Malaysia Entrepreneurs » techcrunch

This Week in Asia Episode 58: Live from Open Web Asia SEA

Daniel CerVentus — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 03:50:30 +0000

TweetIt has been an exciting week for the Malaysia web/tech scene with the Open Web Asia – Southeast Asia conference happening in Kuala Lumpur on 13-14 July. The TWIA crew hosted a live show with Serkan Toto (@serkantoto) from TechCrunch & Brian Wong (@brian_wong) formerly from Digg and now followFormation as our guests. We touched on some hot topics with great seats about InMobi’s 8M fund-raising success, the feedback about the Open Web Asia Conference and interesting start-ups which caught our eye, how Asian start-ups should improve on their pitching so to attract investors (and Asian investors should be more harsh on feedback to the entrepreneurs here) and Serkan’s interesting prediction for Asian companies in the next few decades. A special treat for all our listeners that you can view the video of the live show here.

You can watch the This Week in Asia Live Show Video from Satoo.TV.

Photo credited to Shereen Shah and Sham Hardy: The panel comprising of (from the left) Bernard Leong, Daniel Cerventus, Serkan Toto, Brian Wong, Michael Smith Jr and Chew Lin Kay.

This Week in Asia Episode 56: Attack of The Groupon Clones

Daniel CerVentus — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:47:59 +0000

TweetYes, Google vs China comes to a stunning conclusion with one side making a kow-tow, and the emergence of Groupon clones taking over Asia springing from China and Singapore. How will all these change the landscape of Asia? With Chew Lin taking the helm as the moderator for the first time, the TWIA crew examines the key issues which dominate Asia, with little quibbles over Microsoft’s dropping of Kin, Huawei putting Froyo onto their Chinese Android phones, Mixi making a minor Linkedin, Amazon’s acquisition of Woot and the major differences between e-commerce in Southeast Asia & East Asia.

The Groupon Clones in Asia: With Groupon Clones springing up from China (400+ according to Gang Lu) and Singapore (about 4 according to E27 SG), how is the whole e-commerce fever hitting across the Asian landscape?
Google vs China: The conclusion is that Google buckered down with an official blog release, but what are the next steps for the search engine giant to take on the Great Firewall of China? Is it with Froyo (Android 2.2) loaded with Huawei phones?
Is Mixi creating a minor Linkedin: Are they going to back to their roots or are they running out of ideas?
Microsoft drops Kin and what happens now?
Quibbles on Amazon’s acquisition on Woot and the e-commerce market in Southeast Asia vs East Asia.
Upcoming Events: Open Web Asia – Southeast Asia on 13 and 14 July (and you can use our promo code “TWIA” to register with 10% discount) & BlinkBl-nk on the 19 July.
And one last thing: Chew Lin now has an official twitter account, @chewlink – please add her to show your support.

TWIA Episode 50: Live from Echelon

Daniel CerVentus — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 23:11:30 +0000

Tweet Coming live from Echelon 2010 on 2 June with the largest panel ever assembled and a major announcement, the TWIA crew is in full force for the 1st time with interesting threads of discussion ever pursued. With the major announcement for TWIA that DailySocial.net (Indonesia) and Mobinode.com (China) will syndicate our show in the future, we hope to extend our show to reach further shores that provide Asia with the analysis on news which rocked the web, mobile and tech space. In our distinguished panel, we have Dave McClure (@davemcclure), Serkan Toto (@serkantoto) from TechCrunch, Mohan Belani from E27 (@mohanbelani), Gen Kanai from Mozilla Corporation (@genkanai), Rama Mamuaya from DailySocial.net (@rampok) and the full team with Chew Lin Kay (@chewlink) and Michael Smith (@dreampipe). We start with a review of Echelon 2010 with discussion on social gaming, the shift from web to mobile browser in Asia, the start-ups launch with Foound leading the way and Dave’s thoughts on how they can improve for the future. Following on, we crisscrossed through a variety of issues crossing from country to country (China, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and etc.), the travel stories from Geeks on a Plane (GOAP) and take interesting questions from our audience. Finally, we wrapped up with what all our panelists wish for Echelon 2011.

TWIA Panel Display Screen (taken by Farry Aprianto and tagged by Mohan Belani in Echelon 2010)

Editor’s Note: The sound quality is perfect after the first few minutes with some calibration from the start. Please bear with us. We will post pictures in this event once we receive them from the organizers.

TWIA Episode 29 : This Week in Japan

Daniel CerVentus — Fri, 07 May 2010 06:00:20 +0000

TweetFor this week, the TWIA crew is joined by Serkan Toto, a special guest from Japan, who is the only Asia correspondent for TechCrunch. We diced and sliced through the news happening in Japan: (a) DeNA’s reported profits and its competition with Gree, (b) Google is now booted out of mobile search by NTT-Docomo, the largest telco in Japan with them adopting Goo, (c) the new mobile apps platform set up by various Japan handset vendors including NTT-Docomo, and finally, we have a Singapore start-up named TenCube making headway in China.

DeNA Reports USD100M On Quarterly Profit and focus on social apps business: We examine the landscape of mobile social gaming, and how the fight is now intensified between DeNA and Gree with a lawsuit over a fishing game on Japanese handsets.
Google Losing Default Mobile Search Engine Position On Docomo i-mode Portal, A Gate To Half Of Japanese Mobile Web: Google is once again being snubbed and where do they go from here after NTT-Docomo, the largest telco dissed them for another mobile search engine. However, it did not help with Goo crashing on the first day when they realized that they could not handle the load.
Japan’s next generation mobile application platform: NTT-Docomo is leading the way with Renesas Electronics, Fujitsu, NEC, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Sharp to create a new mobile applications platform. We wonder whether they are planning to take the Apple iPhone head-on given their recent success in the Japanese market. We surprise you by where Apple might get the idea of the mobile apps store.
TenCube, SG based start-up and winner of Android Developer Challenge 2 last year got an award in China. : So, where is TenCube going after traversing from India to China?
Don’t miss out these major events too: Wordcamp MY, PyCon APAC 2010 and definitely, Echelon 2010.

The Malaysian Joojoo Pad

Daniel CerVentus — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:00:42 +0000

TweetNo this is not a Malaysia clone of the Ipad or its clone. This is a rather interesting new twist to the JooJoo/Crunchpad incident.

In case you missed out, Fusion Garage(FG), a Singaporean company was supposed to partner with Techcrunch to launch their version of the Ipad called the Crunchpad. A few days before the launch, Michael Arrington announced the death of the Crunchpad. What happened after that was FG decided to launch the product by themselves and renaming it the Joojoo.

With an impending case with Techcrunch, FG was taking pre-order and announced they received a new round of investment and a partnership with a South East Asia mobile player. This “major mobile player” is no other than Malaysia’s own CSL group. According to their site, “CSL is a leading and most established mobile phone service company in Malaysia”. CSL group is a retailer, service provider and currently manufacturing mobile devices and netbooks.
Their carry their own range such as the Blueberry and the Nseries netbooks.

With this partnership, CSL will be their manufacturing partner for the Joojoo and we will expect to see the device in the market by end of Feb.

When asked by SgEntrepreneurs on the Ipad, Chandrasekar said with the bigger screen and faster loading time, the Joojoo will be formidable and he thanked for opening up the market as pre-order of the Joojoo pad has increased since the announcement of the Ipad.

We have yet to get any comment from CSL when this article was published.

To find out on some of our thoughts on the Crunchpad Joojoo incident, listen to ThisWeekinAsia Episode 5