Image credit: DataRobot.

Boston-based AI startup DataRobot, the first overseas company to receive IMDA’s stamp of approval through the Accreditation@SG Digital program, announced today it plans to invest US$11 million in Singapore to set up its regional headquarters and beef up its research and development efforts.

The startup plans to spend 50 percent of that investment to hire 50 new employees by 2019. Based on performance, it could invest up to US$37 million more.

DataRobot’s premier product is an automated machine learning platform that can create predictive models according to customers’ needs. The company employs around 300 people all over the world, and around half of these are data scientists and engineers.

Key industries it serves include banking and fintech, insurance, healthcare, and more. It has raised a total of US$124 million so far.

“DataRobot tries to teach the machines to do data science,” co-founder and CEO Jeremy Achin told reporters in Singapore today.

Seal of approval

IMDA announced recently it would extend its Accreditation scheme, which is basically a thorough due diligence process, to companies outside Singapore. DataRobot is the first that’s been announced.

Achin said that being accredited by IMDA will vastly improve the company’s ability to work with the Singapore government without having to spend a lot of time cutting through the red tape jungle. Getting government projects will be faster and easier, while the distinction will help validate the company to prospective clients in the region.

It will also help DataRobot collaborate with IMDA to increase the startup’s profile in Singapore and Southeast Asia.

Without the accreditation stamp, DataRobot would still invest in its Singapore operations, but perhaps not to the extent it will now, the CEO told Tech in Asia. The process took around a year and a half, he said.

Singapore is in the middle of a big push to improve its AI and data science capabilities through a number of initiatives. It announced the AI.SG project in May this year, with the intention of investing US$107 million over the next five years toward that goal.

IMDA recently announced it would be part of this project by setting up apprenticeship programs with local AI professionals, collaboration with international companies, and the Accreditation program.

DataRobot can help in this regard by providing employment for data science and AI positions, attracting top data scientists to the city-state, and helping spread the use of AI technology in the government and the private sector, Achin explained.

Converted from Singapore dollars. US$1 = S$1.35.

This post An American startup will pour $11m into AI research and talent in Singapore appeared first on Tech in Asia.

ScadaFence founders Ofer Shaked (L) and Yoni Shohet. Photo credit: ScadaFence.

As connected devices find their way into large-scale industrial applications – what’s often called IIoT, or Industrial Internet of Things – the need to safeguard those networks becomes more imperative. If you’re, say, a large automotive company running a bunch of manufacturing plants, you really don’t want your connected systems hijacked by hackers or compromised by employee errors.

Tel Aviv-based ScadaFence is a cyber security startup that tackles this specific challenge – shielding industrial networks from cyber attacks and threats. The company just announced its series A round, raising US$10 million.

Investors include JVP, NexStar Partners, 31Ventures Global Innovation Fund, Global Brain’s GB-VI Growth Fund, iAngels, and DS Strategic Partners.

The funds will be used to grow the company’s research and development center in Tel Aviv and boost its global business teams to address “growing demand” from its clients in the US, Europe, and Asia.

Co-founder and CEO Yoni Shohet tells Tech in Asia the startup has “dozens” of customers across these territories, although he doesn’t provide details. While ScadaFence serves several industrial sectors, Shohet says the most demand comes from the chemicals, food and beverage, automotive, and energy sectors.

Building the fence

The startup’s name comes from SCADA, an acronym that stands for Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition. SCADA computer systems are used to control and monitor plants and factory equipment in industries like energy, telecommunications, transportation, and more.

Shohet and his co-founder Ofer Shaked were both part of the Israeli army’s intelligence division, which has birthed many a founder in the country – especially in the cyber security field.

No longer operating in disconnected silos, companies now have to deal with the extra challenges connectivity brings.

The duo saw an opportunity in the industrial internet space, as companies started taking advantage of connected technologies. “Once industrial devices started connecting to systems that allowed them to communicate in networks not based within the industrial environment, we saw a lot of transformation in this space,” Shohet says.

No longer operating in disconnected silos, companies now have to deal with the extra challenges this brings. “[They] need to change their security perspective and think about how they can improve their security while staying connected to the outside world – it’s a very big change for them,” he adds.

That’s where ScadaFence comes in – the startup builds products that help companies monitor their networks for signs of intrusion or compromise, and detect threats in real time. It also makes security assessment tools to help a company determine how its networks are being used, what its current security level is, and what the potential risks are.

Shohet says the startup can scale its products to address clients ranging from one-factory businesses to companies running hundreds of plants worldwide.

ScadaFence doesn’t worry much about competition at the moment, as there is currently no dominant player in the field, according to Shohet. He points to his company’s ability to support big manufacturing networks like large-scale automotive factories as its edge in the market.

“We identified this gap early on because of our focus on these business cases,” he says.

This post Cyber security startup raises $10m to help protect industrial internet systems appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Image credit: Pixabay.

As virtual reality (VR) technology attracts both consumers and investors, a wide range of startups are taking AR/VR beyond headsets to give users a more authentic experience.

Scheduled to be held from November 30 until December 2 in Seoul, Korea, Startup Festival 2017 is one of the leading events in Asia’s startup scene. Hosted by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the festival’s agenda focuses on the technologies driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution, such as IoT, fintech, ICO, and AR/VR.

Here are three AR/VR startups you need to watch out for at the festival:

1. Locomotion platform/VR treadmill WizDish

Does VR make you sick, literally? Many people experience simulation sickness when playing VR games. If you’re seated but your visual cues signal you’re walking, then chances are you will experience dizziness, nausea, and other symptoms related to motion sickness.

Your body feels disconnected when what you see doesn’t match what you feel. The evolutionary explanation for this is that your body assumes that you’ve been poisoned, so it tries to induce vomiting to cleanse your system.

Wizdish’s ROVR is a VR treadmill that allows a person to walk and move freely in VR worlds. The treadmill listens to the sound made by sliding feet and converts this into forward motion in games. This feature allows you to fully engage with your game and matches the visual input with your physical stimuli. Less sickness, more motion.

2. 3D audio startup Kinicho

Imagine you’re walking through a cave. Your eyes would probably dart to the dark shadows on the wall and the faint light from your torch. Your ears would also likely perk up because sound is an important aspect of “being present” in any given environment. If a bat were to fly over your head, the flapping sound from its wings wouldn’t be the same as what you’d hear if it were to fly beside you.

Traditional audio recordings, however, can only account for the sound from one fixed point – where the microphone was placed.

Image credit: Kinicho.

With 3D audio, the virtual sound in headphones is designed to come as close as it can to sounds in the real world. 3D audio startup Kinicho’s novel approach to producing 3D spatial audio in VR/AR helps developers take better control of their soundtracks.

To deliver a more authentic VR experience, Kinicho’s method takes into account the spatial relationship involving listeners, sound emitters, and the environment in a virtual world.

3. Smartphone VR visor Altergaze

Funded via Kickstarter, Altergaze merges the concept of “crowd manufacturing” with AR/VR. The result is a 3D-printed, smartphone-based VR headset that offers an immersive 110-degree field of view (FOV) experience – and it comes in a compact and wireless package.

Using 3D printing technology to create a product offers a high level of customization. At the moment, Altergaze boasts of over 8.4 million unique variations depending on the design model, smartphone size, and color combinations. The visor looks vaguely like the goggles worn by the minions in the popular cartoon Despicable Me.

Image credit:

Catch a glimpse of these three promising startups at the Startup Festival 2017. At the events ground, startups and VCs will have the opportunity to network and hold one-on-one consultations. There will also be an On-Air Zone where startups can gain media exposure.

This post 3 cool VR startups you can meet in South Korea this December appeared first on Tech in Asia.

The Ho Chi Minh City skyline. Photo credit: quangpraha / 123RF.

In today’s headlines, Vietnam’s Tiki got a big injection of funds from JD as the Chinese company stakes its claim to a piece of the ecommerce pie in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, another big tech player from China passed a significant milestone.

Ecommerce

Tiki.vn gets US$44 million from JD (Vietnam). The investment in the Ho Chi Minh City-based ecommerce portal represents another big play from China’s JD as it faces off against Alibaba in Southeast Asia. Tiki previously raised US$17 million from Vietnamese internet company VNG last year. (e27)

Consumer tech

KaHa raises US$4.5 million for global expansion (Singapore). The wearables and connected devices firm has received funding from SPRING Seeds Capital, YourNest, and Tata Group affiliate Titan, among others. It will use the investment to expand its presence in Asia, Europe, and the US. (Tech in Asia)

Artificial intelligence

Fano Labs secures pre-series A funding (Hong Kong). Horizon Ventures led the investment in the startup, which has developed natural language processing technology for use in customer service call centers, that can understand Chinese regional languages and dialects. The amount raised was undisclosed. (Fano Labs)

Hong Kong. Photo credit: leungchopan / 123RF.

DataRobot commits US$11 million to set up regional headquarters (Singapore). The US startup, which is the first overseas company to be approved by the Singapore Infocomm Media Development Authority’s Accreditation@SG Digital program, announced it will invest US$11 million in the Lion City to establish a regional office and boost its R&D effort. (Tech in Asia)

Media

IDN Media closes series B fundraise (Indonesia). The startup, which publishes a range of special interest news and entertainment sites, secured the funding from a group of investment firms including East Ventures and Capital Exchange. The funds will go towards IDN’s audience growth strategy. (East Ventures)

Fintech

MAS opens new consultation for proposed payments reform (Singapore). The city-state’s central bank is inviting public comments on its Payments Bill for the second time. Among the proposed changes under the draft law are the extension of the existing regulatory framework to domestic money transfers, online payments gateways, and the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies. (MAS)

Big tech

Tencent overtakes Facebook (China). The Shenzhen-based internet giant is now the world’s fifth biggest tech company with a market value of US$531 billion, surpassing Facebook on US$519 billion. Tencent shares have more than doubled in value on the Hong Kong stock exchange this year. (Livemint)

This post Asia tech news roundup – Nov 21 appeared first on Tech in Asia.

CubeSats deployed outside the International Space Station in May 2017. Photo credit: NASA.

From ecommerce to social networking to cloud computing, the lion’s share of internet services depends on a few, multibillion dollar corporates. Amazon, Facebook, Google, and others are emerging as the foundation of the internet industry.

For blockchain startups aspiring to create decentralized applications, this dominance poses a serious problem, believes Zheng Zuo, the 25-year-old CEO of Spacechain. Launched in April, the Singapore-based company wants to fire off its own satellites to create what Zheng thinks will become a truly decentralized ‘data distribution’ network.

“You can run a decentralized ecommerce platform, but in the backend, you’re using [Amazon Web Services],” he tells Tech in Asia during a trip to Beijing, adding that Facebook and Google are even laying down their own fiber optic cables. If blockchain companies reach a point where they threaten the profits of large players, it’s possible that they could shut down or be refused service.

“It’s their technology infrastructure,” he says. “After we all start depending on this centralized service, it’s hard to realize true decentralization.”

I think blockchain needs an alternative backup [system].

