26 startups in Asia that caught our eye

1. Cermati | Indonesia (Techlist Profile)

Cermati is an online portal for finding and comparing financial products in Indonesia, to help users save them time and money. The platform also helps translate difficult financial jargon to a language that’s more easily understood by normal humans.


2. Doctors’ Circle | India (Techlist Profile)

Doctors’ Circle is a platform with videos solving health queries, as well as a site to discover doctors and book appointments based on social media recommendations.


3. News in Shorts | India (Techlist Profile)

News in Shorts summaries news stories from various topics into a crisp 60-word skeleton for busy readers in India. It has a team that manually curates and summarizes the news in categories like national, business, sports, and technology.


4. Standing Ovation | Japan

Standing Ovation develops XZ Closet, which allows users to upload every article of clothing they own to a social network geared at sharing fashion sense. Drawing from someone else’s database of items, users create “coordinations,” which are then displayed publicly for likes, comments, and user follows.


5. Bizzy | Indonesia (Techlist Profile)

Bizzy is a marketplace that helps small and medium-sized businesses, as well as large corporates, fulfill their office equipment needs in Southeast Asia.


6. Nearex | Singapore (Techlist Profile)

Nearex, a mobile payments startup based in Singapore, specializes in mobile payments and mobile points of sale systems for developing markets. Its product, called Xip, is designed to work with mobile money service providers to enable cashless transactions between consumers and merchants.


7. BobbleApp | India

BobbleApp lets users create their own bobbleheaded comic character. This character can then be used to create funny stickers or comic stories while chatting with your friends using any messenger app. It works with leading chat apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, Line, and Google Hangouts.


8. Lybrate | India (Techlist Profile)

Indian healthcare communication platform Lybrate enables users to get credible solutions or second opinions for their health issues from a pool of trusted doctors on an open-ended platform. It also provides private consultation with a doctor of their choice. Besides communication, the platform enables patients to book appointments, store medical records, or communicate anonymously with doctors. It also provides practice management solutions to doctors to manage appointments, medical records, and maintaining relationships with patients.


9. Sure | Singapore

Beauty marketplace Sure wants to cater to Singaporean women by creating a one-stop marketplace for customers to connect with beauty service professionals. Customers can search for specific services, such as nail artists and hairstylists, and check the appointment schedules of each professional.


10. Practo | India (Techlist Profile)

Doctor finder Practo allows users to discover the right doctor for them, and also book appointments. It started out with a street-by-street mapping of doctors. This week it launched a product to help its users find the nearest diagnostic center for any test they need to get done.


11. Being Chef | India

Being Chef allow customers to order a recipe kit of a particular dish, and provides him or her with a box of ingredients, chopped and processed in the required quantity, and customized as per the customer’s taste. The recipe card provides the instruction to prepare the dish. The customer can cook the dish in a matter of minutes by simply following the instructions.


12. Elanic | India (Techlist Profile)

Bangalore-based Elanic started in 2014 to standardize the process of buying and selling used clothes, shoes, and accessories. All a user has to do is create a listing on the app by taking the photo of the item they want to sell, mention a few details, and set the price, and then the item is picked up from the their door step. The thing is then inspected for any wear and tear, brand authenticity, size, and hygiene, and is sanitized. After all that, it’s packed and shipped to the buyer.


13. HaloMoney | Indonesia

Financial comparison site HaloMoney focuses specifically at credit cards and personal loans only, compared to existing competitors in the market. The platform now goes beyond simply offering comparisons, and actually walks users through the application process all the way up to collecting the signed application documents and delivering them to the service providers.


14. Shosha | China

Shosha wants to let users connect with people they actually care about. Once a day at a random moment, the app will prompt you to take a quick five-second video of whatever you’re doing. You share that video with the friends and family you added in the app. And you can browse through their videos to see what they’re up to very quickly, since each video is only five seconds long.


15. OpenAgent | Australia

Australia’s OpenAgent wants to offer accurate information for both buyers and sellers of property. It is a directory of real estate agents with a rating system and sales records attached. Through OpenAgent, users can see who are the strong, reputable performers in a given market prior to making a commitment with a local real estate agent.


16. Flatchat | India

Developed by CommonFloor, Flatchat is a mobile-only app that lets flat-owners and flatmates connect with potential flat-seekers, without going through the hassles of dealing with brokers. There is also a feature called the Flatchat assistant. This is a human who answers user queries and offers recommendations accordingly.


17Be Lazee | Malaysia

Like US-based Magic, on-demand service startup Be Lazee is an SMS-based service that lets you do what its name suggests by getting someone do your errands for you. The requests can range from household affairs to business matters – all for a base fee of RM 25 (US$7).


18. Mufubu | India (Techlist Profile)

Delhi-based startup Mufubu, conceptualized its idea of premium gifts with a quirky product range better suited to India’s younger citizens. It launched its products on various estores this year, like Flipkart, Amazon India, eBay, and FirstCry. It is on its way to launching its own website before the end of the month.


19. Milestone | Pakistan (Techlist Profile)

Milestone specialises in school software, and is customizable according to specific needs. Some of these are student record management, employee evaluation, and collaboration between students, parents, and administrators. One of the more interesting aspects of the software is a biometric system whereby parents are informed, through SMS, when their child has entered school


20. Haravan | Vietnam (Techlist Profile)

Haravan is a platform for shops, retailers, and new SME ecommercemerchants to run their businesses offline and online. Some features includes having an API for third-party providers to create more features, and even coordinating with local logistics companies to automatically provide logistics services to SMEs.


21. Fabelio | Indonesia

Indonesian furniture startup Fabelio offers custom furniture from local designers. It currently has a free delivery service and a two-week return policy. The startup also positions itself as a business-to-business service, offering a personal assistant and a free interior design consultation for those seeking to furnish an entire office space or restaurant.


22. FlipMed | Taiwan

FlipMed is working on a smart otoendoscope (designed to go into the middle ear) and a diagnostic service to go with it that connects patients with doctors via the web. Huang pitched it as a time-saver for people who might be unable to get to a clinic. The startup will aim the smart otoendoscope at the Taiwan market first before taking it to China and across Southeast Asia.


23. Linqapp | Taiwan

Linqapp is a mobile-only way to get crowdsourced translations from native speakers. It’s designed for situations where the regular translation tools won’t suffice and you need help from a fellow global citizen. Translators earn money by giving quality translations and responses.


24. Phone Doctor | Taiwan

Phone Doctor is an iOS and Android app that diagnoses the state of your phone. But the startup sees that as just the beginning. The killer feature, which will be added in to the app soon, is a recycling service that uses the diagnostics as a way to prove that a phone being sold is in good condition. With that evidence, people can get better prices than on current recycle programs, claimed Ryan Cheng during his pitch.


25. TixChart | Taiwan

TixChart is a search engine for plane tickets on low-cost carriers (LCC). These budget airlines are particularly popular in Southeast Asia, where they account for more than half of the flight market, which is above the global average. That’s the fact with which Outland co-founder Peter Chen started out his pitch for the site.


26.  U Know I Know | Taiwan

U Know I Know is a site for searching and booking classes and workshops in your city. To make things safer for students, the startup holds the class fees in escrow for seven days so that a refund is possible if the class is bad.

It has 500 course providers on the books, alongside 15,000 users so far. It takes 10 to 20 percent commission on orders.

                                                                                                                                                                   Emily Goh