Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan knows a thing or two about how to make a product and, spoiler alert, it’s not easy.

This post Video: Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan on building great products appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Bluegogo.

With China’s third-biggest bike-share startup on the verge of collapse amid unpaid wages and its CEO gone AWOL, users are struggling to get their deposits refunded.

Many Bluegogo users – an estimated 15 million are registered with the year-old service – are now taking to social media to vent their frustration.

This guy applied for the refund on his RMB 99 – that’s US$15 – Bluegogo deposit on November 3, yet the app says it’s still being processed:

Screenshot from Weibo.

Another customer, who paid the higher RMB 199 (US$30) fee on November 5, requested its return two days later – but that’s also still being dealt with.

Screenshot from Weibo.

One individual took to Weibo yesterday, tagging several media outlets as well as the Beijing12345 consumer complaints hotline in the missive.

Screenshot from Weibo.

On the Twitter-esque Weibo, where many companies interact with customers, Bluegogo’s account has been silent since November 10.

Bluegogo’s terms of service do not specify how long the refund process takes. The dockless bikes charge riders based on usage time, with their deposit a safeguard against theft or damage. According to Bluegogo’s terms, they keep users’ payment details on file and can charge more on top of the deposit – “determined by us on our sole discretion” – if significant damage is detected.

Refund regrets

Beijing-based Bluegogo also expanded to San Francisco and Sydney, where its deposits were higher – US$99 in the States, and US$15 to $45 in Australia – but its popularity seemed limited.

Once valued at US$140 million after raising US$58 million and rolling out over 350,000 bicycles, Bluegogo is now on the brink of bankruptcy and collapse, with one Chinese paper yesterday quoting a company insider who said the startup is US$30 million in debt. The whereabouts of CEO Li Gang are unknown, with other media outlets reporting that he has been overseas for some time.

The startup has been struggling to refund deposits even before this week’s crisis, with Bluegogo last month promising to issue any delayed refunds by November 10.

Photo credit: Bluegogo.

Multiple copycat bike-share startups popped up in China throughout 2016 after seeing the rapid growth of Mobike and Ofo, which remain the market leaders.

“Our deposits are safely stored and overseen by CITIC Bank,” an Ofo spokesperson told Tech in Asia today. “In China, our deposits are held in escrow in a separate account, and Mobike was the first in the bike-share industry to implement this,” said a representative from arch-rival Mobike. It’s unclear how Bluegogo keeps its deposits. Emails sent to Bluegogo yesterday and today have seen no replies.

China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, is this week working with the Ministry of Transport to discuss regulatory measures for services that require deposits, reported Yicai yesterday.

Firms “should indicate an operator’s commitment to holding a number of deposits in a dedicated account and invite oversight from a trustee endorsed with their signatures and seals,” said an unnamed official.

Updated two hours after publishing: Added Mobike’s explainer.

Watch: The two drivers behind China’s ride-hailing giant

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Photo credit: Pixabay.

Chinese internet giant Tencent continues its investment spree, while another one of China’s bike-sharing startups finds itself in hot water.

Ecommerce

Maoyan pockets over US$150 million in funding from Tencent (China). The deal comes after the company merged with Tencent-backed Beijing Weiying to create one of China’s biggest online cinema ticketing platforms. Tencent’s additional investment points to heated competition with Alibaba-owned rival Taopiaopiao. (Reuters)

Bukalapak welcomes foreign investor (Indonesia). CEO Achmad Zaky said the marketplace received funding from a foreign entity, valuing it at US$1 billion. He’s keeping mum about the details, except to say that the deal diluted the founders’ and Emtek’s stakes in Bukalapak to 60-70 percent. (Katadata – link in Indonesian)

Alibaba-backed startup Grana gets US$16 million in venture debt (Hong Kong). The venture debt, which allows the firm to raise funds without giving up equity, came from Hong Kong asset manager STI Financial Group. Grana will spend the money to advance its AI efforts. (DealStreetAsia)

Fintech

US$2 billion in funding available to fintech startups (Singapore). On the sidelines of the Fintech Festival, the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced that US$2 billion of capital was made available to fintech startups during a matchmaking event bringing together more than 1,000 firms and 400 investors. The investor summit was organized by MAS, the Association of Banks in Singapore, and Ernst & Young. (MAS)

Transportation

The Bluegogo saga continues (China). With the US$140 million bike-share startup on the verge of collapse amid unpaid wages and its executives leaving, many riders are struggling to get their deposits back. They’ve taken to social media to vent their frustration. (Tech in Asia)

It’s not just Bluegogo that’s falling apart, there’s trouble at Coolqi too (China). The company that made its fame with gold bicycles has its head office surrounded by users unable to withdraw deposits. While the company had denied being bankrupt, it’s seeking support from the government and talking to a potential acquirer for a deal. (Technode)

Hyperloop preliminary studies underway (India). Hyperloop One, now known as Virgin Hyperloop One thanks to strong backing from billionaire Richard Branson, has inked memorandums with the Indian government to conduct initial feasibility studies on route construction. The company has an ambitious goal of building an India-wide national hyperloop network. Karnataka and Maharashtra are among the few states that have agreed to the plan. (TechCrunch)

Media

Mashable agrees to sell for a fraction of its valuation (Asia/US). The website focusing on tech and tech-related stories is being sold to publishing giant Ziff Davis for US$50 million, way less than its US$250 million valuation last year. The sale comes after Mashable reportedly failed to secure additional funding this year, a sign of skepticism toward digital media. (The Wall Street Journal)

Investors

Google doubles down on Japan. The US tech giant will open a new office in Tokyo in 2019 that will allow it to double the size of its 1,300-strong team there. It also announced a new initiative called Minna No Code to help bring computer science education to more than 2 million students across Japan. (Google)

This post Asia tech news roundup – Nov 17 appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: John Voo.

For foreign cloud providers, entering China’s market is often more trouble than it’s worth. Not only are overseas firms required to form joint ventures with local companies, but they’re also prohibited from owning or operating certain types of cloud tech and hardware.

That’s why AWS sold off US$300 million worth of cloud assets to its Chinese partner earlier this week. Factor in China’s new data localization laws, and it’s no wonder that domestic firms captured more than 80 percent of revenue in China’s cloud industry this year.

Storj Labs, a US blockchain startup, thinks a decentralized model could soften some of those pain points. Instead of operating and running its own data centers, the startup runs a peer-to-peer Dropbox-like service that lets users (called ‘farmers’ in Storj parlance) rent out excess storage space on their hard drive. Farmers are paid in STORJ, the startup’s eponymous token. The details of each file transfer, such as payment, are recorded on the Ethereum blockchain.

Instead of operating and running its own data centers, the startup runs a peer-to-peer Dropbox-like service.

It’s an asset-light cloud storage model that Storj Labs claims mitigates traditional data failures and cuts costs. Users who want to store their data with Storj can pay US$0.015 per gigabyte per month. AWS’s equivalent service goes for US$0.023.

“I think it’s probably early to say that we’re going to disrupt AWS, Microsoft, and Google, but we do think that there is the potential to take a huge unused resource […] and bring that to market,” John Quinn, co-founder of Storj Labs, tells Tech in Asia, referring to excess storage capacity.

In China, the startup is working with Genaro, a Shanghai-based blockchain startup that is developing its own decentralized cloud storage system. The partnership, announced today, will see Storj Labs’ more mature technology integrated with Genaro’s in exchange for expansion into China.

Due to latency issues associated with the Great Firewall, the catchall term for China’s online censorship system, Storj Labs needs in-country farmers. According to Genaro founder Larry Liu, the company plans to work with large cryptocurrency mining farms in China, who will add storage units to their mining rigs. That will help the Chinese firm launch its network with thousands of terabytes of available space, he says.

To date, Storj Labs has more than 40,000 users storing data on its network across 50,000 devices in 70 different countries. Genaro’s network is still in beta testing.

Storj’s network of farmer nodes. Places with cheap, unlimited internet are usually able to score more file storing contracts.

Data loss

Genaro will also be responsible for compliance within China, which includes handling the all-too-familiar issue of illegal content stored on the cloud, such as porn and pirated movies. Last year, a crackdown on banned content in China forced many cloud storage providers to shut down.

In that sense, Storj Lab’s system may have an advantage. Stored files are encrypted, splintered into different pieces, and then distributed across the company’s network. Copies of file shards are also stored to help prevent data loss, which can happen if a farmer shuts down their hard drive.

“In other words, no one hard drive will have an entire readable file that might be pointed to by regulators as illegal content which could get the node’s owner in trouble,” explains Jason Inch, chief strategy officer of Genaro.

