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6 startups in Asia that caught our eye

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


1. TNG Wallet | Hong Kong (Startup Profile)

TNG Wallet lets users pay bills and shop at partner merchants. It also allows peer-to-peer transfers. To put credit into the wallet or withdraw cash from it, users can go to partner banks or any 7-11 store in Hong Kong.


2. Red Dot Payment | Singapore (Startup Profile)

Online payments gateway Red Dot Payment helps businesses to build and enhance their capability to accept payments over the internet. Besides its Singapore headquarters, the company currently has offices in Bangkok and Jakarta.


3. Zilingo | Singapore (Startup Profile)

Singapore-based Zilingo provides an online marketplace for offline vendors of clothes, jewelry, and related beauty and lifestyle products. It recently has added new vendors from Cambodia, China, Korea, and Vietnam, and currently ships goods to eight countries throughout Asia-Pacific.


4. Dropfoods | Vietnam

Dropfoods operates an army of smart vending machines in Vietnam. It combines physical vending machines selling food and drinks, and a mobile app to enable cashless transactions. The digital wallet connected to the machines allows users to buy products, top up their mobile credit, pay bills, and transfer money to other users.


5. Infostellar | Japan (Startup Profile)

Commercial space startup Infostellar has developed a cloud-based satellite antenna sharing platform – named StellarStation – which connects satellite operators with antenna operators around the world. The startup charges satellite operators by the hour while communication channels are open. It shares these revenues with the antenna holders.


6. CashShield | Singapore (Startup Profile)

CashShield uses machine learning to track user behavior patterns on websites that involve financial transactions, like ecommerce stores. The startup has developed its own software from scratch with real-time pattern recognition and passive biometric analytics capabilities.


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Video: Nose gestures might be the future of your phone

Here’s what you might’ve missed in Southeast Asian tech

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Zilingo’s co-founders – CEO Ankiti Bose (L) and CTO Dhruv Kapoor (R). Photo credit: Zilingo.

Series B is often said to be the hardest funding round to raise – especially in Southeast Asia. Two Singaporean startups bucked the trend last week, securing over US$22 million in series B investment between them. Elsewhere, Tokopedia was forced to put certain features of its mobile wallet on hold due to regulatory issues, while Thailand welcomed Chinese internet giant JD and Honestbee’s Goodship logistics service.

Singapore

Zilingo closes US$17 million series B round. The Singapore-based online fashion marketplace secured funding from returnee Sequoia Capital and new backer Burda Principal Investments, which both co-led the round. Other participants included Venturra Capital, Wavemaker Partners, and Tim Draper. Zilingo will use the funding primarily to expand its Indonesia business and to enhance its offline brand presence. (Tech in Asia)

Red Dot Payment also gets a series B boost. The online payments company raised US$5.2 million from existing investors including GMO, Telkom’s MDI Ventures, and Skype co-founder Toivo Annus. Singapore-based Dorr Group also joined the round. (Tech in Asia)

CashShield team at work.

CashShield team members, including co-founder Junxian Lee (R). Photo credit: CashShield.

CashShield announces US$5.5 million GGV Capital-led round. Razer, Temasek affiliate Heliconia Capital Management, and iPod designer and Nest Labs co-founder Tony Fadell also invested in the cyber security startup’s series A capital raise. (Tech in Asia)

Mobile payments race heats up as Nets and Razer CEOs trade barbs. Nets made its pitch for creating Singapore’s next-generation mobile payments system early last week. Nets CEO Jeffrey Goh was mildly skeptical about the proposal put forward by Razer earlier this month, in which it claimed its own system could be rolled out within 18 months. In response, Razer CEO Tan Min-Liang said his company would be open to collaborating with Nets though he would have preferred “[Goh] didn’t take a swipe at me.” (Tech in Asia)

Insignia Venture Partners founder Yinglan Tan.

