
Ask HN: Which developing nations have interesting tech stories at the moment? - carlmungz
I&#x27;m a guest host @ Software Engineering Daily &amp; I want to cover tech stories from places which don&#x27;t always get a lot of coverage.
======
erbdex
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%20Paym...](http://image-src.bcg.com/BCG_COM/BCG-
Google%20Digital%20Payments%202020-July%202016_tcm21-39245.pdf) 4\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14030014](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14030014)

~~~
koolba
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
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.

------
buritica
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
Hey would love to chat with you about replicating this model in other
developing countries. What's the best way to reach out?

~~~
buritica
you can email me buritica @ gmail, or DM @buritica on twitter

------
sandGorgon
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.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
> 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". :-)

------
webrobots
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
I've been to Lithuania before, great country.

------
FahadUddin92
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)

------
OmIsMyShield
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...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-amazon-exposed-its-guts-the-history-
of-awss-ec2/)

[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)

~~~
mping
Reminds me of TheKeyboardCaper & Phrozen crew. Followed a tutorial on how to
crack some Norton software via softice. Good old days :D

~~~
muggermuch
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.

------
gfredtech
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
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
M-Pesa, which may have first been created there (not sure, just read of it
used there first), is now in India too.

~~~
gfredtech
yes, as well as Bitpesa

~~~
vram22
Interesting, hadn't heard of that one.

------
Ramiuz
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-
innovat...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/16/a-look-into-chiles-innovative-
startup-government/)
[http://www.startupchile.org/](http://www.startupchile.org/)

p.s: SED it's a great podcast! ty!.

------
avh02
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/bei...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2016/nov/24/beirut-
lebanon-silicon-valley-tech-podcast)

edit: just looked at the podcast, i see you've recently done middle east, oh
well :P

~~~
carlmungz
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
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.

------
bbv-if
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-...](http://www.uadn.net/2017/01/09/top-10-ukrainian-startups-in-2016/)

~~~
drops
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
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-milli...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/08/grammarly-
raises-110-million-for-a-better-spell-check/)

------
ajpgrealish
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
Interesting. Will be in touch, thanks.

------
carlosgg
A while back I read this article on Iranian startups:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-05/start...](https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-05/startups-
surge-as-iranian-tech-finds-silver-lining-to-sanctions)

Also found this:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2014/11/1...](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.quora.com/What-are-the-top-startups-in-
Iran](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-top-startups-in-Iran)

------
djpr
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.

------
floathub
Morocco is now a world leader in solar power:

[http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2016/02/04/465568055/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2016/02/04/465568055/morocco-unveils-a-massive-solar-power-plant-in-the-
sahara)

~~~
carlmungz
Thanks for the link.

------
durian89
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.

~~~
gghh
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
TBH, I think I would expect grade 11 students the world over to be able to
answer the question on display.

~~~
yorwba
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
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.

------
Raed667
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-n...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/tunisia-is-becoming-mena-next-
startup-hub/)

[https://www.wamda.com/2015/11/why-accelerators-are-
flocking-...](https://www.wamda.com/2015/11/why-accelerators-are-flocking-to-
tunisia)

[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-2d4d...](https://medium.com/@ostl/tunis-as-a-startup-city-or-
not-2d4d33a71e05)

~~~
flippyhead
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?

~~~
carlmungz
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-...](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/05/11/tech-in-the-middle-
east-with-chris-shroeder/)

------
miraj
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-...](http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-iqbal-quadir-built-
grameenphone/)

(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)

------
TheHeasman
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.

~~~
petercooper
I'm seeing quite a few Nigerians becoming prominent in the JavaScript space as
well. I didn't realize English was so prevalent there but having a pretty well
developed economy and speaking English makes me think there's a lot of good
stuff to come from Nigeria.

~~~
Lordarminius
> I'm seeing quite a few Nigerians becoming prominent in the JavaScript space
> as well. I didn't realize English was so prevalent there...

And Ruby as well. Don't overlook Ruby!

Anyway, English is the official language of Nigeria

------
rookiemaverick
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

------
awartani
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.

------
rajeshwadhwani
The tech story here in Bangalore ,India also seems very promising.
[http://www.innovationiseverywhere.com/bangalore/](http://www.innovationiseverywhere.com/bangalore/)

------
proyb2
For all tech news in Asia:
[https://www.techinasia.com](https://www.techinasia.com)

------
umarniz
[https://www.startuplist.pk/](https://www.startuplist.pk/)

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

------
tim333
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.

------
ian0
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..

------
mekicha
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.

------
rundmc
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
By what measure is Gibraltar a developing country?

~~~
timwaagh
by no means. but it is a place that usually does not get a lot of tech
coverage.

------
contingencies
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
Thanks for the info. That Myanmar angle is intriguing. What is the best way to
reach you for a quick chat?

~~~
contingencies
Email in profile.

------
jecel
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.

------
myaccountzz
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
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.

------
hallman76
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
Nice resource - thanks!

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

------
leandot
Bulgaria, Telerik recently had a $270mil exit

------
codewithcheese
Indonesia. Check out Go-Jek, Tokopedia

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

~~~
carlmungz
When did you last visit?

~~~
pjmlp
A couple of months ago.

I didn't do much though, just had to drive around the area.

~~~
carlmungz
Ah, right. Have you any connections in the country?

~~~
pjmlp
No.

------
fashionate
:)

------
gdiocarez
prepaid electricity

------
yuyangchee98
Malaysia: GrabCar

------
Temasik
Mymagic.my

Malaysia

