food consumers should be consuming must be in its original condition instead of fearing that it contains harmful chemicals.

Food scares are undermining the trust of China’s new leaders and there’s a national crisis of confidence in food standards. Just 12 percent of people were worried about food safety in 2008 in China, but that’s now up to 41 percent in 2012, according to Pew Research.

There are other choices for food deliveries in China, such as Walmart-owned Yihaodian, or Alibaba’s Taobao grocery deliveries in Hangzhou and Beijing.

But if you want organic foodstuff, the main rivals to BenLai are the imported goods from the US made available on Alibaba’s Tmall earlier this year, or the organic farmer offerings that are also on Taobao.

But skepticism still remains; should we give this startup a chance to prove to the world that better food standards in China can be achieved?

Image via Reuters

From a purely mercenary point of view, one of the wonderful things about solving a problem is that there’s often a way to make money from it. Solving problems in a way that can help people and bring in profits is the goal of most technology companies at the most basic level, and it’s something that the past 15 years have proven they do quite well.

China is not a country that is lacking for problems. Although its economic growth speed has set records, that growth has come along with some major growing pains. And time and time again, when Chinese startups step up and try to address these problems, they are delayed, stymied, or outright banned by the Chinese government. When tech companies tried to make buying train tickets online less of a pain, the government banned their apps. When Taobao tried to make visiting the hospital more convenient, the government told it to stop. As taxi finding apps try to make finding transportation easier for everyone, Chinese local governments have been banning them outright or just banning the ones that try to turn a profit.

Yes, there’s a rationale behind each of these bans, but ultimately I think it really just comes down to an odd sort of territorialism/protectionism. The government keeps pretty tight control over things like transportation and healthcare because they’re important services, but it is unwilling to let go of that control — and the money that comes along with it — even when China’s private companies have come up with ways to solve the very real and very major problems that plague these industries.

I do understand the impulse to protect the public from the sharpest edges of capitalism, but as people have suggested, unless the apps are outright scams — and they’re not in any of these cases — consumers should be given the ultimate choice. If they want to pay a few extra RMB for the convenience of a well-designed user interface and a smooth user experience, why shouldn’t they be allowed to, especially if those new services also have the potential to solve real-life problems?

China has a vibrant, strong tech industry, but local governments are letting some of its talent and value go to waste by not allowing it to take a crack at these social issues. And since the government itself has thus far failed to solve them — finding cabs at rush hour is only getting harder; hospitals have been a nightmare of waiting for years — the fact that it won’t let anyone else even try seems awfully selfish. If it’s really about the consumers, don’t Chinese consumers deserve a service that actually solves the problem?

I am hoping that these bans are just bumps along the road and that over time, China will adopt a more open and productive policy when it comes to allowing tech companies and startups to build products that help solve problems in public-interest industries like transportation and healthcare. But China’s governments would be well-advised to allow tech companies more leeway in tackling these problems. If the citizens are well-served, the tech company is making more money, and the government gets fewer complaints about the problem, isn’t that a win-win-win?

A country where the question Have you eaten? is a common greeting, China is definitely a nation of superb cultural diversity that’s obsessed with food. That also makes it a good place for a foodie app to grow. Ricebook is a homegrown social food app that helps you take great photos of your food and then share them with buddies over social networks like Sina Weibo.

The Ricebook iOS app has just been updated to v2.0 to give it a fresh new look. CEO Meng Chencang told 36Kr today that the refreshed app is now much more social and allows you to find online friends who match the kind of dynamic displayed by your own foodie posts.

But the main aim of Ricebook is the same – to give a very visual way to find good places to eat based on the food photos and reviews of previous diners and Ricebook users.

Of course, we’ve seen this done before by Singapore-based Burpple, which expanded into China last summer and is already proving to be a global success. There’s also Foodspotting, but that’s useless in China.

Perhaps more dauntingly, Ricebook is also up against Dianping, sort of like China’s Yelp, which has over 40 million users on its mobile apps alone and also encourages photos of food in tandem with its user-generated restaurant reviews.

Ricebook is available for iPhone only at this point.

(Source: 36Kr – article in Chinese)

So is something wrong? Why aren’t domestically-educated Chinese people founding more startups? The Chinese people who can afford to study or work overseas tend to be better off than the average Chinese citizen, and that economic foundation also means that it’s often a bit easier for them to take the risk of doing a startup. That’s probably one of the biggest reasons Chinese returnees found so many startups. But I believe the domestic education system and cultural pressures also play a role in keeping domestically-educated students from founding as many startups as you might expect.

There are many good things about China’s education system, but it is rarely accused of fostering creative thinking. The focus on rote memorization and test-taking doesn’t lend itself well to producing artists — something that China’s creatives have been grumbling about for a long time — but it doesn’t lend itself well to producing entrepreneurs, either. An entrepreneur needs to be independent and creative, and while there are many independent and creative Chinese people, it’s generally not something they got from their formal schooling.

But many of the returning Chinese now founding startups went to school overseas, and while they may not have as solid a foundation of technical knowledge as the top Chinese students, it seems that a higher percentage of them have the creativity and independence it takes to found a startup. As an added bonus, their time overseas has likely removed them a bit from the risk-averse culture that’s pervasive among Chinese parents. Chinese students who’ve been educated at home have also been hearing from their relatives that they should find a stable job and start earning money as soon as they graduate so that they can buy a house and car and then find a wife. Chinese who study or work overseas likely hear some of the same things, of course, but they go home for holidays less often, and many of them study and work in places where risk taking is encouraged — or even practically worshipped — so the constant refrains from family to avoid risk are probably offset somewhat.

People have already been wondering for some time whether China needs to make some changes to its education system if it wants to churn out entrepreneurs the way it churns out engineers. Heck, even Kaifu Lee brought up the education system in a speech a few years ago explaining why China doesn’t have its own Steve Jobs. The Zhongguancun numbers are the latest evidence that while China’s startup scene may be booming, it may owe some of that success to overseas education systems and business culture. If China really wants its startup scene to take off, it may need to start by reexamining the education system.

Beijing’s air: Think of the kids (Image: Alamy / Guardian)

You’re an entrepreneur or working for a startup. You’re young. You’re about to have a family that you want to bring up in a nice, safe place. But you don’t have much money. For startups in China, Beijing is still the main tech hub – and that’s bad news. A report by a Chinese think tank this week called the nation’s largest cities “barely livable” in terms of general quality of life and the ecological environment.

Beijing ranked 74th among Chinese cities in terms of livability and 119th in terms of the freshness of its environment. Often cloaked in a smog of lung-wrecking particulates from the surrounding low-tech industrial belt, it’s a grim place to be starting out in life or with a young family. Other large cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen also scored badly in the list. The only large (called “first-tier”) Chinese cities to be deemed reasonably livable in this report are Hong Kong and Macao.

The capital adds to the woes of a young entrepreneur with a mandated car license plate lottery that makes it difficult to get your first ever car on the road. And for a roof over your head, you’re looking at rental or purchasing prices that are more than double that of smaller but equally well developed cities across China. To get on the property ladder for the first time, a small-ish two-bedroom apartment outside of the centre of Beijing will cost RMB 2.5 million ($404,000), which you’ll have to somehow buy on your startup salary of anywhere between $800 to $1,600 dollars per month.

Think local

The alternative to all that lies in China’s smaller “second-tier” cities where the population is just a third or a quarter that of Beijing and Shanghai, and where property costs are half (or lower) than the nation’s top cities. They make for a better place to recruit and keep twenty-something tech talent. In terms of creature comforts, these other cities are not lacking in any way – many have subways, Starbucks, Louis Vuitton stores – and offer fresher air and more greenery for families.

These cities – such as Hangzhou, Chengdu, Xiamen – also have business environments that rival Beijing. Admittedly, it wasn’t always that way. Kerry Sun, a senior partner manager at Pinguo, the startup that makes the hugely popular photo app Camera360, lives in Chengdu in south-western China’s Sichuan province. That’s where the young company has always been based. Kerry says that startup life over 1,700 kilometers from the capital is getting easier now:

Several years ago we found some problems being outside Beijing or Shanghai, such as how to get the latest IT information and where to finding experienced staff. Now everything is getting better. More programmers are coming back to Chengdu because of increasing pressure in Beijing or Shanghai.

Recently the Sichuan government keeps introducing policies to attract startups, such as no tax for the first five years or rent the office to them for free.

While Pinguo didn’t get it that easy, such smaller cities are now more receptive to entrepreneurial web firms. The Camera360-making team is now based in Tianfu Software Park in Chengdu alongside other notable local companies such as game studio Tap4Fun. “In my opinion, Chengdu will be another Silicon Valley in the southwest of China,” adds Kerry, who can also count tech giants like IBM, Intel, Huawei, and Tencent as neighbors in that area of Chengdu.

Bye Bye Beijing

Where are China’s startups? Click to enlarge.

While Beijing’s awful livability index doesn’t dint its business or intellectual prowess (plus, Beijing residents are fantastically friendly, which adds to the enjoyment of visiting), the new report (from the National Academy of Economic Strategy under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) will give more momentum to a gradual shift away from starting tech companies in the capital. From 2011 to 2012, the percentage of Beijing-based startups listed on the comprehensive 17Startup directory went down from 49.7 percent to 43.9 percent. We’ll add up the numbers again later this summer when we expect to see that figure shrink again.

Instead of starting up in the same city where an entrepreneur graduated – or in the city with the most prestige – it’s increasingly fine for someone to return to their native province in China. Being outside of the hub is not a barrier to getting significant funding in China either. Pinguo’s Kerry admits that CEO Xu Hao needs to fly to Shanghai or Beijing from time to time to meet investors, but that distance is no deterrent for VCs. Kerry says, “I’ve worked in three IT companies so far [in the region] and all of them got investment from VCs”. Pinguo itself has attracted funding from Singapore-based Gobi Partners and US-based Matrix Partners.

Increasingly, big business is heading out to the provinces as well. Next month, the Fortune Global Forum 2013 will be held in Chengdu.

Perhaps we should have seen this coming much earlier. China’s most profitable web company is Alibaba, the e-commerce and e-payments giant. It is based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province – about one hour out of Shanghai on the new bullet trains – which is a pleasant city wrapped around a famously beautiful lake with a population of just nine million (just medium-sized by China standards). Why that city? It’s the hometown of founder Jack Ma, who decided to stay put in the city when he quit teaching to build his e-commerce business. Being far from Beijing was never a hindrance for Alibaba, and now the firm’s presence and status is causing more e-commerce startups to launch in the city. Plus, the city scores highly in terms of livability and the environment, with tree-lined streets and a fresh breeze always blowing across the lake.

While those working in Shanghai and Beijing do get double the wages of workers in these second-tier cities, the pay off is not really worth it. It’s fine for those on corporate jobs who can avoid some of the rougher aspects of Beijing’s over-population and griminess, but for the average white-collar worker at a startup, it’s a miserable start to one’s 20s.

Huang Hui, a 27-year-old software engineer from Beijing told the China Daily, after reading about the report:

Beijing has the best medical, academic resources compared with other cities, but it’s not necessarily the best choice when it comes to being habitable. I’m proud of the cultural diversification in the city, but it’s a pity that Beijing sacrifices the most basic essentials, air and water, simply in exchange for all the rapid development.

But with 13 percent of Chinese startups being based in smaller cities in Zhejiang, Sichuan, and Jiangsu provinces, some have already found that the grass is greener if you avoid China’s usual tech hubs.

In my first interview as part of our new student entrepreneurship series, I speak with SpeakingMax.cn co-founder Jason Lin (pictured right) on his thoughts of stopping school to create a startup. He tells us of his journey as a Singaporean student venturing into Chinese waters and gives words of wisdom from what he’s learnt thus far.

Tell us more about yourself.

Jason: I am the co-founder at SpeakingMax and am also in my final year at National University of Singapore majoring in political science, with a minor in technopreneurship at Tsinghua University under the NUS Overseas Colleges Program (NOC). I took an additional year off on top of my NOC program to embark on SpeakingMax.

What does SpeakingMax do, and what is your role?

Jason: SpeakingMax is a new and unconventional English language learning tool. Our team aims to revolutionize mobile English education and pioneer the future of mobile english learning in China through the use of unique content and innovative learning methods. Users, through thousands of recorded real-life situations, would be able to learn how to speak close to how a native American would.

Also [being] the VP of product at SpeakingMax, I manage almost all aspects of product development, from day-to-day operations, website management, business development, to fund-raising.

SpeakingMax.cn was also one of the finalists at Beijing’s Global Mobile Internet Conference G-Startup Growth Stage competition (pictured right).

What were the challenges faced at SpeakingMax?

Jason: There are three problems faced while penetrating into the Chinese online education market (SpeakingMax.cn screenshots below):

1. Chinese habit of learning online. Most users are used to a classroom education and think that one-to-one and face-to-face would be the most effective way to learn. The general perception of online education is that it cannot be seamless and effective online. Until they are in contact and exposed to the idea of online education, they will not realize how effective it can be. In fact, the Chinese market for online education is still in its infant stages. Korea turned to online education back in 2008. Offline language education firms such as Wall Street English have been constantly fighting a price war but are now eventually losing their Korean market share to online players.
2. Online paying habits and trust issues. Most Chinese do not have the habit of paying large amounts online for intangible goods, services such as ours. Also, people tend to be more wary when it comes to paying online due to the high number of fraud cases in online transactions. We do get calls time to time asking if we are a real operating company, and if there’s the possibility that the company could close down. Also, it gets difficult to make payments online. There are too many different restrictions and conditions for credit cards, such as the amount you can pay per day for different banks. It is also not a habit to pay online using credit cards.
3. Slow internet speeds. All I can say is, welcome to China! Slow internet speeds and bad 3G networks. But we are looking forward to better improvements in internet speeds in the future.

How are your user demographics?

Jason: Our users are mostly white-collar professionals in the bigger cities within China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. There are three reasons for this: One, such cities tend to be more cosmopolitan and have a greater influx of foreign talents. Hence there is a higher demand and need to learn the English language. Two, they tend to have higher spending power, and are more willing to spend on self-enrichment courses which they believe will give them an edge over others in the future. Three, the internet conditions in these cities tend to be better. They tend to be the early adopters or early majority within the adoption curve, and are more receptive when it comes to trying out new technology.

What is your revenue model?

Jason: It is a subscription-based model, which averages out to about RMB 2,000 (US$326) to RMB 3,000 (US$489) per year.

What are the upcoming plans at SpeakingMax that you can share with us?

Jason: We are focused on expanding our user-base in Mainland China before moving to other markets. We will also be expanding our product line, adding a variety of online teaching tools to learning english.

Was it difficult navigating the Chinese waters as a foreigner?

Jason: Yes and no. Ultimately, I am a Singaporean Chinese and look just like anyone [there]. I also have Singapore’s bilingual education system to thank for being fluent in both English and Chinese. In fact, if your Chinese is good enough, they will see you just like one of them.

