Tandif is a moderation service for websites and apps.

Online spams or comments with negative contents such as profanity or those containing malware could hurt your website’s credibility as well as hurt your SEO and Google ranking. Businesses and websites owners dont want this to happen. Tandif, an Indonesian based startup, aims to provide the solution to help businesses filter out these unwanted contents. We at e27 spoke to Ahmad Fathi Hadi, CEO of Tandif, to find out more about their solution:

Could you introduce Tandif to our readers?
Basically, Tandif is high accuracy filtering platform that is capable of filtering and moderating any negative digital contents such as profanity, spam, malware/virus domain, etc. As a platform, Tandif can cater to a wide range of different customer segment such as website, blogs, forums, mobile, social media, etc.

How is Tandif doing in terms of user traction, specifically the number of users (paying and non paying), as well as user growth?
Currently we are still in beta and we are doing lot of product development. Since our launch in 29 Jan 2012, we are focusing on accuracy and speed, not on traction. Currently, Tandif is used by our partners for testing purposes on their websites, and some of our major partner includes MindTalk and Indonesia’s Adobe user group. Once we are happy with our product, we will shift our focus to marketing and gaining more traction.

How does the technology of Tandif differs from the other existing moderation technologies?
As I mentioned before to the judges at Jakarta Echelon Satelite, you have to try it yourself. We can confidently say this: Our accuracy is really good. Mollom and Akismet focus on spam filtering, while Webpurify and Tandif focus on profanity filtering. That said however, we are more than just spam and profanity filtering, we want to make filtering easy and accurate.

The Tandif team. Photo: Tandif

What is in the pipeline for Tandif? Are there any exciting updates and features which the community can expect soon?
Yes, first we are going to release Tandif for free, and secondly, we will also be lauching image filtering service and mobile filtering service, complemented by a management service. What we are really excited about is that users do not need to install any application on their mobile devices, because filltering will be made at telco operator/provider service level. Tandif will also add more language support and language detection system in the near future.

Could you let us know what Tandif is looking for at Echelon?
We are looking for investment.

Tandif will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched their product at the Indonesia Satellite in April.

Redmond-based Vice President Walid Abu-Hadba on stage

A  session held on the 15 May for Indonesian local startups, “Microsoft BizSpark Startup Night” witnessed the presence of a special guest speaker, Walid Abu-Hadba.

The Palestinian-born tech executve, who was also the main presenter, is the Redmond-based corporate vice president, developer and platform evangelism group at Microsoft.

In his 40-minute talk, shared about Microsoft Cloud Computing Platform“Windows Azure” and how he leads efforts in building vibrant solutions ecosystems through technical evangelism, community engagement and audience marketing.

Hadba invoked a new perspective into audiences when he challenged app designers to think about cloud design first amongst other things during app design. Afterwhich, think about how and where to deploy.

“Design the app and cloud as if it will scale up unlimitedly. Never limit yourself or you will suffer. Microsoft offers public, private and hybrid cloud services because it sees the Asian market as very appealing due to its highest 67 percent adoption rates for cloud computing, which is comparitively higher to 61 percent and 57 percent adoption rate in the US and Europe respectively,” says Hadba.

Those who join the BizSpark program will be entitled to technology access such as necessary software, documentation and white papers, trainings in both technical and business aspects. Startups will also be listed in Microsoft marketing collaterals to be circulated all over the globe.

Another program introduced is BizSpark Plus. Targeting small and promising firms, it provides full hosting worth US$ 60,000 Windows Azure for free, instead of tech access, software (such as MS SQL Server, Visual Studio .NET), training and publication as mentioned earlier under the BizSpark program. Azure, an open and flexible cloud platform, proffers unlimited servers and storage so one can scale their applications to any size based on the needs.

Hadba also mentioned Windows Azure Store where developers can build, submit, and share their codes and apps with other developers. Another store is the Windows 8 Store (widely known as Windows Store) which is currently designed for Windows 8 Beta (also known as Consumer Preview.)

Although the long-awaited Windows Phone store will be available for Indonesians soon, no exact date as given as Microsoft Indonesia declined to disclose the information.

