13 Asian startups that caught our attention

From Singapore to China, the startup scene in Asia is becoming more crowded by the day. Here are a just a few of the up-and-coming businesses that are gaining ground in the region and beyond.

1. The Mobile Gamer | Singapore

The Mobile Gamer (TMG) is a Singapore startup that builds mobile games on platforms like mig33, as well as, Kotagames, TMG’s very own platform.

2. Harpoen | Indonesia

Indonesia’s Harpoen is a location-based messaging platform and wants users to leave digital marks at their locations. It has recently rolled out a major update and has tens of thousands of users leaving over 50 000 of those digital tags around the world to date. Harpoen is also one of the three Asian startups to win the World Summit Awards.

3. Redmart | Singapore

Redmart is a Singapore-based e-commerce startup that sells necessities and groceries, and has them delivered right to your doorstep. It seems to be doing pretty well these days, as they have recently announced their move to a much spacious 12,000 sq ft. warehouse and increasing their product offerings to over 8,000. The team has also grown from a humble team of four to a team of 48.

4. PicMix | Indonesia

Indonesia’s photo app PicMix, which stands for ‘pictures’ and ‘mixing,’ impressively passed eight million users last month in just nine months since the app’s inception, with more than 108 million photos posted on the app so far. The app was initially just for the old Blackberry OS, but now also supports Blackberry 10 and Android.

5. Burpple | Singapore

Burrple is a Singapore-based social food journal that mixes photo-sharing with foodie fanaticism. This week, it has hit a new milestone with the launch of Burpple for Android, today landing on Google Play to accompany its iOS iteration.

6. InstaWaves | Sri Lanka

InstaWaves is an interesting startup from Sri Lanka that provides a pictorial storytelling approach for users to consume Instagram content, similar to the way you can use Storify to contextualize Twitter posts about a certain event.

7. Frenzoo | Hong Kong

Frenzoo, a Hong Kong-based startup who specializes in 3D lifestyle games for girls, has recently partnered with Teen Vogue to launch Teen Vogue Me Girl.

8. SCOOP | Indonesia

SCOOP is an Indonesian e-reader that allows users to download and read magazines via the iPad or Android devices. This week, they have announced that they will be making a push onto the web by launching its web store.

9. Viddsee | Singapore

Singapore’s Viddsee aims to be a hub for Southeast Asian short films and will be showcasing the best indie directors in the region for a worldwide audience whilst letting users rate the films for the quality of the story, acting, camera, and sound.

10. Vida | China

China’s Vida is one of many Instagram-like photo-sharing apps in the country, combining funky filters with a mini social network, and claims to have about 4 million users. This week, it joined in the national discussion about China’s polluted skies by adding a PM2.5 photo filter.

11. MOL | Malaysia

MOL is one of Southeast Asia’s biggest payment companies, with over 680,000 physical and online payment channels, 60 million annual transactions, and yearly revenue over $300 million.

12. File Expert | China

File Expert is a file manager style app, developed by the team at Xi’an-based GeekSoft. It has revealed this week that it has surpassed 20-million installations across Android and iPhone.

13. Pixtem | Indonesia

Indonesia’s Pixtem helps people to simply build general as well as e-commerce websites, without any coding knowledge required with affordable price plans. The startup was inspired by similar business models offered by US-based website platforms like Shopify and Squarespace.

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This article by Emily Goh originally appeared on Tech in Asia, a Burn Media publishing partner.