But the way they do business is still very different. Singapore, as a whole, is still very much influenced by the West. So there is definitely a learning curve in terms of the business culture. It is pretty much a taboo to have confrontations. People hardly say no upfront and in your face.

As much as foreigners may hold an advantage knowing a different language, often the Chinese market is so big that firms do not have to expand overseas in order to be successful. Many of the local firms here are looking to expand within the Chinese territory even before thinking about international expansion plans.

But of course, being a foreigner gives a different slant and fresher perspective on matters, which might blend into a nice fusion of new and innovative ideas to solving problems.

Not to forget, dealing with business in China, as cliché as it may sound, depends on guanxi (关系), which means the connections and networks that you have. As a foreigner, you may not have those kind of renmai (人脉) and contacts, so it is really helpful if your co-founders have that for a start. Be careful never to close doors on people and keep your options open, because you will never know one day you might just need it.

Perhaps one thing I learned that I’d like to pass to the readers at Tech in Asia would be one given to me when I first arrived in Beijing in 2011. A taxi driver said this to me: 办法总比困难多. Short and simple, but it meant a lot to me. It means there are many ways of solving a problem, and one should always think of different methods should one not work. We as Singaporeans are often too used to being black and white, in its absolutes. But we need to acknowledge that there are in-betweens, or what we call gray areas. It depends on the context to the way we solve problems in China, but I guess that should be applicable even in other countries as well.

I understand you are still a student. What made you decide to stop your studies temporarily for this venture?

Jason: Two reasons for this.

One, it was an opportunity that came knocking on my door. The market, when we first entered, was just timely and might be one that if we miss it, it will never come again. Coincidentally, a couple of days back, my team and I were looking back on the past efforts and realized that we had it spot on. We’re pretty glad we entered because the industry is currently at its peak.

Two, I wanted to be part of the early development phase of the product, where I could participate in all aspects of the business from scratch. Most of the my other partners (team pictured below) were much older and more experienced, and I saw it as a privilege and an exponential learning opportunity where I could obtain much from this stint. It saves a lot of trouble since they have “been there, done that”, where I can easily learn from their mistakes.

Would you encourage other students to stop school temporarily, as you did?

As I mentioned earlier, there’s no definite yes and no. It depends on the situation.

For my case, I am left with a semester to complete at school, where I can make sure that the business is smooth before completing my studies. I think the team that you’re going to work with matters as well. If you are not contributing much and will be very much replaceable, then there’s not much point.

Whether one should leave the comfort of his or her home to embark on an entrepreneurial pursuit overseas, depends on your personal goals and [from] weighing the opportunity costs.

Would you give up your studies for this?

Jason: No. I thought about it before, people have been saying I will lose an opportunity if I don’t give up my studies for this. On the contrary, I see it as a lost opportunity if I give up my studies for this.

Yes, there are a few successful cases, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, but there are also many examples out there who have quit and failed are not being taken seriously. For every successful entrepreneur, there are at least 10 out there who have failed. Why look at the one, and not the millions?

In my opinion, getting a degree isn’t just a piece of paper. The entire process of learning, co-curricular activities, and being in a strong student network are part of the package of a student life. For instance, being on the NOC program at NUS has put me in this opportunity to take my career further. Without this platform, I would not be exposed to such opportunities. You will only be able to take part in such programs which are uniquely available to students.

Would you encourage others to give up their studies to pursue entrepreneurship?

Jason: This might sound a little unrelated, but I would think that finishing what you started comes as a form of responsibility to your parents. How I would put it is that a society is made up of many basic family units. Fulfilling my role within a family unit is a good indicator as to how I would fare within the society. Hence, no. I will not encourage others to give up their studies to pursue [entrepreneurship].

Having the perseverance to complete the degree, to me, is also a form of mental endurance which I think is a skillset required during the startup journey. So when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

This is part of Tech in Asia’s series on student entrepreneurship.

App Annie is a mobile app store data provider with its headquarters in Beijing, China but it is operated with an international team and vision led by founder and CEO Bertrand Schmitt.

Not many people know but App Annie was actually first started by an offshore outsourcing development company in Beijing called Exoweb in March 2010. Unfortunately, the Exoweb team didn’t have any idea on how to monetize it. But Bertrand saw the potential, he spun-off the company from Exoweb (they remain as minor shareholders), and took over App Annie’s operations in April 2010 with around five people in the team. He told me:

The people at Exoweb are friends of mine. App Annie was a free product. They were focusing on other stuff, software products, and not working on App Annie. I was also very frustrated with the lack of market data on the stores. So I felt as a marketer, I was missing a lot of information about what are the most interesting markets, how much are others doing in terms of downloads etc.

Bertrand who has been in the internet and mobile industry for 14 years also said that the early version of App Annie, though it only had basic data, could serve as a base for premium market data in the future. It first started tracking iOS applications but it now also tracks other app stores such as Google Play and Amazon.

While other data providers provide SDKs to track what’s happening for apps in terms of usage. At App Annie, Bertrand says that things are done different because it is connecting to the backend of the stores to get the data. To put it simply, App Annie works with Apple and Google directly.

For its premium product, App Annie has developed a statistical model with 90 percent accuracy that estimates an app’s revenue opportunity, market share etc and is today used by companies such as Gameloft, Microsoft, Nokia, Google, Tencent, and more. Bertrand assures that the top ten apps are well-measured since they are used by most users.

Today, the App Annie team is made up of about 85 people across 16 nationalities. 70 of them are based in Beijing who largely focus on the product. The others are in San Francisco, Japan, and London who focus on sales (Update: SF is a secondary headquarters for App Annie’s sales, marketing, and market insights.). The App Annie team uses English across all team members and that includes its Beijing headquarters. When asked why China, Bertrand said:

We like it in China and China is a fast growing market. It is hard to get into the market so starting in Beijing is easier.

Despite being a fast growing market, the large publishers who are willing to pay for App Annie’s products are mostly still international companies. 90 percent of App Annie sales are generated outside of China with US and Japan its biggest markets.

To date, App Annie has raised $7 million of venture capital in total and is already cash flow positive. Over 220,000 apps are using App Annie with 85 percent of the top 100 iOS publishers using its service.

“At some point, we’re also interested to do digital content, not just apps,” said Bertrand.

We’ve been following the progress of Beijing-based MadeiraCloud pretty closely since last year, and today the cloud visualization and management startup has its biggest news ever – a round of series A funding worth $1.5 million from Sequoia Capital.

MadeiraCloud founders Peng Zhao and Daniel O’Prey

The funding will be used to open an office in San Francisco and to enhance its newly rolled out support for Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) service. MadeiraCloud will also grow to 12 staffers.

The simple idea behind the software-as-a-service (SaaS) MadeiraCloud platform is that it allows users to manage their AWS cloud architecture the way you design it – diagrammatically. It’s proving especially useful for startups managing an app backend on AWS as they grow and scale, and MadeiraCloud is currently utilized by thousands of users in 85 countries – from startups to large enterprise – to manage $25 million worth of AWS resources.

MadeiraCloud CEO and co-founder Daniel O’Prey puts the early success down to a “simple, familiar, self-service interface” that allows drag-and-drop re-organization that saves companies “significant time and money” in managing their servers and connections.

It seems that San Francisco will be the new base for this globally-minded startup, with Beijing retained as a development office.

One of the hottest startups in China, Umeng (pronounced as “you meng” in English), is run and was founded by Fudan University graduate and ex-Googler in China Jiang Fan.

Umeng is like Google Analytics for mobile applications in China. Founded in 2010, Jiang said that the company came about because there was a need for it. Knowing that mobile will be huge in China over the next couple of years, Jiang believed that mobile developers would require tools to help them understand their users’ data and in-app behavior. He was right. Today, Umeng is serving over 100,000 mobile applications across all major mobile platforms — iOS, Android, and Windows Phone — with more than 50 percent of all Chinese developers using the service.

Umeng’s fast-paced growth was a mixture of timing, luck, a good team, and a solid product. Jiang says that Umeng is the only mobile app analytics company that was first launched in China and for China. Even today, there are very few competitors because making money through analytics is tough. Jiang also says that Umeng started early and grew together with the ever-growing mobile industry in China.

The team at Umeng is made up of folks who used to work at big companies including Google, Microsoft, Baidu, Sohu, and Yahoo. Today, Umeng has over 100 people in the team and has raised more than $10 million from Innovation Works and Matrix Partners.

Speaking about turning points and challenges, Jiang says that there were times when Umeng was tempted to go astray to run other mobile-related businesses which have a more direct way of generating revenue (such as mobile advertising). But he is thankful that Umeng ultimately stuck to its vision to serve the Chinese developer crowd. And being in the mobile space, changes are rapid, especially for mobile games. Umeng, as a startup, has to learn how to keep up with the changing trends. He said (translation ours):

Some developers grew very big very quickly. So it’s always a challenge to keep up with their usage and tracking demands as a startup.

Despite 100 percent of its developers being local Chinese developers, Jiang reveals that 40 percent of their apps are actually targeting the global market. Expanding abroad is part of Umeng’s plan and the team is already strategizing on how to do exactly that.

Jiang told Tech in Asia that Umeng will be releasing its English version by Q3 of this year, and stresses that the service will offer value to overseas developers just as it does to Chinese ones. Since China is an unique market, he says the purpose of an English site is to help overseas developers who are targeting Chinese users track and mine user data better and with more precision. He added (translation ours):

The potential is there. In the future, China could represent half of the entire world’s mobile user population.

In addition to analytics, Umeng also provides developers with an app network service that helps to cross-promote apps. The future of Umeng, as Jiang explains, is that it will continue to provide the services developers need. He believes that if the mobile industry in China continues to grow and mature, Umeng will eventually find a way to build a sustainable business model around its service.

And if you’re wondering about the Alibaba acquisition rumor that is spreading, Jiang confirms that both companies are speaking to each other but nothing has been finalized so far!

Beijing-based real-time behavioral analytics startup Mention charmed the judges and audience with its startup pitch at the ongoing GMIC Beijing event yesterday. This afternoon, Mention was crowned as the winner of GMIC’s Early Stage G-Startup Competition. Mention’s flagship product, Traintracks, is a real-time behavioral analytics tool made by game designers for game designers. Nils Pihl Bohlin, co-founder and behavioral engineer at Mention, took to the stage and demoed the current version of the product. It serves to empower game designers, giving them useful and powerful insights on user behavioral patterns.

How Traintracks came about

The team at Mention has been working on the marriage between behavioral psychology, game theory, and memetics to create a better predictive model of human behavior. It eventually led to dealing with many game developers, which the team thought was the perfect sweet spot to study human behavior. However, as the team started to delve deeper, it realized that the potential of big data analytics has not been fully uncovered by many game developers today. In fact, according to Nils, there is no such thing as data-driven design today, as many game designers have not been empowered to use the current tools that exist in the market right now. Nils (pictured right) highlights three issues with analytics:

1. People are unaware of the right questions that are deeper and more meaningful, which is vital to lead them to the right answers.
2. Most companies are tracking what is relatively easier to track, since it is difficult to interrogate the data. The result focuses on vanity metrics, but often does not give you deeper insights about player behavior.
3. Analytics can get very costly. It might need several departments to come together to answer a question, and a single question might take hours or days to answer.

With this approach, Nils and his team has developed Traintracks, which aims to solve the pain points that game developers face. It also boasts being an award-winning product to take on the game analytics market. Nils adds:

Traintracks has a state-of-the-art backend built on brand new technology that is up to 100 times faster than our most advanced competitors. The game analytics industry is growing into a multi-billion dollar market, and we’re entering that market with a product that is 100 times faster than the competition.

Founders’ backgrounds and upcoming plans

Mention is founded by Jeff Hsu, Nils Pihl Bohlin, and Ryan Braley, with strong backgrounds in computer science, electrical engineering, and game design. It was by circumstance that the team happened to come to Beijing. However, due to the system’s complex backend, Nils explained to us that the team will be moving its core operations to the United States for talent acquisition. It is also looking to raise an initial seed round of $1 million, mainly for talent acquisitions in the next twelve months.

This is part of our coverage of GMIC 2013 in Beijing, running yesterday and today (May 7 and 8). For other stories from this event, click here.

One of the most popular Chinese-made apps around the world is Camera360, the photo filter app made by a startup team in Sichuan province. Today the crew has revealed that Camera360 has 100 million global users across its three versions for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone. Of that number, the startup tells us that 30 million of them are active monthly users.

The major milestone comes almost exactly a year after Pinguo, the makers of Camera360, received nearly $10 million in funding. At that time, it had 30 million users across its three mobile apps, Camera360, Photo360, and Movie360.

In the intervening year, Camera360 – which doesn’t have an Instagram-like social element – added its Cloud Albums feature to allow easy photo back-ups. While optional, the team has already seen more than 240 million photos uploaded into Cloud Albums.

Camera360 has also built a platform on its popular photo filters in the past few months, and that SDK is now available for free to other developers. The SDK has been used to put filters into apps made by major web companies like Tencent, Renren, and Kaixin. Camera360 is now in talks with a number of smartphone manufacturers to have its filters preinstalled in some new phones.

Of course, Camera360 is up against a lot of competition in this niche. We recently rounded up 25 Asia-made photo apps, which is a list worth seeing.

If you’re a fan of Sina Weibo but don’t like the idea of your posts swirling around the web for all of eternity, you might like to try out a tiny little tool called SnapWeibo. Inspired by the time-limited messages on Snapchat, SnapWeibo lets you vanish your Weibo post after a set time.

It’s really simple to use: just sign into SnapWeibo with your Weibo account details, and then any post you make (in the usual way, via any Weibo supporting app) that contains a certain time-related hashtag – #10m# would indicate 10 minutes, for example – will self-destruct after that time period.

Its flexible hashtags allow you to set times by minutes, hours, or even days. If anyone retweets your Weibo before it gets deleted, your missive will later appear blank – in the normal way that it does on Sina Weibo anyway.

You can set self-destruct hashtags in either English or Chinese: like, #2m# #5h# #1d# or #2分钟# #5小时# #1天#.

Yes, it’s a bit silly, but someone might find it useful.

Of course, there is a simpler way to make your Sina Weibo posts disappear quickly – say something controversial.

(Source: 36Kr – article in Chinese)

Beijing-based car rental startup Yongche has been diversifying recently, launching a taxi finding app in the form of “DaChe Xiaomi”. Investors seem to be appreciating this move into a hot new niche in China – Yongche has secured a massive new round of funding this weekend, with its taxi app being a major focus of the investment.

Yongche’s investor this time round is China Broadband Capital Partners. The funding amount hasn’t been revealed, but it’s believed to involve tens of millions of dollars. Yongche’s series A round came in August 2011, and was in a similar range.

The taxi-oriented DaChe Xiaomi is up against a lot of similar – and similarly named – competition, such as Yaoyao ZhaoChe, Didi DaChe, and Kuaidi DaChe. That latter one secured seed funding earlier this month.

Yongche’s new baby is a totally mobile-only app, unlike the company’s car rental service which also has an Uber-like limo/car-booking feature. DaChe Xiaomi’s homepage is just its official Sina Weibo account (see here).