Combining developer platform, tools and ecosystems of the respective developer-centric company, the store which was first announced in September last year offers up to 80 percent revenue share for apps sold. Set the price in local currency and our piece will be available in more than 100 languages. The currency conversions and local tax laws will be handled by the store. Pricing model is flexible and rewards popular apps with a better percentage of the net receipts while delivery options include in-app purchases, trial versions, in-app adv, and third-party transaction services.

Lastly, Hadba highlighted Windows9.com as a site where one can find everything  – videos, samples, design, codes, guides, roadmaps and tutorials – in order to develop a Windows 8 app.

The 3-hour event was wrapped up with showcases from Mobile Game Development Studio Nightspade, KOMPAS app for foodie SajianSedap, City lifestyle directory Urbanesia and a presentation by Agate Studio – all lead by Microsoft Indonesia Developer Evangelist Norman Sasono.

Adobe User Group Indonesia will organize Adobe Camp Indonesia to raise the awareness of the local Adobe community and introduce attendees to the local user groups.

On the 24th of May 2012, participants of the Adobe Camp Indonesia would hear from a strong line up of 12 speakers, and be exposed to the various Adobe tools through multiple approaches such as demos, hands-on trainings, and team coding sessions, etc. There will also be case studies featuring examples of projects build using Adobe technologies.

The speakers of the event includes:

Tomas Krcha (Adobe Platform Evangelist)
Harrie van der Lubbe (Quince Asia)
Ahmad Fathi Hadi (Adobe Community Champion, Founder & CEO Tandif)
Ade Herdiansyah (Senior Interactive Developer)
Xing Jun Long (CEO Jotter Production)
Bisri Mustova (Founder Parampaa)
Arief Widhiyasa (CEO Agate Studio)
Arie M. Prasetyo (Developer of @GamelanApp)
Tubagus Saepul Anwar (Senior Adobe AIR Developer)
Harry Saputra (UX Designer, JomSocial)
Jesika (RYK Media Creation)
Muhamad Salman Alfarisi (Creative Multimedia)

Details:
Venue : Al-Azhar University Jakarta, Indonesia Jln. Sisingamangaraja, Komplek Mesjid Agung Al-Azhar, Jakarta Selatan, 12110, Indonesia
Date : 24 May 2012, Thursday
Time: 8am – 6pm
Fee : Free

For more details, please visit http://www.amiando.com/adobecampindonesia2012.html

Klik-eat Logo Photo: Klik-eat

Have you ever been caught in the following situations?

“It’s raining outside, I don’t feel like going out for dinner”

“Exam crunch time! I need food to pull me through my revision at night!”

And the most familiar feeling that we get when we think of ordering  in, “What? MacDonald’s, Pizza, KFC again?”

Not sure about most people but I sure have been through all three situations. I understand how frustrating it is to only have those few food delivery options on days when we are all too lazy to get our butts off to dine out or cook in. Intrigued by how Indonesian online food delivery startup, Klik-Eat.com,  has managed to tackle this problem, I talked to Co-founder, Michael Saputra to find out more.

Can you share with us how Klik-Eat came about?

The idea came to light when some of us were hanging out in one of the apartments in Sudirman area (one of the central business districts in Jakarta). It was dinner time and we had planned to go get some food. We looked out the window and saw gridlocked traffic everywhere.

Not wanting to be stuck in the traffic for hours, we decided to have the food delivered to our apartment. Bored with the usual McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut, we decided to get delivery from non-fast food type restaurants. We went to google and started searching for restaurants that would deliver to our apartment. We managed to find a lot of telephone numbers, and started calling them one by one.

That was the moment when we realized how difficult it was to find and actually get in contact with the restaurants to order food. In addition to that, not all restaurants provide delivery services. Ordering food delivery shouldn’t be this difficult, and that’s why we created Klik-Eat.com.

Klik-Eat founders. Photo: Klik-Eat

Unlike most businesses which are either B2B or B2C, Klik-Eat deals with both customers and  businesses (i.e., restaurant partners). Can you share with us some of  the main challenges you encountered when dealing with both sides? And also, how did your team coped with these challenges?

You’re right on. Handling the B2B and B2C sides of the business requires a two-pronged approach. And that is also how we divide our marketing responsibilities between Andrew and I.