Until recently, the satellite industry was mostly limited to government entities, contractors, and major commercial players. One key reason is cost. Big, geostationary satellites that orbit at altitudes of more than 35,000 kilometers above Earth can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to manufacture, maintain, and launch.

The emergence of smaller satellites at lower orbits has helped changed that. In particular, CubeSats – petite satellites about the size of a tissue box – have significantly lowered the barrier to entry, although it’s still no minor undertaking to start your own space venture. Developed by Stanford University and California Polytechnic State University, CubeSats have made it possible for university students to build their own orbiters. ArduSat, an Arduino-based twist on CubeSats, is even bringing the technology to high schoolers.

Spacechain’s satellite. Photo credit: Spacechain.

Startups are jumping into the aerospace industry as well. Both Elon Musk’s SpaceX and OneWeb are planning to launch their own constellation of low-orbit satellites to create a worldwide broadband network. Zheng thinks that space – the so-called final frontier – can play a role in the development of the blockchain industry.

“I think blockchain needs an alternative backup [system],” he explains. Spacechain plans to run a server on its own CubeSat, which developers will be able to use for their own software applications or data storage. “[Developers] can create backups for a lot of projects.”

“And it’s physically untouchable,” he adds with a grin.

Blockchain optional

If all goes as planned, Spacechain will launch its first CubeSat into space next February. The inaugural satellite will use the Qtum network, an Ethereum-like blockchain developed by one of Spacechain’s investors and partners, Qtum Foundation. The company’s CubeSat plans to run a Qtum node from space.

Among Spacechain’s eclectic roster of contributors and backers is Tim Draper, a billionaire bitcoin enthusiast. Draper is the founding partner of DFJ Venture Capital, a Silicon Valley firm whose portfolio includes SpaceX, Twitter, and cryptocurrency wallet Coinbase.

The most straightforward part of the project – building the satellite – is already finished, says Zheng. Spacechain is partnering with ComSat, a Chinese satellite service provider, to manufacture its CubeSat. GomSpace, a Danish nanosatellite manufacturing and design company, will be the supplier.

The challenge will be getting the software right. Spacechain wants to create an open-source satellite operating system where developers can build and run their own applications, like tracking shipping containers across the ocean or taking photos of Earth. The operating system will be “blockchain optional,” adds Zheng, and open to apps that aren’t blockchain-based.

For the mass majority of operators, data in space does you no good.

Those use cases aren’t new in and of themselves – GomSpace offers global tracking services precisely to meet those needs – but Spacechain argues that its operating system will make it possible for a wider range of applications to be developed by even more software engineers.

“Spacechain satellites add the capability to actually run applications in space,” says Jeff Garzik, the startup’s CTO, who is also a board member of The Linux Foundation and co-founder of Bloq, a US enterprise blockchain startup. “Traditional satellites are single-owner and single-application, simply rebroadcasting video and data from Earth.”

Storing data in space could also present developers with new possibilities. It’s certainly unconventional, says Jordi Puig-Suari, professor of aerospace engineering at California Polytechnic State University and co-inventor of CubeSat.

“We have heard of people interested in putting data in space as a kind of neutral territory where it is not on anyone’s backyard,” he shares. “It’s a very different thing from what most people do with satellites. For the mass majority of operators, data in space does you no good, so you want to send it down as quickly as possible. It’s a new way of looking at it.”

Left to right: CEO and CTO of Spacechain, Zheng Zuo and Jeff Garzik. Photo credit: Spacechain.

Science experiment

It’s still early days for Spacechain and its ambitions for the final frontier. The startup is not disclosing how much funding it has raised, but Zheng says that due to all the company’s research and development efforts, it’s currently dependent on private investors for funds.

In the future, Spacechain is considering a subscription-like model where developers pay for storage space on the satellite and certain functions of the operating system’s API. Creating a token economy with crypto-coins – tentatively dubbed SpaceCash – is another option, though that’s still a work in progress. Generating enough profit to cover satellite maintenance and operating costs will be daunting, but for now, it doesn’t seem to be a top concern.

Spacechain is not alone in its efforts to merge blockchain and satellite technology. Blockstream, a Canadian startup backed by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, rolled out its own system in August.

There is no such thing as truly decentralized.

Unlike Spacechain, Blockstream is renting existing satellites, which are farther away from Earth and have more extensive coverage. One of its main goals is to make bitcoin more accessible in places where internet access may be unavailable or cost-prohibitive, explains Chris Cook, head of Blockstream’s Satellite team. According to his estimates, the hardware needed to receive data beamed down from Blockstream’s satellites amounts to about US$100.

Since going live, the startup’s Satellite program covers Africa, Europe, South America, and North America. By connecting to Blockstream’s satellites, users can download data from the bitcoin network and ensure their nodes stay in sync. The company is still working on two-way satellite communication – users can’t make transactions or mine at the moment – and expanding coverage to Asia Pacific.

“We’re going to make it an open platform that anybody can send any arbitrary data via the satellite network, and just pretty much pay for the data that’s sent,” explains Cook.

“It could be used for anything, from a secure messaging channel to other blockchains that may want to run on it, including a private blockchain or another public ledger, or even some of our enterprise applications.”

Blockstream’s current satellite coverage.

To be sure, both Blockstream and Spacechain have a long roadmap ahead of them, and neither are guaranteed to succeed. Indeed, Spacechain will have plenty of costs to cover in managing its own fleet of satellites, especially since CubeSats are not meant to last for decades – some have to de-orbit within a year – and will need to be refreshed.

They also have a lot to prove to the blockchain community, whether it’s the security and reliability of their networks or how decentralized their systems really are.

“There is no such thing as truly decentralized,” says Gabriel Chan, fintech programs director of the Hong Kong Blockchain Society and architect of Dappler OS, an enterprise decentralized apps platform. “Spacechain, if successful, would be controlling the ground stations that communicate with its CubeSat blockchain network. That is actually less decentralized than if its blockchain network was terrestrially based, running through existing infrastructure.”

Finally, the final frontier isn’t a lawless, free space without boundaries. Successful launches still depend on regulatory approval and support from the country from which the satellite is ejected. “You still need to register somewhere to get frequencies to talk to the spacecraft – that would locate you in some place,” adds Puig-Suari.

Nevertheless, Zheng remains bullish on Spacechain’s satellite project, which he recognizes is experimental. As for regulatory approval, he is talking to partners around the world, especially in countries that are supportive of space ventures. China, for example, has agreed to be the site of Spacechain’s February launch.

“The Chinese government is interested in developing space and blockchain technology right now,” says Zheng. “We hope we can follow this momentum.”

This post How blockchain in space aims to challenge the dominance of Google and Amazon in internet services appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Sea chairman and CEO Forrest Li rings the NYSE opening bell. Photo credit: NYSE.

Sea has announced growth in its revenue, gross merchandise volume, and gross billings during Q3 2017. Its net loss has widened, however, and its share price on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) continued to fall during after-hours trading.

The Southeast Asian company, the most valuable to list on the exchange in recent memory, released its first quarterly financial results since its US$844 million IPO last month.

Sea grew its ecommerce, payments, and gaming segments. The group’s total GAAP-recognized revenue plus non-GAAP deferred revenue from its Garena digital entertainment business and non-GAAP ecommerce commission income from Shopee was US$151.7 million for the quarter. This translates into 73 percent growth in revenue year-on-year, and 21 percent growth over the preceding three months.

Digital payments platform AirPay reported a gross transaction value of US$448 million, representing year-on-year growth of 172 percent and 29 percent growth on the previous quarter.

NB: Financial figures are unaudited. 1: DE = digital entertainment. EC = ecommerce. 2: DE gross billings = digital entertainment GAAP revenue plus change in digital entertainment deferred revenue. Image credit: Sea.

Speaking today during a conference call, Sea CEO Forrest Li said that mobile drove Garena’s performance during the quarter. “More than half of our billings came from mobile games,” he said. “This is a new milestone as mobile use continues to grow across the region.”

Sea operates across several Southeast Asian countries and Taiwan – an area it refers to as “Greater Southeast Asia.”

Li attributed Shopee’s growth to its asset-light marketplace model, which he said was perfectly suited to the logistical practicalities of Southeast Asia. “There’s a strong network effect – the more sellers we have, the more buyers we attract, and that attracts even more sellers. It is a virtuous cycle of growth. It means Shopee is now part of the everyday life of our consumers… Shopee is equivalent to 0.15 percent of the region’s GDP.”

He also underlined Shopee’s claim to be the biggest ecommerce player in the region. “[Shopee] is over twice the size of its nearest competitor [by revenue],” he said. “Also in terms of GMV, we’re close to one-and-a-half times the size of our nearest competitor.”

The unnamed rival is presumably Lazada, which was acquired by Alibaba in April 2016. Speaking at Tech in Asia Jakarta 2017, Lazada CEO Max Bittner argued that publicly held Shopee “will have a harder time continuously raising money… At some point, public market investors expect improvements in profitability. The luxury of being [Lazada] is we’re not exposed to that scrutiny.”

There was some indication of that exposure today as Sea’s share price tumbled, from US$15.70 at the start of the day to US$14.78 by the close of the market. It appears that some investors may have been spooked in advance of the company’s earnings release. After-hours trading saw a further decline in share price, influenced by Sea’s US$127 million adjusted net loss for the quarter – more than twice the US$60.2 million loss it reported in Q3 2016.

NB: Financial figures are unaudited. 1: Excludes stock-based compensation. Image credit: Sea.

Costs were also higher year-on-year, particularly with regards to sales and marketing expenses. Speaking on the conference call, Sea group president Nick Nash said that the higher spend is critical for the company’s forward plans.

“We spent more in Q3 as a percentage of GMV than in Q2, but by design, and in line with our budgets.”

“Some of our markets have developed into a two-horse race faster than we expected, and we can tip the market in our favor” through additional marketing investment, he said.

Also, with Shopee now claiming ecommerce market leadership in Indonesia and Taiwan, Nash explained that it makes sense to focus more sales and marketing effort on where the company sees its major opportunities for future growth – namely the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Nash also underlined some of the difficulties that Sea faces with completing orders and how this can result in higher costs.

“Our key pain point is in payments – that’s not just for us, that’s a regional issue.”

See: How Shopee plans to reign supreme in Southeast Asia’s fashion ecommerce scene

The Singapore-based company combines financial measures recognized under US accounting standards – “generally accepted accounting principles,” or GAAP – with certain non-GAAP figures to give an overall picture of its performance. Sea says that it and other gaming and ecommerce companies do this due to the nature of their online businesses, where a substantial amount of revenue is deferred and user numbers and trends are seen as important indicators.

Looking more closely at Shopee:

• Gross merchandise volume (GMV), the total volume of sales over a given period) grew 219 percent year-on-year and 30 percent quarter-on-quarter to hit US$1.06 billion.
• Gross orders increased 204 percent between Q3 2016 and Q3 2017, and 45 percent quarter-on-quarter to reach 65.9 million.
• Ecommerce monetization – including GAAP revenue plus non-GAAP income from sales commissions – was US$5.7 million for the quarter, up 111 percent on Q2 2017.
• Average monthly active buyers grew from 1.7 million in Q3 2016 to 5.9 million in Q3 2017 – up 247 percent year-over-year.
• There were 3.7 monthly orders per active buyer with an average order value of US$16.20.
• More than 93 percent of Shopee orders in Q3 2017 were transacted through its mobile app.