All the taxi finding and booking apps and services in China are facing an uncertain future, however. As noted recently by Marbridge Daily, it’s rumored that Beijing municipal authorities are seeking to regulate these services because of a confusing array of surplus charges made to consumers. That could even involve the city of Beijing creating its own taxi booking platform, which would devastate these startups. About 30 percent of Beijing taxi drivers are using one or more of such apps.

It’s not unfeasible that an entire city could build its own platform – after all, we’ve already seen that happen in Chongqing, a massive municipality of 28 million people.

(Source: CSDN – article in Chinese)

You’ve created a popular Mac app that has a strong cult following, but you fancy a new revenue stream. What to do? One of the less obvious answers (unless you’re Rovio) is to sell some merchandise. That’s what the Chinese creator of Mou, the writing app for OS X that supports Markdown, has done. The developer has recently launched such products as a tablet stand, beer bottle openers, badges, and stickers. All the merchandise features the distinctive “M” logo that forms Mou’s icon.

The flagship new physical product is MouStand (pictured below), a funky and minimalist tablet stand made of magnesium alloy. The man behind the startup, Chen Luo, explains to us that this particular product is half handmade, involving a CNC cutting machine he has rented, then a whole lot of polishing and bending, followed by a bit of sandblasting to create the matte effect, then they’re anodized and colored.

Chen admits with candor that the item is not perfect due to it being largely crafted by hand – and by Chen himself. That’s a lot of elbow grease involved. You can either buy the color pack containing four of these iPad stands for US$116, or the black-and-white pack for $58:

Developing on a need-to-have basis

Chen says that he first (and unintentionally) prototyped MouStand last year as a mini comb shelf made of pure silver. It was only when he bought an iPad in January this year that he felt the need for a solid stand. That’s when the previous creation became enlarged to support anything from a smartphone to any brand of tablet.

Indeed, Chen says he often develops things on a need-to-have basis – either in terms of the skills required or a particular resource needed. That happened with this merchandise. He explains:

I’ve learned everything needed to make this happen, CAD mechanical drawing, packaging design, cutting machine operation, the necessary knowledge of kinds of metal processing techniques, woodworking, and printing. I feel lucky that I’m already skilled in photography and web coding, as they are useful for building the online store. It’s not easy, but finally, I accomplished all the stuff and brought MouStand into reality.

Prior to making Mou app, he also made apps when he encountered things he needed for his web and software development work, such as Smaller app and the Resize extension for Safari.

Mou for iPad?

Mou for Mac is a great-looking and very stable writing app considering that it’s still in beta – and therefore free. Chen says that he’s still not sure when Mou will mature to the point, as he sees it, that it’s ready to hit the Mac App Store with a price-tag. Other Markdown-oriented Mac apps like iWriter and Byword cost $2.99 in the store, though they don’t have as many features as Mou, such as the latter’s live HTML preview.

But he says that he’s now focusing on the Mac app – which is proving most popular in the US, China, and Japan – with only a little thought given to a Mou for iPad version:

Currently I don’t have the need of writing things on iPad. I use the iPad mainly for playing games, watching movies, and browsing websites. People’s needs will change. Once I feel the need of writing things on iPad someday in the future, I think I’ll try to make an iOS version of Mou – that’s possible.

He admits that iOS development is new to him, but it could be a fun, new learning challenge. And not so messy and dangerous as metalwork.

Mou app is currently free and supports OS X 10.7 and 10.8, though an older version still supports those on 10.6. Oh, and these are the beer bottle openers:

Built by the Guxiu team of three in Beijing, China, Dreamdays helps users remember and be alerted of dates and events that matter to them most. Such as your girlfriend’s birthday, a family dinner, and important life events.

The app sort of provides what Google Calendar also serves but it does more by providing features such as voice memos and a countdown. Dreamdays is smartly crafted to help users remember non-work related dates. So with your Google Calendar remembering all your work-related meetings, Dreamdays helps you remember anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays. What I like is that it neatly separates your work and life events.

The app is priced at $0.99 now on iTunes and has 150,000 users so far, receiving above four star ratings from its users. Dreamdays was launched mid-December last year and is available in English and Japanese. If you’re interested, you can download Dreamdays here.

Enjoy the “fresh” air. (Image credit: Duke University)

If you’ve been to Beijing, you know the air sucks. Many folks wear masks to protect themselves from the poisonous air. But often, these face masks are just pieces of cloth pulled over to cover your nose and mouth. Face masks don’t necessarily work – plus they’re ugly and inconvenient. Understanding the problem, Infipure is a company that set out to solve it through its technology-enhanced “invisible masks” to protect people from all that PM2.5 air pollution.

The problem

The founders sought out different ways to build that perfect mask, thinking about issues like sizing, efficiency, and appearance. Francis Law, partner at Infipure, tells us:

We wanted to be in China, but at what cost? Our health and livelihoods were at risk. Recognizing this, we channeled together our entrepreneurial spirit and sought out ways to defend against air pollution and promote healthy living for not only ourselves, but also our friends, families and the general public.

After much research, the Infipure team learned that most people actually breathe in through their nose. Most people only breathe in through their mouth when they are exercising or when they’ve got a cold. Francis adds:

Based on this finding, we set out to design a new type of face mask. One that can be used in the nose and that addresses the effectiveness, comfort, convenience, and aesthetic issues found in normal facemasks.

The solution

The solution turns out to be pretty innovative. As pictured above, the Infipure “mask” works like a small filter inserted into the nose. It’s patented and trademarked ‘NoPM’ filter technology claims to be able to filter out up to 99 percent of PM2.5 air pollution particles. PM2.5 particles are about 1/30th the width of a human hair.

Infipure nostril filters are also designed to look good. Well, at least better than face masks. The only visible part is the bridge which is hardly visible unless someone takes a close look at your nose.

Infipure is founded by Richard Law and Tiffany Tian who started working on the idea while they were at MIT for graduate school. Francis was already in China and joined them on this venture when Richard and Tiffany came back to Beijing. The product is designed in partnership with one of the founders’ MIT professor. Francis shares more:

With the Infipure Invisible Air Mask, we felt we finally found a product that could protect you from air pollution while being comfortable and allow you to look great!

Infipure has been a self-funded company so far, including financing help from family and friends. The team of eight is headquartered in Beijing.

On the market, up your nose

Infipure is currently out on the market, and has been selling on Taobao for just about two weeks. A box, which contains eight pieces of filters, costs just RMB 21.60 (US$3.50). Each filter only costs about $0.44 which I think is really worth it for the benefits it brings to our health. The filters come in small, medium, and large sizes suitable for adults. The team is currently working towards producing filters suitable for children.

Infipure is rolling out in China first before expanding to other countries, including Japan, India, and Brazil. Besides selling it on Taobao, Infipure is also distributing its products in large pharmacy chains and convenience stores within the coming weeks. Apparently, the Chinese government has been pretty supportive so far, as Francis explains:

While we didn’t have formal help from the government, we found the government bodies such as tax authorities, patent offices, product standards to be very helpful in helping and guiding us. Going forward, we have plans to work with the government on supplying to staff that need it most, such as the police force.

DailyCost is an iOS app that helps you track your daily expenses. It’s beautifully crafted by founder Goupeng Liang who is based in Hangzhou, China. It was first introduced into Apple’s App Store in October 2012 for $1.99 and has so far attracted over 240,000 users worldwide, supporting 10 languages and over 40 currencies.

I gave the app a try and really like it. It’s intuitive to use and upholds Liang’s claim that any cost can be inputted into DailyCost within three seconds. To key in a personal expense, simply select a type and an amount. DailyCost also allows users to export data to CSV so they can do extra analysis if needed. The DailyCost app also provides a chart to visualize your expenses broken down by what you have spent on.

DailyCost is somewhat similar to Mint but doesn’t connect to users’ bank accounts – which may be a good or bad thing depending on your need. Liang claims that Mint’s service is very region-restricted, and only connects to bank accounts in the US or Canada. I guess for someone who just wants to keep track of their spending on mobile, DailyCost will be a better choice over Mint.

With so much debate over the merits of HTML5 versus native apps, Liang says that DailyCost is a hybrid app developed using HTML5 technology and Phonegap. For users, the app does indeed achieve a smooth user experience that is identical to a native app – yet the app is actually just a HTML5 wrapper. So far, DailyCost is only available on iOS with an Android version in the works.

With China’s e-commerce market set to be worth at least $175 billion this year, it’s a massive market where a new entrant will struggle to stand out. But Iwannabuy won’t have the same trouble, as it rocks two interesting niches: it caters to expats living in China, and it supports payments in Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a digital currency not tied to the usual government regulations, and which is now traded on the new Mt. Gox exchange in Tokyo. Beijing-based Paul Afshar explained to us that for his e-commerce startup, which sells a small selection of items as diverse as air pollution filters, juicers, and music festival tickets, the decision to accept Bitcoin is shaped by its user-base:

We started out accepting PayPal payment and cash on delivery (COD), which is very important for Chinese customers, and we continue to accept these payment platforms, complemented by Bitcoin payment.

However, many of IwannaBuy’s customers don’t have online banking enabled for their Chinese bank accounts, or have encountered problems with using PayPal or AliPay for online payment. In Beijing, this means they have problems buying the pollution products we sell, including indoor air purifiers and anti-pollution masks, to protect their health from poor air quality in the city.

Bitcoin, with a growing user base in China, cannot be ignored. For an e-commerce platform like ours, it offers a simple payment system that can be accessed easily both from a computer or a mobile device.

While Bitcoin payment is still a nascent and developing platform, we want to help pioneer its use in the world’s biggest consumer market.

“No currency conversion issues”

Paul adds that Bitcoin offers the benefit of there being “no currency conversion issues, unlike paying with a US credit card” – again, another useful feature for a mixed, global user-base. So far, Iwannabuy has about 10,000 shoppers, mostly in Beijing, in the 16 months since it launched.

Beyond those quirks, site itself is a fairly conventional online discount site. Paul says he spotted “a niche in the market for providing quality of life products to expats living in China”. And so the site is only in English. But Paul notes that the pollution woes in Beijing as well as the recent dead-pigs-in-the-river scandal in Shanghai have brought some Chinese shoppers to the site in search of quality anti-pollution equipment, like water and air purifiers. Encouraged by that, the Iwannabuy team is building a Chinese iteration of the site. Along with a Chinese co-founder, the startup is now a team of five.

Of course, using Bitcoin has its risks for a business – not least in the wild fluctuation in the digital currency relative to the US dollar. Paul explains the site’s approach:

The price of Bitcoins has fluctuated greatly in 2013, with the (Chinese) RMB Bitcoin price quadrupling since the beginning of the year. If we accept Bitcoin payment, there’s always going to be a price fluctuation risk. Fortunately, payment providers like BitPay help you mitigate that risk by giving you the option to choose the proportion of payment made in Bitcoins and in hard currency, and also allowing a merchant to “cash-out” without too much hassle.

Chinese startup Kuaidi Dache (meaning “fast taxis”) has flagged down seed funding to help the taxi-finding service grow. Centered around apps for iPhone and Android, Kuaidi Dache claims to have 300,000 users across the two cities where it operates – Shanghai and nearby Hangzhou – and covers 30,000 existing city taxi drivers. The startup sees 20,000 daily rides taken via the app.

The funding amount hasn’t been revealed, but according to Chinese tech blog 36Kr it takes the form of input from Ameba Capital’s Li Zhiguo, as well as a reported seven-digit RMB (hundreds of thousands of US dollars) investment from e-commerce company Alibaba.

While the Alibaba stake isn’t confirmed officially, it wouldn’t be too surprising, since the online shopping giant has been a lot more interested in startups recently, acquiring the social music site Xiami at the beginning of this year. Plus, there are rumors that Alibaba has bought the mobile ads platform Umeng, and is thought to have ploughed money into the flirty chat app Momo. Also, there’s a nice synchronicity to Kuaidi Dache operating in Hangzhou, which is Alibaba’s hometown.

Kuaidi Dache will use the funding to bring more drivers on board – it already covers 70 percent of cabs in Hangzhou – and expand to new cities.

This particular startup has some rivals in this space, such as Yaoyao Zhaoche and Didi Dache. The latter one has been incorporated into the updated Baidu Maps mobile service; since Baidu Maps has over 80 million users of its smartphone apps, that should be a big boost to Didi Dache.

If you want to see how these taxi-finding apps work, check out this six-minute report from Chinese TV. The reporter tries out booking a cab via SMS and phonecalls and finds that it can be a slow and hit-and-miss affair; then, at the 4:35 mark in the report, she tries out the Kuaidi Dache app and gets a cab arriving at her feet in just five minutes:

(Sources: 36Kr (article in Chinese), via Marbridge)

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is pressuring Tencent to subsidize telcos in China for supporting the huge data demands of WeChat’s user base. There are a total of 300 million WeChat users globally and 260 million residing in China. According to Chinese authorities, either Tencent or its users has to foot the bill. But Tencent president, Martin Lau, confirmed over the weekend that WeChat will remain free to users. Good news for users, at least for now.

I find this whole subsidizing the telcos fiasco ridiculous simply because users have actually paid or will be paying for their data packages when using any mobile service. Whether the app is used frequently or not, users shouldn’t be footing an extra bill for data just because the app is popular or uses more data in relative terms than other apps.

While it is assuring to hear from Tencent that it will not be charging users, the Shenzhen-based company can’t stop telecoms firms from jacking up their data packages (which is okay in a free market). Sure, there are other telcos in China that users can switch to. But make no mistake that they are equally unhappy with their shrinking revenue from SMS – and heavy data traffic – because of WeChat. So it is possible that the telcos may gang up to fight against WeChat. Of course, telcos have vested interests and run their own similar messaging apps – China Mobile has Fetion, for example – so there’s an element of preserving their own OTT offerings.

If Tencent is forced to subsidize the telcos to keep WeChat running, then Sina Weibo and other popular social apps out there will be pressured to do the same. If the big boys are facing such crap in China, imagine it happening to a startup whose app got really big but couldn’t grow because the mobile telcos demand a subsidy to keep it running. Tencent, as China’s biggest web company, is probably big enough to get through this. But a bootstrappy startup is likely to be crushed by the demands. It will be tragic for startups in China if that ever happened. And that is why I’m rooting for Tencent to win this battle against MIIT and the telcos – just so WeChat will not be used as a case study of how it is OK for a popular app to subsidize the mobile networks.

Let’s start Monday morning with some big numbers. Now that smartphones account for 73.2 percent of all mobiles sold in China, and with many locals opting for Android devices across a variety of price-points, it’s not too big a surprise that China is an Android nation. As neatly outlined in this brand-new infographic, China had 224 million Android users at the end of last year (already three times larger than the number of US fandroids), and is on course for 300 million by the end of this year.

Thanks to the flexibility of Google’s Android OS, various research groups reckon that 86 percent of smartphones sold in China run Android, leaving Apple’s iOS to take much of what remains (12 percent).