The company also can’t decrypt or know the contents of files on its network, as it doesn’t hold the encryption keys. If illegal content is discovered on Storj or Genaro’s network by the authorities, the company “will comply with any lawful requests regarding the illegal content owners,” says Quinn.

Amazon loses files. Microsoft, Google, loses files. We have definitely also lost files.

After all, the Chinese government could simply shut down Genaro if illegal file storage got out of hand. That would take down Storj’s entire network in China.

Founded in 2014, the US startup is one of the earlier players in the peer-to-peer cloud storage space. Other companies in the industry include blockchain startups MaidSafe and Sia. So far, the Atlanta-based company has raised a total of US$33 million, which includes a US$30 million token crowdsale or initial coin offering (ICO).

To be sure, it’s still early days for Storj Labs and its Chinese counterpart – and decentralized cloud storage overall. On the topic of data loss, Quinn admits that his company has dropped files before.

“I think running a large distributed network is complex,” he says. “Amazon loses files. Microsoft, Google, loses files. We have definitely also lost files.” But at scale, he defends, decentralized models will prevail.

(Correction: This piece has been updated to correct Jason Inch’s title. A previous version of this article also stated that Storj Lab runs its own blockchain. It doesn’t – it uses Ethereum.)

This post Amazon hasn’t cracked China’s cloud market. This blockchain startup thinks it can. appeared first on Tech in Asia.

This guy has been building this suit for years. At first, it looked like a ridiculous joke, but look how far it has come.

This post Video: Breaking the world speed record in an Iron Man suit appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Here’s our newest round-up of the featured startups on our site this week. If you have startup tips or story suggestions, feel free to email us. Enjoy this week’s list!

1. iPaymy | Singapore (Startup Profile)

iPaymy serves small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), provides a platform for them to use their credit cards rather than cash to pay for expenses like invoices, salaries, and taxes.

2. Active.ai | Singapore (Startup Profile)

Headquartered in Singapore, Active.ai is one of a large number of startups in the region that has developed a customer service chatbot. The startup’s focus is on serving banks and financial institutions. The platform allows banks to respond to queries or complaints sent by customers through messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and Line.

3. Hmlet | Singapore (Startup Profile)

Founded in 2016, Hmlet designs and manages shared, short-term accommodation aimed primarily at young tech professionals. It leases properties from landlords and real estate firms in the city centers of Singapore and Tokyo and refurbishes them to maximize living space. It then sub-lets apartments and rooms in those properties to tenants on a month-by-month basis.

Startup lists

4 – 9: 6 rising startups in Japan

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• Asia tech news roundup – Nov 13

• This Russian founder shares specific strategies for foreign companies to enter China

• Uber board finally agrees to terms of $10b deal with SoftBank, but conditions apply

• Singapore’s central bank to pour $20m into AI and data as it pushes fintech growth

• Discuss: Startups fail because of broken co-founder relationships

• Asia tech news roundup – Nov 14

• When a startup dies because of its founder’s lack of nerve

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• Opinion: Fix your company culture before it becomes a full-blown crisis

• Asia tech news roundup – Nov 15

• Video: Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan on building great products

• Anger mounts as users struggle to get refunds from ‘bankrupt’ Bluegogo

• How this founder is using gaze control to make money from VR, AR, the blockchain

• Asia tech news roundup – Nov 17

Like RSS? There’s always our Asia startups RSS feed!

This post 9 startups in Asia that caught our eye appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Is this a smart home AI or a funk machine? It’s both.

This post Video: Baidu’s dancing answer to Alexa appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Co-founder and group CEO Paul Srivorakul. Photo credit: aCommerce.

Southeast Asian ecommerce services provider aCommerce announced the closing of its series B today, a deal worth US$65 million.

The round is led by Emerald Media, an investment vehicle set up by international investors KKR along with several existing backers: Australia fund Blue Sky, Telkom Indonesia venture arm MDI Ventures, and Swiss market expansion services provider DKSH. The Zurich-headquartered firm previously poured an undisclosed amount of funding in the startup for a 20 percent stake.

The funding will be used to improve aCommerce’s online software that allows merchants to sell and distribute goods through a number of ecommerce platforms, establish more partnerships in the startup’s current markets, and seek out clients in new markets like Malaysia and Vietnam.

At the moment, Bangkok-based aCommerce operates in Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It’s working with international brands like Samsung, Unilever, Nestlé, L’Oreal, Philips, and Mars to help them distribute their products online in the region.

“At the beginning of the region’s adoption of online, it was enough to simply have a website. Fast-forward a few years later and brands are realizing in order to stay ahead of the retail game, they need to be omnipresent and data hungry to fully control all pricing and consumer touch points,” co-founder and group CEO Paul Srivorakul says in a statement.

The company had announced its plans to raise a series B two years ago, aiming for US$30 million. In the meantime, it clinched the DKSH deal and raised some bridge funding from MDI.

Including this funding, aCommerce will have raised a disclosed total of US$95 million.

This post Ecommerce enabler aCommerce raises $65m to reach more markets in Southeast Asia appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Rajarshi Mitra.

Property fraud is rampant in India and takes many forms. It’s one of the biggest avenues for investing black money. One way is to hold property in other people’s names, and this practice is called benami, which means ‘false name.’

In this murky scene, the government does not only lose revenue, but buyers can also be duped when the same property is sold to multiple entities. What exacerbates it is rampant corruption. The Indian government introduced a new law and have seized benami properties worth US$282 million since November last year.

We have already given up a lot of our black boxes. We will lead this transformation.

Sprawled across 160,000 sq km on the east coast with a population of over 50 million, the state of Andhra Pradesh wants to use blockchain technology to tackle the problem. Blockchain’s immutability can make land records tamper-proof. Its visibility to multiple entities also makes the system transparent.

The state is running a pilot by Swedish startup ChromaWay to put land records on a blockchain in fintech hub Vizag.

Doing a pilot is one thing, but executing it on the ground can upset the apple cart even within government. So, does Nara Lokesh, the state’s IT minister, expect resistance from vested interests who have gotten used to exploiting the current system?

“We have already given up a lot of our black boxes. Land records have been made online,” Lokesh tells Tech in Asia, referring to the ePragati program launched recently in the state to digitize government services.

The next move for e-governance is blockchain, starting with land records but with potential applications in several other areas like health services, food supplies, and finance. “We will lead this transformation. That’s the only way we can get rid of corruption also,” adds Lokesh.

ChromaWay CEO and co-founder Henrik Hjelte (right) makes a presentation to Andhra Pradesh IT minister Nara Lokesh (wearing white shirt). Photo credit: Nara Lokesh.

Last month, ChromaWay made a pitch for the government project and got the nod to run a pilot. A similar project in its home country Sweden has progressed beyond the trial stage and has a wider ambit of buying and selling property. Apart from involving the land registry, banks, buyers, sellers, and agents, it deals with titles and other documents like mortgages as well as payments.

“In Sweden, we focus on the whole process of real estate transactions. Here in Andhra Pradesh, it’s more about storage of titles, security aspects, and transparency,” says ChromaWay co-founder and CEO Henrik Hjelte, who has been a developer for over 25 years. He was a finance and IT consultant before becoming an early blockchain entrepreneur.

See: Crypto boom spawns blockchain accelerators

In Sweden, banks phone each other on the last day to confirm if the payment for a property deal has arrived, Hjelte explains. Inefficiencies such as this can be reduced by using blockchain.

“Digital signatures and a transparent blockchain lets everyone see where they are in the process, whether everything is signed in the right order. It’s like a workflow solution,” says Hjelte.

Colored coins

Photo credit: Coloredcoins.org

ChromaWay was one of the earliest developers of blockchain technology. In 2012, co-founder and CTO Alex Mizrahi came up with one of the first ways to associate real-world assets like land deeds with addresses on the bitcoin network – in other words, a bitcoin-based blockchain. Most blockchain tokens today are based on contracts using the ERC20 standard of Ethereum. But Chromaway’s Colored Coins project preceded Ethereum.

“Vitalik Buterin was in the open-source product we had for a while before he built Ethereum,” recounts Hjelte. “It was the first project to use protocol-issued tokens on bitcoin.”

Vitalik Buterin was in the open-source product we had for a while before he built Ethereum.

The so-called Bitcoin 2.0 expanded the use of the bitcoin blockchain from representing cryptocurrency to other assets as defined in various tokens. Each color in the so-called colored coins represented a different asset, like land, gold, or currency.

Hjelte, Mizrahi, and a third co-founder, Or Perelman – who were based in Sweden, Ukraine, and Israel, respectively – had only met online when they started ChromaWay. The company initially worked with a bank in Estonia on a mobile-based payment system using colored coins.

