We weren’t blown away by the typhoon, but we were blown away by these 5 Hong Kong startups

Hosting the event, from L-R, Judges Roland Yau, Mark Syz and Jonathon Li

Approaching stop four of our eight-city tour of Asia, this writer arrived nice and early the evening before the event. Everything seemed pleasant. Visiting Hong Kong is usually a painless and largely hassle-free affair, except on this occasion we were very rudely interrupted by an incoming typhoon that never really happened. So we waited through the evening of the July 9 at our hotel, peering out the window expecting the excitement of downed trees and swaying power lines, only to be disappointed by the mildest of drizzles. Sigh. Luckily for us, we managed to very quickly reschedule the Tech in Asia Hong Kong Tour event to the next day (last Friday) and all went along largely as planned.

Greeting us at the CoCoon co-working space on the afternoon of the event, CoCoon investment director Roland Yau, an especially upbeat and informed member of the Hong Kong startup community, helped us arrange everything into position for the onslaught of guests that was to arrive.

Attendees spanned the gamut from fellow startup founders, to students, to onlookers and even other media outlets – shout out to HK-based Jumpstart magazine! Judges at the table included scheduled guests, Roland Yau of CoCoon, Mark Syz the managing director of global co-investment group, ACE & Company Hong Kong and replacement judge and venture associate, Jonathan Li of HK-based accelerator Brinc. Invited expert and judge Koichi Saito, the founder and general partner of KK Fund, was unable to attend the event due to the rescheduling.

Each of the 5 scheduled startups took turns pitching the audience and the triumphant winner got an all-expenses paid trip to our Tech in Asia Tokyo event in September. Said winner will be setup at Tokyo with a free Bootstrap Alley booth, giving them a chance to network with investors and chat with potential users.

Here are the 5 startups in pitching order.

Mavsocial

First up was Chris Hodgeman of Sydney, Australia, the general manager of Mavsocial. Mavsocial is a United States/Hong Kong outfit with a product that helps small and medium-sized enterprises deal with the glut of content they cross-post across various social networks.

By storing audio visual content in a singular content management system, Mavsocial enables smaller firms to better coordinate their social media campaigns, managing a consistent message across all platforms. “At the moment, what people do is they use a variety of tools to manage and publish content,” said Hodgeman. “We enable our users to be able to upload all of their content to our platform and publish globally and we have data analytics to determine which images are most appropriate.”

Mavsocial is already live and growing at a rate of 30 percent month-on-month, but they’re looking to expand their presence in the Southeast Asia region with localisation for each new market.

Easycare

Easycare offers a service promising to bring down costs and add flexibility to the health care industry. The problem with the current situation in Hong Kong is an acute lack of affordable carer services for the middle class. Whether assisting with the care of elderly parents or people with disabilities, much of the costs associated with this industry are inflated.

Easycare’s service is hosted on the web and has a register of carers and an allocation system similar to what can be seen with other O2O services like Airbnb. The service is live and hopes to raise funding to reach more people.

Swapit

Swapit is an app for Android that allows users to more immediately post their wares for sale based on their location. Inspired by the popularity of local Facebook fan pages, which are often used for selling second-hand goods, Hong Kong-based founder Patrick Kosiol thought there must be a more streamlined approach to the process of posting ads.

Unlike conventional listing services which merely associate ads with text titles, Swapit displays ads in a tile-like format similar to Instagram and allows users to view ads according to location through Google Maps. Additionally, the program is able to alert users as soon as an item fitting a searched description becomes available, making waiting for a recycled pram stroller or relatively new mobile phone a much more convenient affair.

Monexo

Monexo is the latest offering in the peer-to-peer lending space hoping to establish itself in Hong Kong. With current lending rates climbing as high as 30 percent for residents of Hong Kong, Monexo sees great opportunity in removing barriers to the access of more flexible and affordable credit.

Monexo is live on the web in beta form and is operating throughout Hong Kong and Singapore. The team hopes to expand to India in the not too distant future.

Nexpaq

Do you remember the Phonebloks viral sensation of a few years ago? Or how about Project Ara? If you don’t, you should immediately click the aforementioned links, and be prepared to be amazed and then very quickly disappointed because, as is common with such things, development on both projects seems to have stalled. The good news is, however, that Nexpaq appears to be the next best thing. Instead of replacing your current handheld with an entirely new design, with Nexpaq, you can simply attach the Nexpaq case to a number of existing phones and add additional functionality to your phone.

Like how with Project Ara, you buy essentially a shell of a phone with a motherboard and not much else, in the Nexpaq iteration, users buy a smartphone case which they can plug their smartphone into and then proceed to customise to their hearts content.

But there can only be one winner…

After a tense few minutes of deliberation by the judges, one stand-out startup was announced and crowned – it was Nexpaq, the winner of the 2015 Hong Kong leg of the Tech in Asia tour!

and the winner is…. Nexpaq!

While much of the conversation in the eastern hemisphere tends to revolve around the burgeoning startup scene in the big cities of China, often overlooked is the small ball of excitement to the south that exists in Hong Kong. We’re proud to have been apart of this excitement for the brief moment we were here and look forward to all future interaction with local players in the area.

Stay tuned ladies and gents, our next two Tour stops happen simultaneously. Bangkok and Fukuoka, here we come!

Meet Nexpaq and a bunch of other quality startups at Tech in Asia Tokyo 2015, to be be held on September 8 and 9 in Tokyo. Tickets are still available for purchase here.

Sponsors

A heart-felt thanks to our Hong Kong sponsors and partners.