Happy 2012, folks!
As usual, we have quite a few Asian tech startups on our radar this last week, from China, Japan, and Singapore.
For folks who are interested in investing or partnering with these startups, drop us an email — hello[at]penn-olson[dot]com – anytime. No promises, but we’ll try our best to be a bridge. And if you’re a tech startup founder in Asia hoping to be featured, kindly send us your pitch here.
1. Sumally | Japan
This article about Sumally was written for WIRED Japan, and Yukari had the opportunity to translate it to English. Sumally has been covered before on PO, so consider this an update of sorts to the previous article. Sumally is an encyclopedia of all products.
2. ARappli | Japan
Augmented reality (AR) and quick response codes (QR) are pretty neat technologies. But they aren’t often used because it is tough to execute a seamless AR campaign/experience, at least from the layman’s point of view. I met up with the folks from Arara Inc. who run ARappli. Arara is a very cool company that specifically helps brands and regular people, like you and me, to solve problems using AR and QR technologies. Now, this isn’t another marketing firm that is using AR and QR for gimmicky purposes.
3. Anideo | Singapore
Singapore-based app dev startup Anideo pushed out quite a lot of apps this year. But none of them are games. So when co-founder Andrew Solimine told me that they had just released a new game, I had to dig in and check it out. Huntville is an iPad game which puts you in the role of a hunter. You can select different grade of hunters, but the higher quality ones will cost more ‘meat,’ the main currency used in Huntville.
4. Guohe | China
A Chinese startup named Guohe is getting netizens to engage in online social marketing ostensibly for no money – and giving them “free” McDonald’s food instead. It’s all handled via a brand new app for Android phones called Free McDonald’s wherein assigned promotion-related tasks are rewarded via a virtual currency system called ‘fruit coins.’ That’s somewhat ironic, as users will presumably be getting diabetes-causing junk food delicious burgers rather than fruit.
5. Yi Xia | China
I’ve said before that mobile video-sharing apps – especially ones with lots of filters and special-effects – could be big in 2012, so let’s test out one Chinese startup’s contender. Called Yi Xia Shi Pin – meaning ‘Next Video’ in Chinese – it uses the tagline “life’s for sharing” and comes with new apps for iPhone and Android. Basically, users can record video on their smartphone and then apply one of 36 filters to give it a certain look and feel, just like photos taken with Instagram.
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