“It was an eye-opener for banks. But we were very early,” says Hjelte. “No one was doing anything like this until 2014.”

The scene is very different now, with ICOs (initial coin offerings) taking off in the last two quarters of 2017. Governments, banks, and large corporations are actively seeking blockchain-based projects. Andhra Pradesh, for example, is motivated not only by the potential to reduce corruption in land registration, but also by a desire to be an early adopter of groundbreaking tech.

This state is only three years old. Andhra Pradesh was split into two in 2014, with the new state Telangana being carved out of it after a decades-long agitation. Hyderabad will remain the capital of both states for a maximum of 10 years, after which it goes to Telangana.

Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu, who had built Hyderabad into a tech hub by famously persuading Bill Gates to base Microsoft India’s headquarters there, now wants to turn Vizag into a fintech hub. Naidu, who is also the father of Lokesh, promised delegates at a blockchain conference in Vizag last month that the state would open up government projects to them.

“Politicians can drive this (adoption of blockchain),” says Hjelte. “I found some guys from my country looking to set up a base here… The chief minister and IT minister turning up for a blockchain event is something that won’t happen in my country,” he adds with a laugh.

See: ‘World’s largest fintech hub’ expands from Singapore to Vizag

But core challenges remain in both Andhra Pradesh and his home country of Sweden, where the real estate blockchain is in its third phase. In Sweden, ChromaWay has run into legal issues, such as a law that requires physical signatures on land documents. “Different jurisdictions can have different rules,” says Hjelte. “Everything takes time in enterprises, banks, and the public sector.”

In India, the challenges can be even more basic – tattered maps, records not updated for decades, longstanding disputes over boundaries and land usage, multiple owners, and so on. It’s an arduous task to get a fix on the land assets before converting them into digital records, which is the first step in building a real estate blockchain.

J A Chowdary, special chief secretary and IT advisor to the Andhra Pradesh chief minister, hopes that tech will resolve these issues. An IIT Madras post-graduate in solid state technologies, Chowdary was the managing director of Nvidia in Hyderabad and a tech entrepreneur before joining his current position with the AP government.

We have to look beyond naive thinking about the technology. We need real solutions that actually work with the inclusion of everyone.

Andhra Pradesh has come up with an 11-digit unique ID called Bhudhar that combines India’s biometric citizen ID Aadhaar with land titles – bhumi means land in most Indian languages. The Bhudhar project matches surveys on the ground with satellite imagery for verification. Eventually, once a Bhudhar number is assigned to a piece of land and its owner, it can be used for updating records and all other transactions.

Naidu, Lokesh, and Chowdary form a trio with the drive and resources to make Vizag one of the first places to put land records on a blockchain. The Indian government is also exploring ways to use blockchain for land records, distribution of subsidies, and other purposes where its transparency and immutability solve problems. Dubai, Brazil, and Georgia are among other early adopters of blockchains for land titles.

But Hjelte cautions against getting carried away with the idea of tokens for everything. They need to have a utility in the system instead of just being bolted on to a product. And they should be usable by all.

“Can we assume every inhabitant of Vizag would have a private key and would know how to use it?” asks Hjelte. “We have to look beyond naive thinking about the technology. We need real solutions that actually work with the inclusion of everyone.”

This post Tomorrowland: Indian state’s pilot shows the world how to put land records on blockchain appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Tech in Asia was founded in March 2011 with one mission in mind: To serve and build Asia’s tech and startup ecosystem.

As we push the frontiers of our ecosystem and community, it is humbling to meet organizations who believe in our mission enough to invest in it. Today we are pleased to share that Tech in Asia has secured a US$6.6M round of financing led by Hanwha Investment & Securities, an affiliate of Hanwha, one of Korea’s largest conglomerates with US$55.5 billion in revenue in 2016. We share the same mission of building Asia’s tech and startup ecosystem, backing promising entrepreneurs in the region and accelerating their growth.


The round is joined by existing investors Eduardo and Elaine Saverin, Walden International, and East Ventures.

We have updated our Statement of Ethics page accordingly to disclose our new investors. As usual, we will include a link to our Statement of Ethics with every Tech in Asia article.

With fresh capital secured, it gives us more resources to work on research and product and development so we can continue to serve our users well. We are also looking for data scientists and data analysts to beef up our data team.

Some of you may not know, but behind our media, events, and jobs products is a data warehouse with a treasure trove of data for us to understand and serve users better. We have some ways to go before being near the world’s best (e.g Toutiao), but that is the standard we are aspiring to.

Here’s how we envision everything on Tech in Asia working together.

On behalf of the team at Tech in Asia, we thank you for your unwavering support through the years. I’ve included a little of our history here.

If you have any questions, leave them in comments and I’ll be happy to answer them.

Full press release can be found below.

Tech in Asia raises $6.6M led by Hanwha

Singapore, 20 November 2017 – Tech in Asia, the media, events, and jobs platform for the tech community, has secured a US$6.6M round of financing led by Hanwha Investment & Securities, an affiliate of Hanwha, one of Korea’s largest conglomerates with US$55.5 billion in revenue in 2016. The round is joined by existing investors Eduardo and Elaine Saverin, Walden International, and East Ventures.

Speaking about the investment, Willis Wee, CEO and founder at Tech in Asia, said: “It is always humbling to meet individuals and organizations who believe in our mission enough to invest in it. We will continue to serve and build Asia’s tech ecosystem and keep improving our products to better serve the community.”

The capital will be used for research and product development for Tech in Asia’s media, events, and jobs products. The company will also continue to pour resources into community efforts such as Tech in Asia City Chapters and expanding our community content efforts to share expertise from the ecosystem with a broad audience without compromising editorial quality.

###

Hanwha Group
Hanwha Group, founded in 1952, is one of the Top-Ten business enterprises in South Korea and a “FORTUNE Global 500” company. Hanwha Group has 61 domestic affiliates and 258 global networks in three major sectors: manufacturing and construction, finance, and services and leisure. With more than 60 years track record of industrial leadership, Hanwha’s manufacturing and construction businesses encompass a broad range of fields from chemicals & materials, aerospace & mechatronics, total solar energy solutions, and global construction. The finance network, covering insurance, asset management, and securities, is the second largest non-bank financial group in South Korea. The services and leisure sector offers premium lifestyle services with retail and resort businesses.

Walden International
Walden International is a leading international venture capital firm that has provided investors access to cross-border, IT opportunities with the advantage of an unrivaled Pan Asia network since 1987. The firm’s funds total US$2.6 billion in committed capital. Walden International has invested in over 500 companies in 12 countries, with in excess of 100 IPOs on 15 Stock Exchanges and more than 70 M&A exits. Walden’s investments include GoPro, Best Logistics, Creative Technology, JobStreet, Brandtology, HungryGoWhere, YFind Technologies, SINA, MindTree, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., AutoNavi, Inphi, Silergy Corp., Ambarella, Ndoors, Com2uS, SundayToz, iKang Healthcare, Sinosun Technology and Solaredge Technologies.

East Ventures
East Ventures is an early stage venture fund focusing on SEA and Japan. Over the years, East Ventures has invested in hundreds of companies in Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, and Thailand. Majority of East Ventures’ portfolio went on to raise follow-on financing rounds, dominate the market, and become category leaders.

East Ventures has a strong track record in developing pan-Asia tech-ecosystems and backing the startups in their early day, including Tokopedia, Traveloka, Mercari, Disdus (acquired by Groupon), Kudo (acquired by Grab), Tech in Asia , Omise, IDNTimes, Ruangguru, Jurnal, Cermati, Mokapos, Shopback, EVHive, and Loket (acquired by Gojek).

More information about East Ventures can be obtained at: east.vc

Tech in Asia
Tech in Asia (YC W15) is a media, events, and jobs platform on a mission to build and serve Asia’s tech and startup community.

This post Tech in Asia raises $6.6M led by Hanwha appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Bluegogo.

Cash-strapped bike rental startup Bluegogo is still struggling to pay its staff and refund users, but there’s a new chapter in this saga. CEO Li Gang published an apologetic open letter last Thursday, announcing a strategic partnership with fellow startup Biker.

The partnership will see Bluegogo’s bike operations handed over to its Sichuan-based counterpart. Users will still be able to rent Bluegogo bikes, and once “technical integration” is finished, those who have already paid deposits will be able to rent their bikes for free, wrote Li.

“From the very start of Bluegogo, we have always been on thin ice in the face of two well-funded players,” he said in his letter, hinting at Mobike and Ofo, two bike rental unicorns backed by Tencent and Ant Financial, respectively. “Without support from a wide range of investors and good financial planning capabilities, even the best bike product is powerless.”

