Meet our 9 superstars who made it to the Startup Asia Arena finale

The highlight of our Startup Asia Jakarta 2014 conference is, of course, the Startup Arena, which showcases interesting startups tackling unique problems in unique ways.

As always, hundreds of startups applied, making it tough to pick the best among them. We did the hard job for you, and here are the nine super smart finalists, who will battle it out this evening to take home the winner’s trophy.

[The list is in alphabetical order.]

1. Arcterus

Arcterus targets families with kids attending cram school or ‘juku’ using two main products. Caiz teaches both tutors and students how to maximize study time by defining the learning styles of students. With Clear, students who have completed their studies can upload their notebooks so other users can view them and learn how successful studiers excelled on their university entrance exams. Clear has a social element too in that users can ask questions to the original notebook owner if there is an explanation which needs clarifying.

See: Arcterus can find your ‘cognitive individuality’ and supply notebooks for excelling in school

2. Bareksa

Bareksa is a portal for trading stocks and bonds in Indonesia. It offers all the tools that experienced investors and beginners need to make informed trading decisions. More importantly, Bareksa also provides the trading platform. It features a learning center that is complete with a glossary of otherwise tricky investor lingo and an index of listed companies that are already open for investment.

See: Bareksa wants to make online trading more transparent in Indonesia

3. BookMe

Pakistani startup BookMe is an online ticket booking portal for movies, events, and bus services. Accessible via a website, an Android app, or even SMS, BookMe was the first of its kind in Pakistan. It was founded in November 2013 and incubated in Plan9, Pakistan’s first and largest tech incubator. The site launched in March. Now, it is in residence at the PlanX tech accelerator.

See: People laughed when he started an e-ticketing startup in Pakistan. Now it’s the go-to place for movie, bus, and event tickets

4. iGrow