Since the performance of both aspects are highly dependent on each other (customers will be disappointed if there  are not enough restaurant options, meanwhile, restaurants will also be disappointed if there are not enough orders) it is crucial that we get this balance in growing our business.

For the B2B side (getting restaurant partners) some of the main challenges are:

Meeting the decision maker and dealing with the bureaucracy in the management decision Since most of the traditional restaurant owners are older, it takes some effort to break their conventional thinking and embrace the online ordering system

How do we deal with this? Persistence. Understand the needs of the restaurants. And, be flexible on a restaurant to restaurant basis.

For the B2C side, some of the main challenges are finding the ideal and most cost effective user acquisition channel. We believe we had an early start and we will use that advantage to grow our user base.

The Klik-Eat team. Photo: Klik-Eat

Currently, Klik-Eat is only based in Jakarta. What are some of the plans you guys have in the pipeline?

As of right now, we are concentrating on our main target market –  local office workers and apartment residents. So, we will go all out in Jakarta for the short and medium term.

Other features that are in our pipeline includes mobile site or application development and further enhancing our order taking ability from multiple sources such as internet, telephone, BBM, IM Chat, website live chat, mobile site.

What would you mainly be looking for at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace?

We’re mainly looking for investments and strategic partnership to boost our growth and revenue.

Klik-Eat will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched their product at the Indonesia Satellite in April.

A tech ecosystem usually consists of startup founders, angel investors, VCs, government, universities, media, and communities. What often happens is that most people focus only on the entrepreneurs and the ones who invests in them — angels or venture capitals. But local communities are where all of these stakeholders meet, and there are more than a few startups being born or getting investment out of such meetups.

We have at least one strong startup community in each of the big cities across Indonesia, starting with StartupLokal in Jakarta, FOWAB in Bandung, Bancakan 2.0 and Gamelan in Jogjakarta, SuWec in Surabaya, and Stasion in Malang. They are holding regular meetups periodically to give updates about what is happening in the ecosystem and quite often they have a session to showcase newest product launches.

We will have five initiators from these communities talking on stage on the first day of Startup Asia Jakarta 2012:

1. StartupLokal

StartupLokal community is a community that based in Jakarta which acts as a melting pot, gathering start-up founders, digital industry enthusiasts, investors, and media, giving them a chance to collaborate in one way or another. This community started in April 2010 and has been growing since then. The StartupLokal community held Jakarta-based regular monthly meetups, in total 25 up until this month. It also has launched Project Eden, a startup incubator/accelerator aiming to provide pre-seed investment.

2. Bancakan

Founded back in February 2010, Bancakan is a gathering for all Jogjakarta startups and developers. They have already held more than nine meet-ups to date. It also manages Hackerspace YK, inspired by Bandung’s Hackerspace by FOWAB. Bancakan is Javanese term referring to ‘gathering’ or ‘eating together’

3. FOWAB

Bandung in West Java, Indonesia’s third largest populated city, is well-known as a creative city. It is also a high-tech city, as Insitut Teknologi Bandung, arguably Indonesia’s finest technological campus, is there. It’s not surprising to know there’s a creative tech community in Bandung too. FOWAB is community for creative people who get connected through the Internet in Bandung, so in a sense FOWAB is not exclusively for IT startup people only. FOWAB is for everyone from the creative industry who has the same vision to make Indonesia a better country and a better place to live. Since its first meetup in February 2010, FOWAB has held eight events. It has also created shared workspaces for creative workers named Hackerspace Bandung. It has held Geek Fest, a SXSW-like conference at the end of March 2012 and plans to make it an annual event.

4. Stasion

Stasion is a Malang, East Java-based local startup community that aims to build synergies among the members who work in digital business and technology. Founded in March of 2011, they have so far held four meet-ups and three public workshops. ‘Singo Edan’ is the term often referred to Arema FC, Malang’s beloved football club. Lately Malang is making a name for its developers after some hackathon/developer days that have been held there.

5. SuWec

Surabaya, East Java, is Indonesia’s second most populated city after Jakarta. So it’s expected that this city will have several tech communities as well. SuWec is a community for web industry practitioners folks in Surabaya. It helps and connects like minded people to collaborate and work together. Since its founding in September of 2009, SuWec has been a regular monthly event.