Chinese devs dominate apps; Foreign studios make the top games

The Chinese startup behind this infographic is Wandoujia, the third-party Android app store that went global last summer with its SnapPea app for Android-to-desktop syncing. Using the analytical data from its hundreds of millions of individual Android app downloads, Wandoujia reveals an interesting dichotomy when it comes to the top apps and games that Chinese Android users enjoy. This is largely true on iOS as well (1). Essentially, it’s mostly Chinese developers that make the nation’s favorite apps, but foreign gaming studios create China’s most-tapped games.

Indeed, only 10 percent of Wandoujia’s top app downloads are from overseas developers, while 70 percent of the leading games are from outside China’s borders – led by the ever-frantic Temple Run. Chinese giant Tencent makes four of the 10 smash-hit apps, with its WeChat messaging app rising fast to the top alongside Tencent’s old-skool QQ instant messenger app.

Good news for developers is that monetization on Android is finally getting better, especially on games. Here’s the full graphic:

For more fun graphics like this one, check out previous entries in our infographic series.

So we decided to pick out the individuals who’ve specifically created web startups, check out their sites and services, and see what these youngsters are working on. The end result is 15 web entrepreneurs under 30 in China that we should look out for this year.

It’s noticeable that quite a few of them are working on globally-minded businesses. Here are the 15 people and their startups, some of which will be familiar to regular readers:

Zhang Lianglun

• Age: 26
• CEO, Mizhe

As we noted earlier this year, Mizhe is a unique site, a sort of online shopping guide that offers discounts for shoppers on top Chinese e-commerce sites. It raised about US$1.6 million from IDG Capital at the start of this year.

Jing.fm’s Shi Kaiwen.

Shi Kaiwen

• Age: 23
• Founder, Jing.fm

Jing.fm is perhaps China’s coolest music streaming startup and something that I use often for background music when writing. It’s a bit like Grooveshark, really.

But with Chinese consumers being so unwilling to pay up for web-based content like music – or anything digital – Jing.fm will need to find a revenue stream to keep the music flowing.

Huang Kai

• Age: 27
• Chief designer, Yoka Games

If there’s any group of online consumers in China that are actually willing to pay up, it’s MMO gamers. And that’s the target audience for the Yoka Games online store, selling real-world gaming merchandise to fans of virtual adventures.

Ji Yichao

• Age: 20
• Founder, Peak Labs

Backed by Sequoia/Zhenfund money, Peak labs is the creation of US-China educated Ji Yichao and it makes some pretty impressive apps for iOS. Chief among these is Mammoth Browser for iOS which hit the headlines in 2011 because Ji developed the eye-candy browser while still in high school. In our interview with him, Ji told us that he made the app because he felt that multi-tab browsing on mobile was a nightmare, which was certainly true at the time.

Chen Ou

• Age: 29
• Founder, Jumei

China’s daily deals industry is a tough business to be in where the top players pull in over $30 million per day in revenue, and everyone else is left fighting for scraps. That’s unless you’re a highly specialized site that ignores all those cheap restaurant deals – which is exactly what Jumei does. Instead, it focuses on deals for well-known brands of make-up and skincare items at very persuasive prices.

Lin Zuoyi

• Age: 27
• Founder, Alishunlin Furniture

This is an online furniture store that sells only its own-brand creations, with an emphasis, as the “mu” in its name suggests, on wooden items.

Liu Chengcheng

• Age: 24
• Founder and CEO, 36Kr

This tech and startup blog is a nice breath of fresh air in China’s regurgitation machine of a media landscape. Ignoring the usual copy-paste malarkey among web portals, it positions itself as a sort of Chinese-language TechCrunch with a mix of local and global tech news thrown in. We like it.

Luo Yi

• Age: 29
• Founder and president, Beely

As with the furniture business mentioned above, Beely makes its own-brand items – this time for skincare products. It’s a very tough area in which to build up trust, especially as stores and other online outlets are filled with skincare items that might’ve been mixed by a farmer with a random assortment of chemicals in a barrel. It’s difficult to see how this can work for Beely without some very specific angle – like using only organic raw materials or something.

Rick Olson

• Age: 29
• Founder and CEO, Yun.io

Laowai! Yes, there’s even a foreigner on the list in the form of the guy behind the cloud backups startup that we reviewed back in 2011. Since then, Yun.io has doubled its free storage to 10GB, but is now also up against major competition, such as Baidu’s fairly recent Dropbox clone.

Pan Hao

• Age: 29
• Founder and director, Seeed Studio

Taking on the might of Alibaba’s B2B platform for sourcing goods from China, Seed Studio focuses on one very niche area – the bits and pieces needed by electricians, engineers, and hardware hackers. All its products come from various Chinese manufacturers and are snapped up at wholesale prices by overseas buyers.

Wang Bin

• Age: 28
• Founder, Alterniva China

Alterniva is another one on this list that looks to overseas clients. It makes Flash-based physics engines for games, with an emphasis on enabling quality 3D gaming in the browser.

Wang Wenji

• Age: 27
• Founder and CEO, RabbiBox

No, this startup doesn’t bring a rabbi to your door – imagine what a mecheieh that would be – and instead delivers a boxful of childens’ toys. Following the subcom business model, monthly gift subscriptions are available for about $30 per month.

Yang Senmiao

• Age: 27
• Founder and CEO, BlingStorm

Casual games are usually a good cash-cow, and that’s the area being tackled by its iPhone and iPad games, which are free but monetize by in-app payments.

Zhang Xuhao (right). Image: ShanghaiDaily

Zhang Xuhao

• Age: 27
• Founder and CEO, Ele.me

Ele.me – which means “Are you hungry?” in Chinese – is like Rocket Internet’s Foodpanda in that it coordinates with restaurants to let people order food online for takeout delivery. It’s currently running in seven Chinese cities with an initial focus on affordable food items.

Zhang Yichi

• Age: 29
• CEO, Greedy Intelligence’s 1checker

The most unusual app on the list is 1checker, which performs online proofreading to ensure that your copy would pass muster with the most stringent of grammar and spelling nazis. Aimed at English-speaking markets, it has apps for Windows and is free so long as you register with the site.

Can you recommend any other young entrepreneurs active in China that we should check out? Hit the comments with your ideas.

Despite the abundance of third-party app stores in China, we know that content creators and developers in China are not getting paid. What with rampant piracy and the ‘freemium’ method being hard to monetize, it can be a huge challenge to sell to this otherwise connected and gadget-loving nation. The Berlin and Beijing-based startup 88tc88 is hoping to change that with its own multimedia app store, called Paishouba, that sells totally legal apps, mobile games, e-books, and music.

Paishouba (pictured; the name means “Let’s clap” in Chinese) is like the iTunes App Store or Google Play store in that it offers up a variety of free and paid content, and is now available in versions for iPhone and Android plus a HTML5 web app. It takes payments via Alipay, China’s biggest standalone e-payments platform, so that coughing up for content should be easy.

While Apple’s iTunes supports paid apps in China, it doesn’t offer anything else for sale locally; Google Play has no paid content at all in the country. As for all the third-party Android app stores in China, they tend to focus on freemium apps and games – with a smattering of pirated stuff – so there’s little pushing consumers to pay for stuff on their pricey smartphones.

Paishouba aims to be a social space as well, with a social networking element. Its content is brought into the store in cooperation with Western labels and publishers. While that’s nice, it leaves the store feeling limited in its music offerings (I couldn’t see the e-books section, which failed to load repeatedly).

With this being aimed at Chinese consumers, there’s a strange mix of new and dated western rock and pop music; for a young-looking app, Bob Dylan is surely an ill-fitting musical choice. Now that Chinese consumers have lots of legal music options – on sites like Baidu Music, which is free (for now) but ad-supported – perhaps it’d be better for Paishouba to focus on paid apps and games, which is where the biggest void exists in China.

Music and apps in Paishouba.

88tc88′s Tonia Ellis tells us that the China side of the team is split between 10 people in Beijing, and a dozen in the city of Suzhou, just outside of Shanghai. Thanks to its content partnerships, Paishouba is hoping to attract one million users by the end of the year with roughly five percent paying members.

Paishouba is the right idea, if not – in the app’s current form – the right implementation. Surely China’s web and smartphone userbase is at the kind of size and level of maturity that it’s ready for a paid web store that ensures quality and safety. With big players like Google being hampered by regulations, and Chinese web companies always taking the path of least resistance, it’s likely that a startup will be the one to nail this niche sector first.

A custom app made for a Taobao merchant.

Appconomy’s Mike Golden tells us this service is called Zhangyingbao and it’s now launching officially after being in testing since November. In that time it has amassed 2,000 Taobao vendors as users, who now have their own custom store apps made using the Appconomy service. It’s not just the apps they get, as Zhangyingbao also incorporates a chat function for store owners to talk online with their customers. Mike adds: “You can communicate with app users via pushed in-app notifications and in-app email.”

Taobao, and its parent compamy Alibaba, already have a chat platform for its platform merchants, but Zhangyingbao can streamline the process for e-shoppers who opt to use the custom store apps. Payments can even be made while mobile, using Alibaba’s Alipay.

Appconomy’s CEO and president, Brian Magierski, says that the startup’s cloud commerce services are an answer to the problem of how amateur shopkeepers and small businesses can form lasting relationships with a customer. Brian explains:

The Zhangyingbao service, through the merchant-specific mobile apps it generates, offers a robust solution to the problem, providing merchants a unique, convenient option that saves on advertising costs, enhances their shop’s popularity, and builds strong relations with their shoppers via in-app notifications and other communications.

We’re told that the custom app service doesn’t yet cover the B2C version of Taobao, which is called Tmall – that’s where larger retailers and even global brands go to create virtual shopfronts. Mike chips in to say, “Expanding to Tmall is an option for the future, but merchant needs and customers are different – we would be solving a different set of problems.”

Appconomy has one other e-commerce oriented product, which we looked at recently. Aimed at both consumers and offline retailers, it’s a mobile wallet service called JinJin. For the startup, whose personnel is split between Shanghai and Texas, JinJin and Zhangyingbao are “part of the common cloud commerce platform roadmap.” Indeed, some of the custom app Taobao merchants will get cross-promotion in the Jinjin app so that a business boost might result from that cross-fertilization.

The Taobao and Tmall sites amassed $159 billion in sales in the first eleven months of 2012.

Undoubtedly one of humanity’s greatest ancient achievements was inventing beer. Though humankind then massively messed up by coming up with religion and novel ways of murdering people, beer thankfully evolved into many new forms and became a global phenomenon. Fast forward to the present moment, and the startup Cheers In site will deliver some of the world’s most unique beers to the doorsteps of Shanghai residents. The startup tells us that it has wrapped up seed funding that it’s announcing today, and is planning to expand around China as well.

The Cheers In funding amounts to US$230,000 from Kima Ventures, the French investment firm run by web businessmen Xavier Niel and Jeremie Berrebi. Some other unnamed angel investors also took part.

The store is called Qi Yin in Chinese, meaning “drink together”. It aims to bring China’s wine connoisseurs around to the idea of appreciating luxury beers from around the world.

Cheers In’s co-founder and “idea brewer” is Grégoire Prouvost, who explains that the B2C e-commerce beer store started in Shanghai in 2011, and also has three physical stores in the city. The next step, with some aid from the funding, will be to expand across China, first by opening up deliveries from the online store to the city of Hangzhou on April 13th. Then Cheer In will do the same in some other major, ‘first tier’ cities, such as Beijing and Guangzhou.

Beer me!

Being so focused on Shanghai has its benefit for customers, says Grégoire. One of the selling points of the site is that it can deliver within the city in one to three hours, and even has a “cold option” so that your chosen specialist beers will arrive chilled at your home.

Searching for strong beers on CheersIn.

The site has 200 kinds of beers from 30 countries, with an emphasis on little-known and handcrafted beers. Some of the brewery brands on the site I’ve seen for sale in specialist stores in China, like Chimay Blue and the Brooklyn brand, while others on Cheers In are even more unique and totally new to me. I particularly like the sound of the Mongozo Coconut beer that’s on the site for RMB 25 ($4). Grégoire says that the startup will either import directly or buy locally, and aims to introduce a new taste each month to its Chinese customers, along with educational events for tasting the products.

We’ve seen quite a few other alcohol e-commerce startups take this mixed approach in China – some offline stores plus consumer education-oriented events – though they tend to be wines and spirits e-tailers like WineNice. In terms of beer-loving rivals, Cheer In will be up against Kuai Pijiu as well as random beer vendors on online platforms like Tmall.

Cheers In insists that doing B2C e-commerce – which involves buying lots of inventory and warehousing it – is not too challenging for a startup. Grégoire says that the company works with logistics partners and has its own team of delivery guys. Plus, its brick-and-mortar stores also serve as mini warehouses. Its gradual, city-oriented approach will be replicated in a few new cities this year, and some more physical stores will be opened as well.

Chinese consumers are expected to buy 13 billion RMB – a full $2 billion – in wines, beers, and spirits on the country’s specialist B2C alcohol e-tailers by 2014.

After attracting its first major financing in May of last year, the Chinese vacation home rentals startup TuJia has announced today that it has wrapped up series B funding. The startup had not previously revealed financial numbers, but today said that both rounds amounted to RMB 400 million (US$63.7 million) in investment.

TuJia’s series B saw participation from an all-star array of investors: GGV Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, CDH Ventures, and Qiming Venture Partners. Plus, China’s biggest travel booking site, Ctrip (NASDAQ:CTRP), contributed funds, along with America’s HomeAway (NASDAQ:AWAY) – as both did in the last round.

The new funding is thought to have been agreed upon before the Chinese New Year holiday, which ended yesterday for most people.

HomeAway recently worked together with its Chinese startup partner, adding a selection of rental properties in some overseas markets onto the TuJia site.

The TuJia site.

TuJia, which came online in December 2011, says that it now has over 400,000 holiday rental homes in 65 Chinese cities and 45 overseas locations. It focuses on mid-range to high-end properties. The site’s founder has a great deal of experience in online real-estate portals, and has been using this know-how to ensure a steady supply of good apartments and villas on the platform.

We were impressed with TuJia when we first reviewed the site in January of 2012, and our prediction that a lot of funding was about to flow its way is certainly coming true.

With people getting back to work for ‘catch-up’ days this weekend after a lengthy Chinese New Year break, we’ve already seen the e-commerce site 360Buy announce a whopping new $700 million funding round.

(Source: iHeiMa – article in Chinese)

Chinese consumers have plenty of choices if they want to use their smartphones to get discount coupons, but we’ve seen very few startups try to provide a lot more complex things like mobile payments or loyalty cards. That’s what Appconomy’s JinJin app is aiming to achieve, and has recently added social gifting to its features list.

For shoppers, the JinJin app for Android and iPhone can be a mobile wallet that holds loyalty cards, discount coupons, allows mobile payments in-store, and even lets you gift a product to a friend via SMS, email, or some Chinese social networks. For JinJin’s retail partners, explains Appconomy general manager Gerry Goldstein, it offers tools for understanding customers and how they shop, and permits the targeting and automation of shopping promotions.

