Klik-Eat gets food delivered online in Jakarta, competes head-on with FoodPanda

Online food delivery websites are sprouting in Southeast Asia, with Indonesia’s Klik-Eat.com being one of them. The website has more than 130 restaurants in the country’s capital of Jakarta.

Targeting office workers and apartment residents aged 20-35 years old, the app was developed with the hopes of improving food delivery online by offering more food choices and easing ordering jams in the process.

The website was founded by six individuals: Michael Alvin Saputra, who is responsible for day-to-day operations; Andrew, who deals with the finances; and Willy, who is their developer. Three other founding members act as advisers and angel investors: Angelo, who works in the SEA private equity industry, as well as Arya and Ardi, who have successfully launched a telecommunications tower company previously. Read more

Showcase your home-cooked dishes with SnapDish

Food technology startups are a major trend in Asia this year, and even Echelon 2012 is reflecting this, with two of the finalists for this year’s pitching competition being food-related.

One of them is Snapdish, a food picture-sharing app that focuses on home cooking. The mobile app is developed by Vuzz, which was co-founded in 2010 by CEO and designer Zen Funada with four others.

SnapDish lets you upload photos of your food, alter the pictures to enhance their appeal, and share and even multipost to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Flickr, Tumblr, WordPress, and specified email addresses. Read more

Meeple hopes to lessen the suffering of South Korean students

Tangible Idea, a mobile development team from Korea, has launched Meeple, a mobile app that aims to provide mentoring services to those who are in dire need of academic and personal help.

Unveiled in January this year, it connects middle and high school students to university students in Korea.

Meeple involves two kinds of users. The first group are the mentees – middle and high school students who are unable to seek proper assistance from their peers and teachers. The app enables them to communicate with college and university students.

The other group are the mentors – these are tertiary students from college and university who have gone through secondary school and are able to attend to the mentee’s problems. Read more

Amobee goes above the weather with AccuWeather

Mobile advertising has taken on a whole new level with Amobee, mobile ad platform company responsible for defining mobile advertising, announcing an exclusive partnership with AccuWeather, the world’s leading multimedia weather information source.

A division of SingTel’s Digital L!fe Group which focuses on creating new digital growth engines, Amobee offers comprehensive, end-to-end mobile advertising solutions and services for advertisers, publishers and operators worldwide while AccuWeather on the other hand, is an innovator in mobile advertising by making its mobile inventory, mobile applications and mobile web highly contextual by providing over 100 weather, lifestyle and location attributes for advertisers to choose from.

With its US$321 million acquisition of Amobee last month, SingTel has set its sights on expanding into the mobile marketing arena, especially in the area of one-to-one connections between brands and consumers. Read more

Horizon wants to power every home with fuel cells

This electric car from London uses Horizon's fuel cells.

We just love hearing stories of regional startups that’ve made it big internationally. Southeast Asian companies like Charles & Keith, Banyan Tree Holdings and 77th Street have held the limelight in recent years and are still going strong.

Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies, a Singapore company dealing with ultra-light and low-cost energy storage solutions, is right up there with the best of them.

Making hydrogen fuel cells, which are essentially long lasting power generators that generate electricity from gas, has been a global challenge for decades now and this was where Horizon decided to step in and make fuel cell their main focus.

That was in 2004. Eight years on, they are now the world’s largest producers of micro-fuel cells in consumer and industrial applications. It has successfully brought a wide range of products out into the market, with sales spanning 65 countries in total.

We spoke to Taras Wankewycz, Executive Director and one of the co-founders of this green technology company, on its success formula and what it takes to be on top of their game. Read more

How businesses in Singapore are going green

The adoption of green practices among entrepreneurs could become the new black in 2012. With natural resources dwindling, the quest for more sustainable business practices that generate profits will remain a pressing issue for years to come.

In addition, as more consumers are willing to spend more on green products, the boon to an organization’s profitability can be substantial. As such, companies know that taking the plunge into green business practices is necessary to add to their company’s overall value.

Green Future Solutions, a Singapore-based business that promotes environmental awareness and action, provides consultancy services to help SMEs reduce costs, increase revenue, and become more sustainable. Read more

Four up-and-coming trends in the restaurant business

Cupcakes from Teacosy are sold alongside angel figurines and furniture.

As technology advances and business concepts evolve, an increasing number of F&B entrepreneurs and service solution providers are thinking out-of-the-box and making life easier for customers.

By innovating, F&B entrepreneurs enjoy reduced overheads, better customer service and additional revenue. Customers feel more satisfied too. In this article, we chart four recent trends in the F&B industry that have dramatically improved how businesses are run.

If you’re a restaurateur or cafe owner, do look at these trends and consider implementing them in your business. Read more

Little Black Book takes Facebook stalking to a whole new level

If you are actively looking for the right date or just wanted to find the right type of people to hang out with, you can consider downloading the Little Black Book app on Facebook.

This new app enables you to instantly connect and access your friends’ networks, putting to rest the trouble of finding the right individuals to connect with. Bachelors and bachelorettes can even use it to actively looking for “that someone special” through Facebook. Read more

This fashion startup put a Black Eyed Peas member into Depression

What are the chances of meeting an international artist or celebrity while walking in Orchard Road, Singapore’s well-known shopping district? Almost one in a million. It is even rarer for such an artist to declare his love for an independent, not to mention, Singaporean label.

But for local fashion label Depression, that rarity became reality when Taboo (photo), member of American hip-hop group The Black-Eyed Peas, surprised everyone with a visit to its Cineleisure Orchard store while he was in Singapore to perform a DJ set at Forbidden City.

With albums sold at an estimated 65 million records worldwide, The Black-Eyed Peas are considered one of the most popular and successful hip-hop groups in the world.

Read more

S’pore and China based Vickers leads investment in mobile solutions provider Lotaris

Singapore’s investment sector has seen some buzz lately, with Vickers Capital Group, an early-stage venture firm with offices in Shanghai and Singapore, announcing a new investment in Lotaris, a Swiss-based mobile technology company.

Vickers has led the US$9.5M (S$7.36M) Series A round with co-investors, Credit Suisse and Lausanne-based Eurofin Capital. This strategic partnership will bolster Lotaris in the Asian markets and secure growth in resources for both companies. Read more