As for Garena, Sea’s gaming and digital entertainment unit:

• Digital entertainment gross billings – comprising GAAP revenue plus the change in digital entertainment-related deferred revenue – increased 62 percent from US$83.2 million in Q3 2016 to US$135 million in Q3 2017.
• Quarterly active users hit 69 million, representing 54 percent year-on-year growth. There were 42.7 million monthly active users in the last month of Q3 2017, reflecting a 61 percent increase year-on-year. Quarterly paying users grew 38 percent year-on-year to 6.5 million.

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Singapore. Photo credit: David Russo.

Makara Innovation Fund (MIF) has invested US$51.8 million in telecom network MyRepublic, marking the fund’s first publicly announced investment.

The funding will “supercharge” the development of MyRepublic’s proprietary cloud platform, as well as support its “aggressive” plan to expand its regional footprint and deliver more services, said CEO Malcolm Rodrigues in a statement.

A partnership between the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) and private equity firm Makara Capital, MIF was launched in April with a S$1 billion raise target.

It aims to invest in “high-growth companies with strong IP [intellectual property] and proven business models.” These include later-stage startups and established businesses from Singapore and elsewhere that demonstrate a “strong pan-Asian growth trajectory.”

In the statement, MIF said that in addition to its positive assessment of MyRepublic’s growth fundamentals and business model, its investment decision was supported by an evaluation of the startup’s IP portfolio. This was carried out by IP ValueLab, the enterprise engagement arm of IPOS.

Rodrigues said in July that MyRepublic aims to IPO next year, and would seek to raise around US$73 million funding in the interim.

The current funding round is still ongoing, with MyRepublic today saying it expects to ultimately raise up to US$110 million, at an eventual valuation of around US$480 million. The injection from MIF makes up a big chunk of that, with more investors to be announced at a later stage. Rodrigues said the company is pushing ahead with its IPO plans, targeting to go public within the next 18 months.

MyRepublic CEO Malcolm Rodrigues. Photo credit: MyRepublic.

Rodrigues revealed MyRepublic’s intention to IPO after its failed bid to secure Singapore’s fourth telco license in 2016.

After Australia’s TPG won the auction, MyRepublic was reportedly interested in acquiring existing license holder M1.

That deal never materialized, with Rodrigues dismissing the rumors and M1’s owners eventually taking the firm off the market.

Instead, MyRepublic planned to unveil its own mobile virtual network, offering mobile phone plans through partner networks – a setup similar to Singapore-based Circles.Life. The product was expected to launch in October. Rodrigues told Tech in Asia the project is still ongoing, but the company is working to launch it almost simultaneously across Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia. “I think the only shift is we decided to launch mobile in all our markets fairly quickly,” he said.

MyRepublic claims an annualized revenue run rate of US$103 million across markets as of September 2017. Rodrigues told media that the company is “on track” to hit its goals this fiscal year.

What are IP commercialization and monetization?

MIF’s formation came hot on the heels of the Singaporean government’s Committee on the Future Economy report and its 2017 budget, which identified the commercialization and monetization of IP as key to the country’s development.

IP includes trademarks, patents, and copyright, which give their holders varying exclusive legal rights to brands, inventions, and creative works, respectively.

IP monetization refers to ways in which IP rights can be leveraged to generate new sources of revenue – for example, by licensing or selling them to third parties, or using them as collateral to secure financing. They can also be commercialized to create new products and services or to build new businesses around them.

“MyRepublic clearly appreciates the importance of IP, having built a strong business model around a robust suite of intangible assets,” IP ValueLab executive director Shau En Tan said in today’s statement. “[It has] strong brand equity, technical know-how, substantial data assets, and scalable digital platforms.”

Rodrigues added that the startup is working closely with MIF to “implement recommended IP monetization strategies in view of further value creation for our investors.”

Converted from Singapore dollar. Rate: US$1 = S$1.35.

(Update, 18:30 SGT: Updated with more details about the funding and comments from CEO Malcolm Rodrigues.)

This post MyRepublic gets $52m as Singapore’s billion-dollar IP fund makes first investment appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Dr. Pichet Durongkaveroj, minister of Digital Economy and Society. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

The large conference hall in Bangkok was like set up like a sweeping showcase of 21st-century technology. Drone displays and transforming cars flanked the exhibition while students roared from the e-games contest next to the robotics competition. Not too far away, other students presented hand-made hydroponics systems made of air-conditioning units and LED lights, and a young man led a workshop on how to build apps. Meanwhile, children rode Ofo bikes around a small track at the hall’s perimeter.

Called Digital Thailand Big Bang (DTBB), the four-day event embodied Thailand 4.0 – a government plan that details its vision of the future, one that involves using technology to address the country’s challenges. DTBB, which ran from September 21 to 24, was organized by the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (DEPA).

The country is in a unique position: being follower to the innovation game, they’re playing catch-up on a nationwide scale. If the event was any measure, the nation’s government is putting their money where their mouth is; a move that, if successful, could make a difference for the local startup ecosystem.

The rise of government funds

A VR exhibition at DTBB. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

With a young startup scene, the potential for growth is impressive. According to the Tech in Asia database, Thailand went from just six startups getting funding in 2012 to 28 in 2016.

As part of its digital push, the government is promising support for startups. At DTBB, Dr. Pichet Durongkaveroj, minister of Digital Economy and Society, unveiled a new angel fund for early-stage startups. DEPA will raise no less than US$150 million in collaboration with the Stock Exchange of Thailand by the end of 2017.

This news follows the US$147 million Digital Economy Fund announced in June 2017. The reserve will be split between its four objectives: the growth of tech companies, research and development, DEPA operations, and the National Digital Economy Committee expenses.

In 2016, the Ministry of ICT and Ministry of Finance also launched a US$570 million startup venture fund.

ofo rents bikes out to students within the DTBB event space. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

Apart from funding, the Thai government wants to improve infrastructure. It is investing $450 million (15,000 million baht) to provide stable wifi connection across the country’s 77 provinces by 2021. It expect to arm 70 million farmers with internet of things technology and implement 10,000 digital points of sale systems across all villages.

This investment will not just supply innovative minds with the right resources but will also go a long way in helping locals solve local problems, according to Durongkaveroj.

“We’ll create a smart city in every province,” he said.

A part of a mockup of Digital Village, Thailand’s newest economic cluster. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

Efforts to build this vision of the future culminate in Digital Park Thailand, the country’s newest economic cluster. Built in partnership with engineering giant Caterpillar, the US$300,000 project is the size of 80 soccer fields and calls the district of Chonburi its home. It’s located within Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC), which covers three provinces.

A work in progress, the Digital Park will be a smart city that comes with incentive packages, including tax exemptions, smart visas for entrepreneurs and their families, and other privileges for investors and digital specialists.

It’s not about the money

A co-working space set up within DTBB for busy people and tired students. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

Funding, however, is just a part of a much larger picture. For Monthida McCoole, investment partner at Cocoon Capital, the government push is a great initiative to boost the startup scene’s profile. Aside from increasing funding, events like the DTBB help raise awareness about what startups do – and hopefully to promote their acceptance and understanding in the mainstream. McCoole sees the adoption of a startup mindset as a critical part of an innovative Thailand.

“The whole thing about surveys, customer journey, customer validation, discovery, experimenting, reiterating, fine-tuning — family businesses and SMEs don’t really get that,” said McCoole. “They would execute based on their own assumptions.”

Though these new entrepreneurs are daring and driven, experimentation and hustle are hard to teach, especially in a culture where ‘losing face’ (เสียหน้า sĭa nâa) is a paramount concern. The result is a generation of entrepreneurs who could lose the opportunity to build unicorns.

“When you’re venturing into the unknown – an area that you’re neither familiar nor comfortable with – you need all the help you can get. But culturally, you’d be too embarrassed to ask… you won’t even know where to start.”

This challenge aside, Thailand has all the makings of a strong startup ecosystem. Nati Sang, director of Makerspace Thailand, explained how the country’s culture encourages its people to create.

“[Digital Thailand] is more about unlocking the potential of the Thais in what they’re naturally great at,” said Sang. “When you bring something like the resources of a makerspace into the hands of such people, of course, they’re going to come up with amazing things as long as you develop them right.”

McCoole added, “We’ve made phenomenal progress in the past few years. We’ve got ambition; everyone is doing their part. But there’s a lot more work that needs to be done.”

Work in progress

Deputy prime minister Dr. Somkid Jatusripitak shares the Thai government’s vision for Thailand 4.0. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

Changes won’t happen overnight. The local population needs to improve its digital literacy, and the startup ecosystem must do more to help budding entrepreneurs imbibe the startup mindset. A survey by the Center for Economic and Business Forecasting in Thailand showed that 55 percent of local business owners who responded had little knowledge about Thailand 4.0. Only 1 percent has a deep understanding of it.

As such, going digital isn’t just another way for Thailand to improve itself. It’s imperative to the country’s survival, and this sense of urgency hangs in the air.

But Thailand’s leaders admitted that their vision is a work in progress. At the DTBB’s opening ceremony, Thailand’s prime minister Prayut Chan-o-cha rallied the troops. “Don’t lose faith,” he said. “If we do this together, it is possible.”

On the second day, deputy prime minister Dr. Somkid Jatusripitak was more candid.

“We were once on par with Malaysia,” he said. “Now, we’re 20 years behind, [but] we’re not less capable.”

Jatusripitak went on to throw around buzzwords. IoT. Automation. Reskilling. Disruption. Thinking outside the box. But instead of sounding tedious and overwrought, they serve as Thailand’s guiding stars. “These,” he says, “are the benchmarks of our progress.”

Converted from Thailand Baht. Rate: US$1 to THB 33.2

Held in September 2017, DTBB 2017 brought together tech leaders from around the world to address topics related to smart cities, digital ecosystems, and transformation roadmaps within ASEAN.

Covering the entire digital technology stack, DTBB 2017 delivered the latest products, solutions, knowledge, and innovations to businesses keen to widen their expertise and digital business offerings. For more information on DTBB 2017 and its program, please visit www.digitalthailandbigbang.com.

This post What the Thai government’s digital vision means for startups in Asia appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Downtown Kuala Lumpur by night.

Funding for MyRepublic, financial results for Sea, and Singapore thinks about ecommerce tax while Malaysia considers cryptocurrency regulation. Here are the day’s top tech headlines.

Telecom

MyRepublic gets US$51.8 million funding from intellectual property-focused fund (Singapore). The investment is the first to come from the billion-dollar Makara Innovation Fund, which was launched earlier this year by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore and private equity firm Makara Capital to target companies with strong intangible assets. (Tech in Asia)

Internet

Sea reports first quarterly results since IPO (Singapore). The company, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange last month, reported 73 percent year-on-year growth in revenue across its ecommerce, gaming, and payments businesses. Adjusted net losses also more than doubled over the past 12 months, likely contributing to a drop in Sea’s share price through the trading day. (Tech in Asia)

Sea executive team on the podium at the New York Stock Exchange. Photo credit: NYSE.

