8 ms·

Ask HN: Which developing nations have interesting tech stories at the moment?

156 points by carlmungz 9y ago

I'm a guest host @ Software Engineering Daily & I want to cover tech stories from places which don't always get a lot of coverage.

avh02 9y ago
Some stuff happening in Lebanon with government incentives and whatnot (and an educated but undervalued tech workforce). personally I've left that all behind me but I can probably find people you want to talk to if you want to talk to them. something you may be interested in as an index to some stuff the central bank is trying: http://bdlaccelerate.com/2016/ http://bdlaccelerate.com/2016/ The Guardian's chips with everything covered some of it recently-ish: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2016/nov/24/beirut-lebanon-silicon-valley-tech-podcast https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2016/nov/24/bei... edit: just looked at the podcast, i see you've recently done middle east, oh well :P
- carlmungz 9y ago
  I'm happy to chat with people who have a deeper understanding of Lebanon. My Middle East show was more of a general overview of the region. I'm hoping to dig deeper into some of the stories I've come across. Do you have Twitter?
  - avh02 9y ago
    not a very active user but will get notifications: @ahayrabedian, email's firstname.lastname@gmail.com (you can gather those fields from the twitter profile :) ) I mean, like i said, i've kind of left that behind me (only worked there for a year), but i can definitely put you in touch with people who are more up to speed.
durian89 9y ago
Vietnam has quite a strong startup ecosystem relative to its development stage. I think it has a lot to do with its government having laid out a plan since the 90s to develop its IT industry. Results are: 1) Lots of IT grads 2) Lots of funding 3) Okay-ish infrastructure If we add this to the interests in entrepreneurship among Vietnamese people, it results in a strong tech scene.
- djpr 9y ago
  Vietnam has an amazing energy right now. Lots of enthusiasm and optimism among its people. I know Malaysian companies that have back-offices in Vietnam because of the great talent there. The lack of English is a hurdle, but not impossible.
- gghh 9y ago
  This blog post from Google engineer Neil Fraser made the rounds 4 years ago: https://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/ https://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/ He traveled to Vietnam and observed a high quality Computer Science education in primary / secondary school. Talking about grade 11 scholars, he wrote: After returning to the US, I asked a senior engineer how he'd rank this question on a Google interview. Without knowing the source of the question, he judged that this would be in the top third. The class had 45 minutes to design a solution and implement it in Pascal. Most of them finished, a few just needed another five minutes. There is no question that half of the students in that grade 11 class could pass the Google interview process.
  - hardlianotion 9y ago
    TBH, I think I would expect grade 11 students the world over to be able to answer the question on display.
    - yorwba 9y ago
      Where are you from? I have seen university students in my German CS classes struggle to implement breadth-first search; I would by highly surprised if an average grade 11 student could write a program to compute the connected components of a maze in less than 45 minutes.
      - hardlianotion 9y ago
        Dude, I am embarrassed. I didn't read the text properly and didn't realise it was a program. I agree with parent and you.
    - deleted 9y ago
rundmc 9y ago
Gibraltar: After the initial wave of financial services companies came a proliferation of gaming companies which led to a bunch of payments companies setting up. This has now led to a fintech industry evolving and is currently seeing a surge in blockchain related business. Interestingly the cycle has now gone full circle and seen the launch of an Exchange Listed Bitcoin Fund....
- vesinisa 9y ago
  By what measure is Gibraltar a developing country?
  - timwaagh 9y ago
    by no means. but it is a place that usually does not get a lot of tech coverage.
- carlmungz 9y ago
  Thanks for this. I love hearing about tech in places such as this.
gfredtech 9y ago
Kenya has a very budding startup scene, mostly innovative ways of offering financial services to the unbanked: https://www.quora.com/What-are-interesting-startups-in-Kenya https://www.quora.com/What-are-interesting-startups-in-Kenya http://www.innovationiseverywhere.com/kenya-startup-scene/ http://www.innovationiseverywhere.com/kenya-startup-scene/
- carlmungz 9y ago
  My first SE Daily interview was with one of the co-founders of mymookh.com. Kenya is definitely a leading nation in the mobile payments space.
  - vram22 9y ago
    M-Pesa, which may have first been created there (not sure, just read of it used there first), is now in India too.
    - gfredtech 9y ago
      yes, as well as Bitpesa
      - vram22 9y ago
        Interesting, hadn't heard of that one.
codewithcheese 9y ago
Indonesia. Check out Go-Jek, Tokopedia
rshetty 9y ago
Indonesia: Gojek Tech, It does have a very fascinating story to tell
rajeshwadhwani 9y ago
The tech story here in Bangalore ,India also seems very promising. http://www.innovationiseverywhere.com/bangalore/ http://www.innovationiseverywhere.com/bangalore/
webrobots 9y ago
Lithuania: Just had it's first ever proper startup exit. Oberlo was sold for $20mil to Shopify. What is interesting - Oberlo was built without VC backing in 1.5 years. This is a good morale boost for local tech community, as Lithuania always tries to measure up to Baltic sister countries Estonia (Skype and many others) and Latvia.
- snowpanda 9y ago
  I've been to Lithuania before, great country.
proyb2 9y ago
For all tech news in Asia: https://www.techinasia.com https://www.techinasia.com
umarniz 9y ago
https://www.startuplist.pk/ https://www.startuplist.pk/
djpr 9y ago
Indonesia in ecommerce and fin-tech. There are plenty in the scene, but the two bigs ones to know are: > GoJek - Fintech/Uber-like startup: Raised over USD 550 million. They started out providing on-demand motorcycle taxis (called ojeks), but expanded to on-demand food delivery, cleaners, make-up, courier, massage, housecleaners, etc. Their bigger play is GoPay. That's their e-wallet service that lets you pay for service you pay for via GoJek and also transfer money to other GoPay users > Tokopedia - C2C ecommerce They're a C2C ecommerce site with over 4.0 million product listings with 250 million USD raised. Others to check out are Traveloka, Bhinneka, Bukalapak, Doku, Qerja, Talenta, Qraved, Fabelio...tons of energy and funding going around.
bbv-if 9y ago
Ukraine's IT industry is rather developed with still relatively cheap workforce. And there have been a few successful startups recently: http://www.uadn.net/2017/01/09/top-10-ukrainian-startups-in-2016/ http://www.uadn.net/2017/01/09/top-10-ukrainian-startups-in-...
- drops 9y ago
  The workforce is currently cheap compared to western countries because of the local currency's low value, and IT being one of the very few fields where people get paid in dollars. So as a result, what would be a low wage in the west is an extremely high wage in Ukraine (e.g. $1k a month = 25k hryvnias, which is 8 times more than country's minimum wage).