Not only will our speakers talk in depth about what their community is and what are they doing to help startups in their respective cities, but they will also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of being in their city. They will also speak to the difference between startups in these cities, and their plans to help the Indonesian startup ecosystem.

Interested to know more? Get your tickets to Startup Asia Jakarta 2012! Or if you have an interesting product or idea that you believe can wow the judges and audience, please register your startup for the Startup Arena competition and win US$10,000!

The Squiryl Logo Photo: Squiryl

Unlike most mobile loyalty systems, Squiryl has creatively differentiated itself by combining both loyalty systems, and social elements into one app. Not forgetting, the app’s vibrant and fun graphics.

One of the metrics for businesses to measure is customer retention and loyalty, and without doubt, this is a lucrative business. Squiryl, a social loyalty platform, is one such player in Singapore and e27 caught up with Mulyadi Syariffudin, cofounder of Squiryl to find out what they are doing.

Mobile Loyalty is a very competitive space. Where does Squiryl stand right now?

To answer this question, first of all, Squiryl is not a Mobile Loyalty. Well, we kinda are, but that’s not our end goal. As with our competitors, their whole purpose is to replace the currently loyalty card system with a digital one that sits in your phone and that’s the end of the story. They are usually just a service provider doing this for the merchants at a cost. So for our competitors, the issues related to the current loyalty programs, such as inefficiencies, wastage, etc. still exists. So like the example I brought up during the Indonesia Satellite, say now I go to a ramen place and earn some stamps on a card from that ramen place, but however, I decided I am not coming back to that ramen place, immediately this points out the inefficiencies of the current system. Which is why if you look at the loyalty programs out there now, you will see that there would be a lot of inactive users in their list. This is because these people are stuck with the stamps or points.

With Squiryl, the vision is to create one single community of users that all the merchants can tap on. These users can then not only interact with the merchants, but with fellow users as well. For example, one of the key interactions would be the trading function where users can trade Acorns of one particular merchant with another user for Acorns from another merchant. So as the trade happens, the merchants are simply, given a platform to exchange their inactive users for active users.

This video would further explain how the community of users is being established.

What is Squiryl’s traction like?

When we first started Squiryl, we were thinking our first target users would be young adults and students between 16 to 28. However, we slowly see an interest in merchants that are more mid to upper range and as a result we have also seen a shift in the user profile. Our current user base would be 60% female 40% male within the 18 to 35 age group. Our downloads is just slightly above 15,000 and we have about 5,000+ active users.

How can startups or SMEs leverage on mobile loyalty program to create more value to their customers and users?

The answer to this is also exactly why we created Squiryl as a social platform. Being social means we are totally free. No hidden cost, no freemium, nothing. Like how Jack Dorsey founded Square with the vision that no matter how small a business is, they should be able to accept credit card payment, for Squiryl, we believe that any business should be able to reward their customers for being loyal.

The Squiryl Team Photo: Squiryl

Could you tell us more about your expansion plan, especially in Indonesia.

We have started our office in Indonesia. We are currently in the final stages of development for BlackBerry and Android. We have started talks with the merchants. Our goal is to officially launch Squiryl in June. Our target is to get 500 outlets and 150,000 users in Indonesia by November.

Any exciting news and features which Squiryl is working on right now?

We are in the midst of creating the second phase of Squiryl which will strengthen the social part even more with features like social gaming, interactions, etc. However, at this time, we are still unable to share too much details.

What is Squiryl looking for at Echelon?

Our top priority would be to look for investors, followed by media coverage to get more exposure and publicity. We would also be happy to talk to merchants and explore possible collaborations.

Squiryl will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched their product at the Indonesia Satellite in April.

Thanks to our Thailand contributor Byron for the tip-off that we now have a new number one city on Facebook. Bangkok, Thailand has overtaken Jakarta, Indonesia as the social network’s top city, with more than 8.6 million users in total, according to Socialbakers. That trumps Jakarta’s user count of 7.4 million. Istanbul is right behind in third with 7 million.