In this way, says Gerry, it’s a much broader service than the simple coupons that Chinese smartphone owners are now familiar with – from the likes of the heavily-invested DDMaps – and comes closer to “closing the loop” on a full mobile commerce experience in the real world.

Cash-less consumers

JinJin’s team is mostly in Shanghai, with a sales office in Beijing and some Appconomy personnel in Austin, Texas, as well. The focus is on Beijing and Shanghai for now, where the most crucial early element for such a platform is getting the right kind of retailers on board. Gerry explains that they’re targeting major chains right now, with brands like Burger King and ShabuShabu fully on board for the loyalty program and mobile payments.

Loyalty cards inside the JinJin app.

JinJin’s partner retailers can process everything on your phone and without taking cash. If you’re a user of the app and you drop into Burger King for one of its calorific concoctions, then the JinJin app will cook up a QR code that the Burger King staffer can scan. Your mobile payment will be made via Alipay, China’s top e-payments service, and loyalty points will be added to your card as well. In Beijing, the local K-Pay system is also supported.

Gerry adds that small- to medium-sized businesses will be supported in due course. As an alternative revenue source for Appconomy, they also offer white-label solutions to turn JinJin into a branded platform for some retailers.

The gift that keeps on being forgotten

The newest feature in the service, e-gifting, is being used by some local food and leisure chains in Shanghai and Beijing. Gerry reckons that this kind of gifting is perhaps even more important than any other feature for retailers, as it’s a chance for them to reach out to new customers who are arriving via a strong recommendation from a buddy. Effectively, your customers become your brand advocates. He believes JinJin solves the “breakage” with vouchers given as gifts, whereby the receiver doesn’t bother – or forgets – to make use of them. Far from it being free money for a retailer, the Appconomy GM says that it’s actually a lost opportunity, as a shopper brought in via a valuable coupon will “often spend 35 percent above the card’s face value” and might well become a regular customer. To help people remember to use their e-gifts, the app has optional location-based reminders whenever the coupon-holder passes the relevant store.

Pilot tests of e-gifting have been well received, we’re told, and have spawned larger rollouts. For social gifters, the present can be shared via Sina Weibo or Tencent’s WeChat mesaging app.

Appconomy won’t reveal any JinJin numbers for now, but Gerry says the team now has five retail chains in each of its two target cities right now, with more to be revealed after Chinese New Year, which wraps up tomorrow for most people.

Appconomy raised $16 million in series A funding back in December, and plans to remain “China-focused” while making use of mentoring and expertise from Chinese investors such as QiMing Ventures and Neusoft Corporation.

Chinese shoppers seem to have reached the level – with widespread smartphone usage and over 200 million people on 3G – where they’re ready for mobile-based payments and loyalty cards like this, but it’s always a challenge to bring in enough retailers and shoppers to make this kind of thing take off. There are persistent rumors that the huge WeChat app – with over 300 million users – might venture into local deals and mobile payments for its China-based users, which would be bad news for startups in this niche sector.

Take the JinJin app for a spin by downloading from its homepage.

This week I noticed that the Chinese photo-sharing app Vida had joined in the national discussion about China’s polluted skies by adding a PM2.5 photo filter. When the filter is applied to your image, it make the photo slightly grey-yellow tinged, as if the air is as much chemical-y particulates as oxygen. Or if you live in Beijing or the parts of China worst affected by PM2.5 pollution and you then apply this new Vida filter, your original photo will surely be totally obscured. Thankfully I don’t live in Beijing, so when I tested out the filter, the visual results were not so bad as Beijing actually is much of the time.

Once posted, the app tells you your location’s PM2.5 pollution data. Any number under 50 is good. Beijing’s pollution often hits 500, and has even gone off the scale once this year. (Click to enlarge)

The startup team behind Vida explained to me via Sina Weibo that the photo filter has another clever use. Aside from giving your friends a laugh, it’ll also use your location to display the PM2.5 pollution reading for your area in the form of text (pictured right) on the photo. The Vida team points out that their data feed is “delayed by one or two hours,” so it might not be hugely accurate. But still fun. In my test today, a PM2.5 result of just 31 shows that the air is clean (though gloomy) after being freshened up by yesterday’s snow and wind.

For the most up-to-date pollution read-outs, Chinese urbanites already have some neat dedicated apps, such as another startup’s perhaps sarcastically-named Fresh Air app. There’s also the official Beijing Air Quality app created by the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center, which gives PM2.5 data. That’s at least some progress after years of authorities trying to ignore and cover-up PM2.5 data, instead preferring to use read-outs for larger particulate pollution which didn’t make for such horrific reading.

Vida is one of many Instagram-like photo-sharing apps in the country, combining funky filters with a mini social network. Perhaps the largest of these is Tuding, which already had over four million users back in December 2011. Vida says it has four million right now.

Both Vida and Tuding recently incorporated voice comments to accompany photos that you post, which seems to be a new trend among local photo apps. Plus, both apps have been very nimble and clever in adding more fun filters – in contrast to the glacial evolution of Instagram – and have even added branded frames/filters as part of companies’ social marketing campaigns. Imagine the pained cries and agonized goatee-pulling that would occur if Instagram tried that.

The Vida app supports English and Chinese and is available for iPhone and Android.

I’ve been using File Expert on my Android phone for quite a while as it’s a free file manager app that looks pretty good and doesn’t have ugly ads, unlike the free version of Astro. Turns out I’m not alone in being a fan of File Expert, as the Chinese startup who made it revealed this week that it has surpassed 20 million installations across Android and iPhone.

File Expert’s creator is the team at Xi’an-based GeekSoft. I must admit that I didn’t realise before that it’s a Chinese-made app. GeekSoft also told 36Kr the other day that File Expert is the third most used file manager style app for Android in the world, just behind Metago’s Astro File Manager and Beijing-based Estrong’s ES File Explorer.

70 percent of File Expert’s users are overseas, and they constitute the vast majority of buyers of the File Expert Pro Key that costs $2.99.

As for the startup itself, GeekSoft attracted angel funding back in 2010 from Matrix Partners China, and then it later got first-round funding from undisclosed sources.

File Expert has some useful features besides being able to use it to browse your phone’s internal storage, such as a ‘web PC suite’ for easy transfers across wi-fi. More recent new additions include ‘quick send’ which lets you upload files (up to 100MB) to GeekSoft’s servers so that a friend can receive a download link.

To help the app monetize, it now has a ‘featured apps’ and ‘featured games’ section that links to its own third-party Android app store (pictured below).

Another Chinese startup making apps that are doing well overseas is Fotoable, creators of both the GIF-crafting app FotoRus and the newer PIP Camera.

Get File Expert in Google Play, and its Pro Key plugin is here. For iPhone users, grab the Lite version or the paid app on iTunes.

(Sources: 36Kr, via Marbridge Daily)

So now we’ve figured out that the internet won’t bring universal freedoms to China and got all that disappointment out of our systems, perhaps it can at least bring some lulz. A startup site called Xinci.so wants to help people figure out all the Chinese slang and faddish humor that pervades the web, which often resembles some sort of hyperconnected playground of childish insider gags.

Xinci – which could be translated as “new dictionary” – is basically a version of UrbanDictionary, packed full of user-submitted Chinese slang terms. So far it has 4,000 entries, which is a bit short of UD’s seven million English terms, but it’s a start.

Click to enlarge.

If Xinci can gather a devoted clique of regular uploaders, then the site should become the go-to place for the web’s wisecracks. For those baffled by all the slang, Xinci can inform you that “3Q” is a jokey way of saying “thank you” in Chinese (say it “san q”), or that “cai niao” is a “noob”, especially referring to a newcomer on the web. Though if that needs explaining to you, then you’re the noob, obviously.

With UrbanDictionary getting such huge traffic – 15 million visits a month – it might not be a bonehead move to make such a silly site. Xinci’s founder is Jason Gui from mainland China, who’s a graduate of Penn, an Ivy League school, so he’ll have a business plan in mind. Indeed, he told Chinese tech blog 36Kr yesterday that it’s a serious project for him, and he’ll soon start to monetize it. For now, Xinci has no ads and is available in both simplified and traditional Chinese versions, with an English iteration promised.

(Source: 36Kr – article in Chinese)

With China’s e-commerce market consisting of so many sites, the rather unique Mizhe.com is making a business out of being an online shopping guide that offers discounts for shoppers on top Chinese e-tailers. That hasn’t gone unnoticed by IDG Capital Partners, which has invested just over 10 million RMB (US$1.6 million) in a series A funding round for Mizhe.

The investment news was revealed this week, but Mizhe founder Zhang Lianglun said that the IDG backing was wrapped up last summer and the funds have already come through.

As with social pinboard sites like Mogujie), Mizhe’s shopping guide monetizes from referral links to e-commerce sites such as Taobao, Amazon China, and many more. Mizhe claims to generate over 100 million RMB ($16 million) in sales via its platform, though it’s not clear how much revenue can be squeezed from all those referrals. The site says it now has millions of users signed up, and hundreds of thousands of daily active shoppers.

The Mizhe frontpage, which emphasizes getting discounts on China’s top e-commerce sites. Click to enlarge.

The discounts-oriented site claims to offer as much as 50 percent off some purchases, but most price-cuts will be just a few percent. The startup – founded in August 2011 – also has coupons, which are the focus of its Miquan.com sister site.

Founder Zhang Lianglun knows the e-commerce business, being a former employee of Alibaba, the company that runs Taobao and Tmall, the nation’s top two online malls.

Other Chinese e-commerce sites in IDG’s portfolio include top travel site Ctrip, and the Amazon-esque Dangdang. IDG also led the recent massive series C round in the afore-mentioned social shopping site Mogujie.

(Source: Kuailiyu – article in Chinese)

Your blogger and his cat get the PIP Camera treatment.

If you’ve seen your friends taking some wacky photos of themselves recently – as if they’re trapped in a glass, or set as a laptop’s wallpaper – then they’re probably using the new PIP Camera app. Launched last month on Android and iPhone, PIP Camera gives you a bunch of frames and scenes that work best with close-up photos of people (or animals).

The company behind this new photo-filter app is the same Chinese startup that makes FotoRus, the GIF-maker app that soared past 20 million downloads last November. Team member Hua Xue tells us that PIP Camera has seen 2.5 million downloads worldwide of its iOS version since it was launched two weeks ago. On January 5th that spiked to 550,000 downloads in just one day. It’s currently number one in the photo category in the iTunes Store in China, France, Mexico, and a few other countries.

PIP Camera is free for now on iPhone, but that’s only for a limited time. The startup will also “optimize the advertising” in a free version while also preparing in-app purchases for some extra virtual items.

The self-snapshot app comes with 23 “Pip-Styles” ready for use, plus a library where you can choose from over twenty other funky frames and effects:

The startup’s earlier FotoRus app also has these kinds of pic-in-pic (I guess that’s what “PIP” stands for) special effects, so the new app is basically spinning these off into a new app of its own. Of course, PIP Camera can also work for some kinds of landscape shots so long as there’s one interesting focal point to which you can apply the special effects.

In terms of social sharing, it so far supports Facebook, Twitter, Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo, and Renren. But Twitter sharing seems to be missing in the Android version, which might be a bug.

Get PIP Camera for iPhone; or for Android either on Google Play or an an APK file download.

And this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way to series A funding.

Our first two bits of Chinese startup funding news of 2013 could not have gone to companies with weirder names. Beijing-based Xiaozhu.com (meaning “little piggy” in Chinese) is actually a short-term rentals site in the mold of Airbnb. Today Xiaozhu revealed that it brought home the bacon recently with “nearly US$10 million” in series A funding.

Likewise, the similar Mayi.com (meaning “ants”) disclosed that it had been spun off as an independent entity from its parent company, Ganji, and also secured about $10 million in backing. Mayi’s round is led by VantagePoint, with participation from BlueRun Ventures and Sequoia Capital.

The growth and progress of Xiaozhu is pretty impressive for a travel site that only launched in August of last year. The investors in its initial major round haven’t been revealed yet. Xiaozhu has properties in 13 Chinese cities thus far. But it’s not just focused on China’s middle-classes and fancy homes (like the one pictured above), and even has listings in places like student dorms for a few bucks per night.

A property on Mayi. Click to enlarge.

As for Mayi (pictured right), it claims to have surpassed 300,000 rented room nights in its first year of operations. But if its commission is 10 percent, then it’s difficult to see how short-term rentals can actually be profitable for startups once they’ve splashed out on prohibitive marketing campaigns.

The good news for these two curiously-named travel rivals comes eight months after series A funding for the site that will surely be the nemesis of both sites: Tujia. It attracted interest and funds from China’s biggest online travel company, Ctrip, and followed that up by adding over 2,000 overseas listings in conjunction with its American co-investor HomeAway.

The double investment whammy for Xiaozhu and Mayi is sure to shine a spotlight on the Chinese holiday rentals industry, which has so far been overshadowed by a lot more dynamism in Southeast Asia, with lots of recent action from Travelmob, 9Flats, and Airbnb itself.

(Source: Donews – article in Chinese)

The Jing.fm player can be made wider, but here it is with the settings open. Click to enlarge.

Jing.fm was one of the coolest new startups to emerge in China in 2012, a music-streaming service sort of like Grooveshark. But I was so happy using rival Chinese site Xiami – a broader and more established social music site – that I never got round to trying Jing.fm. But now that this startup finally has an iPhone app, launched last month, it might get more traction after a fairly slow start. So it’s time to jump aboard; 2013 should be the year that this comes of age.

The Jing.fm site is very cool and minimalist, but to the point that new users will find themselves making a number of button presses with blind luck. My first encounter with the site was not too pleasing either; after registering, I opted to “add some favorite artists” but was then faced with an utterly random assortment of musicians and groups. Yes, that is Justin Bieber right next to Johann Sebastian Bach:

Then I had to click “more” dozens of times until – not being a fan of most pop music – eventually finding some artists that I both knew and liked. Perhaps some people will like this manner of visual browsing, but I found it a pretty frustrating for the entire 10+ minutes that it took to give the service a flavor of the kind of music I’m into.

Thankfully, as soon as I’d made a bunch of selections, music started playing and then Jing.fm became a joy in its great-looking interface (pictured top). The best part is the little rectangle at the bottom of the web app where you can mix up a cocktail of your favorite artists, which then start playing in random order. You have the option to jump to the next, trash the song from ever appearing for you again, or ‘heart’ it to make that track more likely to spring up for you:

On the whole, there’s a pretty wide selection of music both in Chinese and English – with a fair amount of Korean and Japanese pop songs in there as well – and the Jing.fm web app did such a good job of making a magical playlist from my chosen artists that I thought I was listening to one of my favorite iTunes playlists.

This startup’s founder is musician Shi Kaiwen, and it’s not his first online venture, having previously started up (the now defunct) social music site Koocu. It has not yet brought in any major funding, which I imagine will be seriously needed to grapple with issues like copyright and bandwidth as it tries to grow.