  - tomh 9y ago
    Plus, there's starting to be a lot of promise in Ukrainian startups - Looksery had a great exit a few years ago, and now Grammarly has just attracted $100M+ https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/08/grammarly-raises-110-million-for-a-better-spell-check/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/08/grammarly-raises-110-milli...
  - dmytrish 9y ago
    It's not true that it is cheap because of the local currency low value: the IT wages were approximately the same when $1k was 8k hrn. Ukrainian IT market is mostly outsourcing and does not depend much on the internal market and local currency, outsourcing developers usually get paid in USD (or equivalent) regardless of the hryvnia value.
pjmlp 9y ago
I was quite impressed with the Ciber City area in Mauritius, but not sure how well everyone there is doing.
- carlmungz 9y ago
  When did you last visit?
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    A couple of months ago. I didn't do much though, just had to drive around the area.
    - carlmungz 9y ago
      Ah, right. Have you any connections in the country?
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        No.
ian0 9y ago
As some have already mentioned, Indonesia! Gojek on its own is an amazing story and product. Its also a major player in a larger plot: Payments, chat, e-comm and on-demand platforms are being mashed together in an attempt to build china-style mega portals. Its pretty exciting stuff. On the product side Gojek & Kudo are relativly unique. On the market side check out the recent Grab / Tencent / Ant financial investments and down the rabbit hole from there..
erbdex 9y ago
India | Telecom | 110M subscribers on-boarded in 100 days To summarize: Jio, which is our cellular telephony play, now is the world's largest cellular data network (pumping 22,000 TB per day) and onboards a million customers a day! We now have 110 million subscribers (in ~100 days). This became possible when the telco regulators here gave a go ahead to use the Govt of India's pet biometric auth project Aadhaar[1] to accept electronic KYCs(proof of identity+address). A typical SIM issue took us <3m enabling Jio to issue 1M+ SIM cards a day in a developing country where printouts of PoI and PoA were mandatory. This infrastructure as the physical layer coupled with the fact that India has 40% YoY growth rate in Internet penetration[2] has opened up a fintech opportunity in a $50B market that BCG and Google estimate[3] to be in the tune of $500B+ by 2020. Disclosure: I work with JioMoney's product team in Bangalore. We are building the payments infrastructure on top of Jio and other telcos. We're hiring![4] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar 2. http://www.kpcb.com/blog/2016-internet-trends-report http://www.kpcb.com/blog/2016-internet-trends-report 3. http://image-src.bcg.com/BCG_COM/BCG-Google%20Digital%20Payments%202020-July%202016_tcm21-39245.pdf http://image-src.bcg.com/BCG_COM/BCG-Google%20Digital%20Paym... 4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14030014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14030014
- koolba 9y ago
  Holy shit are those numbers real? 1M paying subscribers added a day? I'm guessing this is prepay with cards / top ups right? If so the cash play becomes amazing too.
  - ramshanker 9y ago
    Yes , all those numbers are true. Ever since I subscribed to JIO I have stopped switching off my cellular Data !! Vacated all music out of phone memory for others useful apps. Now audio on streaming only.
  - erbdex 9y ago
    "One rival executive reckons Jio is carrying more data than either China Mobile or AT&T, the world’s two most valuable operators." http://www.economist.com/news/business/21718495-jios-100m-new-customers-cost-cool-25bn-acquire-mukesh-ambani-has-made-business-worlds http://www.economist.com/news/business/21718495-jios-100m-ne...
yuyangchee98 9y ago
Malaysia: GrabCar
TheHeasman 9y ago
There's some pretty exciting stuff happening in the startup scene in Nigeria, most famously Zuckerberg's PR visit to Lagos a few months ago. Konga (a Nigerian company) is trying to upset Joomla (a South African company) to become the Amazon of Africa, and co-working spaces are starting to sprout all over the place. There are over a hundred different mobile payment solutions, not just in the micro-payment sector, but for traditional middle class spending. There's also been a recent boost for Nigeria to get back into agriculture (~80% - 90% of produce is imported. Welcome to the Resource Curse), there are some entrepreneurs trying to approach this field with the advantages tech can bring to the African agriculture landscape.
- oblio 9y ago
  I'm joking a bit here, but I was expecting that Nigerian entrepreuneurial spirit to actually turn to the light side for a while now, so it's not a suprise that Nigeria is developing a thriving startup scene. Before anyone says that I'm mean or anything, I'm Romanian. Our IT scene started with people pirating software and hacking servers left and right. We were banned from Paypal for quite a few years...
- mekicha 9y ago
  Nigerian techies are making great strides in the sector, overcoming challenges the environment and the system poses on them to shine among their peers. Great efforts have been made in the ecommerce and fintech sectors, but I will also like to mention Andela(https://andela.com/what-we-do/ https://andela.com/what-we-do/) which is doing a great job training and exposing African tech talents to the outside world. There are other platforms of that nature now, springing up across the nation.
  - Lordarminius 9y ago
    I'll be contentious here. Andela's business model is to scout for young talent and train them as developers. They rent them out to companies in the developed world essentially exploiting the gap in wages that exists between the West and Africa. Not bad in the sense that it gives young people a job and exposure, but hardly an innovative idea and not a startup if you go by the common understanding of the term .
FahadUddin92 9y ago
The startup scene in Pakistan is going good. Companies like Finja and Planet N Group have are launching fintech solutions. Markhor and Colwer made it to YCombinator. Nadeem Hussain is probably the largest tech investor in Pakistan who has invested around $8 Million in different fintech/tech ventures. Daraz by Rocket Internet is an eCommerce giant that should be mentioned. Find many startups from Pakistan here: https://www.startuplist.pk/all https://www.startuplist.pk/all
myaccountzz 9y ago
Not at the moment, but when Venezuala finally turns away from socialism/communism and rebuilds itself; it will be interesting to see how well they can do in the tech sector.
- SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
  Iirc Venezuela already has a fairly good (all things considered) internet access. Semi-relatedly Cuba has some pretty ingenious innovation to get around the tightly controlller internet access including makeshift internet that closely resembles a meshnet. Would be interesting to see how Cuba would react to state sanctioned capitalism considering the population very much has been educated under the Castros.
gdiocarez 9y ago
prepaid electricity
