Betatron – Hong Kong’s newest accelerator coming in February [deadline for application: this Friday 16th December 9pm]

December 13, 2016 by Xiaoyu Wang
Betatron Team

Betatron team

Application deadline: countdown

 

Betatron is Hong Kong’s newest accelerator programme providing both funding and hands-on mentorship to help optimize and scale startups.

The programme will be run bootcamp style with an intensive schedule focused on the startup’s fundamental KPIs and progress.

It will launch on Monday 13th February 2017 and will take on FIVE startups in their first cohort.

We spoke to the Programme Manager for Betatron, Michael Kerr, to learn more about it.

What type of startups are you looking for?

Our mission over the four-month programme is to make your startup a viable and investable business. For this to occur, we are looking for teams with a developed product that we can work with. Again, we only have four months, so each startup needs to assess whether they feel they are at an appropriate stage. Additionally, our goal is to help the Hong Kong startup ecosystem and back local talent. As such, we aren’t limiting applicants to a specific industry or vertical. If you have a promising product – you can apply!

 

What do the startups receive when they get accepted?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Events Tagged With: Accelerator, Aria Group, Betatron, CoCoon Ignite Ventures, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Startups, IC Studio, MindWorks Ventures, Vectr Ventures

We are HK Founders: Simon Loong of WeLab

December 8, 2016 by Nicole Pabello

SUHK_1_WeLend

Simon Loong is Founder and CEO of WeLab. Simon graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business in Master of Science in Management prior to that he also became a Certified Public Accountant. This year he was awarded CEO of the Year by Capital CEO in 2016 and Silicon Dragon’s Entrepreneur Achievement Award in 2014.

Before founding the FinTech startup specializing in mobile lending, Simon spent 15 years in retail baking divisions in Standard Chartered and more recently, Citibank. He also served as an advisor on a number of professional organizations including Shenzhen Consumer Council, Hong Kong Trade Development Council and Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce

In your own words what does your startup do?

Founded in 2013 in Hong Kong, WeLab is reinventing traditional financial services by creating seamless mobile lending experiences. With its proprietary risk management technology, we effectively analyze unstructured mobile big data within seconds to make credit decisions for individual borrowers.

WeLab operates Wolaidai (我来贷), one of China’s largest mobile lending platforms, and WeLend, Hong Kong’s leading online lending platform. The company also partners with traditional financial institutions, which utilize WeLab’s technology to offer fintech-enabled solutions to their customers. Our investors include CK Hutchison’s TOM Group, Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad, Chinese provincial government fund Guangdong Technology Financial Group, ING Bank and Sequoia Capital.

In 2016, WeLab was named in a KPMG-sponsored report as one of the top 100 fintech companies in the world – #6 in China and #33 globally.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: KPMG, StartupsHK, WeAreHKFounders, WeLab

We Are HK Founders: Paul Tomes of Passkit

December 7, 2016 by StartupsHK

SUHK_1_Passkit

Paul Tomes, Co-Founder and CEO of PassKit, grew up in sunny Bournemouth, England. After graduating as an Engineer has been working in 5 countries. He has been living in Hong Kong for 11 years now. Before diving into the startup industry, Paul worked for Ford Motor Company, HBSC and Credit Suisse.

Paul likes to skateboard and he does it regularly to work, and more surprisingly he also used to skateboard to work when he worked in Investment Banking. At the time he ran a blog called corporateskateboarder.com.

The startup, PassKit is a software company that is specialised in effective, easy-to-use mobile marketing solutions. The startup platform allows users to reduce costs and waste, track real-time data and magnify customer engagement.

In your own words what does your startup do?

In a sentence, PassKit is to mobile wallet what mailchimp is to email.

To expand, PassKit allows businesses, of any size, to engage with their customers through their most intimate possession – their mobile phone.

We enable this by harnessing the power of the latest mobile wallet applications, (like Apple Wallet, Android Pay, WeChat Wallet, and AliPay) beacon technologies, physical web concepts and apps. Our solutions empowers brands to deliver online and offline insight-driven interactions with their customers, fostering real-time conversations, building long-term relationships and making micro moments matter for their customers – when and where it matters the most.

We are recognized as world-class experts in mobile wallet, proximity marketing, beacon technology, physical web and big data.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: KPMG, Passkit, StartupsHK, WeAreHKFounders
Copyright © StartupsHK.com