“As for the wages I owe everyone, I will try to think of a way to resolve this as soon as possible,” he added.

China’s station-less bike rental industry has seen a dizzying amount of capital raised from both venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital and companies such as Didi Chuxing and Qualcomm. With its overseas operations in Sydney and San Francisco, Shenzhen-based Bluegogo was considered one of the top players in the market.

Once valued at US$140 million, the startup has about 20 million users – many of whom are frustrated about locked-in deposits. In China, Bluegogo charged users around US$15 to use their blue bikes, whereas users in the US paid US$99.

Other bike rental startups in China are using Sesame Credit, Ant Financial’s proprietary credit system, to let users above a certain credit threshold waive deposits. Ofo and Mobike are also working with banks, such as CITIC and China Merchants Bank, to manage their user deposits.

Bluegogo, however, still has to resolve how it plans to refund user deposits and pay its staff. It’s also unclear whether Biker will assume responsibility for its new partner’s deposits in addition to its operations. According to Li, raising money has been difficult, even after contacting “more than a hundred” investment funds.

Biker has also announced that it’s teaming up with Coolqi, another startup with dried-up funds. According to a company statement released today, Coolqi’s bike operations and maintenance will now be handled by Biker.

Tech in Asia reached out to Biker and Bluegogo and will update this article once we hear back.

Converted from Chinese yuan. Rate: US$1 = RMB 6.64.

This post Beleaguered Bluegogo CEO hands off ‘bankrupt’ bike firm as money issues remain unresolved appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Bluegogo.

The Bluegogo saga takes a new turn, aCommerce and Tech in Asia win new rounds of funding, and Alibaba makes a big bet on offline retail.

Ecommerce

aCommerce gets financial boost (Thailand). The Southeast Asian ecommerce services provider scored US$65 million in its series B round, led by Emerald Media and several existing backers. The company will use the fresh funds to further develop a software allowing merchants to sell goods through a number of ecommerce platforms, establish more partnerships in its current markets, and seek out clients in new markets like Malaysia and Vietnam. (Tech in Asia)

Transportation

CEO of cash-strapped Bluegogo writes an apologetic letter (China). Boss Li Gang announced he’s handing over the company’s operations to Sichuan-based counterpart Biker. He blamed stiff competition from “well-funded” players for his startup’s collapse. “From the very start of Bluegogo, we have always been on thin ice […] As for the wages I owe everyone, I will try to think of a way to resolve this as soon as possible,” he said. (Tech in Asia)

Retail

Alibaba doubles down on offline retail (China). The tech giant bought a US$2.9 billion stake in Sun Art Retail Group, China’s largest operator of Walmart-style hypermarkets. The company, owned by billionaire Jack Ma, has staked much of its future on transforming old-school retail by infusing stores with technology to better manage inventory and boost margins. (Bloomberg)

Media and events

Tech in Asia secures US$6.6 million in new financing (Singapore). The round was led by Hanwha Investment & Securities, an affiliate of Hanwha, one of Korea’s largest conglomerates. Existing investors Eduardo and Elaine Saverin, Walden International, and East Ventures also participated. The company will use the money mainly for research and product development for its media, events, and jobs products. (Tech in Asia)

Fintech

Nets ties up with major banks for its epayments system (Singapore). Customers of seven major banks accounting for 90 percent of retail transactions in the city-state will soon be able to make payments from their accounts by scanning a QR code using their smartphones. The feature is currently available to customers of DBS, UOB, and OCBC. Nets rolled out the QR code system to more than 600 stalls in 20 hawker centers in Singapore. (The Straits Times)

Creatives

Inmagine Group – one of the world’s top stock image players – continues its acquisition spree (Malaysia). The company, through unit 123RF, acquired Taiwanese online vector-based design startup Vectr for an undisclosed sum. Earlier the group bought US-based video licensing platform Story & Hearts and UK-based design marketplace TheHungryJPEG as it transforms into an ecosystem spanning different creative content. (e27).

See: Previous Asia tech news roundups

This post Asia tech news roundup – Nov 20 appeared first on Tech in Asia.

From left to right: Marcus Tan, Lenz Yu, and Lauren Goh.

A hardcore gamer since he was a kid, Marcus Tan enjoyed the popular online role-playing game MapleStory.

When he was 12, however, a hacker attacked his account and stole in-game items worth US$368. “I spent one year accumulating the items. And they were all gone,” Tan recounts.

Jolted by his bad luck – and weak password – he began plotting to hunt the hacker down.

An early calling

A screenshot from MapleStory. Image credit: Euuk.

Tan reached out to MapleStory’s developers and got his hands on the hacker’s details. Shortly after, he traced the lead to a neighboring country. While he didn’t manage to catch the hacker, the incident was still a pivotal experience.

“I knew then my career would involve defeating cybercrimes.”

But it wasn’t until Tan became a student at the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) that he got to work on cybersecurity-related incidents.

But it wasn’t until Tan became a student at the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) that he got to work on cybersecurity-related incidents. By then, he was hooked.

After he graduated from ITE, he took up programming during his National Service stint. Two years later, he applied for the Singtel Cyber Cadet Scholarship program to cover his studies in Infocomm Security Management (DISM) at Singapore Polytechnic.

“ITE was instrumental in building my strong basics, [enabling] me to relate to different cybersecurity technologies. Through the education at Singapore Polytechnic, I was exposed to industry partners, which widened my knowledge of cybersecurity,” he says.

Today, Tan is a cybersecurity associate consultant at Singtel.

“Although my next step is advancing to post-graduate education, I’m grateful to have started from the bottom as the experience has helped shape who I am today,” he explains.

Hard and soft skills – a perfect marriage

It takes more than persistence and grit to get ahead in cybersecurity.

“Tech is not like a cooking recipe. It grows rapidly. We have to keep updating and ensuring we’re up to speed,” Tan explains.

Photo credit: Lenz Yu.

Lenz Yu, a senior security engineer, shares similar views. “I play around with new technologies.”

Before he joined cybersecurity, Yu was in network systems support, filling a role that he describes as being the “tech support guy.” While he appreciated the learning opportunities in his previous job, he found himself craving a much more challenging career.

At a time when cyberattacks were happening in Singapore and the rest of the world, Yu realized that he wanted to play a role in building a safer cyberspace.

He eventually discovered the SkillsFuture Study award for ICT, a government initiative aimed at encouraging Singaporeans to develop and deepen specialist skills needed by future economic growth sectors or in areas of demand. Shortlisted applicants receive a monetary award of US$3,682 (S$5000) to defray out-of-pocket expenses associated with the course they’re pursuing.

With the award, Yu found it easier to commit to the mobile security course he had been eyeing. But he still faced some obstacles.

Weekends were sacred. They were strictly for spending time with his wife and toddler son.

While Yu made it a point to set aside weekday nights for his studies, his weekends were strictly reserved for spending time with his wife and toddler son.

He also got support from his current company, F5 Networks, which allowed him to work flexible hours during the course.

Even so, Yu had to brace himself for exhausting nights. “I had to spend extra time after my class in the evenings to review course materials with my instructor.”

Patience and curiosity won over exhaustion in the end, and now he’s in a career he loves.

“We have to deal with challenges like real-time emergencies and security incidents. It poses a certain degree of challenges because we have to come up with real-time solutions,” he says.

The defenders

Photo credit: Lauren Goh.

“We defend the integrity of the system,” says Lauren Goh, a researcher at iTrust, a center for cybersecurity research at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

At present, she is involved in a cybersecurity project for a water facility with a team of lab engineers, PhD students, and postdoctoral researchers.

Goh used to work at a Singaporean F&B SME. When she realized that none of her fellow employees were well-versed in securing IT systems, her interest in the field grew.

“The skills I’ve learned in my engineering system and design degree were adaptive – I could [adapt them] to any industry,” Goh says. However, she still wanted to supplement her skills with “a formal, in-depth, and educational journey to build a solid foundation in cybersecurity.”

This epiphany led her to pursue a Masters of Science in Security by Design at SUTD with the support of the National Cybersecurity Postgraduate Scholarship (NCPS).

The researcher and part-time student has a new plan in the works. Goh is planning to join Blackzero, a homegrown cybersecurity startup, in the coming months. She will work with a team to build a system that detects security vulnerabilities for owners of large IT networks.

“I see myself working in a role to lead and advance cybersecurity in Singapore,” she shares.

While Tan says Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative “opens more opportunities for innovation, transformation, and new business opportunities,” it’s not without a downside. “Unfortunately, it also attracts more cybercriminals,” says Tan. “We need to be a digitally safe nation.”