ajpgrealish 9y ago
There is a lot of work going on using tech to bring energy access to the 1.2 billion people currently living without grid access. BBOXX are using the combination of developments in renewable, battery tech, big data and IoT to bring down the cost of offering solar energy to people living in the most rural areas of the world. Briefly, we use the above technology to enable a pay-as-you-go solution to energy whereby a customer can sign up for a small and affordable down-payment. We will then dispatch one of our installers to fit the system in the customers house and teach them about how it works. We will then remotely monitor the system over the GSM network to ensure it is providing a reliable source of energy. The customer then pays weekly or monthly using mobile money to keep the system enabled. The data-side of what we do enable us to prove to investors and financiers that we understand our customers and can control repayment rates which means we can continue to grow the number of systems we have deployed. We currently have most of our units deployed in Rwanda and Kenya through our fully owned retail network but more recently have launched partnerships in Nigeria, Cameroon and Pakistan.
- carlmungz 9y ago
  Interesting. Will be in touch, thanks.
mekicha 9y ago
Let me mention Nigeria again( I already did in a reply to a comment below). This tech news site: https://techpoint.ng/category/nigerian-tech-startups/ https://techpoint.ng/category/nigerian-tech-startups/ does a good jobb of chronicling some(not all) of the startups springing across the country.
contingencies 9y ago
Nairobi, Kenya: New incubator http://metta.co/#visit http://metta.co/#visit could be a good source of contacts and interviewees. Rangoon, Myanmar: A scene is forming now that internet and mobile phones have become widely available and affordable. Vietnam: Lots of startups.
- carlmungz 9y ago
  Thanks for the info. That Myanmar angle is intriguing. What is the best way to reach you for a quick chat?
  - contingencies 9y ago
    Email in profile.
OmIsMyShield 9y ago
South Africa is fascinating - contrasting bad news and great innovation. Although there have been setbacks from recent government shenanigans the wheels of law are turning (albeit slowly) and the ruling Zuma faction is daily facing more and more resistance. In the meantime the weak rand makes SA cheap, and their interesting ideas enter the world market. Amazon has a strong presence in SA - and (this is generally a little known fact) EC2 was developed in South Africa[1] Locally, the Silicon Cape[2] initiative is aiming to create an environment where tech startups thrive, and has grown to 10k members in 500 organisations. Ventureburn[3] has a lot on the startup scene in emerging markets, and a lot on South Africa in particular. The limitations and challenges of South Africa actually drives innovation. South Africa's (actually, Africa as a continent too) large informal and unbanked sector has led to a lot of fintech and mobile-banking related startups. Limited Internet infrastructure penetration leads to interesting ways to solve, say, the last-mile problem. For instance Flickswitch[4] has focused on greasing the wheels for those within the IoT and M2M market who use the GSM networks to address the last mile problem (disclaimer: I am one of the four original co-founders of and exited last year after being there for 9 years). Etc. It's a super market to explore, bigger than, say, Ireland, and more innovative than most. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-amazon-exposed-its-guts-the-history-of-awss-ec2/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-amazon-exposed-its-guts-the... [2] https://www.siliconcape.com/ https://www.siliconcape.com/ [3] http://ventureburn.com/ http://ventureburn.com/ [4] http://www.flickswitch.co.za http://www.flickswitch.co.za
- carlmungz 9y ago
  Interesting stuff, thanks. As a Zimbabwean I'm always envious of how tech-enabled S.A is.
- mping 9y ago
  Reminds me of TheKeyboardCaper & Phrozen crew. Followed a tutorial on how to crack some Norton software via softice. Good old days :D
  - muggermuch 9y ago
    Yes! I remember reading TKC's tutorials as a teenager and being fascinated by his life story. I wonder what he's doing these days.
sandGorgon 9y ago
India Fintech - the whole country was demonetized in November and there is a serious push to making the whole country cashless. This is a serious challenge in a country where e-commerce was predominantly cash-on-delivery. To power this through, it's leveraging the new fangled Aadhaar infrastructure - which is kind of like "social security number with biometric data" and is triggering this huge polarising debate on privacy vs value. However, what cannot be denied is that the tech and regulatory landscape in India around payments has leapfrogged the world. The new NPCI (National Payments Corp of India) API is designed and intended to make VISA/MasterCard redundant...and is well on its way. We now have a regulatory framework to unlock bank data to make anyone start a service like Yodlee . Crazy , interesting times P.S. We (RedCarpetUp.com) are a YC startup building credit-for-billions in India. I love talking about this stuff - never thought I'd see it in my lifetime. Ping me if you want to chat anytime.
- throwaway423447 9y ago
  > leapfrogged the world. And why is that ? Because the powers that be decided to push it down the throats of Indians.
- nileshtrivedi 9y ago
  > the whole country was demonetized Some currency notes were declared as "no more legal tender". There was no demonetization. And it makes no sense to say that "the whole country was demonetized". :-)
floathub 9y ago
Morocco is now a world leader in solar power: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/04/465568055/morocco-unveils-a-massive-solar-power-plant-in-the-sahara http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/04/465568055/...
- carlmungz 9y ago
  Thanks for the link.
Raed667 9y ago
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Tunisia. Its main advantage is that the country produces SF-grade engineers for 10% of the cost. https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/tunisia-is-becoming-mena-next-startup-hub/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/tunisia-is-becoming-mena-n... https://www.wamda.com/2015/11/why-accelerators-are-flocking-to-tunisia https://www.wamda.com/2015/11/why-accelerators-are-flocking-... http://www.tunisia-live.net/2015/07/10/tunisia-start-up/ http://www.tunisia-live.net/2015/07/10/tunisia-start-up/ Some nuance: https://medium.com/@ostl/tunis-as-a-startup-city-or-not-2d4d33a71e05 https://medium.com/@ostl/tunis-as-a-startup-city-or-not-2d4d...
- flippyhead 9y ago
  I'd love to put this to the test. Do you happen to know of any good places to advertise our open developer positions there?
  - Raed667 9y ago
    The first platform that comes to mind is https://www.jobi.tn/ https://www.jobi.tn/ (also a local Tunisian startup)
  - carlmungz 9y ago
    I did an interview on the Middle East and North Africa recently and the guy I spoke to said similar things about the talent available in the region. You can check it out here: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/05/11/tech-in-the-middle-east-with-chris-shroeder/ https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/05/11/tech-in-the-...
