“We seek and back companies that are transforming industries, and Unity Technologies is one of these companies. Developers have consistently recognized Unity as a leader in 3D game technology and user experience,” says Michel Birnbaum, partner at iGlobe Partners.

Raymond Yang, founding partner and managing director of WestSummit Capital, who also participated in this round of funding, has this to say: ”Unity’s cross platform solution has been highly regarded as the best 3D game development platform among China developers and enabled them to develop highly differentiated gaming products.”

Sequoia Capital, which is a current investor, has also injected more funds into the company.

Unity Technologies, based in San Francisco, plans to use the investment to expand further into Asia. They hope to help their Asian developer base make better use of the Unity platform.

The company’s CEO and co-founder David Helgason adds: “For our next expansion phase, we decided to work with WestSummit Capital and iGlobe Partners because of their incredible understanding of and networks in Asia — our most strategic growth area — and their understanding of the region’s market dynamics. The fact that they’re great people doesn’t hurt either.”

iGlobe Partners is headquartered in Singapore and has a presence in Silicon Valley, Shanghai and New Zealand. The team includes chairman Philip Yeo, who also heads SPRING Singapore. They invest in technology companies in the areas of wireless technology and mobile applications, digital media, clean tech, next generation materials, applications of semiconductor technology and IT/Bio convergence.

Their portfolio includes Singapore-based Sparky Animation, a full-fledged animation production and content development company, Xumii from New Zealand, which develops mobile apps for social networking, and US-based Telenav, a mobile location-based app developer.

In 2010, business magazine Red Herring selected iGlobe Partners as a Top 100 Global VC (see story here).

Here you can find some interesting startup news from China, not only in its capital, Beijing, but also other startup hubs such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Hangzhou, and many more.

(1) According to a local report, Baidu is stealthily developing its own Mobile OS(codenamed Qiushi which means fruits in autumn) which is based around Android and will be released by year-end. Baidu dismissed the rumor by referring Qiushi as an under-developing mobile ad product.

(2) Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like service, experienced its first mass virus attack last week. A large number of users posted the exact same new stories with links to their Weibo.

(3) Nut Shell Electronics, the e-reading subsidiary of Shanda, announced a lowering its Bambook e-reader’s price to RMB 499 (US$ 77), nearly 50% percent off the current RMB 999 (US$ 154) price tag.

(4) Douguo.com, a pioneer in China for its food recipe sharing service, announced that it won first round funding of up to RMB 10 million (US$ 1.54 million) from Chinese online game vendor Shanda Interactive, which is a record high in the food social networking service field and the first investment made by Shanda in such an area.

(5) After 54 hours of non-stop sweat, blood, and caffeine, 5 teams and 39 entrepreneurs presented to a packed house of investors and tech enthusiasts at StartupWeekend Beijing. Here’s a round-up of the five startup teams that came out of StartupWeekend Beijing. E-commerce was a theme among this batch.

(6) Baidu officially launched its Mobile Box Computing effort last week in Beijing, which is aiming to offer search engine users with instant and intuitive access to all kinds of features which are “outside of the box”.

(7) Find Japan announced that it would partner with Sina Corp to market its Twitter-like Weibo service in Japan.

(8) Tencent, China’s most used Internet service portal, is shopping again. Lin Nin, CEO of FTuan, a daily deal site in China, confirmed that Tencent invested in the company for an undisclosed sum.

(9) Baidu’s overseas expansion brought about a total loss of over RMB 680 million (US$ 105 million), or RMB 196 million (US$ 30 million) in 2008, RMB 224 million (US$ 34 million) in 2009 and RMB 260 million (US$ 40 million) in 2010.

(10) Jason Zeng, the billionaire co-founder and former COO of Tencent, who is the largest shareholder of newly public Taomee, has been taken away by authorities to “assist in an investigation”.

(11) Statistics released by NYSE show that, by June 30, there are already seven Chinese firms that went public on NYSE in the first half of the year.

(12) Baidu, the largest search engine which claims over 83.6% of Chinese search market share, announced that the company had struck a deal to team up with Microsoft’s search offering Bing in an effort to speed up Baidu’s pace of overseas expansion.

(13) Chinese group buying site Meituan, has announced that it recently obtained tens of millions in US dollars for its second-round funding from Chinese B2C e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, Northern Light Venture Capital and its first round investor Sequoia Capital.

