Patrick Grove (Founder of Catcha Group) Speaker at Echelon 2012

Named as Asia’s Best Young Entrepreneurs 2008 by Business Week, Patrick Grove is a successful media entrepreneur and CEO of Catcha Group. With his company once facing bankruptcy after the 2001 dot com crash, Grove is the perfect person to speak about topics such as “From Startup to IPO.” Catch him live at Echelon 2012 this 11 and 12 June at University Cultural Centre in National University of Singapore.

Patrick graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance from University of Sydney, Australia and he is also a chartered accountant and member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Australia. During his uni years, he started JDI, a night club promotions business and Vibecom, a chain of mobile phone shops.

Patrick began his very first career with Arthur Andersen, Sydney, Australia in the corporate finance division, specialising in mergers and acquisitions and extraction of investment value in high growth, media, new media and technology environments.

The Birth of Catcha.com

He resigned from Arthur Andersen in 1999 and co-founded Catcha.com Limited. But the burst of the Y2K dot-com bubble left his first company a debt of $2 million in debt. Patrick changed Catcha.com’s business model and expanded aggressively. In 2001, Catcha launched a publishing arm which has since become one of the largest Magazine publishers in South East Asia that publishes and distributes JUICE, Stuff, K-Zone, Evo, MiNT, Fairways, Clive and Prestige in Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

Catcha Media’s businesses span online media, publishing and e-commerce with all of them contributing to a combined reach of approximately 10 million people per month. Last year in July,  Catcha Media Berhad was on the Malaysian Stock Exchange.

iProperty.com.my became the Largest Network of Online Property Portals in Asia

When he noticed the renewed success of online companies in Australia in 2007, he returned to the digital space by acquiring iProperty.com.my. A radical revamp and a steady business growth later, iProperty.com.my became the largest network of online property portals in Asia. His group reported $15 million in revenues. It was also successfully listed  on the Australian Stock Exchange in September 2007.

Besides the two listed companies, IPGA and Catcha Media, this serial entrepreneur also controls several private companies including CDA (www.catchadigital.asia), Dealmates.com, and Catcha Ventures. He is also the co-founder and Deputy Chairman of iProperty Group (IPGA). He was also ranked as one of Asia’s best young entrepreneurs by the World Economic Forum.

A Judge at Angel’s Gate, Asia’s Latest Reality Business TV Series

Given his expertise and impressive portfolio, he is part of the judges at Angel’s Gate, Asia’s latest reality business TV series where Entrepreneurs pitch their Business ideas to some of Asia’s most successful investors. Backed by Asia’s leading venture funds, Angel’s Gate is a 360-degree platform spanning TV, Web and Mobile.

The platform gives entrepreneurs the opportunity of a lifetime to pitch their dream business ideas to some of Asia’s most successful investors.

Patrick Grove (Founder of Catcha Group) Speaker at Echelon 2012

Patrick Grove (Founder of Catcha Group) is one of the awesome speakers at Echelon 2012. This tech conference is a two-day, double-track event on 11 and 12 June 2012 with over 1,100 delegates, a demo pit of up to 50 regional startups per day and various workshops. Get your tickets now!

Clint Nelsen (Co-founder & Director of Startup Weekend) Speaker at Echelon 2012

No stranger to the startup world, Clint Nelsen is the Co-founder and Director of Startup Weekend. He was listed in Forbes as a “Name You Need to Know In 2011″ and was featured on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine.

Passionate about startups and technology, Clint Nelsen is a regular entrepreneurship lecturer at Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley. On 11th and 12th June, he will be part of the panel that will be discussing Startup Growth and Scaling at Echelon 2012 in Singapore.

Startup Weekend was initially created as an event where a group of individuals would brainstorm a single business idea and work to bring that business to fruition over the course of the weekend.

Today, Startup Weekend has grown into an organization with a global presence, having organized at least 207 events spanning 120 cities and 35 countries. It has also has built a network of more than 25,000 alumni, 150 volunteer organizers and 60 trained facilitators spread across more than 175 cities in 500 countries.

In March last year, Startup Weekend became an affiliate of the Kauffman Foundation, the largest foundation for entrepreneurship in the world.

Clint Nelsen is also the co-author of Startup Weekend: How to Take a Company from Concept to Creation in 54 Hours, alongside Marc Nager and Franck Nouyrigat.

The book contains best practices, lessons learnt and empowering examples derived from Startup Weekend’s experiences for individuals and startups to follow as they launch new businesses. Each of the key beliefs have been tried, tested and proven to yield positive results and will give any business idea a greater chance for success.