  - Cardinal_ 9y ago
    Hey how can I contact you?
- carlmungz 9y ago
  Thanks for this.
rookiemaverick 9y ago
1. Spain: the rise of bitnami 2. India: digital payment via paytm, 3. India: tough time for Amazon because of Flipkart 4. India: companies likeswiggy, big basket, etc redefining supply chain 5. The IOT disruption Jio is already covered in previous comments
rookiemaverick 9y ago
One more: the cab network of India, many different apps to book a cab in the era of uber.
Temasik 9y ago
Mymagic.my Malaysia
awartani 9y ago
I live in Palestine, and I see tech sector is growing crazy. We have a couple of Startups who are doing great and we have a VC and funds. It never been better to be honest. I am sure you will find a lot of resources about Tech sector in Palestine.
- bullshy 9y ago
  Palestine isn't developing and it's not a nation either. Do you mean Jordan or Israel? I guess you were referring to Jordan (israel isn't a developing nation[0]). I heard that the west bank and Gaza scene is successful due to very talented people and the support of some Israeli[1] and Saudi arabian companies. It's delighting to hear about group of people who lives in the west bank or Gaza and doing something good for humanity. good luck ya zalame. [0] https://www.quora.com/Is-Israel-a-developed-country https://www.quora.com/Is-Israel-a-developed-country [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-mellanox-idUSKCN0Z21ZR http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-mellan...
  - ASalazarMX 9y ago
    If you care so much about being on topic, please keep politics out of this discussion.
    - bullshy 9y ago
      I was wondering what the OP means by Palestine, is it Israel or Jordan. Both aren't developing countries and both has very successful startup scene. Anyways, if you see it as off-topic I will delete my comments and apologize.
      - awartani 9y ago
        I don't know why are you being so negative about it.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Palestine isn't developing "developing" in this context is a synonym (perhaps more specifically, a euphemism) for "less developed". > and it's not a nation either. Palestine is absolutely a nation (it's also an increasingly widely recognized state, though with disputed borders, but that's independent of it being, or not being, a nation.)
buritica 9y ago
In Colombia, we've gone from having no OSS Dev communities, to 5 world class confs in about 7 yrs, and many (local meetups (http://colombia-dev.org/meetups http://colombia-dev.org/meetups) thanks to the work of volunteers and community organizers. We're trying to get a way from the first thing that comes to mind when you think about our country (even though Netflix is making harder for us, lol). More than happy to talk about how it's been done, and how other developing nations could replicate the model and how it's benefitted the region.
- nthtran 9y ago
  Hey would love to chat with you about replicating this model in other developing countries. What's the best way to reach out?
  - buritica 9y ago
    you can email me buritica @ gmail, or DM @buritica on twitter
- carlmungz 9y ago
  Yes, would be happy to get in touch. Am I right in thinking you're Juan Pablo Buritica?
fashionate 9y ago
:)
carlosgg 9y ago
A while back I read this article on Iranian startups: https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-05/startups-surge-as-iranian-tech-finds-silver-lining-to-sanctions https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-05/start... Also found this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2014/11/10/heres-what-its-like-to-launch-a-start-up-in-iran/?utm_term=.fc4566c12b41 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2014/11/1... https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-top-startups-in-Iran https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-top-startups-in-Iran
Ramiuz 9y ago
The scene in Chile it’s really interesting. There is a well nurtured ecosystem of startups going on right now, with programs like STARTUP-Chile, innova and JUMP. With funding coming from government and private parties, who invites anyone in the world (yes, you don’t need a Chilean nationality, only that your startup is based here). Here are some links with more information, hope it helps: http://www.economist.com/node/21564589 http://www.economist.com/node/21564589 https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/16/a-look-into-chiles-innovative-startup-government/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/16/a-look-into-chiles-innovat... http://www.startupchile.org/ http://www.startupchile.org/ p.s: SED it's a great podcast! ty!.
hallman76 9y ago
the Other Valleys newsletter[0] may be of interest. Their description: "Creative/technology-related news and ideas, that are by and large NOT from the US/UK/EU. Inspiration can strike from many other places (the multiple Other Valleys spread across the world), and I like to know about them. Now you can too." [0] http://tinyletter.com/othervalleys http://tinyletter.com/othervalleys
- carlmungz 9y ago
  Nice resource - thanks!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
miraj 9y ago
allow me to vouch for Bangladesh. there are some good talents and opportunities for grassroots oriented development & innovation! BKash is a good example. its a mobile payments company with equity interest from Gates Foundation & IFC/WorldBank. https://www.bkash.com/about/company-profile https://www.bkash.com/about/company-profile then there is NewsCred, the leading enterprise content marketing platform. Based in NYC, it is founded by Bangladeshis, & have a dev centre in Dhaka. http://www.newscred.com http://www.newscred.com GrameenPhone was one of the pioneers in Mobile for Dev + Economic empowerment. Iqbal Quadir, founder of GP also founded The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT. (0) (1) (2) anyone intetested for more info + discussions re: the field of ICT4D i.e. Tech for Development, I find the TIER group at Berkeley & their mail-list quite useful.(3) (4) thete are other groups & countries that are also interesting. hope to get back with some more data once I locate them. (0) https://www.grameenphone.com https://www.grameenphone.com (1) http://legatum.mit.edu http://legatum.mit.edu (2) http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-iqbal-quadir-built-grameenphone/ http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-iqbal-quadir-... (3) http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/drupal/about http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/drupal/about (4) https://www.millennium.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/tier https://www.millennium.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/tier
jecel 9y ago
I could tell you a lot about tech in Brazil up to ten years ago, but then I stopped paying attention. It would be very shocking if nothing interesting is happening around here at the moment, so I hope someone who knows will comment.
tim333 9y ago
China's an interesting story as the only place rivaling California in terms of funding and valuations. 131 unicorns apparently though not many seem to do a lot of business outside of China.
leandot 9y ago
Bulgaria, Telerik recently had a $270mil exit

