Here’s our newest round-up of the featured startups on our site this week. If you have startup tips or story suggestions, feel free to email us or tell us about your startup on this form. Any juicy tech news tips go here. Enjoy this week’s list!
1. GourmetItUp | India
GourmetItUp is a Mumbai-based startup, which runs a restaurant reservations site focusing on curated fine dining experiences. The startup just raised US$300,000 in its first round of funding from angel investors.
2. T-Pai | Hong Kong
T-Pai, developed by Hong Kong-based startup, claims to be the world’s most high-tech doghouse. It lets you control the space’s temperature, dispense food, and activate its sewage system. You can even play Fruit Ninja with it.
3. SoftwareSuggest | India
SoftwareSuggest is a marketplace for business software that attempts to make a difference. It is a free service that helps Indian companies, professionals, and individuals to find the best software solutions for their business. This startup headquartered in Ahmedabad lists over 1,200 software items in categories like accounting, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), human resource management (HRM), campus management, and ecommerce.
4. Quan | Japan
Quan, a Tokyo-based messaging app developer that makes games and stickers for a variety of popular chat apps, announced the closure of its series A round from existing benefactors Daiwa Corporate Investment and East Ventures, who are also joined by Dentsu Digital Holdings, IMJ Investment Partners, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, and Senshu Ikeda Capital.
5. GNum | Singagpore
GNum is a free online chat service that allows people to connect using a simple URL. So, unlike with Skype, Tango, Viber, or countless other chat apps, there’s no need to sign up or log in. You just need to give the personalized URL to whoever it is you’d like to have call you. The idea is that it gives more privacy, keeping it separate from your social media life. The startup has raised about US$5.6 million in seed funding from private equity firm Tembusu Partners.
6. Bijin Tokei | Japan
With Bijin Tokei (“the beautiful woman clock”), users will see a carefully selected young Japanese woman holding up a sign that tells the current time. Every minute, the page will refresh – sometimes with a new girl, sometimes with the previous one in a new position. This repeats without stop every minute of everyday, drawing on a roster of 70,000 beautiful Japanese women.
7. Grana | Hong Kong
Hong Kong’s Grana sells luxury-quality garments at Uniqlo price points, and it just secured US$1 million in funding. The company sources top-notch fabrics – silk from China, woven cotton from Peru, denim from Japan – commissions production for in-house designs, and stores them in its own warehouse in Hong Kong
8. mClina | Philippines
Philippine startup mClinica, a mobile platform catering to the pharmaceutical industry, announced this week that it raised an undisclosed amount from 500 Startups, IMJ Investment Partners of Japan, and Kickstart Ventures of the Philippines. Through mClinica, drug companies can reach pharmacies on a large scale using mobile phones and provide programs to improve patients’ health.
9. KnowRe | South Korea and United States
Adaptive learning platform KnowRe announced it has raised US$6.8 million in funding. Existing investor SoftBank Ventures Korea led the round, while KTB Network, Partners Investment, and SparkLabs Global Ventures joined in. The platform assesses individual students’ strengths and weaknesses through a series of question-and-answers sessions – the questions are generated in real-time via an algorithm.
10. Hive.im | Hong Kong
Cloud storage provider Hive.im, a Hong Kong-based startup with staff in Eastern Europe and California, is hoping to win over average consumers with some visual sheen and a social spin. Files are laid out thumbnail style, and can be accessed inside Hive’s web app through a built-in media player. Individual storage collections are called hives, and users are encouraged to share their hives with friends they invite onto the service.
11. MangoPlate | South Korea
Available in both English and Korean, Korean restaurant discovery app MangoPlate’s database covers 200,000 restaurants across the country, searchable with personalized restaurant recommendations based on your location and places you’ve eaten at before. Users can follow other members to see what their friends are eating. This week, the company announced it secured an undisclosed series A round of funding from Softbank Ventures Korea.
12. St. Games Cafe | Singapore
St. Games Cafe, is a Singapore-based retail outlet where customers can rent video game consoles for on-site play. The retail outlet is part of a bigger startup called Gaming How, which organizes events – corporate and otherwise – that make use of gaming consoles.
13. Drivebot | Thailand
Thailand’s Drivebot provides data and feedback on the health of your car – and on you as a driver. The startup is currently seeking US$35,000 in crowdfunding on Indiegogo and has already amassed over US$12,000 with 37 days to go.
14. Ayibang | China
Ayibang – which literally means “maid help” in Chinese – has secured series B funding just 10 months after its first major round. The startup brings together domestic helpers and other useful services into one platform in a similar way to Uber’s approach to transportation. It began by covering just four services, but in the course of the year it has added in extra options such as window cleaning and air-con maintenance.
Startup lists
15 – 29. Beyond a billion: here are China’s 15 most valuable startups
30 – 35. Intel Capital invests $28 million into 5 smart Chinese startups
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We’re gearing up to bring you yet another round of our signature conference series with Startup Asia Jakarta 2014, happening 26 – 27 September 2014.
If you’re an entrepreneur, investor, developer or just someone looking to meet and learn from the speakers and companies, get your tickets now. See you there!
Like RSS? There’s always our Asia startups RSS feed!
35 startups in Asia that caught our eye
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