Singapore’s StarHub has announced the public launch of Crowdivate, the first telco-backed crowdfunding platform.
The Crowdivate platform has launched with an initial 12 Asia-based projects, including the world’s first mechanical smart watch hybrid, a platform-as-a-service for Bitcoin mining and a mobile app to allow people to use the main front camera of a phone to take good selfies.
StarHub’s Crowdivate platform launched in beta in April. StarHub i3 head Stephen Lee said that since the beta launch, “we have received hundreds of project proposals for crowdfunding.”
He said the company has spent the past three months “with the entrepreneurs developing a strong marketing and promotional campaign that we believe will inspire the crowdfunding community.”
The Crowdivate platform accepts contributions from PayPal or major credit cards. As part of the program, depending on the response from backers, selected projects may be eligible for services including business incubation, access to test users, start-up funding and marketing support.
Organizations providing mentorship and consultancy include StarHub i3, Crowdonomic, Home-Fix Experience Centre, National Book Development Council of Singapore, NUS Design Incubation Centre and Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation.
StarHub meanwhile revealed that Crowdivate is starting to expand into other markets – Indonesia’s Indosat has started working with local entrepreneurs to offer campaign proposals on the platform.
“We are pleased to form a strategic partnership with StarHub on Crowdtivate—that will help us broaden our commitment to Indonesian innovation, and provide both local and global visibility and funding opportunities to Indonesian innovators through crowdsourcing,” Indosat CEO Alexander Rusli commented.