156 points by carlmungz 9y ago

I'm a guest host @ Software Engineering Daily & I want to cover tech stories from places which don't always get a lot of coverage.

avh02 9y ago

Some stuff happening in Lebanon with government incentives and whatnot (and an educated but undervalued tech workforce). personally I've left that all behind me but I can probably find people you want to talk to if you want to talk to them. something you may be interested in as an index to some stuff the central bank is trying: http://bdlaccelerate.com/2016/ http://bdlaccelerate.com/2016/ The Guardian's chips with everything covered some of it recently-ish: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2016/nov/24/beirut-lebanon-silicon-valley-tech-podcast https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2016/nov/24/bei... edit: just looked at the podcast, i see you've recently done middle east, oh well :P

carlmungz 9y ago
I'm happy to chat with people who have a deeper understanding of Lebanon. My Middle East show was more of a general overview of the region. I'm hoping to dig deeper into some of the stories I've come across. Do you have Twitter?
- avh02 9y ago
  not a very active user but will get notifications: @ahayrabedian, email's firstname.lastname@gmail.com (you can gather those fields from the twitter profile :) ) I mean, like i said, i've kind of left that behind me (only worked there for a year), but i can definitely put you in touch with people who are more up to speed.

durian89 9y ago

Vietnam has quite a strong startup ecosystem relative to its development stage. I think it has a lot to do with its government having laid out a plan since the 90s to develop its IT industry. Results are: 1) Lots of IT grads 2) Lots of funding 3) Okay-ish infrastructure If we add this to the interests in entrepreneurship among Vietnamese people, it results in a strong tech scene.

djpr 9y ago
Vietnam has an amazing energy right now. Lots of enthusiasm and optimism among its people. I know Malaysian companies that have back-offices in Vietnam because of the great talent there. The lack of English is a hurdle, but not impossible.
gghh 9y ago
This blog post from Google engineer Neil Fraser made the rounds 4 years ago: https://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/ https://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/ He traveled to Vietnam and observed a high quality Computer Science education in primary / secondary school. Talking about grade 11 scholars, he wrote: After returning to the US, I asked a senior engineer how he'd rank this question on a Google interview. Without knowing the source of the question, he judged that this would be in the top third. The class had 45 minutes to design a solution and implement it in Pascal. Most of them finished, a few just needed another five minutes. There is no question that half of the students in that grade 11 class could pass the Google interview process.
- hardlianotion 9y ago
  TBH, I think I would expect grade 11 students the world over to be able to answer the question on display.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    Where are you from? I have seen university students in my German CS classes struggle to implement breadth-first search; I would by highly surprised if an average grade 11 student could write a program to compute the connected components of a maze in less than 45 minutes.
    - hardlianotion 9y ago
      Dude, I am embarrassed. I didn't read the text properly and didn't realise it was a program. I agree with parent and you.
  - deleted 9y ago

rundmc 9y ago

Gibraltar: After the initial wave of financial services companies came a proliferation of gaming companies which led to a bunch of payments companies setting up. This has now led to a fintech industry evolving and is currently seeing a surge in blockchain related business. Interestingly the cycle has now gone full circle and seen the launch of an Exchange Listed Bitcoin Fund....

vesinisa 9y ago
By what measure is Gibraltar a developing country?
- timwaagh 9y ago
  by no means. but it is a place that usually does not get a lot of tech coverage.
carlmungz 9y ago
Thanks for this. I love hearing about tech in places such as this.

gfredtech 9y ago

Kenya has a very budding startup scene, mostly innovative ways of offering financial services to the unbanked: https://www.quora.com/What-are-interesting-startups-in-Kenya https://www.quora.com/What-are-interesting-startups-in-Kenya http://www.innovationiseverywhere.com/kenya-startup-scene/ http://www.innovationiseverywhere.com/kenya-startup-scene/

carlmungz 9y ago
My first SE Daily interview was with one of the co-founders of mymookh.com. Kenya is definitely a leading nation in the mobile payments space.
- vram22 9y ago
  M-Pesa, which may have first been created there (not sure, just read of it used there first), is now in India too.
  - gfredtech 9y ago
    yes, as well as Bitpesa
    - vram22 9y ago
      Interesting, hadn't heard of that one.

codewithcheese 9y ago

Indonesia. Check out Go-Jek, Tokopedia

rshetty 9y ago

Indonesia: Gojek Tech, It does have a very fascinating story to tell

rajeshwadhwani 9y ago

The tech story here in Bangalore ,India also seems very promising. http://www.innovationiseverywhere.com/bangalore/ http://www.innovationiseverywhere.com/bangalore/

webrobots 9y ago

Lithuania: Just had it's first ever proper startup exit. Oberlo was sold for $20mil to Shopify. What is interesting - Oberlo was built without VC backing in 1.5 years. This is a good morale boost for local tech community, as Lithuania always tries to measure up to Baltic sister countries Estonia (Skype and many others) and Latvia.

snowpanda 9y ago
I've been to Lithuania before, great country.

proyb2 9y ago

For all tech news in Asia: https://www.techinasia.com https://www.techinasia.com

umarniz 9y ago

https://www.startuplist.pk/ https://www.startuplist.pk/

djpr 9y ago

Indonesia in ecommerce and fin-tech. There are plenty in the scene, but the two bigs ones to know are: > GoJek - Fintech/Uber-like startup: Raised over USD 550 million. They started out providing on-demand motorcycle taxis (called ojeks), but expanded to on-demand food delivery, cleaners, make-up, courier, massage, housecleaners, etc. Their bigger play is GoPay. That's their e-wallet service that lets you pay for service you pay for via GoJek and also transfer money to other GoPay users > Tokopedia - C2C ecommerce They're a C2C ecommerce site with over 4.0 million product listings with 250 million USD raised. Others to check out are Traveloka, Bhinneka, Bukalapak, Doku, Qerja, Talenta, Qraved, Fabelio...tons of energy and funding going around.

bbv-if 9y ago

Ukraine's IT industry is rather developed with still relatively cheap workforce. And there have been a few successful startups recently: http://www.uadn.net/2017/01/09/top-10-ukrainian-startups-in-2016/ http://www.uadn.net/2017/01/09/top-10-ukrainian-startups-in-...