He thinks back to the hacking incident that nudged him toward this profession – a reminder that no doubt echoes Yu and Goh’s motives as well.

“I was the victim. Now I’m the attacker and defender.”

If you want to maximize your skills in the ICT field, the TechSkills Accelerator (TeSA) can help. It’s an initiative of SkillsFuture, driven by Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and in partnership with Workforce Singapore (WSG) and SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG), as well as in collaboration with industry partners and hiring employers.

It is designed to equip budding ICT professionals with the right skills so they can be prepared for the digital economy. Visit their official website to find out about the training opportunities and get ahead.

Besides the programs mentioned in the article, find more pre-approved cybersecurity courses under TeSA’s Critical Infocomm Technology Resource Programme Plus (CITREP+) here.

This series, “Stories from the Ecosystem,” cover features and profiles of people building tech ecosystems around the world.

Converted from Singaporean dollars. Rate: US$1 = S$1.358.

This post An ITE graduate, a tech support guy, a career switcher: How 3 people joined cybersecurity appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Sidu Ponnappa, Go-Jek’s head of engineering. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

Go-Jek scaled 900 times in the first 18 months after the launch of its mobile app in January 2015. By June 2016, there were over 20 million bookings on Go-Jek – about 667,000 rides per day. After that, the Indonesian startup turned into a unicorn, raising a funding round of US$550 million. It did all that with a team of less than 80 engineers.

“Even now, across Go-Jek, we may have 200 to 210 engineers, and we’re running [the equivalent of] three unicorns – at least – under one roof,” Sidu Ponnappa, Go-Jek’s head of engineering, tells me.

To give me a sense of proportion, he compares Go-Jek’s volume with other Indian unicorn companies. “We do comparable transport to [Uber’s Indian rival] Ola. We do double the Indian market for food deliveries, as per publicly reported numbers. That means if you take Swiggy and Zomato combined in terms of their published order volumes, we do twice that number. Our payments are of the same order of magnitude as Paytm’s. And we’re supporting all of this with just over 200 engineers across three locations: Jakarta, Singapore, and Bangalore.”

Ponnappa was the founder of Bangalore startup C42 Engineering, which got acquired by Go-Jek. He was meeting me at the Indonesian company’s office in the heart of Bangalore. Most of Go-Jek’s engineers are now based here, even though India is not a market for Go-Jek yet.

The Bangalore tech team powers its ride-hailing product with a string of on-demand services thrown in. “In headcount terms, this is our largest office, but all our teams are distributed. So you’ll find that every single team in Bangalore also has members in Singapore and Jakarta; [and] every single Go-Jek product is executed across these three locations,” Ponnappa explains.

We must be the first company who raised prices so we would have fewer customers [while scaling backend tech].

Go-Jek is Indonesia’s first unicorn. It has raised over US$1.7 billion in total funding so far. The Go-Jek umbrella now covers 18 services – from ride-hailing to massage at home. It lets users find connecting bus rides, book tickets to events, or get their cars serviced and parcels delivered.

But when I asked Ponnappa to pick the Go-Jek product that excites him most, he says Go-Jek is actually just two products: logistics and payments.

“Everything we do is an intersection between the two. If you look at logistics, we have the same fleet delivering multiple services. In fact, that’s the advantage we have,” he says. “The same driver who will deliver your breakfast will also drop you [off at] work and then come back to pick up your keys if you’ve forgotten them.”

Technology is not a means to an end for him; it’s a medium. If you don’t understand the medium, you can’t do good stuff with it. “If you look at it transactionally – like what I care about is this outcome, and I don’t care how you do it – you’re not going to be able to leverage the medium to its fullest and that’s something that Go-Jek just gets right.”

Unforeseen scale

The number of completed orders, excluding Go-Pay (Go-Jek’s payments product) transactions, were at 500 per day when the app launched in January 2015. That grew 900x to cross 450,000 per day by June 2016, Ponnappa says.

Ponnappa had been building up Go-Jek’s tech muscle even before he officially joined the company. His company C42 Engineering used to help other tech startups and enterprises “iteratively architect, develop, deploy, and scale their core product offerings.”

Go-Jek’s investor Sequoia Capital roped in C42 when the Indonesian company’s small tech team was struggling to keep pace with the rapid growth it experienced in the months after its app was launched.

“We grew so fast that we lost control of how many people downloaded our app. We grossly underestimated our growth rate,” co-founder and CEO of Go-Jek Nadiem Makarim told me in an earlier interview. Drivers and passengers were complaining about frozen bookings, rides that couldn’t be canceled, and “error” in the app. “Error” is Indonesian lingo for buggy and unreliable.

That’s when Ponnappa and a team of tech ninjas from India stepped in.

C42, along with another startup CodeIgnition, were used to lending tech muscle to growing startups. They had experienced scale as tech consultants for companies like Flipkart, Applause, Staples Labs, Quintype, UrbanLadder, and ThoughtWorks – a bunch of fast-growing startups in a high-churn/high-growth phase. C42 was primarily focused on heavy backend engineering, while CodeIgnition worked on tech infrastructure automation.

If you want to hire well, you have to support and grow the community, no strings attached.

C42 and CodeIgnition had merged in late 2014 when they found themselves collaborating frequently for the same clients. They began working with Sequoia Capital in March 2015 to help companies on its portfolio with scaling challenges.

“In April, Sequoia asked us to go to Indonesia to meet the companies they’d invested in. Go-Jek was a non-entity back then. The other companies [in the Sequoia portfolio] were behemoths compared to it. So, Go-Jek was not much a part of the conversation,” Ponnappa recalls. Go-Jek must have been doing 3,000 to 4,000 orders a day around then, he adds.

“Just four months later, Go-Jek was the single biggest thing that was happening in Indonesia.” By September, Go-Jek was clocking over 100,000 orders a day – 15x scaling in just a few months.

Photo credit: YouTube.

All-nighters

Ponnappa remembers those early days with Go-Jek vividly. His co-founder at C42, Niranjan Paranjape – Go-Jek’s CTO currently – was one of the early ones from India to head to Jakarta. They used to see how Go-Jek’s systems would crash with the huge volume of orders coming in. This was around July 2015. “The orders were way over what the systems were originally designed to handle. Every day during rush hour, the systems would go down, things would become problematic,” Ponnappa recalls.

“We must be the first company who raised prices so we would have fewer customers,” he chuckles. “That’s the genesis of rush-hour pricing in Go-Jek. It wasn’t profitability; it wasn’t anything else; it was to keep the load down in the systems back then.”

Paranjape and others would be firefighting all day, trying to keep the system alive amid the constantly increasing load. So they weren’t getting time to fix the system during the day.

Ponnappa remembers Paranjape saying: “I’m going to pull a few all-nighters. Are you up for it?” Paranjape and a colleague worked three nights at a stretch and re-wrote Go-Jek’s allocation system that matches drivers and customers. “That’s the heart of this machine and that’s what really needs to scale. If you’re scaling transport, what you’re really scaling is that allocation system.”

Go-Jek had just switched to Golang or Go, a programming language created at Google in 2009. Paranjape wasn’t familiar with it back then. “Niranjan [Paranjape] re-wrote the allocation system in Golang, a language that he did not know, in three nights flat. And that scaled everything up by 10 times immediately.”

In 20 days, Go-Jek went from 20,000 drivers to 80,000 drivers.

“It was interesting times – the routine was proper sleep on the couch, hack at night, keep systems up during the day,” Ponnappa recalls.

Mind you, this was when C42 and CodeIgnition were just consultants to Go-Jek.

“By July 2015, we were doing a lot of the engineering for Go-Jek. By September, 100 percent of CodeIgnition and C42 – around 35 of us – were consulting for Go-Jek. And by October, we were in acquisition talks.”

Go-Jek drivers demonstrate in Bandung. Photo credit: Tribun Jabar.

Firefighting mode

After Paranjape and the team brought in the first set of optimizations in September 2015, Go-Jek’s scale picked up pace exponentially. When more customers start using the service, you start running short of drivers. Then you need to onboard drivers fast.

Rohan Monga, Go-Jek’s COO, told the tech team: “Looks like our stability issue is okay. So I’m going to start hiring [drivers].” The team happily gave him the go-ahead.

Monga hired a stadium and started onboarding drivers, giving them the app, jacket, helmet, phone, and the necessary training. In 20 days, Go-Jek went from 20,000 drivers to 80,000 drivers.

