Our TWIA producer, Mike Foong is finally back with the crew in the virtual studio after 3 months of hiatus, with also one of our highest recurring special guests, Serkan Toto (@serkantoto) from TechCrunch in Japan to talk about the top news that rocked the web and tech landscape in Asia this week. We discussed a few big hitters in the form of TenCent’s acquisition of Comsenz, the growing popularity of Sekai Camera and Koprol’s TV ad that rocked Indonesia along with other stories that focused on e-commerce in Asia, online forums and the big events in Asia which will have our September and October calendars all filled up.
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Filed under MediaTags: AliBaba, Asiajin Meetup, Auctiva, Comsenz, Facebook Places, Geek Camp, Hackerspace SG, Koprol, Rakuten, Seedcamp, Sekai Camera, Serkan Toto, Social Media World Forum Asia, TechCrunch, TenCent, This Week in Asia, TWIA
We have often talked about the success of TenCent and QQ in Asia. Inside their history, MIH Group, a division of Naspers, is one of their investors and owns 38% of TenCent in China. So, we have invited Craig White, CEO of MIH Group, a division of Naspers to join us in the TWIA virtual studio. Probably our most stellar guest so far, Craig shares his thoughts on the story on how MIH invested in TenCent, E-Commerce in Asia and also a bunch of companies in Southeast Asia, BuzzCity and Lelong that they have invested. Read more
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Filed under MediaTags: Craig White, E-Commerce, Groupon, MIH Group, MyGengo, Naspars, QPod, QQ, TenCent, This Week in Asia, TWIA
The TWIA crew are brought together in Smithy’s place where all of us can have a great view of the Singapore city landscape. With wine and pizza, the crew discussed the news that dominate the Asian landscape – first with everything on Blackberry and their run-ins with the governments of Saudi Arabia and India, some thoughts on recent events from Mark Hurd’s resignation from HP to Google-Verizon’s Net Neutrality proposal and our friends in Hackerspace Hong Kong.
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Filed under MediaTags: blinkBL-NK, Facebook, FlutterScape, Google, HP, Net Neutrality, Nokia, palm, RIM, TenCube, This Week in Asia, TWIA, Verizon
The TWIA crew is back this week with a laser focus on acquisitions that are spreading across Asia, with Transfer-To and Unoh being the biggest beneficiaries, and what’s more with Temasek investing in Tudou, one of the top video sharing sites in China. Of course, we celebrated the final end of Friendster as the company MOL who acquired them, sold the set of social networing patents to Facebook with an exclusive deal of distributing FB credits in Southeast Asia. If you think that news of that nature, what about hearing our friend and guest on the show, Brian Wong has successfully gotten venture capital of $200K with Tru Ventures for his new company Kiip.me and, also possibly one of the youngest entrepreneurs funded in Silicon Valley. Read more
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Filed under MediaTags: Facebook, Friendster, Kiip.me, MOL, Open Web Asia, OWASEA, Temasek Holdings, This Week in Asia, Tru Ventures, Tudou, TWIA, Unoh, Zynga
Yes, everyone is checking out on Smithy’s location these days. Yet, the news of the week from TenCube being acquired by McAfee to Google’s foray into China & Japan dominated the Asian landscape for web and tech. The TWIA crew starts off their chat about the future of Android in China & thoughts on the future of Southeast Asia tech scene with Daniel coining his term “Silicon Straits”. Of course, you won’t want to miss our crew’s famous discussion on “who wants to guess how much this company is acquired for”. You can go directly to TWIA website or listen the podcast here in SGEntrepreneurs. Read more
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Filed under MediaTags: Android, Apple, Baidu, Bing, ComScore, Foound, Google, Google Android, Google Search, iPad, IPhone 4, Koprol, McAfee, Neoteny Labs, Starcraft II, TenCube, This Week in Asia, TWIA, Yahoo
Starting off with congrats to Mike Foong with his 4th kid, Myra Ines Foong, the TWIA crew is back to discuss the interesting stories that dominate the Asian mobile, web & tech landscape this week. While we look back at Open Web Asia Conference & Google Dev Fest in KL, we also discussed interesting stories covering from iPads selling out in Singapore to an Asian company called Bubble Motion funded by Sequoia and how it’s kicking ass in India. If you are not impressed, then the gaffe from MOL CEO, Ganesh Kumar Bangah on his rival OffGamers’ FB page surely hits the most entertaining story of the week in Asia. You can go directly to TWIA website or listen the podcast here in SGEntrepreneurs. Read more
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Filed under MediaTags: Bubble Motion, Bubbly, Facebook, Friendster, Google Dev Fest, MOL, OffGamers, Open Web Asia, Sequoia, This Week in Asia, TWIA
As a prominent Asian brand, HTC has been producing mobile handsets with three different platforms: Windows Mobile, Android & Qualcomm’s Brew OS. What is the roadmap and what may be the new phones coming out in the next quarter? With Melvin Chua, the country manager from HTC Singapore, we discussed all these issues together with the adoption of the various mobile platforms and whether the new explosion of Android handsets have an impact in the smart-phone market. You can go directly to TWIA website or listen the podcast here in SGEntrepreneurs. Read more
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As an Asian company, InMobi has made a lot of headway recently with their expansion from India to US, starting with a 2M fund for developers and a new investment series B round of 8M from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers & Sherpalo Ventures. Touted as an interesting independent ad-network by TechCrunch, InMobi is set to have an interesting trajectory. We have Emmanuel Allix from InMobi in Singapore to talk to us about the company, how they grow to reach 179 million consumers in over 108 countries through over 16 billion mobile ad impressions monthly in the past few years. You can go directly to TWIA website or listen the podcast here in SGEntrepreneurs. Read more
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It 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 go directly to TWIA website or listen the podcast here in SGEntrepreneurs. You can watch the This Week in Asia Live Show Video from Satoo.TV. Read more
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Filed under MediaTags: AdMob, Asia Tech News, Asia Technology podcast, Brian Wong, Chlkboard, Digg, Facebook, FollowFormation, Foound, InMobi, Koprol, Open Web Asia SEA, OWASEA, Serkan Toto, TechCrunch, This Week in Asia, TWIA, Yahoo
myGengo is a Japanese start-up which deliver value for users to order cheap and high quality translations on the web. In our virtual studio, we have both co-founders, Robert Laing (@robert_laing) & Matthew Romaine (@quanza) telling us how the idea come about, the interesting features on myGengo and also the challenges in fundraising and setting up in Japan. We also hear how they manage to get Dave McClure to be their angel investor and their journey from the far east to Silicon Valley for fundraising this year, and finally wrap up with their future plans. You can go directly to TWIA website or listen the podcast here in SGEntrepreneurs. Read more
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