drops 9y ago
The workforce is currently cheap compared to western countries because of the local currency's low value, and IT being one of the very few fields where people get paid in dollars. So as a result, what would be a low wage in the west is an extremely high wage in Ukraine (e.g. $1k a month = 25k hryvnias, which is 8 times more than country's minimum wage).
- tomh 9y ago
  Plus, there's starting to be a lot of promise in Ukrainian startups - Looksery had a great exit a few years ago, and now Grammarly has just attracted $100M+ https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/08/grammarly-raises-110-million-for-a-better-spell-check/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/08/grammarly-raises-110-milli...
- dmytrish 9y ago
  It's not true that it is cheap because of the local currency low value: the IT wages were approximately the same when $1k was 8k hrn. Ukrainian IT market is mostly outsourcing and does not depend much on the internal market and local currency, outsourcing developers usually get paid in USD (or equivalent) regardless of the hryvnia value.

pjmlp 9y ago

I was quite impressed with the Ciber City area in Mauritius, but not sure how well everyone there is doing.

carlmungz 9y ago
When did you last visit?
- pjmlp 9y ago
  A couple of months ago. I didn't do much though, just had to drive around the area.
  - carlmungz 9y ago
    Ah, right. Have you any connections in the country?
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      No.

ian0 9y ago

As some have already mentioned, Indonesia! Gojek on its own is an amazing story and product. Its also a major player in a larger plot: Payments, chat, e-comm and on-demand platforms are being mashed together in an attempt to build china-style mega portals. Its pretty exciting stuff. On the product side Gojek & Kudo are relativly unique. On the market side check out the recent Grab / Tencent / Ant financial investments and down the rabbit hole from there..

erbdex 9y ago

India | Telecom | 110M subscribers on-boarded in 100 days To summarize: Jio, which is our cellular telephony play, now is the world's largest cellular data network (pumping 22,000 TB per day) and onboards a million customers a day! We now have 110 million subscribers (in ~100 days). This became possible when the telco regulators here gave a go ahead to use the Govt of India's pet biometric auth project Aadhaar[1] to accept electronic KYCs(proof of identity+address). A typical SIM issue took us <3m enabling Jio to issue 1M+ SIM cards a day in a developing country where printouts of PoI and PoA were mandatory. This infrastructure as the physical layer coupled with the fact that India has 40% YoY growth rate in Internet penetration[2] has opened up a fintech opportunity in a $50B market that BCG and Google estimate[3] to be in the tune of $500B+ by 2020. Disclosure: I work with JioMoney's product team in Bangalore. We are building the payments infrastructure on top of Jio and other telcos. We're hiring![4] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar 2. http://www.kpcb.com/blog/2016-internet-trends-report http://www.kpcb.com/blog/2016-internet-trends-report 3. http://image-src.bcg.com/BCG_COM/BCG-Google%20Digital%20Payments%202020-July%202016_tcm21-39245.pdf http://image-src.bcg.com/BCG_COM/BCG-Google%20Digital%20Paym... 4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14030014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14030014

koolba 9y ago
Holy shit are those numbers real? 1M paying subscribers added a day? I'm guessing this is prepay with cards / top ups right? If so the cash play becomes amazing too.
- ramshanker 9y ago
  Yes , all those numbers are true. Ever since I subscribed to JIO I have stopped switching off my cellular Data !! Vacated all music out of phone memory for others useful apps. Now audio on streaming only.
- erbdex 9y ago
  "One rival executive reckons Jio is carrying more data than either China Mobile or AT&T, the world’s two most valuable operators." http://www.economist.com/news/business/21718495-jios-100m-new-customers-cost-cool-25bn-acquire-mukesh-ambani-has-made-business-worlds http://www.economist.com/news/business/21718495-jios-100m-ne...

yuyangchee98 9y ago

Malaysia: GrabCar

TheHeasman 9y ago

There's some pretty exciting stuff happening in the startup scene in Nigeria, most famously Zuckerberg's PR visit to Lagos a few months ago. Konga (a Nigerian company) is trying to upset Joomla (a South African company) to become the Amazon of Africa, and co-working spaces are starting to sprout all over the place. There are over a hundred different mobile payment solutions, not just in the micro-payment sector, but for traditional middle class spending. There's also been a recent boost for Nigeria to get back into agriculture (~80% - 90% of produce is imported. Welcome to the Resource Curse), there are some entrepreneurs trying to approach this field with the advantages tech can bring to the African agriculture landscape.

oblio 9y ago
I'm joking a bit here, but I was expecting that Nigerian entrepreuneurial spirit to actually turn to the light side for a while now, so it's not a suprise that Nigeria is developing a thriving startup scene. Before anyone says that I'm mean or anything, I'm Romanian. Our IT scene started with people pirating software and hacking servers left and right. We were banned from Paypal for quite a few years...
mekicha 9y ago
Nigerian techies are making great strides in the sector, overcoming challenges the environment and the system poses on them to shine among their peers. Great efforts have been made in the ecommerce and fintech sectors, but I will also like to mention Andela(https://andela.com/what-we-do/ https://andela.com/what-we-do/) which is doing a great job training and exposing African tech talents to the outside world. There are other platforms of that nature now, springing up across the nation.
- Lordarminius 9y ago
  I'll be contentious here. Andela's business model is to scout for young talent and train them as developers. They rent them out to companies in the developed world essentially exploiting the gap in wages that exists between the West and Africa. Not bad in the sense that it gives young people a job and exposure, but hardly an innovative idea and not a startup if you go by the common understanding of the term .

FahadUddin92 9y ago

The startup scene in Pakistan is going good. Companies like Finja and Planet N Group have are launching fintech solutions. Markhor and Colwer made it to YCombinator. Nadeem Hussain is probably the largest tech investor in Pakistan who has invested around $8 Million in different fintech/tech ventures. Daraz by Rocket Internet is an eCommerce giant that should be mentioned. Find many startups from Pakistan here: https://www.startuplist.pk/all https://www.startuplist.pk/all

myaccountzz 9y ago

Not at the moment, but when Venezuala finally turns away from socialism/communism and rebuilds itself; it will be interesting to see how well they can do in the tech sector.

SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
Iirc Venezuela already has a fairly good (all things considered) internet access. Semi-relatedly Cuba has some pretty ingenious innovation to get around the tightly controlller internet access including makeshift internet that closely resembles a meshnet. Would be interesting to see how Cuba would react to state sanctioned capitalism considering the population very much has been educated under the Castros.

gdiocarez 9y ago

prepaid electricity

ajpgrealish 9y ago

There is a lot of work going on using tech to bring energy access to the 1.2 billion people currently living without grid access. BBOXX are using the combination of developments in renewable, battery tech, big data and IoT to bring down the cost of offering solar energy to people living in the most rural areas of the world. Briefly, we use the above technology to enable a pay-as-you-go solution to energy whereby a customer can sign up for a small and affordable down-payment. We will then dispatch one of our installers to fit the system in the customers house and teach them about how it works. We will then remotely monitor the system over the GSM network to ensure it is providing a reliable source of energy. The customer then pays weekly or monthly using mobile money to keep the system enabled. The data-side of what we do enable us to prove to investors and financiers that we understand our customers and can control repayment rates which means we can continue to grow the number of systems we have deployed. We currently have most of our units deployed in Rwanda and Kenya through our fully owned retail network but more recently have launched partnerships in Nigeria, Cameroon and Pakistan.

carlmungz 9y ago
Interesting. Will be in touch, thanks.

mekicha 9y ago

Let me mention Nigeria again( I already did in a reply to a comment below). This tech news site: https://techpoint.ng/category/nigerian-tech-startups/ https://techpoint.ng/category/nigerian-tech-startups/ does a good jobb of chronicling some(not all) of the startups springing across the country.

contingencies 9y ago

Nairobi, Kenya: New incubator http://metta.co/#visit http://metta.co/#visit could be a good source of contacts and interviewees. Rangoon, Myanmar: A scene is forming now that internet and mobile phones have become widely available and affordable. Vietnam: Lots of startups.

carlmungz 9y ago
Thanks for the info. That Myanmar angle is intriguing. What is the best way to reach you for a quick chat?
- contingencies 9y ago
  Email in profile.

OmIsMyShield 9y ago

South Africa is fascinating - contrasting bad news and great innovation. Although there have been setbacks from recent government shenanigans the wheels of law are turning (albeit slowly) and the ruling Zuma faction is daily facing more and more resistance. In the meantime the weak rand makes SA cheap, and their interesting ideas enter the world market. Amazon has a strong presence in SA - and (this is generally a little known fact) EC2 was developed in South Africa[1] Locally, the Silicon Cape[2] initiative is aiming to create an environment where tech startups thrive, and has grown to 10k members in 500 organisations. Ventureburn[3] has a lot on the startup scene in emerging markets, and a lot on South Africa in particular. The limitations and challenges of South Africa actually drives innovation. South Africa's (actually, Africa as a continent too) large informal and unbanked sector has led to a lot of fintech and mobile-banking related startups. Limited Internet infrastructure penetration leads to interesting ways to solve, say, the last-mile problem. For instance Flickswitch[4] has focused on greasing the wheels for those within the IoT and M2M market who use the GSM networks to address the last mile problem (disclaimer: I am one of the four original co-founders of and exited last year after being there for 9 years). Etc. It's a super market to explore, bigger than, say, Ireland, and more innovative than most. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-amazon-exposed-its-guts-the-history-of-awss-ec2/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-amazon-exposed-its-guts-the... [2] https://www.siliconcape.com/ https://www.siliconcape.com/ [3] http://ventureburn.com/ http://ventureburn.com/ [4] http://www.flickswitch.co.za http://www.flickswitch.co.za

carlmungz 9y ago
Interesting stuff, thanks. As a Zimbabwean I'm always envious of how tech-enabled S.A is.
mping 9y ago
Reminds me of TheKeyboardCaper & Phrozen crew. Followed a tutorial on how to crack some Norton software via softice. Good old days :D
- muggermuch 9y ago
  Yes! I remember reading TKC's tutorials as a teenager and being fascinated by his life story. I wonder what he's doing these days.

sandGorgon 9y ago

India Fintech - the whole country was demonetized in November and there is a serious push to making the whole country cashless. This is a serious challenge in a country where e-commerce was predominantly cash-on-delivery. To power this through, it's leveraging the new fangled Aadhaar infrastructure - which is kind of like "social security number with biometric data" and is triggering this huge polarising debate on privacy vs value. However, what cannot be denied is that the tech and regulatory landscape in India around payments has leapfrogged the world. The new NPCI (National Payments Corp of India) API is designed and intended to make VISA/MasterCard redundant...and is well on its way. We now have a regulatory framework to unlock bank data to make anyone start a service like Yodlee . Crazy , interesting times P.S. We (RedCarpetUp.com) are a YC startup building credit-for-billions in India. I love talking about this stuff - never thought I'd see it in my lifetime. Ping me if you want to chat anytime.

throwaway423447 9y ago
> leapfrogged the world. And why is that ? Because the powers that be decided to push it down the throats of Indians.
nileshtrivedi 9y ago
> the whole country was demonetized Some currency notes were declared as "no more legal tender". There was no demonetization. And it makes no sense to say that "the whole country was demonetized". :-)

floathub 9y ago

Morocco is now a world leader in solar power: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/04/465568055/morocco-unveils-a-massive-solar-power-plant-in-the-sahara http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/04/465568055/...

carlmungz 9y ago
Thanks for the link.

Raed667 9y ago

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Tunisia. Its main advantage is that the country produces SF-grade engineers for 10% of the cost. https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/tunisia-is-becoming-mena-next-startup-hub/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/tunisia-is-becoming-mena-n... https://www.wamda.com/2015/11/why-accelerators-are-flocking-to-tunisia https://www.wamda.com/2015/11/why-accelerators-are-flocking-... http://www.tunisia-live.net/2015/07/10/tunisia-start-up/ http://www.tunisia-live.net/2015/07/10/tunisia-start-up/ Some nuance: https://medium.com/@ostl/tunis-as-a-startup-city-or-not-2d4d33a71e05 https://medium.com/@ostl/tunis-as-a-startup-city-or-not-2d4d...

flippyhead 9y ago
I'd love to put this to the test. Do you happen to know of any good places to advertise our open developer positions there?
- Raed667 9y ago
  The first platform that comes to mind is https://www.jobi.tn/ https://www.jobi.tn/ (also a local Tunisian startup)
- carlmungz 9y ago
  I did an interview on the Middle East and North Africa recently and the guy I spoke to said similar things about the talent available in the region. You can check it out here: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/05/11/tech-in-the-middle-east-with-chris-shroeder/ https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/05/11/tech-in-the-...
- Cardinal_ 9y ago
  Hey how can I contact you?
carlmungz 9y ago
Thanks for this.

rookiemaverick 9y ago

1. Spain: the rise of bitnami 2. India: digital payment via paytm, 3. India: tough time for Amazon because of Flipkart 4. India: companies likeswiggy, big basket, etc redefining supply chain 5. The IOT disruption Jio is already covered in previous comments

rookiemaverick 9y ago

One more: the cab network of India, many different apps to book a cab in the era of uber.