Ecommerce

Singapore mulls ecommerce tax (Singapore). The city-state’s senior minister for law and finance Indranee Rajah suggested that online purchases could be taxed in the near future, echoing similar plans being made by the governments of Thailand and other countries. (Bloomberg)

Fintech

Microloans crackdown hits fintech stocks (China). The Chinese government is now requiring online lending platforms to obtain a license to operate legally. The clampdown has had a negative impact on several recently listed microloans-focused fintech companies, with PPDai, Jianpu Technology, and Qudian all experiencing share price drops. (China Money Network)

Photo credit: traviswolfe / 123RF.

Malaysia’s central bank to regulate cryptocurrency exchange (Malaysia). From 2018, Bank Negara Malaysia will require people and organizations converting cryptocurrencies into fiat money to report under the country’s Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act. (Channel NewsAsia)

Automotive

Suburbs to get driverless buses by 2022 (Singapore). The autonomous vehicles will be introduced in the outlying districts of Punggol and Tengah, as well as the Jurong innovation Park, initially to ferry commuters on the “first-and-last miles” of their journeys. (The Straits Times)

Investors, incubators, and accelerators

Smart Axiata reveals first startups to get investment from its new VC fund (Cambodia). Delivery and logistics company Joonak Delivery, cloud software provider Morakot Technology, and 3D printer comparison site Aniwaa will each receive between US$25,000 and US$500,000 from the Cambodian telco’s US$5 million venture fund. (Southeast Asia Globe)

See: Previous Asia tech news roundups

This post Asia tech news roundup – Nov 22 appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Now worth over US$5 billion thanks to his Virgin empire, Richard Branson started out with pretty much nothing.

This post Video: Richard Branson before he was a billionaire appeared first on Tech in Asia.

An online fashion store is giving away a slinky, skin-hugging, hi-tech bodysuit to help its shoppers get the right size.

Photo credit: Zozo.

The bodysuit “is capable of capturing 15,000 precise measurements” with all its sensors, according to its creator, Zozo.

GIF by Tech in Asia, from Zozosuit’s video.

It goes from neck to ankles, and works for both men and women.

GIF by Tech in Asia, from Zozosuit’s video.

The Zozosuit has Bluetooth so it can sync to the Zozo shopping app, uploading your figure’s figures to your profile.

GIF by Tech in Asia, from Zozosuit’s video.

Then, when you order clothes, you won’t need to select a size because Zozo already knows.

GIF by Tech in Asia, from Zozosuit’s video.

Free to Zozo’s shoppers in the US and Japan, the Zozosuit is now up for preorder for arrival spring 2018. The company describes it as ushering in “the world’s first size-free ecommerce experience.”

While it’s inventive, the growing sophistication of 3D scanning tech could mean that in the fairly near future there’ll be a small and discreet gizmo in your home that can scan your shape with great precision. Perhaps Amazon already has that in mind for the next iteration of its judgemental Echo camera.

Brash billionaire’s fashion empire

The Zozo store was created by a Japanese firm called Start Today that was established back in 1998. It’s now a US$9.2 billion business that saw US$705 million in annual sales at the last count.

Its founder is Yusaku Maezawa, a 41-year-old billionaire and former rock drummer who earlier this year forked out US$110.5 million to buy a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting. He’s the 11th richest person in Japan, according to Forbes.

Photo credit: Yusaku Maezawa’s Instagram.

“I just won this masterpiece,” posted Maezawa to his Instagram from the Sotheby’s auction.

This post This hi-tech bodysuit could solve the biggest problem with buying clothes online appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Tan Yong Han (left) with Shashank Dixit, founder and CEO of Deskera. Image credit: Tan Yong Han

Hard work gave Tan Yong Han his big break. The diligent student came from a humble family – his dad retired early due to an illness, forcing his mom to start working after being a homemaker.

Despite this challenge, luck gave him a little helpful push. Drenched in the rain with no mobile phone and no cash to hail a cab, Tan was running late for his government scholarship interview. Out of the blue, a trailer truck driver spotted him and gave him a ride.

Tan had average grades relative to the other candidates, but Philip Yeo, former chairman of the Economic Development Board (EDB), gave him a chance. “I wasn’t the smartest guy, or the guy with the best grades or the most polished,” Tan tells Tech in Asia in his office overlooking the Singapore skyline.

Almost two decades on, Tan is the CEO of the Indonesian operations of Deskera, one of the most successful enterprise software companies from Singapore. Deskera’s customers in Indonesia include Pertamina, a state-owned oil and natural gas company making billions in revenue, and Medco, a publicly listed energy firm.

Hard landing

Tan began his career in government service. He stayed for six years, becoming the director of EDB’s Jakarta center in the latter half of his stint. Essentially, his role was to get Indonesian companies to set up in Singapore, and this allowed him to make important business connections. With the network he developed, Tan felt it was time to leap into the private sector.

In 2010, he joined a manufacturing firm in Indonesia as its marketing director but left after a couple of years. Armed with the knowledge of running a factory, he started a firm that distributed China-made forklifts in Indonesia.

“I remember tearing up because it felt so good to have a company,” he says, describing the moment when he opened the shipping container to receive his first batch of forklifts. It seemed like business was picking up as the firm made US$500,000 in the first year. But it soon became obvious that it was failing.

It turned out that several distributors in Indonesia were pushing the same products. Prices were depressed as customers picked the cheapest option. His rivals also had more experience in selling heavy equipment.

Wanting out, Tan found a way to minimize his loss by befriending his competitors. “One of them just texted me yesterday,” he shares. He was also involved in merger talks that did not pan out, but he was able to sell his inventory to two of his competitors and cut his loss to one-fifth of the original amount.

I like Excel sheets.

The failure humbled him. Up to that point, Tan’s career had been smooth, and he got his start in Singapore, which felt like a greenhouse where everything is regulated and controlled to perfection.

Jumping head-first into Indonesia’s chaotic business environment was risky, and that put Tan, who goes by “Johan” in the country, in an uncomfortable spot. “The reason I worked hard since young was to get a good and comfortable job and a decent pay,” he says.

The experience deepened Tan’s self-knowledge. For one, he admits he is not a product visionary, but more of a marketer as well as a systems and team builder.

“What would you do if you were not paid for it? I would sell something. I just like to sell things. I’ve no interest in making things, except Excel sheets,” he says. “I like Excel sheets.”

Deskera’s sales process

Tan’s desire to carve order out of chaos made him a good fit for Deskera. After all, Deskera sells enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, which is designed to manage a company’s resources.

It’s also fitting that Tan is laser-focused on selling. Product development can be left to his boss, Shashank Dixit, Deskera’s CEO and founder.

Yet peddling enterprise software is different from hawking forklifts. When Deskera Indonesia started three years ago, it saw zero revenue in its first nine months. “When you cook porridge, you don’t cook it in 10 minutes. You’ve got to put it on the boil,” he says.

Also, the sales cycle for ERP software is long – it takes three to five meetings before a deal is sealed. The typical process looks like this:

• Get a sales lead
• Qualify the lead and understand a potential customer’s needs
• Do a live demo running from Deskera’s servers, then get feedback
• Tweak the demo to account for their needs, then get feedback again
• Sign the contract
• Implement the product (takes one to six months)

Tan adds that Deskera is not a fully customizable solution, and he reminds customers about that. “I tell them that our philosophy is to build a highway with a toll that serves 100,000 cars a day. We’re not building a special road for you in your complex.”

SOP land

True to his love for systems building, Tan studiously implements standard operating procedures (SOPs) at his firm, which consists of over 10 full-time employees. He finds SOPs useful because 90 percent of problems that surface are recurring ones. Fixing these issues is a matter of following the steps.

He opens his MacBook to show a list of SOPs on Simplenote. There’s one for his personal assistant with a list of eight questions for qualifying sales leads. There’s one detailing how people should prepare for sales meetings.

I’m a pretty demanding supervisor.

Some of his SOPs cover the mundane. He lists restaurants near his office from various cuisines, which he recommends to visiting guests. He has templates for naming the company’s Whatsapp groups, which shows his fondness for this task.

Once Tan identifies a recurring problem, he will bring an SOP through several iterations before rolling it out. He then drills the procedures into his team by repeatedly communicating them via Whatsapp and face-to-face meetings. He explains the rationale for the procedures, and that involves reminding employees about the mission and vision of the company.

“I’m a pretty demanding supervisor. I make no apologies for that. I always tell them, ‘Look, I know I’m a fussy guy, but it’s very important for me to spend one hour telling you about what we’re doing instead of giving you an instruction for one minute,’” he says.

Despite Indonesia’s culture of “saving face,” Tan has created the practice of readily sharing mistakes within the team for the sake of learning. He talks about his own missteps and gets employees’ permission to share their slip-ups with the group. “It’s never personal, and when we talk about somebody’s mistakes, it’s not to put that guy down,” he says.

He may have imported this Singaporean discipline to Indonesia, but he has gained much from his adopted home as well. Tan is married to a local, and they have two kids. He also says Indonesia’s laid-back and accommodating culture has rubbed off on him.

“It’s important also to have an open mind and not just measure things by KPIs. You have to give and take. When you’re too meticulous, you miss the forest for the trees. I’ve learned to be more relaxed but still get the job done,” he shares.

This post How a Singaporean civil servant rose from humble origins to head Deskera in Indonesia appeared first on Tech in Asia.

GrabPay CTO Vikas Agrawal. Photo credit: Grab.

Grab has appointed Vikas Agrawal as chief technology officer (CTO) of its mobile payments unit GrabPay. His arrival is the latest in a string of hires and acquisitions that the company has made as it moves beyond ride-hailing to build its credentials as a payments platform.

Agrawal was previously a senior vice president at Indian digital payments firm Paytm, where he led a team of 200 engineers. Prior to joining Paytm in February 2016, he was co-founder and CTO at ecommerce startup Fashionara.

He will be based in Bangalore, where Grab has a research and development facility.

Grab group CTO Theo Vassilakis highlighted Agrawal’s tech leadership at Paytm at a time when India has been attempting to reduce its reliance on cash.

“Vikas has steered some of the world’s largest epayments platforms through rapid growth, including during the critical time of 2016’s demonetization of higher value banknotes in India,” he said. “We believe Southeast Asia has the same potential for epayments in the next 12 months.”

Pushing payments

Grab has been investing heavily in the development of its mobile wallet of late, as it seeks to diversify beyond its core ride-hailing business.

Over the past year it has introduced GrabPay Credits – an in-app currency that users can top-up with to pay for rides, or transfer to each other – and GrabRewards, a loyalty scheme which recently paired up with Singapore Airlines’ frequent flyer program.

More recently, Grab has rolled out QR code mobile payments in shops, restaurants, and hawker centers in Singapore, representing its first major play outside of a transportation context. The company said it wants to extend GrabPay for merchants to other Southeast Asian markets next year.