New VC firm founded by ex-Sequoia partner closes debut fund. Insignia Venture Partners – founded by former Sequoia partner Tan Yinglan – raised US$25 million for its Southeast Asia-focused fund, according to filings with the US Securities & Exchange Commission. (Tech in Asia)

Indonesia

EV Hive gets US$3.5 million investment. The co-working space operator – which is affiliated with regional VC firm East Ventures – got the funding in a “pre-series A” round led by Tan’s Insignia, in its first publicly announced investment. (Tech in Asia)

EV Hive shared workspace in South Tangerang, Jakarta. Photo credit: East Ventures.

Tokopedia temporarily suspends mobile wallet features. The ecommerce company froze some of its TokoCash ewallet functions while it waits to be granted relevant licenses by Indonesia’s central bank. TokoCash users can still spend the credit they have in their wallet, but won’t be able to top up until the situation is resolved. (Tech in Asia)

Thailand

Photo credit: Honestbee.

JD enters Thailand. The Chinese company was previously rumored to have been in talks with Thailand’s Central Group over a US$500 million ecommerce and financial services-focused joint venture. The hook-up was confirmed last week, with Central Group offering its stores and malls as a way for the joint venture to source goods. JD’s new Thailand marketplace will act as a storefront for many of Central Group’s retail offerings. (Tech in Asia)

Honestbee takes its last-mile logistics service to Bangkok. Singapore’s Honestbee – known for online food, groceries, and laundry delivery – officially launched its logistics service Goodship in the Thai capital. Honestbee said that Goodship, which it has trialled in Bangkok for several months, has already surpassed its food and groceries services in volume. (Tech in Asia)

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Google’s Tez payments app just went live in India, and we tested it to see how fast it is

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A screenshot of Google’s Tez app.

Google today entered the Asian mobile payments fray with the launch of a new app in India called Tez – which means ‘fast’ in Hindi. It has also registered the trademark in Indonesia and the Philippines, suggesting that an expansion across Asia is imminent.

The app is already live on Google Play. India’s finance minister Arun Jaitley will be launching it formally in Delhi today. Tez rides on India’s government-backed unified payments interface (UPI) – hence it’s a huge endorsement of the public digital infrastructure that started rolling out in the country last year.

UPI enables instant mobile payments between multiple banks on a single app. It does away with the need to enter bank account details and codes or waiting for a beneficiary to be added. The bank assigns a virtual address to the user after authentication, which has also become faster and easier with India’s biometrics-based Aadhaar ID.

On downloading it, Tez asked me to link one of my bank accounts. It then allows me to send money to anybody who has the app, whether it’s an acquaintance, a merchant, or a restaurant. The money gets debited directly from the bank, so there’s no need to transfer money to a wallet. All this took just a few minutes to set up, and I could transfer money instantly to a friend who downloaded it too.

Google Tez

Google’s Tez also has a “cash mode” which lets the user transfer money to somebody nearby who also has the app, using the location service.

Google had initially wanted to launch its wallet Android Pay in India, but ran into regulatory hurdles on data transfer, storage, and security. Now, its UPI-enabled app circumvents those hurdles with a system that’s supported by the National Payments Corporation of India, an umbrella organization set up by the Reserve Bank of India.

UPI-enabled apps also do away with the need for card-swiping at retail outlets. India’s leading ecommerce site Flipkart uses UPI for its payments app PhonePe, and even the top digital wallet Paytm, which recently launched a payments bank, has a UPI payment option. WhatsApp too is expected to launch a UPI-based payments feature soon.

See: India makes an ambitious move toward a cashless society

Google’s Tez also has a “cash mode” which lets the user transfer money to somebody nearby who also has the app, using the location service.

These are only the immediate uses of the app. Essentially, it can be used wherever UPI payments are enabled, including Google’s own music and video streaming services and other apps. The minimum payment on it is as low as INR 50 (US$0.78) – so it enables micro-payments.

More than 90 percent of smartphones in India run on Android, so the Tez app will be almost ubiquitous. It supports seven Indian languages – Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu – apart from English.

This is also a watershed moment for UPI, which had a lukewarm response when it was launched in April last year, with only 30 out of 150 eligible banks adopting it. It got a push with demonetization in November as the government began to take drastic measures to move financial transactions online.

See: A crash course on India’s digital ID: why it has such staunch believers and fierce critics

Google’s typically easy user interface, coupled with the confidence users may have in its backend security protocols, could give digital payments another major boost in the world’s fastest growing smartphone market.

