Most of the stories this week – chosen by seven of our bloggers – focus on startups, which has to be a positive sign that some of the region’s most dynamic young companies can get everyone talking. Here’s our weekly selection.
Willis’ and Andrew’s pick: The New York Times Gets Xiaomi Way, Way Wrong
Willis: A very misleading article by the NYT torn apart by our very own Charlie Custer. Bravo, really. China’s Xiaomi deserves more credit than what the NYT author gave it, which obviously is blinded by a very thick coat of Apple/American pride and ego.
Andrew: As a Xiaomi user, I’ve never likened Xiaomi’s Mi2 to Apple’s iPhone. There are plenty of differences if you were to get down to the specifics. Like how Charlie has explained in the article, those differences might actually work in Xiaomi’s favor. I’m a huge Apple fanboy but Xiaomi indeed deserves more credit for manufacturing a phone with a high level of performance at an affordable price for Chinese consumers.
Youshen’s pick: Dropmysite Now Turns Emails Into Business Insights
Personally, I find this amazingly impactful. How often do you find yourself searching for your business data and contacts in your emails? I am not sure about you, but I can definitely count more than my ten fingers. Way much more than I’d like. I can find similar services such as Gmail Meter and Google Vault but there are businesses who are not on Google Apps. Affordable pricing aside, I see great potential in this enterprise service for information governance.
Vanessa’s pick: DocDoc and DoctorPage Merge, Form New Company
We don’t really see competing startups merge that often. But this week we see doctor booking portals DocDoc and DoctorPage merge, taking on the name DocDoc. The new concoction, I believe, would be an exciting one because it would mean combining each other’s strengths to build an even better product for its users in Singapore and other nearby markets.
Minghao’s pick: 3D Printer Maker Pirate3D Now Aims for $1 Million on Kickstarter
Although 3D printing technology has been around in the market for a while and it is not new, it hasn’t become a common consumer product yet. Singaporean startup Pirate3D is making this technology available to consumers at an affordable price. This is disruptive and I’m excited to see how the young company can scale in the coming months.
Steven’s pick: How Tokopedia is Building Indonesia’s Taobao
I’ve always thought that Indonesia’s still emerging e-commerce industry can learn a good few tricks from China, where online shopping has been pretty well established in the last decade since the launch of Alibaba’s Taobao. Apparently the two founders of Indonesian C2C marketplace Tokopedia are actually putting that into practice in their own business, looking to Alibaba’s Jack Ma for inspiration. A couple of days after this nice interview article, Tokopedia raised another major round of funding, this time from Softbank Ventures Korea.
Charlie’s pick: WeChat Looks to Take on Qihoo as With New Security Features
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