See: Grab launches hawker center cashless payments as part of big play beyond transport

This new emphasis on payments has been driven by M&A – such as Grab’s US$100 million-plus acquisition of Indonesian ecommerce platform Kudo earlier this year – and a flurry of hires.

Former Euronet senior executive Jason Thompson became head of GrabPay in April, while Ongki Kurniawan – previously Line’s national manager in Indonesia – joined as managing director for GrabPay in the country in September. Vassilakis was appointed group CTO last month after serving as development manager for Microsoft’s Azure cloud service in Seattle.

There has been something of a revolving door within Grab’s engineering function as far as executive roles are concerned. Prior to the arrival of Vassilakis, the group CTO post had apparently been vacant since the departure of Facebook alumnus Wei Zhu in 2015. Wei later sued Grab in a dispute over stock options. Grab’s former vice president of engineering Arul Kumaravel quit in August due to personal reasons.

This post Grab nabs Paytm engineering head to be new payments CTO appeared first on Tech in Asia.

If you’re looking to mingle or gain new knowledge, look no further. We’ve curated for you the most comprehensive and up-to-date list of events in the tech community, sorted by topic and date. There’s something for everyone. All pricing in Singapore dollars.

• Engineering
• Data science
• Cybersecurity
• Design
• Startups
• Fintech
• General
• How to add your event

Featured event: CoDE-2017 Summit – Full day UX Workshop

Learn as much as you can about UX from some of the highly experienced industry experts. The instructors have rich hands-on experience and credibility working with large organizations in their decades of work experience.

Date and time: December 16, 9am to 6pm
Location: LEVEL3, Mapletree Business City 20 Pasir Panjang Road (East Wing) #03-22/24 Singapore, Singapore 117439
Price/pax: $26.24
RSVP here

Engineering

I NEED A BREAK! presented by Wantedly

This first casual session will introduce tech leaders representing different industries and share what it takes to work within an engineering team.

Date and time: December 1, 6pm to 9pm
Location: Spacemob, 8 Claymore Hill, #03-01 Singapore 229572
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Study Session & Community Lunch

Dojo is a co-learning community of people from all backgrounds, who are committed to learning and improving technical skills.

Date and time: December 2 and 9, 10:30 am to 4:00 pm
Location: 1 North Bridge Road #08-08, Singapore 179094
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

DevOps, Automation and Postgres – Attend Tech Insights

Learn how this trio is changing the way organizations today are deploying applications and databases, while digitally transforming themselves. Dated business processes are getting replaced by newer technologies, innovative solutions and strategic adoptions.

Date and time: December 5, 9am to 12:30 pm
Location: 10 Bayfront Avenue, 018956 Singapore
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

iOS Dev Scout December 2017 Meetup

We will show how to use Bluetooth and beacons as a form of indoor localisation mechanism. We’ll also show how Swift can be used on the Raspberry Pi.

Date and time: December 5, 6:30pm to 9pm
Location: Capita Green, 138 Market Street, #32-01, Singapore 048946
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Managing Your Platform as a Product with Scott Shaw

In this talk, I’ll introduce the concept of a digital platform, explain why they accelerate delivery, provide some examples and describe the technical pillars that support the platform.

Date and time: December 5, 6:30pm to 8:30 pm
Location: 18 Cross Street, #11-08 China Square Central
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Engineers.SG Recruitment Drive

Meet and greet with all the current volunteers and for new friends to find out more about Engineers.SG and what we do.

Date and time: December 6, 7:30pm to 9pm
Location: 344B King George’s Avenue, King George’s Building, Singapore
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Super Silly Hackathon

Come together with fellow coders, makers and designers (inner-picassos) to build the most boliao thing ever, let out all your brain farts or work on what you’ve been wanting to but were always “too busy la”.

Date and time: December 9, 10am to 9pm
Location: Impact Hub @ Prinsep
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Identity Tech Talk – Singapore

In this tech talk we will discuss the latest developments in internet of things, microservices, blockchain (and the impact on identity) and CIAM (Customer Identity & Access Management).

Date and time: December 11, 5:30pm – 8:30pm
Location: The Work Project OUE Downtown, 4th Floor, 6A Shenton Way Singapore
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Java 9 night!

Java 9 has just been released and we will organise a dedicated night to discuss its great new features.

Date and time: December 13, 7:00pm to 9pm
Location: 18 Cross Street, #11-08 China Square Central, Singapore 048423
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

WWCode Python Data Scraping & Cleaning Workshop

This workshop assumes basic programming skills. This event is open to everyone who is there to inspire women to excel in tech careers.

Date and time: December 14, 6:30 pm to 8:45 pm
Location: 5 Temasek Blvd, #09-01 Suntec Tower Five, 038985 Singapore
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

YOW! Night 2017 Singapore – Steve Freeman – Dec 14

In this talk, steve will revisit the basics, the essence of what makes TDD work. Steve will look at some of the common difficulties that he see with teams that are struggling.

Date and time: December 14, 6:30pm to 9pm
Location: One Raffles Link North Tower, Level 2, Wealth Institute Singapore, Singapore 039393
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

December Meetup – “One SSO to rule them” & “Investigating a Data breach event”

The PS_TOKEN is the Single Sign-On (SSO) implementation for Oracle Peoplesoft applications, which provide operational support for enterprises such as Human Resource Management and Customer Relationship Management operations.

Date and time: December 14, 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Location: 1 Raffles Quay, EY (Ernst & Young) North Tower, Level 14, 1 Raffles Quay (048683), Singapore
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Sharing of Re-Invent Updates by AWS (TBC)

Date and time: December 14, 7pm to 10pm
Location: 23 Church Street, Capital Square, #10-01, Singapore 049481
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Coding with Java: Spring Boot

This workshop is facilitated by our network Director Purnima Kamath. This event is intended for everyone who aims to support & inspire women in technology.

Date and time: January 10, 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Location: Credit Suisse, Wealth Institute One Raffles Link, Training Room 4 – Level 2 Singapore
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

The API Surgery: Set up your API shopfront in 90 minutes

It’ll be a hands-on, technical session, with lots of opportunities to Q&A, all powered by open-source, pizza and drinks.This is a hands-on workshop with limited spaces to ensure you get the most out of the session with the API Doc.

Date and time: January 17, 6:30 pm – 9pm
Location: Collision 8, High Street Centre Road #08-08, 1 North Bridge Road, 179094 Singapore
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Talk.CSS #24 max-content Edition

As part of the build-up to the largest JSConf.Asia thus far, Talk.CSS is going to be doing something special. Stay tuned for updates.

Date and time: January 23, 3pm to 6pm
Location: To be confirmed
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

JSConf.Asia

Southeast Asia’s largest web and mobile developer conference.

Date and time: January 25 to 27
Location: Capitol Theatre, 17 Stamford Road, Singapore 179907
Price/pax: $890 and above
RSVP here

FOSSASIA Summit 2018

The FOSSASIA Summit is the premier Free and Open Source technology event in Asia for developers, start-ups, and contributors. Projects at FOSSASIA range from open hardware, to design, graphics and software.

Date and time: March 22 to 25
Location: Lifelong Learning Institute, 11 Eunos Road
Price/pax: $69 to $620
RSVP here

Data science

CodeCircles @BLOCK71 Singapore

Code for Asia is launching CodeCircle, a beginner-friendly, social learning network, where you can learn and interact with people like yourself who have a similar interest in Data Science. Come learn beyond the buzz, acquire programming basics and start building real projects that you can showcase.

Date and time: December 2, 9:30 am to 12:30 pm
Location: BLOCK71 Singapore 71 Ayer Rajah Crescent, #02-01 Singapore 139951
Price/pax: $205.23
RSVP here

PyData Meetup – December 2017

This talk covers several real-world applications of Machine Learning across industries and will provide inspiration and beginner steps to get started with TensorFlow & Machine Learning.

Date and time: December 4, 6:30pm to 9pm
Location: LEVEL3, #03-22/24, 20 Pasir Panjang Road, Mapletree Business City, Singapore 117439
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Panel discussion on IoT and Data with iguazio

iguazio in collaboration with IoTSG is presenting a diverse group of industry leaders at an open reception near the Strata Data Conference in Singapore. iguazio’s CEO, Asaf Somekh, will moderate as panelists share their most challenging data experiences:

Date and time: December 5, 6pm to 9pm
Location: Alter Ego , #01-13D, Esplanade Mall, 8 Raffles Avenue
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

AI Use Cases From the Trenches

This event is specifically targeted towards those of you who are about to embark on the journey of adopting Artificial Intelligence in their work or building an AI company of some sorts. Also- those who would just like to hear some practical use cases from those who actually build AI, rather than the ones who just talk about it.
Date and time: December 5, 05:30pm to 9pm
Location: LEVEL3, 20 Pasir Panjang Road (East wing), #03-22/24, Singapore 117439
Price/pax: $15.00
RSVP here

Strata x DSSG’17

In this talk, Paco illustrates PyTextRank use cases in media and learning to enable semisupervised word sense disambiguation, move from natural language parsing to natural language understanding, and implement AI-based video search and approximation algorithms for content recommendation based on semantic similarity.

Date and time: December 6, 6:45 pm to 9:45 pm
Location: Location visible to members
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

How to build a great data science team

For those looking to hire data scientists, technical analysts and data engineers, there are a range of options for tipping the odds in your favour of finding that perfect hire. Learn to see the problem through the eyes of a data scientist, and indeed see how even recruitment itself can be optimised using data science techniques.

Date and time: December 12, 7pm to 9pm
Location: 128 Prinsep Street, Singapore 188655
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Azure Machine Learning: Part 4 – Anomaly Detection

This is Part 4 of planned 4 part series on Azure Machine Learning.

Date and time: December 13, 7pm to 9pm
Location: Microsoft Singapore, Level 22, Room CF12 One Marina Boulevard, Singapore 018989
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Cybersecurity

Free PDPA Advisory

Join us for our complimentary PDPA advisory session to learn about the latest enforcement actions and data breaches (including ransomware) and the implications on companies as well as the solutions, training and the funding schemes available:

Date and time: November 29, 1:30pm to 4:45pm
Location: LATTICE80, 80 Robinson Road, #08-01, Singapore 068898
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

How to Protect Your Business against a “Sophisticated” Cyber Attack

This event is about cybercrime include harassment, bullying, financial scam, computer hacking, virus attacks, cyberstalking or creating website for criminal activities.

Date and time: December 6, 2pm to 5.30pm
Location: Singapore Manufacturing Federation 2985 Jalan Bukit Merah Singapore, 159457
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Singapore Infosec Community Hackathon – HackSmith v1.0

HackSmith v1.0 is a first of its kind infosec hackathon held in Singapore. The objective of this hackathon is to promote Singapore’s infosec tools development culture.

Date and time: December 16 to 17, from 9am
Location: To be confirmed
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Design

Communication of Design Specs between Designer & Developer (Part 2)

In this session, we continue from the previous session and welcome a panel of professionals from Engineering, answering questions about the best practices in the production and delivery of UI and logic specifications between Design and Engineering.