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Singapore is flexing cyber security muscles with an additional $12m for research

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Singapore Minister of Finance Heng Swee Keat visits Switch 2017.

Singapore Minister of Finance Heng Swee Keat visits Switch 2017. Photo credit: Switch.

Singapore will double down on commercializing deep technology applications, with new grants by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and a collaboration with state sovereign fund Temasek to enable investment in cutting-edge ideas coming out of the city-state’s research centers.

Minister of Finance Heng Swee Keat made the announcement this morning during the opening of Switch 2017. The minister said the NRF is working with Temasek on “new commercial entities” that will build and invest in deep tech startups emerging from Singaporean research and development. “This will complement other government support schemes for startups by connecting technical and academic innovators to smart capital,” he added.

Specifically regarding cyber security, the NRF has already awarded grants to nine public-private research projects. Singapore’s research funding body will dispense over US$12 million under the National Cyber Security R&D Program, which is coordinated by the NRF and a number of Singapore government organizations including GovTech, the Ministry of Defense, and the Economic Development Board.

The program calls for translation and deployment of technologies to the market, taking in research proposals from Singapore-based companies in collaboration with institutes of higher learning, research centers, or government agencies. The nine projects were chosen out of 23 submitted proposals.

The program calls for translation and deployment of technologies to the market.

Examples include an automated vulnerability detection and analysis tool developed by local startup Scantist and Nanyang Technological University (NTU); an encrypted data exchange system for businesses developed by Acronis’ Singapore-based research and development facility and NTU; and a system for secure, data-protecting environments on smartphones by Singaporean company i-Sprint and Singapore Management University.

Meanwhile, the Singapore Cyber Security Consortium set up by the NRF and the National University of Singapore awarded grants to six projects under its seed grant call.

Among them is a method to map internet-of-things devices in a user’s house to monitor potentially malicious traffic while preserving the user’s privacy, developed by Singaporean company Custodio and the Singapore University of Technology and Design. Other projects include a security study for malware attacks on iOS conducted by PayPal and NTU, and a secure data exchange platform for clinical data made by local startup Cloak in collaboration with A-STAR’s Bioinformatics Institute.

“Should our cyber security researchers arrive at new findings, industry leads will stand ready to develop them into game-changing soltions,” the minister said.

Additionally, Singapore will launch a national intellectual property (IP) protocol, which is meant to encourage public agencies to work closely with enterprises to develop valuable IP. They will be able to grant exclusive and non-exclusive licenses, as well as assign IP to industry players in order to take more publicly-funded innovations to market.

Cyber security has been a key focus for the Singapore government this year, with the minister emphasizing it during the 2017 budget announcement. The importance of developing Singapore’s tech and IP capabilities was also a big part of the Committee for the Future Economy.

Converted from Singapore dollars. US$1 = S$1.34

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Softbank buys into Chinese online insurer ahead of $11b IPO

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Masayoshi Son at SoftBank World 2016. Photo credit: SoftBank.

Online insurer ZhongAn, one of China’s leading fintech services, today got a big vote of confidence ahead of a much-anticipated IPO.

Japan’s SoftBank will buy a 5 percent stake in ZhongAn in its upcoming share offering, it announced today (hat-tip to TechCrunch). Depending on the offer price, this’ll cost Softbank up to US$550 million.

See: China’s fintech industry shows where the rest of the world is heading

ZhongAn is gearing up to raise US$1.5 billion from an IPO that’ll value it at US$11 billion, according to Reuters citing people familiar with the deal. Alibaba and Tencent-backed ZhongAn, launched in 2013, is a spin-off from Chinese insurance giant PingAn.

Softbank’s Masayoshi Son is arguably the savviest investor in China tech – such as the Alibaba stake that turned from US$20 million to US$50 billion.

Watch: The crazy world of Masayoshi Son

Converted from Hong Kong dollars. Rate: US$1 = HK$7.82.

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An encounter with WeWork co-founder reveals a tussle between money and mission

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wework cofounder Miguel McKelvey

WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

Co-working giant WeWork has been busy lately. How to stay in tune with its ethos even as it expands fast in global markets with local partners is a question that pops up more and more.