Jing.fm’s iPhone app is not yet in the iTunes Store; but if you’re jailbroken, you can download it here. The startup has made this short demo video of the app in action:

What do you do when your young app has 20 million users and you need a path towards monetization? Go local! That’s the approach that will be taken by Momo, China’s hottest flirting app, as revealed by its recent v3.0 beta. The dating app adds Foursquare-like listings and check-ins in the experimental update for iPhone and Android.

The new focus on local will come only to the Chinese version of Momo app – not the new global app – when it updates for iOS and Android later this month. The user-generated listings of local points-of-interest will rival those from Jiepang and Sina Weibo’s ‘Places’. Testing them out in the Momo v3.0 beta (pictured above), I notice that venues are restricted to those that are within a two kilometre radius.

Momo team member Zhang Ying explained the check-ins with reference to the startup’s more established rivals:

We do notice that Weibo and Jiepang appear to have done things we are going to do. Whereas I personally think that Momo’s check-ins and local listings will be more specific, featuring more interests-oriented and informative location-related feeds generated by users.

Indeed, the dating app already does have interest groups as a feature, so these will co-exist with the check-ins. The beta app also reveals that Momo will get Instagram-style photo filters. Looking ahead to the future, the listings could be a good way to make money from the app.

The English-language and globally-oriented version of Momo will not get check-ins to rival Foursquare anytime soon. “We want to keep the international version simple at this early stage,” explains Zhang Ying.

Momo isn’t the only location-based app that’s thinking of local venues, as Tencent’s WeChat (“Weixin” in Chinese) looks set to move into nearby daily deals and mobile payments if rumors are to be believed.

We don’t find hardware startups in China as often as we’d like – but we’ve stumbled across what looks like the coolest we’ve ever seen. The team of tinkerers and ‘makers’ behind AngelEyes is prepping crowdfunding for its upcoming HeX Air Robot, a smartphone-controlled drone that looks like some sinister stealth helicopter (pictured above).

Team member George Liu tells us that the HeX Air Robot (see it in flight in the video below) will soon drone its way onto Kickstarter to raise funds to evolve and then manufacture the flying machine. Until that launches, the globally-minded Chinese startup has a couple of software platforms to sell, as well as a huge fascination with 3D printing to keep everyone occupied. To find out more, we fired him a few questions:

How did AngelEyes come to life, and how many products do you have right now?

George: AngelEyes came to life from the vision to propel the democratization of technological innovation. Before AngelEyes existed, we did some projects purely on software and they failed eventually. But now the tide is turning, and it is becoming easier and affordable for individuals to manufacture things on their desktops, which means hardware can be as easily iterated as software, and the cost of going through several lifecycles of hardware manufacturing decreases dramatically.

Plus, crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter unfolded a new way to finance tech startups. That’s pretty much the context how we plunge into projects that can integrate software and hardware. So far, besides HeX, we’ve got two other cloud services: ‘AR Generating‘ and ‘Pattern Recognition’.

When will your HeX Air Robot be for sale, and how could it be used?

George: Actually there are several stages in the development of HeX. The first stage, which we are on now, [means we’ve] finished the first prototype of it and we’re improving it. We plan to sell it on Kickstarter.com, which we estimate might happen at the end of January, to raise funds for the next stages of evolution. With the money we could raise, we’re going to add some sensors and an airborne computer on HeX to make it able to avoid obstacles automatically. Ultimately, we plan to mount a camera on it (pictured below) and make it able to track a moving target and film it so that extreme-sports fans can use it as an aerial filming kit.

The HeX app in testing.

Click to enlarge both images.

You seem to be interested in 3D printing. Is that just an experiment right now, or can you sell printed products at good prices?

George: Yes, we find 3D printing fascinating. It’s not just an experiment. Actually, we make some components and parts needed on HeX by 3D printing and all of the design files will be shared on the website Thingiverse so that hobbyists can download them to make and customize a HeX for themselves. Also, we’ll sell HeX and its parts via Shapeways, which we think is a new way to sell hardware.

Your hardware website is all in English – which markets are you aiming at?

George: We’re aiming at foreign markets, particularly North America that is a huge and mature market for things like HeX.

Does your startup have any funding, and how large is it right now?

George: We haven’t drawn any funding yet. That’s why we’re planning to get funded on Kickstarter.com and we hope to draw some seed funding as well. Right now we have six employees and two interns.

We’ll let you know when HeX hits Kickstarter. In the meantime, check out this two-minute video of the drone in flight:

How the 8 Securities trading dashboard will look for Japanese users.

We’ve been following the progress of Hong Kong-based 8 Securities for about a year, and the socially-oriented stocks trading portal has done a lot in that time. The latest news from 8 Securities is two-fold. Firstly, it has closed another $3 million funding round last week, coming quite a short time after earlier rounds of $1.5 million and $8 million. CEO Mikaal Abdulla explains to us today that the team has “100 percent follow-on participation from our original eight investors.”

The second bit of news is that 8 Securities will open an office in Tokyo in March 2013, and will launch for Japanese users pretty soon. This takes the startup global into what it calls, along with its Hong Kong HQ, the two most important markets for stock trading in Asia. Mikaal reckons that Asia has 80 million online investing accounts among its citizens, leaving it with huge scope for growth. The interface in the top image is how its trading dashboard will appear to Japanese users.

As for 8 Securities’ own progress, the startup says it now has “55,000 accounts holding $1 billion USD in assets with us.”

Co-founder Mathias Helleu explains what Asian investors are interested in on its service:

The biggest trend we see in Asia is customers investing in the US companies they interact with daily. They see the growth opportunity of companies like Google, Apple, and Starbucks in their own markets and it is no coincidence these are some of the most popular stocks. Customer can invest in their local market or the US, all from a single account.

And with that enthusiasm, the startup is keen to disrupt US brokerages where, Mikaal insists, there has been “very little technology innovation in the past decade.”

The trading platform, which features social integration and an API for third-party developers to create their own widgets, came online in April 2012, but we first saw it in action at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing in November of last year, where 8 Securities was one of the Startup Battlefield finalists.

With nearly 10 percent of my posts in the past couple of weeks being about some alcohol-related website, I’m at risk of appearing obsessed with booze. Nonetheless, here’s another such site, this time a Shanghai-based startup called Heritage Wine Club. As well as being a conventional online seller of premium wines, it also aims to be the leading subscription e-commerce (subcom) offering on the wine market in China.

The CEO and founder of Heritage Wine Club is Adrien Fabry, who’s originally from France. He explains that the subcom element entails a monthly subscription of between 500 and 2,000 RMB (US$80 to $320), depending on the package (I mean, the “bouquet”), for users to receive a box full of wines delivered to their doorstep. To ensure a good selection each month, Heritage Wine Club has enlisted some expert help. Adrien explains why this is being done:

In the wine market – not only in China – people are lost and need strong references. So the subcom model helps them to make wise decisions when it comes to buying wine, especially as the bottles are selected by Andreas Larsson, one of the best sommeliers in the world. It brings advice in a ‘wild’ environment.

Part of the Heritage Wine Club “bouquet” for December. Click to enlarge.

And so the team regularly meets with Andreas in Bordeaux to work on the selections (see the video below), and believes that discovery and education are an important part of the business. There are also wine-tasting sessions organized, and there’s a strong emphasis on guiding drinkers on how to best enjoy the wine, with advice on what foods best match the bottle.

The site plans to keep the line-up very selective, and Adrien says “we will never have more than 50 products on our platform. We don’t want our members to get lost in the choice between 2,000 products.”

In addition to the subcom packages and the conventional online selling, Heritage Wine Club also holds flash sales for some premium wines, and has programs dubbed iCellar (storage space for true connoisseurs who have huge collections), and Cellar BuildUp (to help fill some space with the right vintages).

Offering all these extra features, Adrien reckons that Heritage Wine Club doesn’t have too much competition from larger e-commerce sites in the country, such as the well-established Jiuxian or the recently-launched and very flashy WangJiu. There are some startups in the space too, such as TasteV with its very social approach to enjoying fine wines.

Here’s a five-minute video of the expert sommelier in action for Heritage Wine Club:

Yes, this is the third bit of news for a China-based wine e-commerce site in as many days. This time it’s the turn of WineNice to count some cash as it wraps up series B funding thought to be worth over RMB 100 million (US$15.8 million). No financial details have been given, but CEO Lu Yide, teased the investment news a few months ago and also mentioned that exact figure.

Rumors in the industry suggest, however, that the funding is led by the N M Rothschild Group, the investment arm of the centuries-old Rothschild family empire that also runs Château Mouton Rothschild and Château Lafite. That’s because WineNice has suggested that it’ll reveal its source of funds at a Rothschild event in China on the evening of December 10th.

WineNice’s funding will be used to to build up both its online B2C infrastructure and its offline “experience stores” that now number just over a 100 across China.

The site started in 2008, one of the pioneers of premium wine e-tailing in China. WineNice saw RMB 150 million ($23.7 million) in sales revenue last year, and aims for this to grow to RMB 1 billion ($158 million) in revenue within two to three years.

Earlier this week we saw WangJiu launch as a high-end rival to WineNice (and others like Jiuxian and YesMyWine), and Vinehoo raised a more modest round of funding.

[Source: QQ Finance - article in Chinese]

Being big fans of both alcohol and startups, we’re pleased to hear of yet more funding for a Chinese wine e-commerce site. This time it’s Vinehoo that has pulled in RMB 5 million (US$800,000) – though the investor has not been revealed.

Vinehoo’s funding news comes just a few days after the launch of China’s priciest and glitziest online wine mall, and three months after a much more substantial $32 million in investment for rival Jiuxian.

But Vinehoo is different from those others in being as much a social network as a B2C e-commerce site. Indeed, it started in 2008 as an online forum for wine connoisseurs, and its premium wine sales only began in 2010. The site does limited-time flash sales, which help to reduce costs both for itself and for consumers. Now the site has over 100,000 users, and it’s on course to bring in RMB 10 million ($1.59 million) in sales revenue in 2012.

A flash sale of wine on the Vinehoo site. Click to enlarge.

That’s not a huge amount, and perhaps all its figures would be higher if the website focused more on its flash sales, and less on news and user-generated content. Indeed, it might escape the notice of new visitors that Vinehoo even sells anything.

In terms of flash sales of good wines, Vinehoo is up against more focused opposition, such as Moooton and TasteV.

Sales of alcohol online is expected to reach $2 billion in China by 2014.

[Source: 36Kr - article in Chinese]

One of the first Chinese startups I wrote about this year was TuJia, which is an online service for vacation home rentals. Then a few months later, this promising site attracted major series A funding. And now today TuJia is partnering with the American site that inspired it – HomeAway (NASDAQ:AWAY) – to bring some of the latter’s overseas home rentals onto the TuJia site, translated into Chinese.

HomeAway took a minority stake in TuJia at the time of the sites first-round funding, so this tie-up isn’t too surprising. HomeAway’s PR man, Victor Wang, explains that this’ll bring “listings from the most popular destinations among Chinese citizens” onto the TuJia site, such as Australia, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and the US. TuJia previously had only China-based rentals. He adds:

Our immediate goal is to translate nearly 2,000 listings in [those aforementioned] regions. We look to slowly roll out more over time — the process isn’t immediate as each individual listing is reviewed and translated by someone at Tujia.com.

HomeAway’s overseas listings on the TuJia site. Click to enlarge.

It’s also a good opportunity for HomeAway to reach out to the 39 million Chinese tourists who ventured abroad in the first half of 2012 alone. Seeking to allay investor fears of TuJia eating into HomeAway revenues, the CEO of the US site, Brian Sharples, explained in today’s announcement:

We are excited about the potential in China, where the vacation rental industry is only now developing. Although this distribution agreement will not have a meaningful impact on our short-term financials, it opens China’s travel market to HomeAway owners and property managers, and is reflective of our continued interest in growing our presence in Asia.

Speaking of the Asia region, HomeAway partnered up with Singapore’s Wego last week to bring its array of vacation rentals to that site too.

That was fast. Just a few weeks after some ‘Instagram with voice’ startup apps emerged into the limelight, two of China’s established photo-sharing services have already rolled out voice comments. Tuding has launched this new element to its iPhone app this week, while Vida has just done so this morning on both iOS and Android.

This quick evolution for Tuding and Vida suggests that audio annotations might be the next big thing in social photo taking. It remains to be seen if Instagram will go this route. But Chinese startups tend to move a lot faster than those in Silicon Valley, so it’s no surprise that the duo are way ahead of Instagram on this.

Voice comments and narration are central to two promising apps that we looked at very recently: Voicepic from Japan, and Papa from China. But their speciality is proving to be easy to copy and implement pretty quickly for their rivals.

Vida and Tuding have put the audio into action in a very similar way to the early starters, right down to the ‘play’ button with the number of seconds written on it. But while Tuding also supports vocal comments from your buddies in response to your photo, Vida doesn’t.

Tuding is a rare overseas success story in China, being made by Finland’s GeoSentric (HEL:GEO1V), and which passed four million users this time last year – but no newer stats are available. Vida is a newer startup that launched at last year’s TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing event.

Snag the updated apps from the homepages of Tuding or Vida.

China’s biggest flirty chat app, Momo, is still attracting new users at one hell of a rate. Today the startup’s app reached 20 million users. That’s stellar growth from a fledgling two million back in March of this year. At this rate, Momo is larger than many general messaging apps.

As well as announcing this milestone on Momo’s official Weibo page, the startup also revealed that its new ‘groups’ feature has seen 100,000 interest groups created in the month since it rolled out, and every single day there are about 10 million messages sent. It also said the next v3.0 of the iPhone and Android app will arrive either at the end of this year, or at the start of 2013, with a mysterious major new feature onboard.

Momo brought in $40 million in funding this summer, and launched an international, English-language version of its app/service a few weeks ago. As for the global venture, Momo’s Zhang Ying tells us today:

The English version will be improved with major features added early next year to optimize international users’ experience. For now, most of the Momo English version daily downloads are from the US.

Find the app download links on the Momo homepage.

Wangjiu’s priciest wine.

China’s wealthiest wine connoisseurs now have another option when trying to source the very best wines. Over the weekend, the new e-commerce site WangJiu held a glitzy launch party, and its CEO Li Rui stated the aim to hit RMB 300 million – nearly US$50 million – in sales transactions in the first year. To put that figure in perspective, China’s online alcohol sales are expected to bubble up to $2 billion by 2014.

WangJiu focuses on high-end wines, from a $120 Cavalli right up to a $3,100 bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1996 (pictured above). With so many top wines being fake – yes, that actually happens here – the WangJiu site promises that all its products are genuine, an assurance also seen on China’s fashion-oriented luxury e-commerce sites.

The newest B2C wine e-tailer actually came online in October to run in a low-profile beta mode. During this testing, WangJiu says it’s seeing an average order of 2,000 RMB ($318).

WangJiu has significant angel investment from Jia Yueting, who has a major stake in the video-streaming site LeTV (SHE:300104) – but the two sites are not formally related in any way.