Date and time: December 6, 7pm to 9:30pm
Location: 71 Robinson Road, Singapore 068895
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

DesignThinking- IoT Driven Digital Transformation with Smart Cities Use-case

This hands-on workshop aims to enable participants to take a new and non-obvious stance on creative problem-solving that is human-centred in approach using proven design-thinking methodology that reinvents ageing business-models, products and services in an era where everyone is connected, always on mobile and where your competitors are only a click away.

Date and time: December 7 at 9:00am, December 8 at 5:30 pm
Location: 81 Anson Road
Price/pax: $700.00 – $1,100
RSVP here

Inside the minds of brilliant designers

This inspiring panel event series invites key players in Singapore’s design community to offer a rare insider’s look at how they work and create. From branding to user experience to city planning, panelists will discuss how they approach projects from a design point of view, how design thinking methods help with problem-solving, and much more.

Date and time: December 7, 7pm to 9pm
Location: Level 6, Vanguard Campus, 1 Kallang Junction Singapore
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

CoDE-2017 Summit Conference

The discussions and talks scale beyond Interface Design to address end-to-end product experiences. The event supports building of User Insights specific to SEA by UX and Software professionals.

Date and time: December 17 8:30 am to December 18 6:30 pm
Location: 20 Pasir Panjang Road (East Wing) #03-22/24 , Singapore, Singapore 117439
Price/pax: $78.13
RSVP here

Design is a Dialogue

The Design Innovation Singapore community will come together every month to chat, socialize and have a dialogue about topics such as Human-centered Design, Design Thinking in different industries, Creativity in Teams and Innovation Practices in Organizations.

Date and time: January 20, 5pm to 8pm
Location: Needs a location
Price/pax: Free
RSVP here

Product Development and Testing Workshop

In this workshop, we will touch on designing products based on user insights, creating quick prototypes, and getting quick feedback from users on how to improve your product.

Date and time: February 3, 9:00am to 1pm
Location: 113 Somerset Road, Singapore 238165
Price/pax: $60 – $100
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Startups

Grow Your Startup: From Startup to Scale Up [NTUC U Startup x Fivbrain]

Are you planning to scale your startup and bring it to the next level? Join us and meet our panel of experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalist to learn from their experiences and expertise.

Date and time: November 29, 7:00pm to 9:30pm
Location: NTUC Centre, One Marina Boulevard Level 7, Room 701
Price/pax: Free
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Fireside Chat: Business 101 with Reshmi Rajendran and Robin Pho

Female Founders is holding a session with Reshmi Rajendran – Director, Life Science and Healthcare of Budding Innovations, alongside Robin Pho – CEO of Right People Group of Companies on the basics of starting a business and understanding the challenges faced as you start your journey as an entrepreneur.

Date and time: November 30, 6:30pm
Location: 71 Ayer Rajah Crescent #02-01 Singapore 139951
Price/pax: Free
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How can I get help for my startup?

A sharing session by the Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) on what ACE brings to the startup community. As part of this sharing, ACE will also be talking about the types of funding/investments available from SPRING Singapore, including the Startup SG Founder, Startup SG Tech, Startup SG Equity, and Startup SG Talent.

Date and time: December 1, 2017, 10am to 11:30am
Location: 79 Ayer Rajah Crescent Singapore #01-13 (ACE Ideation Centre)
Price/pax: Free
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Entrepreneurs’ Round Table 2017

This event is tailored for entrepreneurs, PMETs, and aspiring entrepreneurs who are seeking for business growth or planning to take the first leap in pursuing their dreams of entrepreneurship.

Date and time: December 1 at 6pm, December 5 at 11am
Price/pax: $101.99
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Google Design Sprint & Apps Script for Everyone

In partnership with Google For Entrepreneurs, Impact Hub Singapore presents an evening of high grade education on two massively important topics for anyone who is building a startup or SME.

Date and time: December 4, 6:30pm to 9:30 pm
Location: Impact Hub Singapore, 128 Prinsep Street #01-01, Singapore 188655
Price/pax: $15.00
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Meet Your Mentor 2.0

16 mentors, ranging from corporates to entrepreneurs, have graciously agreed to meet with YOU and answer any burning questions you might have. Applications close November 30.

Date and time: December 5, 6:30pm to 9:30 pm
Location: 71 Ayer Rajah Crescent #02-01 Singapore 139951
Price/pax: Free
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Financial Essentials for Startups Workshop

The aim of this workshop is to use plain language to explain core accounting concepts so that you, as a startup founder can start keeping track of essential financial and corporate information, and know how to do it effectively so you are always ready to communicate with confidence with your key stakeholders.

Date and time: December 5, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Location: 113 Somerset Road, Singapore 238165
Price/pax: $60 to $100
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International Payments Made Easy

This lunchtime talk will show you how you can get competitive exchange rates and outstanding service to prepare you for what’s next.

Date and time: December 6, 12pm to 1pm
Location: CoSpace Park, Sparkle @ Singapore Science Park 2 43 Science Park Rd #01-11
Price/pax: Free
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GITSG Tech x Legal

This event will explore legal must-knows for tech startups and what does it take to start a Cryptocurrency business in Singapore.

Date and time: December 6, 6pm to 9pm
Location: 20 Pasir Panjang Rd, #03-22/24 Mapletree Business City, Singapore 117439
Price/pax: $25.00
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ACE Workshop on Understanding Investment Term Sheets

This seminar will help you to understand the legal and business implications behind complex investment terms required by investors.

Date and time: December 7, 4pm to 6pm
Location: ACE International Centre , 67 Ayer Rajah Crescent, #04-16, Singapore 139950
Price/pax: Free
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Scaling smart with Cloud: Learnings from successful startups

Hear from 6 startups from the Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator Programme on how they leveraged cloud technologies to get ahead of competition. They will also share how Zalora’s combination of strategic business approach and cloud technology adoption has helped their business embrace agility and innovation.

Date and time: December 7, 5:30pm to 9pm
Location: 32 Carpenter St
Price/pax: Free
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NUS Entrepreneurship Launchpad 2017

NUS Entrepreneurship Launchpad is a 3-Day event organised by NES, supported by NUS Enterprise, in collaboration with both External and University organisations including Student Societies, Start-Ups, Government Statutory Boards, Venture Capitalists, and Industry Specialists.

Date and time: December 11 at 8am to December 13 at 8pm
Location: 21 Heng Mui Keng Ter, Singapore 119613
Price/pax: $23.80 – $90.43
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Discuss how we can use WordPress to improve our businesses

This event will discuss specific issues any of us are having with our website or more general issues (site is slow, security etc). Any pain points we have dealing with our website or ask questions about how to add a feature or new behaviour to our websites.

Date and time: December 12, 6:45 pm – 9:45 pm
Location: 402 North Bridge Road, Jun Xin Building, Singapore 188722 ·
Price/pax: Free
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Pitching Essentials for Social Impact Workshop: Communicating for Change

This workshop is most suitable for founders and driven individuals who desire to be better at speaking, pitching and presenting to obtain effective buy-in from their key stakeholders in work and life.

Date and time: December 14, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Location: 113 Somerset Rd, Singapore 238165
Price/pax: $60 – $100
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Intermediate Financials for Startups Workshop

Learn the fundamentals so you can start tracking key financial information that are typically required by your stakeholders, and assess the financial health of your company to know where and how you could make improvements. No prior accounting or financial background is required.

Date and time: December 19, 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Location: 113 Somerset Road, Singapore 238165
Price/pax: $60 – $100
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Angel Investing Course

Learn how to invest in your 1st Asean startup. Revealing Real data from a $2M Angel Portfolio + Enter into a closed community of Angel Investors.

Date and time: January 20, 9am to 1pm
Location: 79 Ayer Rajah Crescent #01-13, Singapore 139955
Price/pax: $388
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Financial Essentials for Startups Workshop

The aim of this workshop is to use plain language to explain core accounting concepts so that you, as a startup founder can start keeping track of essential financial and corporate information, and know how to do it effectively so you are always ready to communicate with confidence with your key stakeholders.

Date and time: March 27, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Location: 113 Somerset Road, Singapore 238165
Price/pax: $60 – $100
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Intermediate Financials for Startups Workshop: From Good to Great Impact

Learn the fundamentals so you can start tracking key financial information that are typically required by your stakeholders, and assess the financial health of your company to know where and how you could make improvements. No prior accounting or financial background is required.

Date and time: April 10, 6:30pm to 9:30pm
Location: 113 Somerset Road, Singapore 238165
Price/pax: $60 – $100
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Tech in Asia Singapore

Get direct access to tech leaders transforming the digital landscape, meet potential customers and investors, network with fellow tech junkies and more – taking your startup to the next level starts here.

Date and time: May 17 to 18
Location: Suntec City Convention Centre
Price/pax: $297 and beyond
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Fintech

The NEO Ecosystem (featuring Neo Council, Qlink, TheKey) – 1st NEO event in SEA

This event will be able to provide insight into those questions, and a glimpse of the blockchain platform that is poised to power the smart economy of the future.

Date and time: December 7, 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Location: Location visible to members
Price/pax: Free
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Next Money Singapore Meetup

The Next Money Singapore community will come together every two months to chat, socialise and hear from interesting speakers and guests.

Date and time: December 14, 6:30pm to 9:30 pm
Location: Asia Square Tower One, 8 Marina View Singapore
Price/pax: Free
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Blockchain, Tangle & Beyond

This meetup will focus on the evolution of Blockchain, problems the young industry is facing and exciting solutions which already exist.

Date and time: December 21, 7pm to 10pm
Location: To be confirmed
Price/pax: Free
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Next Money Singapore Meetup

The Next Money Singapore community will come together every two months to chat, socialise and hear from interesting speakers and guests.

Date and time: February 8, 6:30pm to 9:30pm
Location: Asia Square Tower One, 8 Marina View
Price/pax: Free
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General

Is the Automotive industry ready for the Digital Customer?

In this session, we will explore the underlying trends which are dramatically changing the way consumers find and purchase their cars. Gathering a car dealership expert, a SaaS entrepreneur building a new generation cloud CRM, an online marketplace connecting buyers and sellers and a corporate innovation manager, we will get all sides of the story.

Date and time: November 30, 7pm to 10pm
Location: Allianz Training – Centre Allianz Technology SE Singapore Branch, Singapore 018961
Price/pax: $15
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IONS Fireside Chat – Embracing Transformation

Technology is everywhere around us. Learn how as a non-technical or technical person, you can harness and be empowered by it. Reputable tech companies that will share how you can be part of technology ecosystem – from career opportunities to crowdfunding!

Date and time: December 1, 6pm to 9:30pm
Location: 461 Clementi Road, Singapore 599491
Price/pax: Free
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2020: Toward Practical Quantum Networks

This talk aims at providing the participants with a wide view about quantum networks and the unique challenges for transmitting quantum information.

Date and time: December 5, 3pm to 5pm
Location: INFUSE 1 Fusionopolis Way 14th Floor – Connexis South Tower Singapore, Singapore 138632
Price/pax: Free
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TomorrowToday #2 – The Forgotten Half of Change

This 2nd event in our series will discuss the relationship between creativity and innovation, reality and perception. Where innovation predominantly seeks to change reality by delivering new products or services, creativity is essential for changing perception: the way people think about these products or services.