Brian Wong, Founder and CEO of Kiip, and fellow speaker at Echelon 2012 commented about the book, “Startup Weekend is the most current account of how the modern tech entrepreneur will operate and succeed. Sure, the person, the hustle, the persistence, and the environment all account toward success—but to hit your key fundamentals, this book will be the best.”

Clint Nelsen has been featured in many publications around the world including the New York Times, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Entrepreneur Magazine, Glamour Magazine.

Clint Nelsen (Co-founder & Director of Startup Weekend) Speaker at Echelon 2012

Clint Nelsen recently founded Startup Labs. Startup Labs is a global seed stage investment fund aiming to disrupt the startup scene by reinventing the traditional incubation process and helping companies launch in various countries. It operates a three week program in cities around the world investing seed capital into 5 teams in each city.

Working with local investment partners and shares the local investment in the startups, Startup Labs will host 15 events in 15 countries for 2012 with the goal of 100+ cities happening soon. Startup Labs is open to all investors and all team may apply. The best way to think of the program is 500 startups meets Startup Weekend with teams building startups in countries around the globe.

When he is not busy with startups and events, Clint is a pilot, enjoys mountain biking, snowboarding, camping and photography.

He also loves traveling.

Clint Nelsen (Co-founder & Director of Startup Weekend) is one of the awesome speakers at Echelon 2012. This tech conference is a two-day, double-track event on 11 and 12 June 2012 with over 1,100 delegates, a demo pit of up to 50 regional startups per day and various workshops. Get your tickets now!

The Infographic of the Day series visually expresses important stories from Asia and the world of technology.

A fresh snapshot of Asia’s social media landscape reveals which service dominates in each country – and it’s especially good news for Facebook, which has added more than 20 million users across Asia in the past six months.

The infographic and its stats were put together by the Singapore-based branding and PR agency WeAreSocial. It points out that Facebook now has more than 192 million users across the 24 main Asian wired nations.

The only countries that prefer a different social network are China (where Tencent’s (HKG:0700) QZone dominates), Vietnam (Zing), South Korea (CyWorld), and Japan (Twitter). In the latter country, Japanese social network Mixi has been struggling and is now getting swamped by both Facebook and Twitter.

In China, Tencent’s Qzone looks monstrously huge, but its user numbers have dropped by five million since we last checked on the Asian social media scene last year. That squeeze will have been caused by increasingly popular microblogs (weibo), such as those from Sina and Tencent itself.

Here’s the current view across the region, with the newest site-reported stats that are available for each country (click to enlarge):

Check out which social networks are the most popular in each nation in Asia (May 2012) - Click to enlarge.

[Source: WeAreSocial blog]

Photo: Netchunk

Beintoo and MoVend will visit Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia in May to meet mobile app developers.

The mobile space is blowing up. This is evident when Facebook shook the community by acquiring Instagram a month ago, making the acquisition one of the largest mobile app acquisition to date. Earlier this week, Facebook acquired yet another mobile app to strengthen their position in the mobile industry.

Nearer to home, the mobile industry is continue to grow as well. Beintoo, a mobile gamification platform provider and MoVend, a mobile commerce platform, will be visiting three cities in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia in May to meet with mobile app developers to share about mobile game monetization. Expect both companies will share insights and strategy on how mobile gaming and developers are making money for their apps and games via in-game rewards and in-app purchases in these sessions:

Session 1: The rising of the G-economy: When gaming meets the real world

Description:

Games and apps user experiences offer new innovative ways for brands and retailers to engage with audience during their game plays. Several top international brands already partnered with successful apps to introduce real products offers such as coupons as reward for in game achievement. A few startups are now trying to build a scalable model to allow retailers to do that on thousands of different apps with a single campaign. It is a huge opportunity of monetization for developers who could become an effective customer acquisition channel for brands. The conference will show some interesting business cases and give an overview of the Beintoo’s mobile loyalty platform, a monetizaton tool for mobile developers to reward their users with real world offers.

Session 2: Navigating the Android Appstores Maze

Description:

There are tons of Android appstores out there in the world, and every store represents their own unique opportunity. Especially in emerging markets where Google Play underserves, there is a whole lot of Android appstores around that Android developers can work with to reach out to customers. However, every appstores have their own policy, SDK and requirements on the developers, and that adds a big challenge in development, for localization, integration, support and subsequently publishing in every single market. This session will talk about how some games have worked around this issues and how MoVend can come in to help developers get out of the Android Appstore Maze.

