Hong Kong Business sifted through more than a hundred nominations submitted by founders, investors and industry observers in the hunt for startups worth watching over the

next 12 months. The list of 20 hottest startups in Hong Kong is now on its third year and the selection process has become even more extensive.

The companies selected started operating from 2012 and were able to make their businesses flourish from initial funding ranging from $20,000 to $15.5M. Startups which made it to the list were arranged based on total funding generated to date. Find out how each is shaking up its sector’s norms with new innovations.

Founders: Stefan Rust, Cat Purvis Funding: HK$15.5M (US$2M); private investors and Angelsstart oF operation: 2013Exicon is an online platform which provides customers with the intelligence, tools and connec-

tions, to successfully build and manage mobile engagement. Founders

Hong Kong’s 20 hottest startups to watch in 2014Here’s a look at the city’s biggest up-and-comers offering products and services ranging from an online marketplace to small Unmanned Aerial Systems to managing mobile engagement.

HONG KONG’s HOttest startups

note that mobile engagement is already greater than engagement via the Web. Social media and devices, along with apps and services, they add, are the key ingredients for building and managing mobile engage-ment.

Founder: Sopheap LaoFunding: HK$13.95M (US$1.8M); Phileas Investment, Series A investorsstart oF operation: May 2013 While a mobile payment company at its core, Mobexo aims to connect merchants and its clients with

each other through steps that lead to payment and thereafter dubbed “Pre-payment, payment, post-payment”. Mobexo is both an app and a backend portal for merchants to run targeted ads, promotion coupons, discount vouchers, membership and loyalty programs, sales report and other business essential tools.

The app handles the payment process using QR codes while the consumer has the benefit of staying connected to their favourite store or brand, receiving special deals which are automatically applied to the transaction at checkout.

1. EXICON

2. MObEXO

HONG KONG’s HOttest startups

Founders: Douglas Aitken, Matthew AitkenFunding:HK$7.75M (US$1M); SingTel Innov8, Yuuwa Capital and Pollenizerstart oF operation: Jan 2013SodaCard, a loyalty and marketing platform, focuses on deepening

customer engagement by allowing brands to offer personalized loyalty journeys to their customers. According to founders, the universal rewards platform uses emerging tablet technology to engage walk-in customers in retail locations and continue the exchange online. This, they say, effectively creates a closed-loop marketing channel that al-lows merchants to acquire, understand, and communicate effectively with their audience, and build brand equity over the long-term.

SodaCard has a 60,000-strong community of members and over 100 brands on board, including caffe HABITU, Satay King, Eric Kay-ser and Paul Lafayet.

Founders: Arjan van der Vlies, Patrick Kosiol, Boris BoegeFunding: HK$5.8M (US$750K); S4BB and several private equity, Angels.start oF operation: 2014According to founders, Toshi is building the largest catalogue of mobile travel apps that serve niche

markets on a global scale and help travellers have a great experience on their journey.

“Our business is about providing an individual city guide for each of the major cities in the world, similar to how travel guides like the Lonely Planet can be bought as a separate book for each destination,” they say.

Founders: Wai-Lun Hong, Gary LeeFunding: HK$4.65M (US$600K); seed investorsstart oF operation: Jan 2013Snaptee bills itself as the first com-pany in the world to make t-shirt design as easy as clicking few tabs

on your smartphone. “We see it as a start to push forward the makers revolutions on

tshirt, and we believe this is the future. We have already got some ini-tial proof by having customers from over 50 countries paying for our products and most of them love it,” say the founders.

Founders are confident that with the advancement of design tools, prototyping and manufacturing technologies, product customization will reach its tipping point in five years, if not earlier.

Here’s how it works: Just import an image from your photo album or Instagram account, or take one with your camera, to begin. Then choose the template that you like, add a filter if you want, include your rsonal text, change fonts and colors to find the perfect match.

Founders: Shylesh Karuvath, Bernard TanFunding:HK$3.88M (US$500K); private investors, Hong Kong Science Park – In-cubation Program Financial Aid Packagestart oF operation: August 2012

Cenique is transforming the retail industry using computer vision andreal time anonymous video analytics. It bills itself as a technology leader in audience measurement tools that collect and deliver metrics and analytics from the offline world such as physical retail stores.

“We offer technology that enables brand, advertisers, agencies and publishers to deliver highly engaging advertisements powered by com-puter vision. This offers an automated way for anonymously detecting human presence, as well as providing the analytics and viewership metrics,” say the founders.