Date and time: December 12, 6pm to 9pm
Location: 99 Duxton Rd, 089543
Price/pax: Free
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HackerNest Singapore January Tech Social

HackerNest Tech Socials are a fun, relaxed way to connect with your local tech community. Atmosphere: chill, friendly, unpretentious, agenda-free (no sales pitch), and brimming with Ultra Smart People.

Date and time: January 22, 7pm to 10pm
Location: 15 Beach Road, Singapore 189667 · Singapore
Price/pax: Free
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Digital Marketing Workshop: Creating an Impactful Marketing Strategy for your business tickets

Get your hands on the basics that anyone can start with. Build a strong foundation now for more advanced marketing in the future.

Date and time: January 23, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Location: 13 Somerset Road, Singapore 238165
Price/pax: $60 – $100
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CROWDFUNDING MASTERCLASS: Launch and run a SUCCESSFUL campaign!

This session is great for anyone looking to test and raise support for their social impact ideas/initiatives, or simply want to learn more about the crowdfunding model.

Date and time: February 13 and March 14, 6:30pm to 9:30pm
Location: 2 Orchard Link, Singapore 237978
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Resumes, Interviews & Branding

Writing a resume/CV or going for a interview for a Tech job can be quite different. This event is open to everyone who is there to inspire women to excel in tech careers.

Date and time: January 24, 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Location: Mapletree business City II, 70 Pasir Panjang Road, Singapore 117371
Price/pax: Free
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Seamless Asia 2018

The Seamless Asia exhibition is where leading solution providers can showcase a wide range of technologies to partner with retailers, ecommerce companies and payments companies in Asia.

Date and time: May 3 to 4
Location: Suntec Convention Centre, Singapore
Price/pax: $750
RSVP here

How to add your event

Fill out the form below to get started. This post will be shared with our audience twice a month. We’ll vet the event and update the list ASAP. We don’t accept:

• Paid classes by education providers (for example, coding classes for kids)
• Webinars
• Events not held in Singapore

This post Here’s the most complete list of tech events in Singapore appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Jakarta. Photo credit: Bagus Ghufron.

Today, Grab announced another executive hire as it expands its payments business, while there were funding announcements from a precision medicine company, a cryptocurrency exchange, and a financial data provider.

Artificial intelligence

Line acquires carpooling chatbot (Indonesia). The Japanese messaging app has purchased TemanJalan, which has developed a chatbot that can help university students to find people to carpool with. TemanJalan has already integrated its service with Line’s app in Indonesia, and claimed it experienced 70 times more daily transactions compared to its own app or alternate platforms. (Line)

Xenodata Lab raises US$2.24 million in series A round (Japan). The startup uses natural language processing technology to provide finance data analysis. Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Teikoku Databank, and Mizuho Capital were among the participating investors. (DealStreetAsia)

Fintech

GrabPay CTO Vikas Agrawal. Photo credit: Grab.

Grab taps Paytm for CTO of its payments business (Singapore). The ride-hailing company has appointed Vikas Agrawal, former senior vice president of engineering at Indian digital payments firm Paytm, as GrabPay’s chief technology officer. It’s the latest in a string of hires and acquisitions the company has made as it seeks to expand its payments business beyond ride-hailing. (Tech in Asia)

Bitcoin.co.id gets funding (Indonesia). The cryptocurrency exchange operator has received an undisclosed amount of funding from investors including East Ventures. It started out as a media outlet focused on cryptocurrency-related news before moving into trading, and now claims to be Southeast Asia’s largest exchange by user numbers. (East Ventures)

Life sciences

3D Medicines secures US$101 million funding (China). The startup, which develops precision medicines for the treatment of cancer, received investment from China Reform Holdings through the government-linked China State-Owned Assets Venture Investment Fund. ChinaEquity Group was among the other investors. (China Money Network)

Transportation

Photo credit: Go-Jek.

Ojek drivers march to demand protection (Indonesia). Independent motorbike drivers that work with ride-hailing companies like Go-Jek and Grab are holding a demonstration to demand that Indonesian authorities introduce regulations to protect them against alleged mistreatment at the hands of their contractors. (CNN, in Indonesian)

This post Asia tech news roundup – Nov 23 appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Ola.

Imagine getting into a cab in the morning where your Skype call and calendar are already set up in front of you. Or hailing a car at the end of a long day of work and your favorite music is playing. And the playlist depends on whether your destination is home or a bar.

The kinds of experiences you create with an app are different for a car.

These are some of the things Ola is implementing as part of a partnership with Microsoft it sealed earlier this month. The Ola Play touch console – usually fitted to the back of a front row seat, just like on a flight – lets a commuter play music and video, adjust the temperature, or use Microsoft’s Skype for Business and Office 365.

And because Ola knows it’s you, when you book the ride, all these apps and tools are already personalized when you enter the car. You could be watching a movie on Eros on your smart TV before the ride and just continue from where you left it.

But for India’s Uber rival, it’s not just about adding productivity tools to the infotainment and personalization features on Ola Play launched a year ago. It has more up its sleeve for riders and drivers as well as car makers.

Head of Ola Play Ankit Jain says Ola is building an app store, opening up the Ola Play platform for third parties to create interesting and useful experiences for riders and drivers. How about some Starbucks coffee delivered to the car on the way to a meeting? Or an app that acts as a personalized tour guide for a city you visit, recommending places to see, what to do, where to eat.

There’s even an app in the works for drivers to find the nearest public toilet – which Jain says is a pressing need they’ve identified. It also helps with the ongoing Swachh Bharat (Clean India) campaign if people don’t have to urinate on roadsides.

The Ola app store is not public yet, but partners are already developing apps for it.

But why do these apps have to be designed for Ola Play, I ask Jain. Why does Ola want a separate app store?

“I had the same debate with myself a year ago: why can’t we just pick up something that’s already built and put it in a car?” Jain smiles in response, before going on to explain why.

“Our app store is not for a mobile phone or tablet; it’s for a car, because the kinds of experiences you create are very different for a car,” he explains. “For example, if you’re building an app for a driver, you don’t want it to be very visual and distracting. It should have minimal elements and be voice-driven so that you’re not distracting someone from the core thing they’re doing, which is different from an app that you typically build for a phone where the whole intention is to engage you. Here the intention in some ways is not to engage you.”

The Ola app store is not public yet, but partners are already developing apps for it. “We’re open to having a conversation with anyone who is interested in building experiences on Ola Play,” says Jain. Current partners include Qualcomm for the hardware, and several others including Apple and Sony for music and other apps. But going forward, Ola is aiming for more apps specifically suited for in-vehicle use.

Future of mobility

Ola co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Photo credit: Ola.

Ride-hailing apps have transformed commutes for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Cars are also getting connected to the internet and smarter, all the way from driver assistance and digital entertainment to self-driving.

But the experience of passengers in the back seat of a car is not so different from what it was decades ago. The car is an unnecessarily disconnected experience for them, says Jain.

“Car makers are always thinking of the front seat because the driver is the one making the purchase in most cases. But in the world of tomorrow, when cars become autonomous and ride-hailing is the way to go, the focus will be on the passenger. That shift hasn’t happened in the industry yet.”

Ola Play is thus a product for car makers as much as it is for riders and drivers. And this is where the partnership with tech giant Microsoft becomes more interesting for Uber’s Indian rival.

There’s an app in the works for drivers to find the nearest public toilet – a pressing need Ola identified.

Jain and I are chatting on the sidelines of an IoT Next conference in Bangalore. He’s here because IoT (internet of things) is a big piece of Ola Play.

Sensors in the car can track vehicle condition and usage, road conditions, and the environment. Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform can provide big data handling and advanced analytics. In combination, they enable preventive maintenance of vehicles, driver assistance, and third-party services related to transport infrastructure, accidents, insurance claims, and so on.

The Microsoft Cortana digital assistant chimes in with natural language processing and speech recognition: voice commands are easier than touch screens or a keyboard in a shaky car.

The app store and personalized services for riders and drivers thus sit on top of IoT and AI services from Azure. Ola’s vision is to be a global player in the emerging domain of in-vehicle tech beyond enhancing its ride-hailing platform in India.

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

“We’re building a full-stack platform with Azure services plus our in-vehicle tech,” says Jain. “We can then go to any OEM (original equipment manufacturer) in the world and say here’s a ready platform that you can engage your customers with, instead of trying to build that entire stack from scratch. That’s really the power of the partnership with Microsoft for us.”

It’s still a work in progress, with different parts of it at various stages of testing and implementation. OEM deals could be expected in a year’s time. “The true power of the platform, I’m assuming that’s still five years down the line,” says Jain. “But core parts of the platform, where people can start imagining stuff to build apps and services, that will be ready within a year.”

Platform model

The likes of Tesla and Google, Uber and Didi are investing in self-driving cars. Microsoft too has partnerships with BMW and Renault-Nissan to help them build connected car services with Azure for their cars.

What makes Ola different is that it has no intention, as of now, to have its own connected cars. Instead, it wants to build a connected car platform that can go into a range of cars, that any car manufacturer can adopt. “Our secret sauce is the software and platform, not the car,” says Jain.

That’s why it has to think global in building the Ola Play platform, unlike its India-focused ride-hailing app. Ola Play needs to work everywhere so that car makers can integrate it.

There is also localization. For example, India has no service that works as well as 911 in the US. So building an emergency response is more complex than just tying into existing services. Then there is the the issue of connectivity that can fluctuate wildly.

Our secret sauce is the software and platform, not the car.

“At times you’ll be at 4g and suddenly you’ll be 2g or no-g,” quips Ankit. “We’re building a lot of things into Ola Play so that the experience, safety, and all that doesn’t get disrupted just because you don’t have good connectivity. But those features apply everywhere else too. That makes us more robust because we’re solving for a lot of those corner cases that platforms coming out of the US would not solve for.”

Uber is also now dealing with the connectivity issue in India. It has launched a lighter web-based version of its app, as Ola and Indian ecommerce leader Flipkart had done earlier. Now it is running a pilot in Mumbai to have tablets stuck on headrests for in-car infotainment a la Ola Play.

Security challenge

Jain, an MIT post-grad who left McKinsey to join Ola last year, believes it’s early days yet for the idea of a car as a platform. “When Apple and Google came up with their platforms on the phone, they didn’t design for an Uber or an Ola. So we also don’t know what will get built on top of this connected car platform. But if you can unleash that power, a lot of startups globally can build interesting experiences on top of that platform.”

He says the car will have its own use cases, just like smart TV use cases are different from those of a smartphone. “A lot of it is around driving and safety and entertainment today, but there could be a lot of things we can’t imagine yet.”

There are big challenges to be overcome too, especially in dealing with scale and security. An insecure infotainment system that uses personalization could expose users to hacks and loss of privacy. Mobile and laptop operating systems have spent a great deal of time and effort in trying to plug these risks. Smart car systems will need to at least match that.

See: Insider’s account of how Go-Jek hit 900x scale in 18 months and is still doubling

Just this week, Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi disclosed that personal data of tens of millions of riders and drivers around the world had been hacked last year. Former CEO Travis Kalanick chose to brush the hack under the carpet instead of letting victims know about it.