The fledgling company is also looking to engage wine connoisseurs offline, opening experience stores and private clubs in major cities across China. Wangjiu so far has clubs with cellars in Beijing, Taiyuan, Tianjin, and Hangzhou – with more to come later in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. It’s a pricey but shrewd move to help foster new wine lovers, and a tactic we’ve already seen from rival site Jiumei, which is about to close a series B funding round. There’s also strong competition in this sector from the more established Jiuxian.

The main concern I’d have about the business is that its user-base is largely the kind of people with the resources to travel overseas often, and buy wines themselves at vineyards across Europe. That’s also cheaper than paying China’s significant import tax mark-up – though Wangjiu seems to be quite aggressive with discounts. Also, one enterprising UK wine e-tailer recently launched a Chinese version of its site and ships to Chinese consumers from overseas – that could become a growing (and threatening) trend for Chinese services.

[Source: InvestChina - article in Chinese]

What comes after Instagram? What’s the next social sharing niche? A number of startups think that the next surge could be in apps that combine photos and voice, allowing users to talk – or sing, or record background noises – to accompany their photos. Comments can also be in audio form, saving you the hassle of typing out a response. One of these is China’s Papa, which I tested out over the weekend.

Papa app – as with Japan’s much better named Voicepic – is hoping that smartphone users are tired of simple photo-sharing services. In China, popular ones include Tuding and Vida. And so Papa brings in the voice messaging element of hit apps like WeChat and Whatsapp, allowing people to narrate their images. If they want. The American photographer and artist Ansel Adams would not agree with this move; he once said:

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.

Undeterred by Adams, I signed up for Papa (which has apps for iPhone and Android) using Sina Weibo third-party login and found that a few dozen of the people that I follow on Weibo were already active on the startup app. The main timeline/stream (pictured below) is reminiscent of Pinterest, showing who ‘hearted’ other posts. Once you click on one, the photo is enlarged, and there’ll either be a voice message or a text caption:

To post something, first snap a photo and then – a lot like sending a voice message – you can hold down the record button to capture your audio. I gave it a try myself, and shared the end result with folks on Weibo. The image gets nicely embedded in Sina Weibo if you choose to share it that way. But your Weibo followers will have to click the provided link to your Papa page to hear your vocal missive, as pictured here:

In the Papa app itself, the voice element can also be ignored. It’s up to you to decide if you’d like to spend an unrecoverable 32 seconds of your life listening to what I had to say in my first post to Papa. At least it’s less of an overt effort than is involved in video-sharing apps, which perhaps explains why video apps like Viddy and Socialcam – and their Chinese counterparts – have been such a let-down this year. At least with things like Papa and Voicepic, the photo is often enough to enjoy all by itself – which is not the case when sharing video.

Papa has a few celebrity users – thanks to its third-party support for posting to Sina Weibo or Tencent Weibo – which will be a useful boost for the app as it grows. The hottest of these might be the actress Angela Baby (pictured below left), while the geekiest is the founder of Innovation Works, Kai-fu Lee, seen here in one of his own images:

Papa is not being incubated by Lee’s Innovation Works, but it’s a distinct possibility that it could be taken onboard if the founder thinks it has great potential. As I noted a couple of months ago when I first heard of the app, Papa has received angel investment from Xu Zhaojun, the creator of the Tumblr-like Diandian – and Diandian is backed by Innovation Works. I think it’s likely we’ll hear of some first-round funding for this pretty soon. That’s so long as Papa and Voicepic – and other “Instagram with voice” apps – aren’t torpedoed by Instagram itself rolling out audio comments.

Grab the apps for iPhone or Android from the Papa.me homepage.

Now that animated GIFs are all over the place – even in news articles – it should be no surprise that one early GIF-making app is doing well. The Chinese startup behind FotoRus app (called WanTu in Chinese) tells us that it has so far seen 20 million downloads worldwide across its iPhone and Android app – that’s since it first came out on iOS back in September of last year.

FotoRus, which supports English and Chinese, now has 10 million monthly users (and 1.5 million daily), who have created a total of 400 million GIFs and photos. The startup explains that it’s mainly seeing traction in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, the US, and Japan.

Weibo user @PangziLiu的马甲 makes use of FotoRus app.

The app has matured beyond just GIFs, and now also features things like Instagram-style photo filters, and templates for a photo-within-a-photo (pictured below). The newest FotoRus thing is the animegram, which is a way to animate a single photo by drawing on it or distorting it in some fun way; the end result is a short video, not a GIF file [1]. So far that’s available only on the updated iPhone version, but we’re told that the Android FotoRus app will get animegram support by the end of December. But with 80 percent of the app’s users on iPhone, it’s understandable that they want to roll it out first for Apple’s platform.

As for the startup itself, FotoRus’ Hua Xue explains that they’ve had some seed funding, but are generating “very little revenue from mobile advertising.” They’re currently contemplating in-app purchases for some extra items – like additional pic-in-pic templates – but have not yet rolled that out. They make other apps too, like Fotoable, which costs $1.99 and is a neat way to better organize your photos than Apple’s own albums app.

The startup can perhaps learn some lessons from the young team behind the Chinese-made Camera360, which has also seen huge global success with its photo and video apps. Indeed, FotoRus has recently added things like cloud backups for your images, so it’s branching out into a broader platform as well.

GGV Capital, perhaps spurred on by its new US$625 million fund that focuses on China, has invested in the local recipes sharing startup Douguo.com. This second round of funding for Douguo is worth $8 million, and was only announced today despite being finalized in August.

Social recipes sites are a growing trend, and are doing especially well in Asia. The early success of Japan’s Cookpad.com is proving inspiring, and last month we also saw Taiwan’s iCook raise funds from CyberAgent Ventures.

Douguo has apps for iPhone and Android, and claims to have six million users who have uploaded 10,000 recipes so far. Its first major round was led by China’s Shanda, but the size of that investment was never revealed.

GGV has backed lots of Chinese startups – like Meilishuo or the recently IPO’d YY – as well as local web giants such as Alibaba and Tudou.

[Source: Donews; via Technode]

The China-made flirtatious mobile app Momo recently launched its English and global-oriented version of the app. For a Chinese startup which has reportedly raised tens of millions of dollars with international ambition, I was pretty excited to see what the Momo English app has to offer. Well, in a word, it was disappointing. The English app offers zero additional features or innovation for overseas users. It feels like a scrappy job, which really is a let down.

I downloaded both the English and Chinese app from here in Singapore – note that the global version is on iOS only for now – and I can’t really tell the difference because the UI looks the same. OK, that’s fine; it looks pretty nice. But annoyingly, it shows the current Chinese users on the supposedly English Momo network. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m okay with the Chinese language but not when it is on an app which supposedly caters to an overseas audience.

Think about it. For someone who doesn’t understand Chinese, he/she will surely hit the exit button having seen the app. Having users who only speak Chinese within the English app is annoying. Maybe I was just expecting Momo to have a community filled with English speaking folks. But even if an English speaker were to be able to connect with a Chinese speaking user, it doesn’t help, because fundamentally, there’s a breakdown in communication. One speaks English while the other speaks Chinese. There’s no way to flirt.

I think I see where Momo is trying to take this. While I own both the English and Chinese app, Momo only allows me to stay logged in on one of them. But as you see below, it doesn’t make sense, the community is from the same user base. It just doesn’t help to match English speaking user to English speaking user. It’s like TechinAsia trying to force feed you with our Chinese content which most of you probably wouldn’t like.

The solution to solve this is simple. Momo can simply let users pick the language(s) that they are proficient in so only users who pick the same language(s) would appear. Problem solved!

Not a Shanghai taxi driver.

The internet lets you rate a lot of things: restaurants, apps, movies, asses. And now there’s one more service that you can evaluate – thanks to the new TaxiCrab app – and that’s Shanghai taxi drivers.

Created by Shanghai-based startup ExploreMetro, it’s an Android and iPhone app (pictured below) that lets you rate Shanghai cabbies on their driving skills and professional appearance. And their personal hygiene. All you have to do is input the driver’s municipal taxi license – which should be on a plaque on the dashboard – into the app, and then check boxes for things like “scenic route” (a shady driver who takes you the long way round to make the fare larger) or “spitter” (for expert expectoraters – yes, that’s a thing in China).

Eventually, this’ll create a user-generated database of Shanghai taxi drivers, giving them a score across all TaxiCrab users that they’ve ferried across the city. I’ve never had any major problem with a cabbie in Shanghai, but it’s good to know there’s a resource where you could be forewarned of one who is, say, a rogue racer.

ExploreMetro’s Matt Mayer explains that the new app was built to solve a personal problem – which he reckons is a good way to approach new product development. He adds:

Six years ago when I first arrived in Shanghai there was no good online metro map of the Shanghai Metro. So, I sat down and created one, which became ExploreShanghai.com. I got lots of great feedback from people who used the map, so expanded it to six other cities, and also created iOS and Android apps.

TaxiCrab is initially also an experiment. Complaining about taxi drivers is a shared experience for many people who live in Shanghai, so I wanted to create a light-hearted way for people to share data about their experiences, good or bad. I’ll be guided by feedback from people using the app whether to keep this as an amusing toy, or expand it into something bigger. I’m also planning to analyze the data and share trends. And I have lots more ideas! Who wouldn’t love an app which would help them find a taxi in the rain, for example?

Matt’s core company is ReignDesign, which he describes as “a bootstrapped, ambitious, multicultural, mobile design and development studio” that’s based in Shanghai and now employs 10 people. Clients include the likes of Porsche and WeightWatchers.

To start rating your driver, get the Taxi Crab app for iOS or Android from its homepage – from which you can also check out the startup’s array of excellent free subway apps.

Just as the rumors said a couple of months back, China’s top Pinterest-like social commerce site, Mogujie, has secured a major series C funding round. It was led by IDG. The funding was confirmed today by Mogujie, but the startup was tight-lipped about the exact investment amount – though it was happy to say that it’s now effectively valued at $200 million.

The first round for Mogujie was led by BDMI, and series B came from Qiming Ventures – both those raised a total of $20 million.

Earlier this year we described Mogujie as a social commerce money machine. That’s because at that time, as confirmed by CEO Chen Qi, the site was earning over 100,000 RMB ($15,900) per day in ad referral clicks to Taobao, China’s largest e-commerce site. In March of this year, the social pinboard site had 9.5 million registered users.

Mogujie is up against a large number of similar sites that are aimed at young Chinese female shoppers, including ones from major web companies, like Taobao’s Wantu, or Renren’s Plaza site.

[Source: 36Kr - article in Chinese]

The Chinese online security outsourcing company Anquanbao.com has secured series B investment, for an unknown sum, led by Northern Light Ventures. Beijing-based incubator Innovation Works also participated in this second round for Anquanbao, just as it did in the first.

The funding news was revealed by Innovation Works founder Kai-Fu Lee. His incubator ploughed in about $5 million into the first Anquanbao round.

We first encountered the security startup back in November of last year when Anquanbao impressed at the TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing event. Indeed, the team emerged as the runner-up in the Disrupt Battlefield finale.

In Anquanbao’s startup pitch, the team said that they foresee a trend towards security outsourcing for business sites in China, to safeguard them against hackers and DDoS attacks. The startup said it aims to serve two million company sites in China, and 60,000+ government-run websites. Currently the service is growing, and now has just over 6,000 clients.

As for Innovation Works, it recently added $224 million to its second funding war-chest.

[Source: Sina Tech - article in Chinese]

After three months of intense hacking, coding, biz refinement, and some pivoting, China’s funkiest incubator, Chinaccelerator, yesterday graduated all eight of its 2012 batch. Rather than heading up to the incubator’s home-base in Dalian, the Demo Day event took place in downtown Beijing.

Chinaccelerator has a pretty good track record. One of last year’s graduates, OrderWithMe, went on to win TechChrunch Disrupt in Beijing a short while later, and the super-funky PiktoChart has graced the stage at our own Startup Arena contest in Singapore earlier this year. The incubator was founded by Cyril Ebersweiler, who’s also in demand as a mentor at 500startups, OnLab, and lots of other places.

The 2012 batch is all killer and no filler (and includes some startups we’ve profiled already), so these are some startup teams to watch:

• AdConnect
  This startup has already launched its free app cross promotion network, AppSpree.me, which is aimed at early-stage startups that have apps. We talked to co-founder Andrew Boos earlier this month, who describes AppSpree as “a zero-cost way to help apps grow” via its customizable cross-promotions.

• HopCab
  Unlike the rest of the 2012 batch, HopCab is focused on a different country – Malaysia. Launched earlier this summer, and centered around its iPhone app (the Android version is coming soon), it’s a location-based service for booking cabs or executive cars-for-hire. Before you even book your ride, the app can help you get an estimated cost for your journey. It’s currently operational in Kuala Lumpur and Penang.

• QuWanBa
  QuWanBa (or “LetsGoOut” in English) takes a different philosophical approach to the other 2012 batch startups, encouraging people, in the words of founder Yung-Chung Lin, to “reconnect in real life and rediscover the love shared among us.” This “offline socializing” startup will monetize from offline travel transactions, sort of like Airbnb, on its “peer-to-peer activities and happenings” service. The site is at QuWan.ba, which will launch on November 3rd 30th [The startup's website had the wrong date before].

• 7Colors
  7Colors has already rolled out as a cross-platform online learning platform for children. From its homepage at 7colors.cc, it already has a lot of education-oriented Windows, Android, and iOS apps.

• WeiboAgent
  Another one to have already launched into action is WeiboAgent, a service that aims to help brands do much better social media marketing on Sina Weibo, the nation’s hottest Twitter clone. Essentially, as the co-founder recently told us, it’s a SaaS advisory tool built on top of social media analytics – but it has actual human advisors onboard to help out its users in their marketing to Chinese consumers. [UPDATED: Co-founder Michael Michelini reaches out to explain that the business model was tweaked since our first interview. He adds: "We pivoted from advice/analytics to lead generation and B2B. We learned (using the lean startup methodology) that people didn't want "advice" but instead [wanted help to] find customers/business contacts in Chinese social media”].

• TuiCool
  TuiCool is a social network oriented around reading. From its UI it looks to be halfway between Reddit and the China-made Wumii Reader, and it’s backed up by a very alpha-stage Android app.

• ToyCloud
  ToyCloud is doing something that sounds both insane and very neat – encouraging people to create apps that can control toys. The website is up, but the SDK for all this hackery – which would let things like radio-controlled cars be maneuvered by smartphone swipes or voice commands – is still in the works. There will also be hardware, in the form of RC cars, sold via the ToCloud website.

• QiuQiu
  Lastly, there’s QiuQiu, which is a social dating platform that’s currently in open-but-quiet beta. Co-founder and CEO Michael Lewis tells us that the idea behind QiuQiu is that “the two most common ways that people meet each other are through their friends/family, and online – we are combining it and putting it on an app.” The app is close to ready for a full launch, but for now is being kept under wraps. With stats indicating there could be more than 30 million adult males in surfeit to the female adult population in a few years’ time, China is sitting on a bachelor timebomb. And clued-up dating apps could be the answer. Or more homosexuality. Either way, it’s all cool.