To be clear, Socialbakers uses Facebook’s own research tool to arrive at its statistics, so take this at face value as it may or may not be accurate. But it should at least be a solid indication of the distribution of users on Facebook. And it certainly looks like there are a lot in Asia, as Byron notes. Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, Bangalore, and Singapore are all in the top 20.

The United States is still the top country on Facebook, but Gartner analyst Shalani Verma predicted [1] that India could overtake the US for top spot within the next three years.

I’ve visualized some of the city figures from Socialbakers below, and you can see the biggest Facebook cities in the top left, decreasing in size and you go down and to the right. Click on a city to see its Facebook population and rank. Note the size of the country blocks as well, particularly India, where there’s so much potential for growth.

[Download image version of chart]

Thanks to Jon Russell at The Next Web for pointing this out.

Photo:Campaignsingapore.sg

Y&R’s ‘Spark Plug’ initiative gives office space and opportunity to collaborate to four digital startups.

Gamification startup GameMaki, DJ Nomsta, talent management company Riot Records and social media loyalty startup Squiryl are the four digital startups that will get to work alongside Y&R Singapore for the next six months.

Y&R’s global chief of staff, JJ Schmuckler, said the programme is a way of tapping into and leveraging the growing start-up market around the world.

“For us, clients are incredibly engaged [with the programme],” Schmuckler said. “Also for them, to be honest, it’s a little bit of free ideas, added value and something that comes on top of the day-to-day of what they are expecting.

“It’s more than just story-boarding or campaign ideas, it’s something on top that’s a really interesting added value.”

The initiative will begin in Singapore this month before being expanded to Indonesia, Thailand, China and India.

Photo: Slashgear

If you were unable to make it to the Blackberry World Conference in Orlando earlier this month, then Research in Motion is bringing a part of the conference to you. The following are the dates for the Asia Pacific region:

July 4- Delhi, India

July 6- Beijing, China

July 9- Singapore

July 10- Jakarta, Indonesia

July 12- Sydney, Australia

Reps from companies founded Indonesia E-Commerce Association (idEA) (Credit: idEA)

Ambitious plans for id-EA lay ahead. Some of which include transforming Indonesia into Southeast Asia’s biggest digital economy.

On the 3^rd of May, 10 Indonesian e-commerce firms released news that the Indonesian E-Commerce Association (idEA) would be establied as a forum especially for communication between the e-commerce industries in Indoneisa.

Also know as Asosiasi E-Commerce Indonesia in Bahasa Indonesia, this collaboration has come after several months of deliberations in order to address the growing number of local online shoppers and shopping sites.

Integrated communications and media amongst stakeholders together with an increasingly positive atmosphere in this industry have been key factors driving the actualization of id-EA.

Pioneer companies part of this assocation include Berniaga, Bhinneka, BliBli, DealGoing, Gramedia, Kaskus, Multiply, Plasa, Tokobagus and Tokopedia. They have constantly been in negotiations with the government and other respective associations such as Apkomindo, Aspiluki and APJII on how to further improve.

Executives from participating companies also sit on its advisory board. They are William Tanuwijaya as Chairman, Ken Dean Lawadinata, Kusumo Martanto,Edward Kim, Edi Taslim, Hendrik Tio, Dwi T. Cahyono, Remco Lupker, Jullian Gafar and Aris Siswoko as Vice Chairman. Meanwhile Daniel Tumiwa and Arnold Sebastian Egg are Chairman and Vice Chairman of the executive board.

idEA’s future plans are to make Indonesia the most developed digital-based economy in Southeast Asia. Many educational programs targetting both consumers and other human resources have since been set up.

Bylaws and public memberships are also in discussions.

As repored by MasterCard Worldwide, around 57 percent of Indonesians are already aware of e-commerce transaction. Thus, it is paramount that “the perception that online shopping is unsafe amongst most Indonesians has to change,” says Chairman William Tanuwijaya.

idEA would therefore be designing the best business models to ensure that e-shoppers enjoy a secured e-commerce experience.

“Indonesia has the third largest number of Facebook uers in the world and it also the most active country on Twitter. This doesn’t bring any value to our economy, but if we can manage it properly, it has potential to make Indonesia the biggest digital economy in Southeast Asia,” Tanuwijaya adds.