Singapore

Date: 15^th May 2012

Time: 2pm – 5pm

Venue: Games Solution Centre, Block 71, Ayer Rajah Crescent, #04-01, Singapore 139951 (Google Maps)

Registration Link: http://www.gsc.sg/2012/04/the-rising-of-the-g-economy/

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Date: 17^th May 2012

Time: 7:30pm – 10pm

Venue:  iTrain (M) Sdn Bhd, Unit E-7-1, Block E, Megan Avenue 1, 189 Jalan Tun Razak, 50400 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Google Maps)

Registration Link: http://blog.codeandroid.my/2012/04/monetizing-your-android-apps.html

Jakarta, Indonesia

Date: 18^th May 2012

Time: 2pm – 5pm

Venue: Bina Nusantara International University, The Joseph Wibowo Center for Advanced Learning, Jl. Hang Lekir I No. 6, Senayan – Jakarta Selatan 10270 (Google Maps)

Registration Link: http://www.codeandroid.or.id/mobile-game-monetization-tour

CloudyRec pitching at Singapore Satellite. Photo: Microsoft

Together with the Microsoft Campfire and Imagine Cup, the Singapore Satellite showcased 14 startups from Singapore, Malaysia and India.

14 startups pitched at the Singapore Satellites, which was held together with with Microsoft Campfire. The strong infrastructure of the Singaporean startup community clearly showed in the maturity of the startup pitches and their products. The Judges’ Choice went to clear winner Perx, a customer loyalty and engagement platform. The startup, backed by solid investors such as Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin, has already signed on merchants, such as Subway Dunkin Donuts, and is currently expanding their user base.

TinyTrunk's YongFook pitching at Singapore Satellite 2012. Photo: Microsoft

Some other notable startups at the Singapore Satellite were Malaysian teams, Flexiroam and XpressCover. Flexiroam, which is a service that allows travelers to roam at an affordable price, showcased their newly launch iOS app and further expansion plans. XpressCover, a business-to-business insurance services for couriers, stemmed from a founding team well-versed in the insurance industry. Both startups demonstrated strong user traction. View our pre-Singapore Satellite post for the full list of the 14 pitching startups.

Perx winning the Judges' Choice at Singapore Satellite 2012. Photo: Microsoft

Winner of Judges' Choice award, Piktochart, pitching at the Vietnam Satellite

Missed the Echelon 2012′s Vietnam Satellite? Well, Piktochart, a web application for creating infographics bagged away the Judges’ Choice award. Read on as we recap the main highlights of the event.

Ho Chi Minh City was the third stop out of Echelon 2012′s 6-city hunt for the hottest tech startup in Asia. The event featured 14 startup pitches out of which three are non-Vietnamese, hailing from Malaysia (Piktochart), Cambodia (MangoMap) and Thailand (Builk), and speaking sessions by notable people in the tech industry.

Prior to the pitching session at the Satellite on 17 April 2012, the teams underwent a one-day bootcamp session conducted by the e27 team to firm up their pitches before the showdown. The bootcamp proved to be extremely beneficial as the startups heeded the advices in preparation for the  actual pitching session. We were really impressed with how diligently some startups such as Biaki and Giaibongda

At the satellite, each team was given five minutes to pitch their product to a panel of judges made up of Tetsuya Mori (DeNA), Hong Quan Dinh (RIM), Mohan Belani (e27), Sieng Van Tran and Linh Thai (DFJ VinaCapital),  and an audience of more than 160 people from the Vietnamese tech startup community.

All startups who pitched at the Vietnam Satellite received BlackBerry Playbooks sponsored by Research in Motion.

Choosing the winners of the Vietnam satellite was a tough decision for the judges. After a round of deliberation, Piktochart with their pitch by Ai-Ching, took home  the title of Judges’ Choice at the Vietnam Satellite.

From left to right: Builk , Team Piktochart, Sieng Van Tran (Judge) and the e27 team at Vietnam Founders Drinks

It wasn’t all disappointment for those that didn’t won. All startups that pitched at the event were presented BlackBerry PlayBooks proudly sponsored by Research in Motion, Premier Sponsor of Echelon 2012.

After the satellite, the e27 team headed off for a chilled out after-session, also known as Founders Drinks, to catch up with the Vietnamese startup community. Read all about the startups that pitched at the Vietnam Satellite here. You can also view our photo album on the Vietnam Satellite and Founders Drinks.