---

Many investors will have been in the Demo Day audience – place your bets in the comments as to which of the startups have the promise to attract VC backing.

“Guanxi” is the Chinese word for a relationship – and also the broader concept of the benefits of knowing someone, particularly when doing business. That explains the name of the business networking app Guanxi.me, which today received series A funding led by SingTel Innov8. Also participating in the round was Timothy Draper of Draper and Associates. The sum has not been revealed.

Guanxi.me has location-based apps for iPhone and Android that allow users to connect with fellow professionals nearby and then chat with them. It’s sort of like Momo or Skout, except that it’s oriented towards making biz connections, not dating. Guanxi.me is a spin-off from the Shanghai-based mobile search startup mInfo.

SingTel Innov8 is the investment arm of Singapore’s giant telco Singtel. The last major round we saw from SingTel Innov8 in the region was when it pumped up to $5 million into phone-maker G-Mobi.

In today’s announcement, the Guanxi team says it’ll use the funds to “expand its team, build up a carrier-grade operating platform, grow its user-base […] and raise awareness for the service beyond China.”

William Bao Bean, the MD at SingTel Innov8, added:

We are excited about Guanxi’s promise of a more intelligent and automated mobile social networking user experience. We look forward to supporting Guanxi’s geographic expansion of their innovative solution into the various markets the SingTel Group operates in.

Tibiji

Upon logging into the dashboard, one is able to store important contacts, maintain personal finances, keep track of special dates and birthdays, record notes, and monitor personal favors.

One of the founders of Tibiji tells us via email that its product stands out from other single-function notes app because it not only combines several features into one, but they claim to be the only available platform that provides monitoring of personal favors.

I was intrigued by this latter feature, which allows a user to note their personal ‘receivables’ and ‘payables’ from others (as shown in the image below). But on second thought, are people really so particular about receiving and giving?

This Tibiji service also hopes to go green by encouraging the adoption of a paper-free way of organizing life. It offers a virtual notepad with a customizable link, so users are able write, edit, and share by accessing the link. Concerned about privacy issues? No worries! Each note page can be secured by a personal password so only those who have the password, are able to access it. There is one major disadvantage though – users cannot upload any images or audios into the notepad, so this just serves as a basic note-keeping tool.

Nonetheless, the personal finance management feature is fuss-free, and enables users to have a quick overview of their monthly income and expenditures. Each entry can also be further categorized into things like lifestyle, culture, and necessities. From the dashboard, you can see problem areas and manage your budgets with ease.

It is accessible via your mobile web browser, but there are no mobile app versions, and that’s a little disappointing. Keying in Tibiji’s main web address brought me to a random user’s note page (a security flaw?). It seems like using Tibiji on a desktop web browser provides a more seamless user experience, but defeats the main purpose of being mobile and convenient.

Overall, Tibiji is a simple and straightforward tool which does a pretty cool job in managing personal accounts and contacts. But if you are someone who prefers to make random notes and loves apps, perhaps other cloud note apps might do a better job. Here are a few from China that might be of interest, or you can try something like nvNotes, which is currently on sale in the app store.

The Beijing-based startup behind the flirty hook-up app Momo is preparing to take it international, with an English version of its iPhone app submitted to Apple last week. The dating app has been picking up users at an incredible rate; I notice it was at 500,000 last December, two million by this March, and 10 million by August. And now? Now Momo has reached 16 million users.

[UPDATED: It's now live. See final paragraph for details].

Of those, says Momo’s operations manager, Li Dihao, “about 10 percent are international users” already, despite its iOS and Android apps currently only being available in Chinese. Dihao adds, “We believe this number will skyrocket when Momo for English is available.”

Dihao explains that the Android version of the Momo app will be updated with English in a few months’ time. For now, the top ten areas outside of China using the app are Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, the US, Australia, Russia, Canada，India, South Korea, and Japan.

It’s pretty impressive to have apparently well over a million international users despite not supporting other languages in the app – and not doing any marketing in other countries. Or perhaps those users are mostly Chinese overseas students scattered across the globe. Either way, it’s good to see a Chinese startup move onto the international scene, where it’ll be up against other LBS dating apps like Skout.

Momo attracted $40 million in series B funding this summer.

Grab the apps via the Momo homepage, or look out for the English update to the iPhone app rolling out soon on iTunes. UPDATE on Oct 29th: Surprisingly, the English version is a separate app, but it integrates with the Chinese app. A Momo staffer tells us: “You can see all Momo users, the English version and the Chinese version share the same user database.” Grab it now here on iTunes.

After launching in January of this year on iOS, the Chinese startup DianDao has rolled out apps for Android and Windows Phone, helping even more people find their way around malls and department stores.

The indoor maps app claims it now covers shopping venues in 24 cities across China, and it’s also accessible via a rather awkward and jittery web app. Thankfully the smartphone apps are buttery smooth and give a lot more information about retailers than the web app. 36Kr reports that DianDao has now mapped out the multiple floors of over 600 malls.

But the rhinoceros in the room – or in the store – is that Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), China’s biggest search engine, is already doing indoor maps in the country – albeit with very limited reach in its popular Baidu Maps app. Admittedly, Baidu’s indoor guides are mostly in the web app, and largely just at locations in Beijing and Shanghai, but they’ll surely become more prevalent in the giant’s mobile app over time. Plus, Baidu said last week that its online maps have 77 million users, so that’s some mighty competition.

Of course, DianDao’s CEO, Li Xiuyi, has thought of this, and reckons that the market is big enough for everyone – especially as, Li claims, Baidu is just sourcing its indoor maps from a pre-existing rival of the startup’s called Palmap.cn. Plus, DianDao is working on an open API to make it easier for both developers and retail chains to make use of its maps.

At the moment, the app is useful for keen shoppers, but it lacks an extra pull factor – perhaps it could be nicely complemented in future by adding features like discount vouchers or shop check-in rewards.

Get the DianDao apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone from its homepage.

[Source: 36Kr - article in Chinese]

Fresh out of this summer’s DemoChina 2012, the Chinese flash sales site Xipin.me – which models itself closely on Fab.com – has secured nearly RMB 10 million (US$1.59 million) in series A funding. It has not been disclosed who the investors are in this major round; previously, Xipin’s angel investors were Korea-based VCs.

Xipin, much like US-based Fab, focuses on stylish or handcrafted products like funky clocks and other creative home decoration items. As with most other flash sales e-commerce sites, a lot of products are sold in limited items for a period of only 72 hours.

Xipin’s CEO and co-founder is “Hiris” Tan Kaiyi (pictured below), one of the all-too-few female startup founders in the country. Onstage at DemoChina in August this year – where the startup went all the way to the finals – Tan told Sequoia’s Neil Shen that Xipin chooses only items to sell that “will inspire people” and that the site has the requisite “social DNA” so that “products can go viral.” The site works with both Chinese and overseas designers to create a number of unique product lines, and that too is touted as a major strength and selling point for the company.

Xipin's Tan Kaiyi onstage at DemoChina recently (Image: cyzone.cn)

From some research I note that Neil Shen responded (via Cyzone) by saying he has concerns that China’s market is not ready for fairly pricey decorative items like these – or that the market is pretty small right now. The Sequoia man also expressed concern, in his role as a panelist at DemoChina, that Xipin will see high costs in terms of working with all those designers and trying to acquire new users in this e-commerce niche.

Nonetheless, fashion-oriented flash sales sites in China have been thriving, with VIPshop (NYSE:VIPS) doing well after its US IPO earlier this year, and the similar FClub wrapping up $30 million in series B funding. The Xipin crew will be hoping that China’s growing middle class – especially the women – will be as keen to spend as much on home decorations as fashionable garments.

[Source: Kuailiyu - article in Chinese]

I’ve long believed that Google needs to do more to push for and promote beautiful-looking Android apps – preferably by splashing out a fair amount of its profits to top developers in the form of awards. But that has never happened. Thankfully one Chinese third-party app store has an eye on aesthetics, running a weekly award for the most gorgeous Android apps.

It’s run by Wandoujia, one of China’s top alternative Android app stores. Started back in the summer of 2011, the Wandoujia Awards are now in their 57th week of crowning eye-catching Chinese-made and overseas apps. The most recent winner is Vplayer, which is a neat video playing app from a Chinese startup. Previous winners include Flipboard, Path, and DoubleTwist – plus lots of funky Chinese ones like the photo-sharing app Vida, photo-filter app Camera360, and the business professionals app ZaiZher.

Not many major Chinese web companies have scooped up the prize, save for an honorable appearance by Baidu Music, the streaming tunes service from the country’s top search engine. Here’s the awards page showing the most recent eight winners:

Click to enlarge.

The award from Wandoujia doesn’t bring a prize, but it does result in your app getting a very nice promo page, like this one for Vplayer. How’s the weekly award decided and what’s the benefit? Wandoujia’s Kai Lukoff explains:

Each week we collect submissions, discuss, and select one Android app that exemplifies great design – our company has a strong focus on UI/UX. Apps can come from either Chinese or foreign developers, but all apps must have a Chinese version so that our Chinese user-base can enjoy it. We then promote it on our Wandoujia.com homepage and our mobile app, which drives tens of thousands of downloads.

That sounds like a nice boost. Admitedly it might not be enough to spur global developers to follow Android’s new UI guidelines for developers more closely, or to stop producing apps that look like they resulted from a chimp being sat in front of a laptop with Coda app open on it [1], but it’s greatly encouraging. It’s also a useful place for aesthetically-minded Android users to get some pointers towards good-looking apps. For that, the Android section of Beautiful Pixels is a must-visit place too.

Of course, Google does also promote quality apps in this way – by giving them priceless space on the homepage of the Play store app – but, hey, the mighty GOOG really ought to be pushing it a bit harder with some awards like Wandoujia does; and maybe some cash as well. Because it’s a great motivator.

One of China’s most innovative reading apps, Wumii Reader has just upgraded its Android app to version 2.0. In contrast to many other apps that demand you add in lots of subscriptions or preferred sites – which can be quite laborious – Wumii Reader instead uses its own clever algorithm to offer up what it thinks you might want to read.

One new feature that takes advantage of that is the “shake to read” that causes the Wumii app to freshen up your suggested list of relevant articles. Also new in this v2.0 beta is a reading network where you can follow and interact with other Wumii Reader users – and read some of their articles too.

A favorites folder is also integrated into the app, plus a built-in ‘read later’ service so that you can access a particular article when you have more time to read – even if you’re offline. The app’s interface takes on a nice magazine format for all those stored articles, as if it’s rewarding you for saving up good thing to read. If you prefer to stick with third-party services like that, there’s still the option to stash things in Pocket or Instapaper – and Pocket of course also has the same superb browsing interface since its recent major revamp.

Shake the phone to find articles the app thinks you'll like.

Despite its algorithms for helping you find things, you can of course still add particular sites or topics manually within the app.

The startup behind Wumii has a lot of competition in this sector – everything from global players like Flipboard, to local clones like Zaker. Plus there are some good-looking alternatives from major Chinese web portals, such as Shanda’s Daguan app.

Get the Wumii app for Android from its homepage. The iPhone app is not yet out.

[Source: Techinasia Chinese]

Having resisted the temptation to use the tired “China’s something something” format for the headline, I’m going to have to use it in the first paragraph. Here goes. The founder of China’s Tumblr invests in a Path clone. Yes, Xu Zhaojun, the founder of Diandian, one of China’s coolest lite-blogging services, has said that he has personally invested in a very new social app called PaPa . That makes it an app to watch.

Aside from PaPa’s terrible name, it’s a clever app that fuses the best social elements of Path, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter/Weibo all into one. If that’s not enough, it also supports sending voice messages of up to 60 seconds in length, sort of like China’s popular Weixin/WeChat app. It can integrate with Chinese social networks like Weibo. It sounds like an overblown mess, but it might prove a hit with local smartphone users if it can find a niche – perhaps as an Instagram-on-steroids that can do voice plus photos. It was launched earlier this month as an iPhone app from its PaPa.me homepage.

Diandian founder, Xu Zhaojun.

Though it’s not known how much Xu Zhaojun (pictured right) angel-invested in Papa, it prompted speculation in Chinese tech media that his own startup, Diandian, might pivot in the light of PaPa app and its more innovative approach to a social networking. But he has responded by saying that Diandian will focus on being a minimalist and funky blogging platform.

Diandian is backed by Innovation Works and has received over US$10 million in funding from the likes of Sequoia Capital. But Diandian’s initial success prompted local copycats that perhaps ruined its potential – not least when China’s biggest Twitter-esque site, Sina Weibo, launched its own lite-blogging service called Qing.

Get PaPa app, which supports Chinese and English, from the iTunes App Store.

[Source: Techweb - article in Chinese]

It’s just over three weeks until Chinaccelerator 2012 officially graduates its newest flock of startups, but we’re already seeing some of the incubated businesses get going. One of these is AdConnect, whose AppSpree is an app cross-promotion network for small startups. For now, the service is free.

Co-founder Andrew Boos is originally from Toronto but is now busy honing AppSpree at Chinaccelerator HQ in Dalian, Northeast China – but the startup will eventually be based in Beijing with its five current full-timers.

Andrew pitches AppSpree as “a zero-cost way to help apps grow” as an alternative to its “expensive or opaque” larger rivals. It has the full array of stats and an analytics dashboard that developers need to see how the cross-promotions are benefitting their apps. Coming later, says Andrew, will be “substantial targeting” of ads and “full cost-per-action” options for things like acquiring new Weibo followers. Essentially, he says, it’s “an [ad] impressions swap – totally costless” and “less intimidating, more simple” for younger startups to use. “We’ll keep it free up to a threshold,” Andrew reckons.

Connecting apps and sharing users

AdConnect’s AppSpree will focus on Chinese apps, and will soon have more options for cross-promoting by app genres, regions, and language.

“The tricky part is behind us,” says Andrew, as all the service infrastructure is now done, and the website has just gone up in both English and Chinese. The next step is to get developers on board whilst also meeting with investors and practicing for the Chinaccelerator demo day on October 31st. He admits that there’s just one app developer signed up so far, so a few more fledgling apps from “growth-related startups” are needed to get the network moving.

It’ll be up against Chinese ad platforms like Guohe, or Innovation Works-backed Umeng. But Andrew identifies Papaya’s AppFlood as closer to what they’re working on – albeit with a different model.

Expectations will be high for the Chinaccelerator 2012 graduates. Of last year’s batch, OrderWithMe quickly went on to win TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing, and then the funky Piktochart made a strong showing at our own StartupArena Singapore contest earlier this year. We’ve already looked at one of this year’s Chinaccelerator chosen ones, WeiboAgent, which is a a SaaS advisory tool built on top of social media analytics for Sina Weibo, China’s hottest Twitter-esque service.

So if you have a burgeoning app on iOS or Android (with support for WP coming later), reach out to AppSpree and perhaps join its network.