Hackathon. Demo day. Conference. Sparxup 2012 in Jakarta.

Indonesia’s biggest and most prestigious tech startup competition and conference is back. Sparxup 2012 is taking place this October in Jakarta and promises to be bigger and better. This time, the conference’s grand theme is XXX: eXplore, eXecute, eXpand. There will also be the usual Sparxup competition where startups vie to outshine one another, and there will also be a hackathon with APIs available from Foursquare, Evernote and Nokia. Read on to find out more:

XXX Conference
It’s all about sharing knowledge, good discussions and awesome networking sessions. There will be people from Foursquare, Evernote, Netprice, Thomson-Reuters, Microsoft and Yahoo! Indonesia with audience from more than 20 countries gathered to know more about Indonesia’s tech scene.

Startup Competition
Sparxup 2012 is about products, so startups will DEMO their product on the Demo Day in front of judges, investors and selected audience in a private environment.

Juries will filter and pick 24 startups from each category to proceed to Demo Day where each startup will have 5 minutes to demo their product at the Demo Day. But each startup representative will also have a chance for a one sentence pitch on stage during the awarding night right before we announce the 1st and 2nd winner.

Hackathon
Hackathon participants will submit their ideas for an app using one of our supported platforms (Foursquare, Evernote and Nokia) and our committee will filter to top 30 ideas. Top 30 participants will spend 15 hours from Oct 3-4th 2012 on the venue under our mentor’s watch to further develop the app. Hackathon event will be ended with a demo and judging session from all participants, winner will be announced at the awarding night.

Judges will pick one Hacker (or team) as the best hacks to win the top prize.

This Coderace Hackathon event is supported by Foursquare, Evernote and Nokia.

Event Details
When: Wednesday-Friday 3-5th October 2012
Where: Plaza Bapindo, Jln. Jend. Sudirman kav. 54-55, Jakarta Selatan. 12910, Jakarta, Indonesia (map)
Fee: Paid event.

REGISTER HERE.

SGE is proud to be a Media Partner of Sparxup 2012.

Jakarta is world’s top Twitter city; other Asia-Pacific nations make strong showing

Jakarta has been ranked the top Twitter city in the world by Semiocast, a Paris-based company that provides data intelligence and research on social media. The cities are ranked based on the number of posted tweets.

The company says that the results are based on a sample of 1.058 billion tweets in June this year. Tokyo, in second place, is not far behind, while Bandung (Indonesia), Singapore, Osaka and Seoul also made the list. Read more

Innovation & Creativity Workshop with Co-founder of Apple Steve Wozniak

Don’t miss out on this great and rare opportunity to hear Steve Wozniak, Co-founder of Apple, share his experiences and thoughts at the Innovation & Creativity Workshop, organized by 3 Ocean Act! This seminar will take place in Jakarta on Tuesday, July 17 2012 and will discuss topics surrounding digital technology and innovation, and will also allow attendees to network with one another. Apart from Steve Wozniak, the speaker lineup includes experienced professionals such as Rene Suhardono, Founder of Impact Factory Indonesia, Daniel Tumiwa, Country Manager at Multiply, and Ligwina Hananto, Co-founder and CEO of Quantum Magna Financial. Read more

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

Video interviews with the who’s who of Startup Asia Jakarta 2012

I’m having a great time here at Startup Asia Jakarta 2012, chatting with industry experts, community leaders and startups based here.

Here are some quick videos to show what’s happening at the event.

Andrew Darwis, CTO of Kaskus

Kaskus is Indonesian largest online community. Andrew talks about the challenges of e-payments in Indonesia and how Kaskus is building it’s own payment gateway, KasPay to solve this problem. Read more

Kark is refreshing trading cards for the future, and they educate kids too

I remember the time, over a decade ago, when Magic: The Gathering trading cards were the rage. Boys would play them below apartment blocks and on hidden corners of shopping malls.

They’re so addictive that my school would punish any student caught playing them while in school uniform. Newspapers sensationalized about the evils of these collectible cards, much like they do now with World of Warcraft.

While I think much of this negative hype towards games are overblown,  Kark, one of twelve incubatees at Singapore’s JFDI-Innov8 Bootcamp, is taking the message seriously and has embarked on a mission to make games less harmful to kids. They’re achieving this by making educational trading cards that interact with smartphones through companion mobile apps.

“Children love games, but they don’t benefit. Only developers do,” says CEO and serial entrepreneur Sindhu Prabowo Dilaksono, who heads a team of four Indonesian co-founders.

“Doing educational apps is one way of making money without feeling guilty.” Read more

And the winners of the Jakarta International Space Apps Challenge are…

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The Challenge is a global event that is happening in 24 cities around the world, and even on the International Space Station. Read more

Pitch, Battle, and Win US$10,000 at Startup Arena in Jakarta

Startup Asia Jakarta 2012, hosted by Tech in Asia, is pleased to invite startups across Asia to apply for the upcoming Startup Arena competition to be held in Jakarta, Indonesia, on June 7 and 8.

Startup Arena is a startup competition run within Startup Asia Jakarta 2012 for entrepreneurs, serving as a launchpad for startups to get a headstart in Asia’s mobile and internet industry today. About 20 startups will be selected to pitch and challenge on the Arena stage, in front of top investors, industry leaders, and press for US$10,000 as a top prize. Startups can send in their applications here.

Submissions will be reviewed based on a first-come-first-served basis, hence it would be an added advantage to submit your application early so that entrepreneurs can prep their killer pitches. Tech In Asia will give preference to startups who are new, struggling, and unknown but with a brilliant product to demo and an awesome team.

Demo is a primary requirement, and pitches have to be done in English. The team at Startup Arena will also provide a week-by-week pitch consultation in the run-up to the event to help practice your pitch. The recent Arena competition held at Singapore attracted about 300 applications, out of which 19 startups were selected to compete.

Teamie, an educational collaboration platform, walked away as the Startup Arena Singapore winner last time round. According to Tech In Asia, long with Teamie, other finalists at Startup Arena Singapore have gone on to secure seed funding – namely GushCloud and Phroni.

Startup Arena Jakarta will take place at Upperroom at Annex building, Jakarta, from June 7th – 8th, 2012.

New Indonesian-based startup accelerator announced

A 100-day startup accelerator program called East Ventures Alpha will open for registration in August 2011. The first run will last from September to November in South Jakarta, Indonesia, although this initiative is not just restricted to startups from that area. Read more