Among tech startup circles in Singapore, Yuuzoo is not a tech company that’s particularly well-known.
But the social media and e-commerce firm, which even has a Square-like mobile point-of-sales system, recently caused a small blip on the radar by completing a reverse takeover of public-listed but declining hardware company Contel, paving the way for an entry into the Singapore Stock Exchange. The deal gives Yuuzoo majority ownership of Contel, valued at USD 582.3M.
Contel’s share price has remained at USD 0.08 since the announcement.
It isn’t stopping there. Now comes news that Yuuzoo has made another acquisition, this time a cash and share deal with IAHGames, a games distributor and operator in Singapore. Read more
SingTel’s mWallet: Hype or substance?
There’s a lot of noise recently about the wonders of mobile money and how smartphones will bring about a dawn of the cashless society. Google Wallet has been at the forefront of this push in the United States, and here in Singapore, SingTel’s recently launched mCash is touted as a reinvention of money.
Facetious claim indeed, considering how credit cards and cash are still how people prefer to pay — even online.
But a lot of resources have been pumped into making mobile wallets work. The NFC Forum has the backing of some of the world’s top technology companies, and it’s quite possible that the technology will become ubiquitous in smartphones. Read more
Scoop, a top digital newsstand app from Indonesia, is expanding to India, Singapore, Malaysia, and Philippines. It has launched localized iOS apps in those countries, adding titles from publishers India Today Group, SPH Magazines from Singapore, and The Philippine Star Group of Publications. Read more
Sprooki, a location-based marketing platform for retailers and shopping malls, has announced today that it will be expanding to Australia. Andrew Lockwood, founder of PostClick, has been appointed the startup’s representative partner in the country.
Since launching in Singapore last year, Sprooki has road tested its app with over 80 retail brands and malls. It also signed its first customer — Singapore shopping mall 313@Somerset — and sealed a deal with startup YFind to integrate indoor positioning services into Sprooki. Read more
Since launching in October last year, mobile loyalty app Pouch has been off to a running start, picking up traction among merchants in Indonesia. It is now looking to expand abroad, with Philippines as its first overseas stop.
The Singapore and Indonesia based startup has revealed that it has a presence in 25 shopping malls in Jakarta, representing over 70 brands. It claims to be the market leader in the country. Agreements are in place with major malls Kuningan City, Bellagio, FX and Central Park, and even a nutrition website to implement loyalty features.
While it isn’t revealing exact consumer-related figures, it will say that it has some tens of thousands of active users every month.
Pouch is available on Android, iOS, and Blackberry and is free for consumers to use. Most of its users would appear to be on the Blackberry platform, since the Android app has less than 5,000 active installs at the moment. Read more
Amobee, a mobile advertising company acquired by SingTel for USD 321M, has announced today an exclusive partnership with four mobile operators: Philippines’ Globe, Australia’s Optus, Indonesia’s Telkomsel, and SingTel from Singapore.
The partnership will involve Amobee integrating its publisher-side mobile advertising platform, PULSE for Publishers, with mobile inventory belonging to the four telcos. Read more
Singapore-based early stage fund TNF Ventures has invested SGD 588K (USD 475K) in MoGi, a mobile wallet app developed by Mobile Media Creations. The Singapore government’s National Research Foundation is a co-investor through the Technology Incubation Scheme.
Available on iPhone and Android for free, MoGi enables users to store virtual pre-paid cards, rewards programs, and discount coupons to over 220 dining, health, retail, and beauty outlets in Singapore. Users can even send gifts to one another. It was launched in October 2012. Read more
ShopSpot had a rough 2012 when, after a hot start, its peer-to-peer mobile marketplace struggled to take off. Now, with a SGD 779K (USD 628K) cash injection from Jungle Ventures and SingTel Innov8, the Thailand and Singapore based startup is giving it a second go.
While the app (available on iOS) received 10,000 downloads in just over a month when it launched in April last year, CEO and co-founder Natsakon Kiatsuranon found 60 days in that the Craigslist model does not seem to work well in Asia. That was not the only challenge.
“It was so much harder than we thought to built a two-sided marketplace,” said Nat, echoing another startup that faced similar challenges and had to pivot. Read more
Singapore’s top two mobile operators SingTel and StarHub have made known today that they are taking the fight to WhatsApp, which has become the dominant messaging service in many parts of the world. Faced with declining revenues from SMS, both telcos are developing their own chat apps that they hope to launch within the next few months.
While the Today article is vague about SingTel’s plans, it reports that StarHub will be working with Vodafone to create an ‘interoperable’ service that includes instant messaging, video calls, and file sharing.
But here’s the problem: what StarHub has described sounds exactly like WhatsApp.
Sure, it would have been feasible to develop a WhatsApp killer one or two years ago, but the fact is that market conditions have shifted dramatically in one important way: They’re no longer battling against just Whatsapp or Vibe, but also Kakaotalk, Wechat, Line, and many others. Read more
Touchten, a top mobile games developer from Indonesia, has announced that its latest free-to-download title, Train Legend, has reach the top 5 position overall in the United States iOS App Store. It has logged over 200,000 downloads within 24 hours.
Created by a lean 15-person team, Train Legend, which is also available on Android, is a puzzler that tasks players with connecting color-matched railroads in order to create a path for trains. Reviewers, which gave it an average of 3 out of 5 stars, have noted its similarities to Flow Free, an earlier game where players join pipes to let water through. Read more