Australian accelerator, Pollenizer, expands to Singapore with new Hive. Looking to hire

Pollenizer, the Australian-based accelerator, is looking to set up a new Hive in Singapore with the aim of bridging Sydney and Singapore early stage technology ecosystems.

Pollenizer is exploring ways to connect the tech ecosystem down under with Singapore via technology events, investor exchanges and pitching platforms. Currently, the Australian accelerator has a team of 25 digital evangelists based in Sydney and have created 35 companies over the past four years which has seen double digit million dollar returns. The Pollenizer team was in Singapore for Echelon 2012 and also interviewing possible candidates for their new operations in Singapore that they are in the midst of setting up.

Some of  Pollenizer’s current portfolio companies includes Dealised, which is now based in Singapore, Pygg, and Spreets.

From the Pollenizer blog, founder Phil Morle mentioned that the team is actively seeking meetings with Singapore-based entrepreneurs, investors and web business builders. For those that are interested to get in touch with the team regarding their Singapore Hive, drop them a line at info@pollenizer.com.

[Leak] Darius Cheung, co-founder of tenCube, working on BillPin to help people track who owes what

tenCube’s co-founder, Darius Cheung, looks like he’s back in the startup game with possible new social payment venture, BillPin.

After tenCube’s acquisition in 2010 by McAfee Inc., co-founder Darius Cheung has been doing some angel investments in Singapore while finishing up his contract with the online security giant and ended in March 2012.

Since then, we have been following Darius for news about his “unemployment” to see if he is looking to get back into the startup scene again. And we weren’t wrong. It looks like Darius is currently working on a potential new venture called BillPin.

A quick check on the landing page indicates a beta version of the service in the makings.  Through a source leak, BillPin’s company profile indicates:

BillPin helps people track who owes what.

Often people share meals where one person pays for the rest, or have sharedhousehold expenses. There are no good tools today for the person who took care of the bill to keep track of who owes him money. BillPin provides a convenient mobile tool for him to keep track of all the money he owe people or people owe him. This also removes the awkwardness of chasing for money as the system can send out automatic reminder on his behalf.

Looks like Darius is venturing into the social payment space where existing players like Billmonk, Pygg and PayPal Mobile are in play. Billmonk was acquired by Obopay in 2007 while Pygg is one of the latest batch of startups under Australian incubator, Pollenizer.

From what we know, Darius is doing this on his own. We may possibly see some hires soon as it is rumored that the beta version will be out by end of this month. Given his understanding of the Singaporean market, it would be safe to say that BillPin will be launched in Singapore, with possibly the Indonesian market in Darius’ sights.

With his experience in mobile security, Darius looks set to tackle the mobile payments space with BillPin. Looking forward to covering more news about BillPin when the official announcement takes place.