Photo:Mozilla

Mozilla Malaysia Community has chosen Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) which is based in Sintok, Kedah, as the starting point for its campus tour.  The campus tour has been scheduled to be held on April 29, 2012.

A Community-Driven workshop will  be held during the tour to enhance participation by the staffs, lecturers, and students of UUM in translating the Mozilla Firefox browser from English to Bahasa Malaysia (Malay). In addition to this,the Community also will introduce an initiative by Mozilla to the attendees which is the Mozilla WebFwd (Web Forward) Program.

There will also be competitions and prizes including exclusive Mozilla merchandise that is unavailable to buy. I actually attended a Mozilla event like this last year at BarCamp Cyberjaya, and even individuals who have no coding experience are able to participate and contribute to the project. To sign up, register at http://mozillamycampus.eventbrite.com/ .

At the time of writing, there were 31 places remaining. Those who wish to follow the event but are unable to make it can check out the live updates at http://www.facebook.com/MozillaMalaysia or follow the tweets “#mozmycampus” on Twitter at MozillaMy.

Photo:JFDI

In this article, we take a quick look at the startups participating. The startups founders hail from a diverse range of countries including: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, India, New Zealand, Canada, France and the Netherlands.

Read on for a complete list of the startups

ShopSpot: mobile phone app that makes buying and selling items as easy as sending a tweet.

Qryo: A document sharing service for the masses that connects your printer to the cloud. Anything you can print, you can publish online!

Remember: the family Time Capsule in your pocket that makes it simple to capture and relive memories on your smartphone.

Tradegecko: a web-based supply chain portal for independent brands and their retailers.

FamilyKo: a tele-parenting app for Overseas Filipino Workers to bond with their young children.

Trafflers: By taking the pain out of planning and booking group holiday travel experiences, we give the travel industry access to a new segment of social leisure travellers.

Fetch Plus: a Facebook and Twitter page builder that helps large brands with local businesses control brand identity, monitoring and maximizing the impact of their social media marketing.

Kark Mobile Education: a hybrid game platform using trading cards and Android tablets to make 4–12 year old children masters of a simulated world.

Flocations: Our travel visualizer shows nearby destinations on an interactive map, so leisure travelers can browse by budget and book their next getaway in minutes, not hours.

Wildby: a fun talking encyclopedia on your iPhone that 4 to 8 year olds can enjoy without needing any literacy skills.

TribeHired: the social recruitment platform that puts friends to work.

Source: JFDI

Most of the folks in Southeast Asia know about Gmarket. But this familiar name will soon be gone in Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The e-commerce giant will be rebranded to Qoo10, according to a note we received from the company. But only one Gmarket will remain, in Korea, which is under eBay’s control.

The main shareholder behind Qoo10 is actually Giosis Gmarket International. Right now, users can still see the familiar Gmarket logo, but the Qoo10 logo will be officially unveiled on May 2. If you’d like a sneak peek at the new logo, you can see it at Qoo10.com. The rebranding came as a shock to me because Gmarket is among the most visited e-commerce sites in Singapore. I reached out to a Gmarket rep today who told me:

We know the Gmarket brand has quite a strong presence in the region (especially Singapore, as we’ve been building this business with our hearts and sweat). But this decision has come from all the stakeholders’ ambition to position our brand as a leading marketplace platform provider for Asia and go bigger, rather than one of many online shopping sites riding on the Korean wave.

Gmarket.com.sg will still be accessible as the team migrates to qoo10.com. But it will take a lot of hard work bringing the site back up to its usual traffic as we experienced first hand ourselves here at Tech in Asia with our own past rebranding. Good luck!

According to Apple, its new iPad will launch officially in five Asian countries later this month. South Koreans will be among the first to grab one when it rolls out there this Friday (20th), while folks in India need to wait a week longer (27th). Here’s the full list of Asian arrival days for the iPad:

In total, 12 countries around the globe are getting official shipments of the best-selling tablet this month. No word yet on when it’ll hit mainland China, leaving consumers there paying the ‘grey market’ rates for iPads brought over the border from Hong Kong – though demand hasn’t been that strong this time round.

Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) announcement did not mention specific localized prices for all the new markets. The US price starts at $499 for the base 16GB model of the “new” iPad in either black or white, while the previous generation iPad 2 has already dropped to $399. The new model was unveiled in early March by the company’s CEO, Tim Cook, who hailed the high-res “Retina” screen and the upgraded A5X processor.