“Our systems were running fine with 20,000 drivers and these many customers. Within 20 days the whole thing had gone up 4x. So we were back to square one, desperately trying to scale the systems,” Ponnappa says. “We do a lot of work to make the system stable and then our insanely amazing ops team goes out, kills it, and we’re again busy trying to firefight and keep things stable.”

We go through 3,000 resumes to hire a single developer.

“In India, nobody has scaled 900x in 18 months. But that’s how we scaled at Go-Jek. That has been brutal. 900x in the first 18 months and now still doubling, doubling, doubling, I mean we’re a big company now, we’re still doubling several times a year. It’s insanely hard keeping the technology running, making sure there are no defects, making sure uptime is solid, making sure the experiences to our drivers and customers are not compromised,” he says.

It’s been tough, but what makes all of it work is the company’s lean engineering mindset. “We never throw people at problems. Instead, we always throw talent at problems.” For example, Go-Jek has a six-member team handling its app for drivers.

He says Go-Jek’s approach to scale is different from that of most Indian companies. In India, he feels, the general reaction if things are not going fast enough is to hire more people. That is in stark contrast to the approach of hugely successful companies like WhatsApp or Instagram. WhatsApp, for example, had a 35-people team tackling 400 million users when it was acquired by Facebook for US$19 billion. Instagram added a million users within hours of launching its Android app and in 10 days, grew to 40 million users across its iOS and Android apps. It only had six engineers then.

“We have that rigor in philosophy. You will find that nothing in this company [Go-Jek] goes manual. Every single piece is automated; there are no manual steps anywhere. Only the final stage which pushes a product to the customer will involve some human checks. So we have enormous focus on the engineering quality,” Ponnappa says.

“We go through 3,000 resumes to hire a single developer,” he adds.

He shares the example of how Go-Car, Go-Jek’s entry into cab-hailing, was launched. This service was rolled out in April 2016 to take on the deep-pocketed Grab from Malaysia and Uber from the US.

“We built and launched Go-Car in under four weeks, from scratch,” Ponnappa tells me.

The launch also happened 24 hours earlier than planned because of an accident. “Operations was not ready, PR was not ready, engineering was not ready. And somebody clicked the wrong button in Play Store by mistake and launched the product 24 hours early. Once you clicked that button, you can’t take back the app, so we simply launched it. Nothing went wrong,” he says. “Go-Car grew 10x in the next four weeks.”

Go-Jek CEO Nadiem Makarim on stage at Tech in Asia Jakarta 2016. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

Hiring challenge

Acquiring the C42-CodeIgnition combo was a master stroke for Go-Jek CEO Nadiem Makarim. Their 35-member team joined Go-Jek post-acquisition. “In many ways, these guys (the founders of C42 and CodeIgnition) taught me how to run a tech startup better,” Makarim told me while explaining the buyout decision.

“We were doing a few things wrong because for all of us, this is the first time we’re doing anything like this. These guys showed me how to manage and structure a tech organization; how to review the performance of developers and coders; how to create team-based dynamics; how to scale with processes; how to recruit effectively; how to communicate; and how to structure a technology organization. All of these things, I had very little knowledge of,” he said.

While Go-Jek is brutal when it comes to dealing with scale, not everyone in its tech team has computer engineering backgrounds. For instance, Paranjape is a mechanical engineer, while Go-Jek’s Group CTO Ajay Gore holds a bachelor of commerce degree.

At Go-Jek, writing software is not a low-level task; it’s at the very core of what we do. Leaders who code are better judges of technical skill in people.

Go-Jek does not care about your degree, your marks, and so on, Ponnappa says. The only thing that matters is your coding skills.

Every applicant to the tech team is asked to solve a college-level coding problem. “You’ll be shocked at what percentage of Indian applicants fail to clear that,” Ponnappa says.

“Everyone writes code,” is a guiding principle within the company. “We believe that software principals/architects/engineers can only do the right thing when they work on code themselves; that’s the only way to decide what’s working and what’s not. We don’t believe that software requires a 50,000 foot overview with people exclusively working on the blueprint. At Go-Jek, writing software is not a low-level task; it’s at the very core of what we do. Leaders who code are better judges of technical skill in people,” Gore explains.

Go-Jek sponsors and organizes a whole spectrum of events for the tech community. Every other weekend, it holds meetups at its India office, which Ponnappa says is “wide open to any technology meetup group that needs a space to gather. No questions asked.” Communities across the board – Clojure meetups, Android user groups, Ruby enthusiasts, groups around languages frameworks, tools, and so on – have been taking up the offer.

Gore, Ponnappa, and Paranjape are trustees of a non-profit that has been running tech community events for seven years now. They run three tech conferences in India and sponsor open-source contributors who can’t afford to travel to international conferences where they’ve been invited as speakers.

“What we’ve realized over the years is, if you want to hire well, you have to support and grow the community – no strings attached,” Ponnappa says.

This post An insider’s account of how Go-Jek hit 900x scale in 18 months and is still doubling appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: SAM.

I ask about President Trump; I ask about Brexit. All I get are canned responses that dodge my queries. Typical politician!

But SAM, who I’m talking to over Facebook Messenger, is far from being a regular lawmaker. She is touted as the world’s first virtual politician.

And this isn’t just some prank. SAM’s creator wants the robo-representative to run for office in 2020.

“There is a lot of bias in the ‘analogue’ practice of politics right now,” says Nick Gerritsen, who unveiled SAM last week. “There seems to be so much existing bias that countries around the world seem unable to address fundamental and multiple complex issues like climate change and equality.”

“That is without even entering the discussion around fake news and the global decline in journalism,” the New Zealander tells Tech in Asia.

It turns out that SAM wasn’t dodging my questions – Gerritsen is still teaching the AI how to respond, so for now she – that’s the gender its inventors decided upon – is focused on issues specific to New Zealand, like policies around housing, education, and immigration.

When I ask SAM about those, it offers detailed responses, and sometimes even solicits my opinion:

Image credit: Tech in Asia.

Biased bots

As well as learning within Messenger, the virtual politician is being shaped by a survey on her homepage.

Gerritsen, 49, acknowledges that humans can bake their biases into the algorithms they create – a study earlier this year found AI exhibited racist and sexist tendencies. “We do not view bias as just a challenge to technology solutions,” he says. And so AI, while imperfect, still has something to offer in terms of bridging what seems to be a growing political and cultural divide in many countries.

Nick Gerritsen. Photo credit: Nick’s Facebook.

Which brings us to Trump. Gerritsen – unlike SAM – has an opinion on the avid tweeter, keen golfer, noted racist, and alleged sexual assault enthusiast.

“Personally, I think he represents a very sad period in US and global history. But it is obviously exciting for the Asia-Pacific region as it is evidence in the rapidly shifting centre of gravity – the world is flowing in our direction. This presents new challenges but also a world of opportunity,” he says. “I’m pretty sure that SAM is happy for the data around Trump and his impact to speak for itself.”

SAM is moulded not just by Trump and the bitter US presidential election, but by a tsunami of partisan rancor.

“We’ve seen in the US, UK, and Spain recently […] that politicians may be wildly out of touch with what people actually think and want. Perhaps it’s time to see whether technology can produce better results for the people than politicians. The technology we propose would be better than traditional polling because it would be like having a continuous conversation – and it could give the ‘silent majority’ a voice,” states Gerritsen.

But the techno-utopianism might be short-lived if fake news morphs into fake politicos – just look at that Black Mirror episode in which Waldo, a cartoon character, turns political and ultimately ushers in a climate of insults and authoritarian ad hominem attacks.

GIF by Tech in Asia, from Netflix’s Black Mirror.

Gerritsen has been an entrepreneur since the age of 17. Now he’s a commercial lawyer specializing in intellectual property as well as a startup investor through his Crisp Start firm – and a recognizable face in Wellington’s tech scene.

“I am not afraid to take action and test ideas and get huge satisfaction from opening up new ‘spaces’ and encouraging others to join in,” he says. “I believe that the future is ours to create. Technology has to be an enabler and I react strongly to those who promote technological determinism.”

By late 2020, when New Zealand has its next general election, Gerritsen believes SAM will be much more advanced. And then she might be able to run as a candidate, though Gerritsen manages a politician’s sidestep when asked about the legalities of an AI doing that.

“SAM is an enabler and we plan to operate within existing legal boundaries,” he offers.

Until his experiment has a chance to be tested, the entrepreneur sees 21st century society as being ruled by darkly 19th century politics. On a lighter note, he’s hopeful for New Zealand’s newly-installed, 37-year-old Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. “SAM and Jacinda would likely get on very well as they are both receptive, interested in ideas, and like to engaged with contemporary issues and society,” says Gerritsen.

This post Would you vote for this AI politician? appeared first on Tech in Asia.