This post Why on earth is a ride-hailing giant building an app store? Ola’s surprising way forward appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Luzhou, China. Photo credit: Mingwei Li / Unsplash.

In a small, bright office filled with books, Huamin Qu gives me a bird’s-eye view of WeChat, arguably China’s most influential app. His screen shows a red pinwheel of nodes that map how content is shared throughout the enormous social network of almost a billion users.

Called WeSeer, the internal tool is the ultimate gauge of China’s netizen hivemind: it can predict which articles will go viral in the next hour, pinpoint key accounts driving the spread of information, and identify stories of interest for different communities, whether it’s locals in Beijing or people who love AI.

It’s an advertiser’s wet dream – or a powerful tool for information control.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” says Qu, a professor of computer science at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), which opened a joint artificial intelligence lab with WeChat in 2015. Big data analytics can be used to capture criminals, but it can also target other groups of people, he says.

“We are more working on the technical side,” he emphasizes.

A demo video of WeSeer shows how an article spreads through WeChat over time. Image credit: WeChat-HKUST Joint Lab on Artificial Intelligence Technology.

Fake news is the new scourge of the modern world. As people increasingly turn to online platforms to understand the world, fake news has the power to sow doubt almost anywhere, as evidenced by how it disrupted the recent democratic elections in the US. At the center of it all is Facebook, whose platform encompasses a user base of roughly 2 billion monthly active users – larger than the population of any single nation.

But while the Silicon Valley juggernaut has sought to distance itself from the fake news epidemic, Chinese tech firms are taking it head on. In China, there are no debates around the role that companies play in deciding what the public sees. The Great Firewall, which blocks thousands of sites like Facebook and The New York Times, might keep information from the outside world from filtering in, but domestically, the government expects tech giants to take responsibility.

Tech companies must balance the cost of censorship with running a business.

For online content platforms, blocking keywords and taking down ‘illegal content’ – which can range from celebrity gossip to sensitive political topics – is par for the course. The more influential the company, the more culpable they are.

“Effectively, the government authorities are pushing responsibility for content control and other types of information control down to the companies, who then also offload that to users in some sense,” says Masashi Crete-Nishihata, research manager at The Citizen Lab, a research lab at the University of Toronto that has conducted numerous studies on online censorship in China.

“For the companies, they’re trying to balance keeping their business active, keeping users interested in the platform, having a good user experience, and of course, doing all that while staying within the line set by the government,” he adds.

That last point is a key driver behind the development of WeSeer. On top of predicting article popularity, Qu’s research team has been tasked with automating rumor detection, a rising priority for the app as its user base grows to triple the size of the US population.

Huamin Qu, professor of computer science at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He specializes in data visualization. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

Wrangling fake news

In September, the Chinese government fined Tencent, Weibo, and Baidu the maximum penalty under the new cybersecurity law for failing to prevent the spread of harmful information. By flagging rumors before they erupt and reverberate through the platform, WeChat could one day quell fake news before it takes off.

Tencent, operator of WeChat, declined to comment on WeSeer.

Here’s how WeSeer works: articles that are shared between accounts, both on personal newsfeeds and via public accounts, create a path when they travel through the social network. In WeChat, these traces are especially unique because the platform is a closed system. Unlike Facebook, only first-degree contacts can see your Moments, the app’s newsfeed-like feature.

If you think about it, some rumors are like the truth.

That means some articles pass through 50 to 60 layers within the social network as they’re shared from account to account, says Qu. By analyzing these propagation paths, you can start classifying articles by their behavior.

Radiating outward over time, the propagation paths look strangely beautiful, like red drops spreading on a page. Other visualizations resemble supernovas, showcasing a bright explosion of activity in the center.

Some paths have an “overall pattern just like a virus,” he explains. “You suddenly capture a lot of attention or you just slowly build up.”

To identify potential falsehoods, Qu’s research group must delve deeper into the accounts themselves to assess how credible they are. For instance, if a computer science professor shares something on AI, perhaps the article should be considered more legitimate. But it’s still a work in progress.

“I think it’s a very challenging problem,” emphasizes Qu. “If you think about it, some rumors are like the truth.”

WeSeer can break down readership by different segments (ex: location, age, community). This display shows the results of an article published October 2016: “3 minutes of news for breakfast”. Image credit: WeChat-HKUST Joint Lab on Artificial Intelligence Technology.

Cost center

The pressure to control information will only increase for Chinese tech companies, as Beijing tightens its grip on the country’s cyberspace. In August, government regulators released new rules requiring real-name registration for users who post comments. A month later, the Cyberspace Administration of China published another set of regulations that holds creators of online groups accountable for anything discussed in their forums.

That could mean rising costs related to content moderation, as tech companies still largely depend on human moderators. Even at Facebook, taking down gruesome content, such as beheadings and sexual violence, still requires human input – not to mention something as complex as rumor classification or responding to changing government directives.

Something that’s blocked one day is not blocked the next.

In preparation for China’s 19th party congress, a key political event that reshuffles top leaders every five years, WeChat began blocking relevant keywords as early as a year prior, according to a report conducted by The Citizen Lab. Due to the sensitivity of the event, researchers found that even seemingly benign keywords were blocked, such as ’19th Party Congress Power.’

One of the challenges of the lab’s work, which has conducted multiple studies on keyword censorship on WeChat, is that “the censorship is dynamic,” explains Crete-Nishihata. “Something that’s blocked one day is not blocked the next.”

Toutiao, whose news aggregation platform sees over 120 million daily active users, has rapidly grown its team of content auditors and reviewers in Tianjin, a northeastern city neighboring Beijing. According to a source that spoke to Reuters, the Chinese unicorn has almost a thousand reviewers – up from 30 to 40 two years ago.

Momo, a Chinese social networking app, has also expanded its content moderation team in Tianjin. Since launching its app in 2011, the company has hired more than 400 content reviewers to meet the needs of its growing live streaming business, a spokesperson tells Tech in Asia. Wages for content auditing jobs across different tech firms range from US$455 to US$910 a month, according to job posts on Lagou, a Chinese hiring site.

Toutiao headquaters in Beijing. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

These tech companies must balance the cost of censorship with running a business. After all, they have their own commercial goals, which may or may not align with the government’s agenda. This tension is illustrated in a report published in October by Blake Miller, PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, which featured a leaked dataset of Weibo censorship logs from 2011 to 2014. Specifically, Weibo’s content review team disobeyed certain government directives because “they were concerned that censorship on the Sina Weibo platform would drive users to competitor Tencent Weibo’s website,” writes Miller.

“We should not be stricter than Tencent,” states one of the leaked logs, referring to instructions on banning users. “Today maintain user blocks, tomorrow as soon as you receive instructions, release the block.”

In that sense, smarter information controls, such as WeSeer, could be a competitive advantage. It would not only reduce the cost of human labor but also help companies make judgment calls on what content to block – and the ensuing blowback from readers. Other tech firms including Toutiao are also investing in AI-driven analytical tools to help weed out low-quality content and fake news – something that state media People’s Daily has slammed it for in the past.

Currency converted from Chinese yuan. Rate: US$1 = RMB 6.59.

The Robert Bosch Foundation provided travel expenses for Sonja Peteranderl and Eva Xiao to cover this story under the Tandem scholarship.

This post How China’s WeChat is tackling fake news differently from Facebook appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Mingbike.

And then there were three.

After the recent implosions of two rival services, a third Chinese bike-sharing startup is this month falling to pieces. Mingbike has fired 99 percent of its staff, some of whom haven’t been paid for months, reported the South China Morning Post today.

As with the other two failing startups, angry users are struggling to get back their US$30 deposits from the dockless bike-share service.

Compared to the other two, Bluegogo and Coolqi, Mingbike – also known as Xiaoming – was a less-used service available in just a handful of cities.

Coolqi cockup

Coolqi, known for its green livery as well as its headline-grabbing golden bicycles, has 1.4 million bikes, but it’s now struggling to stay afloat.

Its former CEO this week suggested an unusual – and illegal – way it might settle its debt with riders. “In the worst scenario, we will allow users to ride our bikes home,” said Gao Weiwei, according to state news agency Xinhua.

Photo credit: Sohu News.

Angry users are speaking of their frustration on social media – or anywhere where they can leave a comment.

“A company of swindlers – won’t return my deposit,” vented one commenter on the Chinese iOS App Store. “A month with no responses. Can never get through to the customer service hotline. Everyone, do not use this,” wrote another on the Coolqi app page.

Bluegogo bust

With 350,000 distinctive blue-and-white bikes, Bluegogo still hasn’t resolved how to return riders’ deposits after news broke last week of its financial turmoil.

Photo credit: Bluegogo.

Bluegogo was once valued at US$140 million after raising US$58 million from invstors.

With 40 bike-share apps still operating in China, winter has just set in.

“Bike-sharing is an asset-heavy industry. As investors become increasing cautious and reasonable about their bet, a timely merger or acquisition may be the only chance for second-tier players to survive,” said Shi Rui, an analyst with consulting firm iResearch to the South China Morning Post.

Mobike and Ofo, China’s top bike-share services, are now rapidly expanding overseas.

This post Wheels fall off a third startup as bike-sharing boom grinds to a halt appeared first on Tech in Asia.

West Lake, Hanoi. Photo credit: huythoai / 123RF.

Ride-hailing apps face new hurdles in India while bike-sharing firms are having financial woes in China. Also today, there was a big funding announcement in Vietnam.

Ecommerce

Vntrip gets US$10 million funding (Vietnam). The Hanoi-based online travel agency received the investment from Hong Kong’s Hendale Capital. Vntrip previously raised US$3 million in a series A round led by Alibaba executive John Wu. (DealStreetAsia)

MiStay secures investment from Axilor and others (India). The short-term rentals portal will use the funding to strengthen its team. Some of the undisclosed amount came from several hospitality industry veterans. (MiStay)

Flipkart to begin selling insurance products online (India). The ecommerce site will soon begin selling general, life, and health insurance, before offering other types including motor insurance, according to regulatory filings. It is not clear if Flipkart has yet obtained the necessary approval from India’s insurance watchdog. (VCCircle)

Transportation

Coolqi bikes. Photo credit: Sohu News.

Another bike-sharing firm runs into trouble (China). Mingbike has fired 99 percent of its staff, some of whom haven’t been paid for months. Bluegogo and Coolqi also appear to have gone bust in recent weeks, with users reporting that they can’t reclaim their deposits from the companies. (Tech in Asia)

Maharashtra the latest state to discuss capping ride-hailing firms’ fares (India). The state government is considering set minimum and maximum fares for Ola and Uber rides, bringing them in line with licensed taxi companies. This follows similar moves by local governments in Delhi and Karnataka. (VCCircle)

Investors, incubators, and accelerators

IE Singapore launches China link program (China/Singapore). The enterprise agency is leading the Global Innovation Alliance (Beijing), which will establish launchpads for Singapore companies to connect with the Chinese business and innovation community. (IE Singapore)

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The remotely controlled robot likes to mimic your movements.

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