Founder: Jennifer ChengFunding: HK$3.88M (US$500K); Angel fundsstart oF operation: May 2013Glam-it! is a beauty & fashion startup behind the patent pending invention GlamPact - billed as the first all-in-one customizable refill-

able light-up and rechargeable compact. In less than a year,Glam-it! has launched e-Commerce, physical retail and several

SKUs while pushing GlamPact into 6 countries via luxury distributors and partners within 2 months of its debut.

Founders: Edwyn Chan, Dian Liu, Charlotte ChenFunding: HK$3.49M (US$450K); 500 Startups, Cheru-bic Ventures, Private Angelsstart oF operation: Jan 2013Spottly , dubbed as the “Pinterest for places” aims to become the

world’s biggest and most personal travel guide. “We make it easy for people to create and share beautiful notes of

their travels,” say the founders. Notes are limited to 400 characters, and users can add hashtags.

The app, which supports 12 languages, started on iOS and will be launching a Web version soon. Android will follow next year, add the founders. Apple named Spottly amongst“Best New Apps” in 15 markets across Asia - Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Brunei, Cambodia, and Laos - for 2 weeks since its launch. The app was developed in January last year and has received its first fund-ing from 500 Startups’ Beijing branch three months after.

3. SOdaCard

4. TOSHI

5. SNapTEE

6. CENIquE INfOTaINMENT GrOup

7. GlaM-IT!

8. SpOTTly

HONG KONG’s HOttest startups

Founders: Vicky Wu, Xian-gling CaiFunding: HK$ 2.5M from pri-vate investors; HK$200,000 from Hong Kong Science Parkstart oF operation: April 2012ZAOZAO is a web-based plat-form that allows designers to post

projects and garner funds for production through crowd-funding. Itbills itself as the ultimate destination for adventurous women to dis-cover and to buy beautifully curated, one-of-a-kind pieces by emerg-ing designers in Asia. ZaoZao targets the Asia market, particularly Hong Kong and Singapore.

Founders: Nishant Kapoor, Michelle Cheng Funding: HK$2.33M (US$300K); private angel investorsstart oF operation: November 2011Life Projects bills itself as Asia’s first family focused e-Commerce por-tal. It launched its first initiative

PetProject.hk in November 2011. It is an online store for pet food and supplies, carrying a full range of pet products, treats and toys, includ-ing natural and organic foods. Life Projects also provides convenient home delivery to all areas in Hong Kong, including the New Territo-ries and all outlying islands. According to the founders, LifeProject.hk, a site for health and wellness, and Toddler.hk, a site for babies and children, will be launched this year.

Founders: Alexis Zirah, Flo-rian MartignyFunding: HK$1.55M (US$ 200K); Angel investors from Hong Kong and USstart oF operation: July 2013Luxify bills itself as Hong Kong’s first bi-lingual online marketplace

for buying and selling new, vintage and pre-owned luxury goods.According to founders, it is free to list and free to sell at Luxify. There

is no commission on sales as well. Within eight pre-selected categories of Motors, Yachting, Fine Wines, Diamonds, Jewellery, Watches, Fash-ion and Bags, buyers and sellers can seamlessly exchange and trade the world’s most exclusive and prestigious brands on one safe and reliable online platform, claim founders. “Luxify provides an excellent online buying source for purchasers in the market for luxury goods, but also eliminates the hefty marketing expenses smaller operators and sellers need to invest, to advertise their product to reach potential buyers online, providing them with visibility and a platform at zero cost,” said founders. Luxify also hosts quarterly online auctions for unique luxury goods they source independently.

Founders: Chris Geary, Con-stance Ip, Nickey KhemchandaniFunding: HK$1.3M; Naveen Khugputh / +1 confidential, equitystart oF operation: May 2013BSD Academy aims to provide the best learning and development environment in Asia for code

and graphic design. “Learning code is one of the most important but under-provided needs in all levels of society today. Not only from the perspective of current and future careers, but also from the perspective of future innovation.

BSD knows that it is not just about the code but also about the design and how the final product affects those in the environment around you.” say the founders.

Founders: Benjamin HallFunding: HK$1M; Neststart oF operation: Development of version 1.0 began in September 2013; the app will launch in Q1 2014.FoodieQuest is a food photography app- it’s part ‘Hot or Not’ for food, and part visual food guide.

FoodieQuest allows people to compete with friends and strangers around the world, with their favourite food photos for a shot to be the number one foodie. As well as creating a social game, the app puts all the images to good use, allowing users to discover the hottest dishes and restaurants nearby, or even anywhere in the world with a user curated, interactive ‘foodporn’ map.

Founder Benjamin all received about $130,000 in seed funding for his “food based” smartphone game. According to the British founder, the app will launch first in Hong Kong, as he believes the city is the ideal launch pad for an app that will translate and scale very easily as it launches in AppStores across the world.