Temasik 9y ago

Mymagic.my Malaysia

awartani 9y ago

I live in Palestine, and I see tech sector is growing crazy. We have a couple of Startups who are doing great and we have a VC and funds. It never been better to be honest. I am sure you will find a lot of resources about Tech sector in Palestine.

bullshy 9y ago
Palestine isn't developing and it's not a nation either. Do you mean Jordan or Israel? I guess you were referring to Jordan (israel isn't a developing nation[0]). I heard that the west bank and Gaza scene is successful due to very talented people and the support of some Israeli[1] and Saudi arabian companies. It's delighting to hear about group of people who lives in the west bank or Gaza and doing something good for humanity. good luck ya zalame. [0] https://www.quora.com/Is-Israel-a-developed-country https://www.quora.com/Is-Israel-a-developed-country [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-mellanox-idUSKCN0Z21ZR http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-mellan...
- ASalazarMX 9y ago
  If you care so much about being on topic, please keep politics out of this discussion.
  - bullshy 9y ago
    I was wondering what the OP means by Palestine, is it Israel or Jordan. Both aren't developing countries and both has very successful startup scene. Anyways, if you see it as off-topic I will delete my comments and apologize.
    - awartani 9y ago
      I don't know why are you being so negative about it.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Palestine isn't developing "developing" in this context is a synonym (perhaps more specifically, a euphemism) for "less developed". > and it's not a nation either. Palestine is absolutely a nation (it's also an increasingly widely recognized state, though with disputed borders, but that's independent of it being, or not being, a nation.)

buritica 9y ago

In Colombia, we've gone from having no OSS Dev communities, to 5 world class confs in about 7 yrs, and many (local meetups (http://colombia-dev.org/meetups http://colombia-dev.org/meetups) thanks to the work of volunteers and community organizers. We're trying to get a way from the first thing that comes to mind when you think about our country (even though Netflix is making harder for us, lol). More than happy to talk about how it's been done, and how other developing nations could replicate the model and how it's benefitted the region.

nthtran 9y ago
Hey would love to chat with you about replicating this model in other developing countries. What's the best way to reach out?
- buritica 9y ago
  you can email me buritica @ gmail, or DM @buritica on twitter
carlmungz 9y ago
Yes, would be happy to get in touch. Am I right in thinking you're Juan Pablo Buritica?

fashionate 9y ago

carlosgg 9y ago

A while back I read this article on Iranian startups: https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-05/startups-surge-as-iranian-tech-finds-silver-lining-to-sanctions https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-05/start... Also found this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2014/11/10/heres-what-its-like-to-launch-a-start-up-in-iran/?utm_term=.fc4566c12b41 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2014/11/1... https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-top-startups-in-Iran https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-top-startups-in-Iran

Ramiuz 9y ago

The scene in Chile it’s really interesting. There is a well nurtured ecosystem of startups going on right now, with programs like STARTUP-Chile, innova and JUMP. With funding coming from government and private parties, who invites anyone in the world (yes, you don’t need a Chilean nationality, only that your startup is based here). Here are some links with more information, hope it helps: http://www.economist.com/node/21564589 http://www.economist.com/node/21564589 https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/16/a-look-into-chiles-innovative-startup-government/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/16/a-look-into-chiles-innovat... http://www.startupchile.org/ http://www.startupchile.org/ p.s: SED it's a great podcast! ty!.

hallman76 9y ago

the Other Valleys newsletter[0] may be of interest. Their description: "Creative/technology-related news and ideas, that are by and large NOT from the US/UK/EU. Inspiration can strike from many other places (the multiple Other Valleys spread across the world), and I like to know about them. Now you can too." [0] http://tinyletter.com/othervalleys http://tinyletter.com/othervalleys

carlmungz 9y ago
Nice resource - thanks!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

miraj 9y ago

allow me to vouch for Bangladesh. there are some good talents and opportunities for grassroots oriented development & innovation! BKash is a good example. its a mobile payments company with equity interest from Gates Foundation & IFC/WorldBank. https://www.bkash.com/about/company-profile https://www.bkash.com/about/company-profile then there is NewsCred, the leading enterprise content marketing platform. Based in NYC, it is founded by Bangladeshis, & have a dev centre in Dhaka. http://www.newscred.com http://www.newscred.com GrameenPhone was one of the pioneers in Mobile for Dev + Economic empowerment. Iqbal Quadir, founder of GP also founded The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT. (0) (1) (2) anyone intetested for more info + discussions re: the field of ICT4D i.e. Tech for Development, I find the TIER group at Berkeley & their mail-list quite useful.(3) (4) thete are other groups & countries that are also interesting. hope to get back with some more data once I locate them. (0) https://www.grameenphone.com https://www.grameenphone.com (1) http://legatum.mit.edu http://legatum.mit.edu (2) http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-iqbal-quadir-built-grameenphone/ http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-iqbal-quadir-... (3) http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/drupal/about http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/drupal/about (4) https://www.millennium.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/tier https://www.millennium.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/tier

jecel 9y ago

I could tell you a lot about tech in Brazil up to ten years ago, but then I stopped paying attention. It would be very shocking if nothing interesting is happening around here at the moment, so I hope someone who knows will comment.

tim333 9y ago

China's an interesting story as the only place rivaling California in terms of funding and valuations. 131 unicorns apparently though not many seem to do a lot of business outside of China.

leandot 9y ago

Bulgaria, Telerik recently had a $270mil exit