The funding is in! This week’s roundup features the latest funding for fintech biz One Tap Buy, as well as updates on VR, AI, and drones.

Full details below:

Tomaruba

Tomaruba is a Kyoto-based vacation rental startup that manages everything from attracting customers to making renovations. Tomaruba’s high-end renovated guest houses/hotels are traditional in style, which appeals to foreign and local tourists alike. Tomaruba has also created Machiya Support, a service that manages vacation rentals, and Smart Vacation Rental, an iPad app that allows vacation renters to control appliances, air conditioners, etc.

Tomaruba raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Japanese crowdsourcing platform, Crowdworks. Including previous investments from B Dash Ventures, Anri, and some undisclosed angel investors, Tomaruba’s total funding now rounds out to about US$732,000. With this latest round of investment, Tomaruba is looking to leverage the money to grow Smart Vacation Rental and to expand beyond Kyoto.

Clue

Drone software company Clue offers more than just general drone services. Its DroneRoofer service enables users to operate drones from their iPads and capture aerial images of their roofs. DroneCloud, on the other hand, lets users manage their data, projects, and flight logs online. Companies can also book these services and hire Clue for projects like public works surveying, building inspections, aerial imaging, etc.

On November 15, Clue announced it has raised US$3 million from several big investors in Japan, including Dentsu, iMercury, Adways, FreakOut, Spiral, Campfire, ANRI, DroneFund, Dream, and Real Tech Fund.

One Tap Buy

One Tap Buy enables the buying and selling of American and Japanese stocks as well as 225 ETFs listed in Japan. As of October, One Tap Buy has been downloaded 600,000 times by users who are mostly stock trading beginners. To boost thier knowlege, One Tap Buy has educational mangas on investment basics and financial news on related companies.

One Tap Buy has added another US$22.3 million to its mountain of funding, bringing its total to over US$30 million. Tech in Asia previously reported on One Tap Buy in February, when it raised US$13.3 million from Softbank, Mizuho Capital, and Mobile Internet Capital. Previous investors also joined this round, but a new player, Yahoo Japan, was added to the mix.

Jolly Good Inc.

Jolly Good Inc.  offers two main cutting-edge media products: GuruVR and VRCHEL. GuruVR provides equipment and software necessary to create 360-degree content. Clients include major Japanese television companies like Hokkaido Broadcasting, Broadcasting System of Niigata, and Tokai. VRCHEL is a VR and AI service that analyzes 2D and 360-degree content. Through an AI algorithm, VRCHEL gives film industry professionals data analytics capabilities so they can determine viewing patterns and other relevant information.

According to a November 17 press release, Jolly Good has secured US$3.6 million in investments from DIP Corporation, and aSTART Co.

JustInCase

Set to debut in December, JustInCase allows anyone to register their smartphone phone or other electronic devices for damage insurance in about 90 seconds. Through its AI algorithm, JustIncase will determine the price of a monthly subscription plan based on customers’ risk and the kind of electronic device they’re registering. The cost ranges from about US$2 to US$5 a month. A special feature lets users connect with friends to create an insurance pool so they can share costs and risks.

JustInCase recently secured funding from 500 Startups Japan. While the company didn’t disclose the exact amount,TechCrunch Japan says it’s within the range of hundreds of thousands of US dollars.

Lute

Launched in August, Lute is an Instagram-based media company. It started out in 2016 as a YouTube variety channel for music videos, live events, and documentaries. The company then pivoted and turned into a pop culture site that uses Instagram to distribute content aimed at millennials.

Lute’s mission is to take the latest trends and then condense them into Instagram stories. They are working to expand their business model with projects like culture marketing and artist management.

In their recently raised seed round, Lute secured US$700,000 from Gumi Ventures, Candee, Allfuz, and individual investors.

This post 6 rising startups in Japan appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Grab CEO Anthony Tan (L) and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Image credit: Grab, Uber, Tech in Asia.

As Uber’s board gives the green light to what could be a US$10 billion investment deal with SoftBank, all eyes in our region turn to the ride-hailer’s local competitors, most notably Ola in India and Grab in Southeast Asia.

Assuming the deal goes through, Uber and Grab will once again find themselves sharing a major investor – Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing is already an investor in both, and SoftBank (which has also invested in Didi) will be one more.

What does this mean in the long run for Uber’s fortunes in Southeast Asia? Not everyone agrees on that. Grab and Uber are neck and neck in the countries they share, including Singapore, with Grab pulling ahead of its US rival in several of them. Riding on both cars, SoftBank wins regardless in this scenario, but there’s another possibility everyone is thinking about – Grab and Uber putting aside their differences and merging under the SoftBank roof.

All in the family

Monk’s Hill managing partner Peng T. Ong believes the planned investment could bring the two companies closer together. “It is a possible friendly way to work towards consolidation,” he notes.

It is possible that SotfBank would bring the two operations together in the future.

Elizabeth Lim, editor at M&A research firm Mergermarket, shares the same view. “SoftBank will probably continue to invest in both startups in the region, and it is possible that they would bring the two operations together in the future,” she says.

Lawrence Cheok, senior research manager for market intelligence firm IDC, feels that the consolidation of SoftBank’s ride-hailing assets would be a “win” for the fund – yet there are other ways for everyone to win too.

“What would create a win-win-win scenario for all firms involved is to avoid price competition and collaborate on technology sharing to create a global ecosystem,” he explains. He uses the Uber-Didi deal as an example of how this could work. The deal basically resolved the unhealthy price war between them and left Uber with at least a foot in the Chinese market through its stake in Didi.

“Instead of straight-out mergers, a similar approach may be taken by [SoftBank] to encourage collaborations between firms under its portfolio. Doing so seems in line with their investment strategy to build up a global ecosystem of technology disruptors,” Cheok says.

Malaysia-born, Singapore-based Grab claims to have over 1 million drivers and recently announced a milestone of 1 billion rides across Southeast Asia. Having raised over US$4 billion in disclosed funding, its pockets are not as deep as Uber’s but it has cemented its presence in the region as a force to be reckoned with.

In Singapore, Uber celebrated its four-year anniversary earlier this year, announcing it hit 1 million active riders in the city-state with “tens of thousands” of drivers. It crossed the 5-billion-ride mark worldwide in June.

Cheok cautions a possible consolidation might not end up being such good news for consumers – the price wars might end, but that could result in increased costs for users that could sometimes be inscrutable, like the dynamic surge pricing system. “Under a monopolistic market structure, there needs to be more transparency how these changing prices are generated or calculated,” he notes.

Softbank’s top 10 deals this year. Graphic by Tech in Asia.

Spring cleaning

With or without an alliance, the potential SoftBank investment could help Uber put its house in order. “Such an investor will bring some discipline to [Uber],” says Kee Lock Chua, CEO of Singapore-based venture capital firm Vertex, an early investor in Grab.

The incoming investment could help Uber put its house in order.

Under former CEO Travis Kalanick, the embattled company was connected to controversies ranging from sexual harassment and sexism to questionable competitive tactics – like the Hell program to gather data on US rival Lyft’s drivers and a project called Surfcam to scrape data from competitors like Grab.

If SoftBank does end up coming on board as an investor, it will likely have little patience for such shenanigans, Chua thinks.

Mergermarket’s Lim also thinks SoftBank will have a big influence on Uber’s board.

“Uber has attempted to move past its recent woes by resolving certain issues within its board, which paved the way for this investment to take place,” she says. “With plans for an IPO in 2019, SoftBank’s stake buy and two new board seats signal a move forward finally for the ride-sharing company.”

The US company’s board of directors decided to go ahead with the deal by resolving the much-discussed feud between Kalanick and investor Benchmark Capital. Benchmark agreed to suspend the lawsuit it kicked off against Kalanick a few months ago so that the deal with SoftBank could proceed. If SoftBank does invest, Benchmark said it would drop the lawsuit, which aimed to reduce Kalanick’s influence over the board.

See: Uber was catching up with rivals in Southeast Asia. Now the gap could be widening

Head to head

In the meantime, Chua feels Uber’s competition with Grab is a good thing so long as it’s healthy, and new people coming on the company’s board should help with that.

Competition, after all, can help diversify and improve both companies’ services.

Grab has quite the headstart there, with several verticals under its umbrella. From taxis and private-hire cars to bikes, shuttles, and coaches, the company has offered enough different mobility services to make itself as ubiquitous as possible.

Uber does carpooling and motorbikes as well (although its offering in this regard lags behind Grab and Indonesia’s Go-Jek) but it’s mostly laser-focused on its core product – the private-hire car. UberEats is quite the tasty addition to its verticals but one that faces its own competition from other providers like Foodpanda and Deliveroo. Grab has its own food delivery offering but only in some markets like Indonesia and Thailand.