Founders: Jimmy Lam, Lawrence Shen, David Li, Jackie YeungFunding: HK$530K from Cy-berport’s Incubation Programme; $100,000 from Cyberport’s Creative Micro Fund Schemestart oF operation: 2013Dimcook bills itself as Hong Kong’s

first crowd-sourced recipes sharing and cooking blogging platform, with a growing network of local and overseas food bloggers.

While it currently offers customized digital marketing solutions to food and ingredient businesses, it has plans to vertically integrate with vendors of ingredients to provide a one-stop ingredients shop-ping experience to extend beyond the current functionality of recipe searching, reviews, nutrition calculation, and social sharing.

10. lIfE prOjECT

11. luXIfy

12. bSd aCadEMy

13. fOOdIEquEST

14. dIMCOOk

9. ZaOZaO

HONG KONG’s HOttest startups

Founders: Jeffrey Broer, Angelina YanFunding: HK$504K (US$65K); Telerik AG, Remi Caron, Eric Sminia; angel invest-mentstart oF operation: 2012Surround App allows Weibo user one-click machine translation

of any post from someone he follows. A full English UI for the most common Weibo functions, i.e. making retweets and comments is provided. Surround App targets the social interaction and engage-ment between non-Chinese reading Western companies and Chinese consumers in a growing Chinese consuming economy for brand building and product promotion.

Founders: Boris Boege, Patrick KosiolFunding: HK$233K (US$30K) via a Crowdfunding Campaign on Indiegogo and computing-resource funding through the Softlayer Incubation Program

start oF operation: 2012 Skylab develops small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) - also called drones - for personal and commercial use.

“We have the first solution that is fully digital and can provide unlimited range by utilizing existing 4G/LTE networks as a commu-nication channel, providing HD live video to a groundstation app on a tablet,” say the founders.

Founders: Adam Whiting, James Beacher, Malcolm LoudonFunding: HK$200K; private investors, family investorsstart oF operation: Janu-ary 2013Eight52 International is behind the brand VenueHub which helps

clients find their perfect venue. After just three months of operation, founders said that they have managed to sign up over 150 Hong Kong venues to their portal, including some of HK’s biggest hotels and res-taurant groups. “We provide these venues with online exposure and event booking enquiries from our users, who range from big corporate bodies and event managers, to the general public.”

VenueHub is also available to view in Traditional Chinese and is 100% free to use.

VenueHub has launched operation in Thailand recently and now currently searches for partners in SEA (Singapore, Malaysia, Indo-nesia), China, Japan, South Korea. VenueHub claims that it has now over 40 signups in Thailand. In its official statement, VenueHub will

provide partners with a fully-functioning platform for a “very minimal investment.”

Founder: Scott BowlerFunding: Less than HK$200K; private investorsstart oF operation: September 2013CallTracking allows you to prove which advertising & marketing campaigns make your company’s phone ring. “I believe it’s going

to revolutionise the offline marketing landscape in Hong Kong as it finally allows people to say “yes, I know for sure that this ad in the newspaper was worth it,” says Bowler.

Its online platform captures a wide range of data about customers calling you (even if you don’t answer the phone), and allows you to quickly identify which offline and online channels are generating the most calls, recapture lost leads, improve customer service and increase return on advertising spend (by reducing wastage), adds Bowler.

It plans to expand across Asia, Africa and South/Central America. It has already started the expansion by entering Singapore.

Founders: Jean-Marc Ly, Truong Lam, Lawrence TseFunding: HK$116K (US$15K); AcceleratorHKstart oF operation: App released on November 2013Taxiwise focuses on international business travellers who wish to use taxi services in major cities

in Asia, starting with Hong Kong. It allows them to book a taxi ahead of time, helps with translation of their pickup/destination and seeks quality service. According to the founders, they plan to launch their services throughout major Asian cities.

Founders: Raymond Yip, Tony Wong, Fiona LauFunding: HK$20K; Prize money from winning at HKCo-Coon Pitch Nightstart oF operation: July, 2013Shopline offers order manage-ment and reporting tools to

help merchants run their entire business remotely, as well as customer relations and marketing features to interact directly with consumers. The service also fosters product discovery by shoppers as it aggre-gates all products from its wide network of shops into a mobile social marketplace. This helps merchants reach new customers even if their online shop isn’t garnering traffic. “Shopline believes in the future of mobile commerce, so much so that our tagline includes the phrase ‘No computer needed’.”

15.SurrOuNd app

16. Skylab MObIlESySTEMS

17. EIGHT52 INTErNaTIONal

18. CallTraCkING

19. TaXIwISE

20. SHOplINE