(14) App Annie, the global leading provider of app store analytics and marketing intelligence for the Apple App Store, got Series A investment from IDG Capital Partners.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.

Bubble Motion is already working closely with several large associates within the SingTel Group, including Bharti Airtel in India, Telkomsel in Indonesia, and Globe in the Philippines.

Since Bubble Motion launched Bubbly™ in 2009, its flagship voice-based social messaging service, it has gained over 7 million users across 4 countries (India, Indonesia, Japan and Philippines) and has delivered more than 250 million “bubble messages” through its service.

Sometime back, I was invited by Preetam Rai to attend the launch of Ogywawa, an interesting web service integrating with the mobile phone for users to buy drinks for friends. If this is not interesting, Sunil Coushik, the co-founder of Ogywawa, started the company BubbleMotion (funded by Sequoia Capital and based in Singapore). We managed to get him to come on board to talk about Ogywawa and the challenges ahead for this festive season if you are thinking of gatherings and meetings with friends from clubs to pubs.

BL: Hi Sunil, thank you for accepting an interview with SGE. Tell us about yourself and what have you been up to before Ogywawa?

Sunil: Hi – I have been an entrepreneur all my life. I started a newspaper when I was 15 – that’s how I got interested in ventures.

In 1999, we started a company called Ceasewire labs working on mobile messaging and collaborative filters for mobile networks. We started with 6 people and sold the business in 2000 to an internet consulting company based out of Santa Clara. I then started Bubble Motion with my partner in 2004.
In 2007, last quarter I decided to take a small break.

In 2008 – Ray Koh and I started working on ogywawa.com. We needed engineering help, so we decided to recruit our third founder – Sandeep back in Bangalore to help us scale ogywawa.com.

BL: What is the motivation behind Ogywawa? Is it just to give you ample supply of free drinks for chatting up ladies in bars?

Sunil: We just kept asking ourselves what friends buy each other – the answer was drinks. We organized an experiment with a group, earlier this year and received some encouraging feedback. We also felt that if we could approach a few things differently then the original idea would have a potential for business here. So we continued to work on what might make sense in Singapore. So in short ogywawa will be an interesting social network that people will use to find unique things to gift in Singapore.

BL: How does Ogywawa work for the customer who uses your services?

Sunil: With Ogywawa you can delight your friends with drinks, personalized “adventures”, beauty treatments, great food and other interesting stuff. On the website, you can decide the kind of gift you wish to give, fill in your details
Select the type of gift you wish to give. On the order page, you will be asked to fill in your and your friends’ details. Click on the “Proceed” button and then check out by paying using your credit card or PayPal. Your friend shall receive an SMS alerting them about your gift and a gift coupon number that can be redeemed at a partner establishment. Pls take a tour here: http://ogywawa.blogspot.com/

BL: What are the top 5 features which you want us check it out in Ogywawa?

Sunil: We think interesting features are:

• OGYME: Request your friend to buy any gift item you like from ogywawa store.
• OGYLIST: Allows you to add items to your wish list called Ogylist – and twitter the url / blog it or have it on Facebook status
• Mobile Coupon: A coupon is sent to the recipient. This can be redeemed at any of our participating outlets.

BL: One of the difficult parts of Ogywawa is that you need to coordinate with bar outlets, do you face considerable challenge in convincing them to try your solution? Any interesting stories to share?

Sunil: We do face issues coordinating with outlets, but we feel that as we make our presence felt our teething problems would slowly fade away and would make business sense in the long run.

One of the best things about Singapore’s businesses are they are always eager and open to try new ideas. The bigger challenge, however, is to build upon this ‘interest’ to bring about meaningful revenue. And in the end, it’s all about making people’s lives easier and fun.

BL: Are you planning to bring Ogywawa into online social networks in the form of app?

Sunil: Yes we are going to be on social networks shortly.

BL: What are the three attributes that an entrepreneur should have in your opinion?

Sunil: (1) Ability to understand and add ‘value’ in the context of the business, (2) Lust for money and (3) Lot of enthusiasm.

BL: So, when will I have the chance to buy anyone in any bar out there?

Sunil: We are in discussions with a lot of outlets and we promise that you will soon see the adoption of ogywawa by the outlets.

BL: Thank you for the interview, we wish you all the best with Ogywawa. Also to our readers: Merry Christmas & Happy New Year.