THE BRIDGE
 
HalalMinds is a mobile app that can scan bar codes to see if a food is halal compliant, or permissible for Muslims to eat. When we featured it in April, they only had an Android version but have subsequently released an iOS version. They recently released version 2.0, which allows halal scanning of the bar code of drugs, cosmetics, and food products. In addition, the new version allows for scanning of E numbers —codes for food additives used in European countries.
 
Meanwhile, the HalalMinds team won a pre-startup award at Global TIC 2014, Taiwan’s largest business plan competition event which took place in Taipei on August 17–22. HalalMinds is the first award-winning team from Japan at this event. Leveraging this exposure, the team aims to accelerate Asian expansion, including enhancing the app so users can find halal restaurants and halal foods in China, South Korea, and Taiwan.
 
The app was developed by Indonesian student Agung Pambudi, a member of Kyushu Lab who has lived in Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Finland. KyushuLab is a software development community based on the southernmost of the four main islands in the Japanese archipelago.



http://halalminds.com/