Metrics for Microshops: Frogtek wins $206,000 to help shopkeepers in emerging countries

Spanish-American startup Frogtek just won the biggest competition for European mobile startups, Vodafone Mobile Clicks, with its app to help small shopkeepers in emerging markets run their businesses.

According to Frogtek, a Mexican stall-like, microretailer stocks an average of 1,000 products from 25 vendors and is often managed with nothing more sophisticated than a paper notebook. Frogtek wants to change all that with the help of the $206,000 (150,000 EUR) prize.

The product consists of … Continue Reading

Emerging markets will spend billions on games this year

Gamers are expected to spend billions of dollars in emerging markets this year such as Brazil, Mexico and Russia, according to market researcher Newzoo, based in Amsterdam.

Newzoo’s data shows that gaming is spreading rapidly around the globe, thanks to online play, mobile games, and new ways to pay for games such as free-to-play games with micro-transactions.

In Brazil, gamers are expected to spend $2 billion on games in 2011. Online and mobile gaming accounts … Continue Reading

AltoBridge lands $12 million to bring mobile to emerging markets

Altobridge makes it cheaper to provide mobile coverage to communities in emerging countries, from an African village to a remote oil drilling site. The company just closed a $12 million third round of funding with Intel Capital and the International Finance Corporation (an offshoot of the World Bank).

The most expensive part of making a mobile call from a remote area is generally the backhaul, i.e. the connection between the local mobile base station and … Continue Reading

Frog Design's Jan Chipchase on how the poor can least afford bad design

You could call Jan Chipchase the Indiana Jones of product design. He lives in Shanghai, has a Japanese wife and just returned from a research trip in the north of Uganda, an area recently controlled by the notorious military group the Lord’s Resistance army.

Chipchase’s job as Frog Design‘s “Director of global insights” takes him all around the world and into the most private areas of people’s lives. The aim of his research is to … Continue Reading

Grameen IT CEO on how technology transformed Bangladesh

Kazi Islam describes his job as “implementing the future”. He is the CEO of Grameen IT which runs the IT services of Grameenphone, Bangladesh’s biggest mobile carrier. Islam grew up in the U.S. become returning to his home country.  ”I lived in the future. I went back into the past. My job is to implement the future” he says. Islam is convinced that emerging countries like Bangladesh will determine which technologies survive and dominate in … Continue Reading

Sproxil takes on Africa's drug counterfeiters

Not many tech startups save lives. Sproxil may be one of them.

The company tags pharmaceutical products in emerging markets with a scratch-off code which is verified by sending a text message to Sproxil’s product authentication service. Sproxil was one of two companies to receive an honourable mention from the judges in the recent IBM smartcamp global finals (having previously won the Boston competition) and was one of the most talked-about startups in the competition.… Continue Reading

Intivation gives boost to solar-powered phones

Not many tech startups save lives. Sproxil may be one of them.

The company tags pharmaceutical products in emerging markets with a scratch-off code which is verified by sending a text message to Sproxil’s product authentication service. Sproxil was one of two companies to receive an honourable mention from the judges in the recent IBM smartcamp global finals (having previously won the Boston competition) and was one of the most talked-about startups in the competition.… Continue Reading

Assured Labor, a mobile LinkedIn for the developing world, raises $1M

Not many tech startups save lives. Sproxil may be one of them.

The company tags pharmaceutical products in emerging markets with a scratch-off code which is verified by sending a text message to Sproxil’s product authentication service. Sproxil was one of two companies to receive an honourable mention from the judges in the recent IBM smartcamp global finals (having previously won the Boston competition) and was one of the most talked-about startups in the competition.… Continue Reading