Indonesia’s Harpoen wins World Summit Award mobile; adds more content to app

Harpoen, an Indonesia-based startup with an augmented reality app that lets users create ‘digital graffiti’, has been selected as one of 40 winners at the World Summit Award Mobile, a biannual competition that selects the world’s most useful apps. It competed in the mobile tourism and culture category.

The startup will go on to the final event in Abu Dhabi in February 2013, where a winner in each category will be picked. Twenty-one of the top 40 come from Europe, but that’s due to the large number of nominating countries. Asia is the next largest group with 8.

In addition, Harpoen told DailySocial that it is working on partnerships to bring content to its app, such as letting users browse old photographs or related literature of a location while they are on-site.

Available for now on iOS, Harpoen will be coming to Android in a few weeks’ time. A Windows Phone version is being considered for next year.

Harpoen, a digital graffiti app, could be a billion dollar idea

Startups like Harpoen are the sort shunned by many Asian investors — they won’t make money for many years. That’s because they’re so forward-thinking that the market may not be ready for them yet. But the huge risks they bear could have immense payoffs, precisely because they are far ahead of the curve.

So what exactly is it about Harpoen that makes it so dangerously enticing? Well, essentially, it is an augmented reality (AR) mobile app that lets users leave digital graffiti on real world objects and locations, and allows other users to view them.

The company was founded in Indonesia by J.P Ellis and John Patrick, who are Americans based in Jakarta. The app was launched for the iPhone in March and has since amassed tens of thousands of user-created “harps” in the capital city and Bandung. These harps could serve as virtual noticeboards, historical notes, or even clues for a scavenger hunt. Read more