Grab wants to expand into other applications beyond just ride-hailing.

The kicker may be the way Grab wants to expand into other applications beyond just ride-hailing. The company wants to use its e-wallet function to enable more online-to-offline services.

Earlier this year it acquired Indonesian fintech startup Kudo to expand its payment network. During Grab’s five-year celebrations, CEO Anthony Tan said the company wants to “win payments in Southeast Asia,” saying that the app’s user base can be the groundwork for more services.

Grab already made it possible for users to make peer-to-peer micropayments using the wallet, while more recently it announced its payment system can be used at restaurants and hawker stalls through a WeChat-like QR code.

Not going anywhere

Grab’s strong position in Southeast Asia could portend a repeat of what happened in China where Uber sold its local business to Didi, or Russia where it pulled out while retaining a stake in a joint venture with home-grown player Yandex.

However, during The New York Times DealBook conference a few days ago, new Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi dispelled rumors of Uber ceding the Southeast Asian market to competitors.

That said, Khosrowshahi doesn’t expect profitability from Southeast Asia anytime soon. “The economics of that market are not what we want them to be – I think it’s over-capitalized at this point,” he pointed out.

See: What SoftBank’s $10b investment in Uber means for its battle with Ola in India

This post SoftBank’s $10b investment in Uber could end the war with Grab in Southeast Asia appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: maridav / 123RF.

Singapore-based startup KaHa – also known as CoveIoT – has raised US$4.5 million in funding from investors, including SPRING Seeds Capital and Titan.

KaHa designs and builds wearables such as smartwatches and fitness trackers. It provides manufacturing services such as electronics design and printed circuit board assembly, as well as app development, cloud storage, data analytics, and after-sales services.

Its “internet of things” (IoT) platforms – its Cove and Covenet brands – enable connectivity between these wearables and other consumer tech devices, allowing third parties such as watchmakers and sports equipment manufacturers to incorporate smart wearable technology into their existing product offerings.

KaHa CEO Pawan Gandhi claims this “white-label,” platform-based approach is what separates the startup from the substantial number of companies working in the wearables space, including big-name players such as Apple and Xiaomi.

“As an enterprise, we are unique in that we provide complete end-to-end solutions to our brand partners,” he said in a statement.

Among the investors to have backed KaHa are SPRING Seeds Capital – the investment arm of Singaporean government enterprise agency SPRING – and VC firms Jungle Ventures and YourNest. Watch and jewelry retailer Titan, part of India’s Tata Group, recently invested US$500,000 in KaHa.

“We want to accelerate the development of IoT as part of our ‘Smart Nation’ initiative,” said SPRING deputy chief executive Ted Tan in reference to Singapore’s digital connectedness drive. “KaHa presents a new value proposition to the market by enabling conventional watch and accessories companies to develop smart wearables.”

Founded in 2015, KaHa currently has offices in Singapore, Bengaluru, Geneva, and Shenzhen. Gandhi said that the startup plans to use its recently raised funds to expand its presence in Asia, Europe, and the US.

This post Singapore wearable tech firm gets $4.5m for global expansion appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Razer.

When the Razer Phone was first announced, availability was limited to Western countries, specifically the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Denmark, and Sweden.

In a nod to the company’s Singaporean heritage, though, Razer announced today the device will be available for pre-order in the city-state from November 23. Singapore will be the first market in Asia to get the Razer Phone.

“While we founded Razer in California, US, I’m a Singaporean still and I’m very excited to make Singapore the first country in Asia to release the Razer Phone,” said co-founder and CEO Min-Liang Tan in a statement.

See: Razer just showed off its first phone

The device will be available at local telco Singtel’s booth during the SITEX consumer electronics expo, which runs from November 23 to 26. It will retail for S$1,068 (US$787) if you’re buying it without a contract, placing it in the premium end of Android smartphones. After the expo, Singtel retail stores and its exclusive partners will carry the phone.

Razer’s online store will also be selling the handset in Singapore from December 1 onwards.

The US-headquartered hardware and entertainment company went public last week on the Hong Kong Exchange, raising US$528 million. Its stock climbed 42 percent above its opening price of HK$3.88 (US$0.50) and settled at HK$4.58 at the end of the first day. It’s currently trading at around HK$4.10.

This post Razer Phone will be available in Singapore, its first Asian market, from November 23 appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Image credit: Pixabay.

Failing to keep pace with the proliferation of big data and the increased power of machine learning could also prevent companies from making a substantial shift from standalone processes to more collaborative environments.

Here are the frontiers of technology that startups and institutions will get cracking on by 2018.

1. Fintech and blockchain are established areas that continue to present unique problems

Image credit: Pixabay.

One of the main regulatory problems is that Bitcoin users are assigned a private identity, although every transaction on the bitcoin network is publicly visible on the blockchain. This, in turn, raises the issue of security as cryptocurrency uses public key cryptography to protect transactions. For this reason, regulators and financial players must engage in a constructive dialogue to find proper solutions.

Banks are using blockchain in other ways – not to hide identities, but to verify them. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), together with OCBC Bank and HSBC, has completed a proof-of-concept for a Know Your Customer (KYC) blockchain in collaboration with Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA).

The KYC blockchain runs on a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform that enables structured information to be recorded, accessed and shared across a distributed network using advanced cryptography. It allows banks to collect, validate, and share customer information in a secure way, making a complex and highly regulated process possibly more efficient.

This isn’t even AI’s final form. Image credit: Go Game Guru.

2. Bigger is better

In the digital age, the universe of data keeps expanding, leaving some companies in disarray when it comes to making effective use of unstructured data from a wide variety of sources. Having a big set of data at their disposal makes companies’ appetite for hypotheses and trends even bigger.

It is a challenge to develop algorithms that can successfully query varied data sets and deliver meaningful results. Big data can be fed into a machine-learning algorithm trained to process and reproduce the right behavior, while experts need to be able to manage data chaos.

According to IBM, demand for data scientists is expected to grow 28 percent by 2020, so mid-size companies and startups that lack the skills, resources, and capabilities will find it hard to bank on their business potential. In this regard, the MUFG Digital Accelerator programme offers companies the tools and the expertise necessary to achieve their full business potentials.

3. Quantum computing is in its infancy but has huge potential

Quantum computing is likely to have the biggest impact on industries that are data-rich and time-sensitive. It’s especially useful for optimization problems present in many industries, such as supply chain and finance, but are difficult to solve, given the large amount of data needed and the current processing power of computers.

Across industries, quantum computing shows promise in helping to determine attractive investment portfolios, supply chain on a global scale, and ads customers see based on hundreds of their attributes. Quantum computing can even help detect fraud and prescribe personalized medicine.

The development of quantum computing is an expensive process and takes time. The technology is still maturing, and there are some hurdles left to overcome in order to build fully scalable quantum computers.

2018 could be the year in which some applications are brought to light. IonQ, an early-stage company developing quantum computing for commercial applications, plans to bring general-purpose quantum computers to market by late 2018.

Proptech will disrupt housing as we know it. Image credit: Pixabay.

4. PropTech, IoT, and robotics are game changers in construction and sales

For quite some time now, the real estate sector has been ripe for disruption by the use of new technologies. The often-dubbed “proptech” is the real estate version of “fintech”.

Most proptech companies promise to automate the process by giving house-hunters with real-time listings and much-faster search options. Apart from property search engines, other opportunities areas include crowdfunding websites, smart building firms, construction planning, and leasing and liquidity. Spatial-mapping robots could provide virtual tours of properties and help potential homeowners make decisions.

Robotics would be required to build hardware for spatial mapping or microsensors. This is especially needed as the Internet of Things can benefit real estate by lowering utility bills, increasing surveillance, and providing information on parking availability, among others.

Looking to 2018

With 2018 just around the corner, it’s not too early for organizations to evaluate their technology priorities for next year. Startups can help to figure out how technology can continue to meet the changing needs and demands of key industries.

The MUFG Digital Accelerator programme offers innovative companies a chance to demonstrate their solutions for real issues and for some of the problems outlined above. Companies can expect to gain valuable knowledge from bank experts and get access to a global network of clients, investors, and partners.

MUFG will provide participants with the tools and a dedicated working space in Tokyo to create and sharpen their business models. They will guide participants to launch their businesses through the program. The attending startups will have an opportunity to present their business plans in front of plenty of investors on Demo Day and be financing assessed if they meet all specific requirements.

This post Tech problems that 2018’s startups will be solving appeared first on Tech in Asia.