Tech recruiters wanting to break into the Far East market, those already dipping their toes in or even those already up and running should be heartened by the start-up scene across the region. 

While the ‘Asian Tigers’ of Singapore and Hong Kong still lead the charge in tech development, investment opportunities and low barriers to entry mean centres in some of the region’s emerging economies could be the next big tech hubs, according to job portal Everjobs, which operates in Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

Those centres are as follows:

Bangalore, India

Seattle and Boston-based Unitus Seed Fund finances start-ups innovating for the masses in India. The region’s biggest success story could well be Ola, taxi-summoning app Uber’s biggest competitor in India.

Yangon, Myanmar [Rangoon, Burma]

Project Hub Yangon provides incubation and training programmes to help entrepreneurs launch businesses. The success story is IdeaBox, a community of entrepreneurs who foster the next generation of internet companies by incubating new start-ups and accelerating existing companies.

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Everjobs says the number of start-up funding opportunities in Sri Lanka is growing. For example, Colombo-based start-up incubator Spiralation is best thought of as a business assault course with a grand prize at the end. 

In fact, Everjobs notes itself as the success story of the region. 

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Cradle gives conditional grants to teams of innovative individuals with innovative, technology-based ideas in the ICT, non-ICT and high growth technology industries. Tinder-like fashion app Shoppr, an online store aggregator app that provides users with item recommendations based on in-app likes and dislikes as well as social media profiles, was noted as the centre’s success story.

Jakarta, Indonesia 

DeNA, which develops and operates a broad range of mobile and online services including games, e-commerce and entertainment content distribution, invests in promising Indonesian start-ups. Online property listing platform Lamudi was highlighted as the city’s success story. 

Everjobs, backed by internet platforms Rocket Internet, the Asia Pacific Internet Group (APACIG) and the Africa Internet Group (AIG), was launched in March this year.

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