It announced an investment of US$4.4 billion from Japanese giant SoftBank last month, brought on board a Chinese consortium led by Hony Capital, and acquired Spacemob in Singapore to drive its expansion across Southeast Asia. It partnered Bangalore real estate billionaire Jitendra Virwani’s Embassy Group to enter India in July, and redesigned a relic from the past – movie theater Galaxy – into a 145,000-square-foot co-working space.

An even larger space of 190,000 square feet came up soon afterwards in Mumbai’s business hub of Bandra Kurla Complex, even as two more locations at Embassy Golf Links IT park and Koramangala in Bangalore are being readied for launch later this year. And in early 2018, the tech hub of Gurgaon near Delhi will have a WeWork too. The goal is to build up 6 million square feet of WeWork space in India over the next four years, says Virwani.

When you have a company like Microsoft which moves in with 400 members, that has an impact on the community, and you want to figure out how to manage that.

But WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey, who calls himself the company’s chief culture officer, wants to stay focused on first principles amid the dizzying growth of the US$17-billion unicorn.

“We’re not measuring ourselves by how much money we’ve raised, or how much we’re investing, or how many buildings we have, but by the impact we can make,” he says in Bangalore, during his first visit to India.

The tall McKelvey, sporting a t-shirt with Kannada characters on it, grew up at a commune in Oregon, northwest USA. He shares that community living experience with his co-founder Adam Neumann, whose formative years were in a kibbutz in Israel. The idea of community was central to the launch of WeWork’s co-working spaces in 2010.

“When we started the company, it’s because we believed there was something changing in the world, and certainly India is a perfect example of that – where there’s a shift in what people are looking for out of the time they put into work,” says McKelvey. “That’s the change we’re looking to support. That’s how we measure ourselves, and we’ll continue to invest until we get to that.”

The challenge in doing that becomes apparent during an interaction where McKelvey is flanked by Jitendra Virwani and his son, Karan Virwani – WeWork’s partners in India. It’s easier said than done to balance financial objectives with what it takes to build a vibrant, interactive, and diverse community in India’s Silicon Valley.

WeWork cofounder Miguel McKelvey flanked by Jitendra Virwani (right) and Karan Virwani of the Embassy Group in Bangalore. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

Enterprise skew

Most early stage startups in India would be hard put to rent a desk in WeWork Galaxy. And Embassy Golf Links – the next WeWork location in Bangalore – is where the likes of IBM and Microsoft rub shoulders with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Many of the world’s largest corporations have large workforces – second only to their home bases – in this tech hub.

Increasingly, it’s the large global enterprises that are attracted to the ambience, services, and flexibility that WeWork provides – and can afford it too. Even the likes of Amazon and Microsoft, which have an established presence in the country with their own facilities, are keen to take up hundreds of seats in WeWork because of the convenience of working out of different locations or the new office dynamic it could provide to creative teams.

Virwani senior says it would be easy to let out the entire Golf Links space to a single, large corporation. But that would go against the WeWork ethos of community building.

“We have to be careful, because in a city like Bangalore, this whole thing can be taken by large enterprises,” says Virwani. “We try to keep a balance – 40 percent small entrepreneurs and 60 percent large enterprises.”

“It’s the other way round,” McKelvey interjects immediately, thus drawing attention to a tension between money and mission as WeWork scales and expands in different parts of the world with local partners.

“60 percent, 40 percent, it could go either way,” continues Virwani. “In Bangalore, companies are willing to take large spaces in these buildings. So we have to be careful in doing that.”

We have to be careful, because in a city like Bangalore, this whole thing can be taken by large enterprises.

His son, Karan Virwani picks up the thread: “We have an enterprise skew perhaps more than in other markets WeWork is in. Global enterprises are growing faster here and they look at WeWork as a global solution. They’re looking at how they’re growing in 10 different cities, so for them WeWork is great because it’s spread across the world. But we have lots of Indian enterprise clients and startups within our space as well.”

He says it’s an ongoing process to build the right culture. “We’re not a landlord, we’re not here to just lease out a building… We know that enterprise is now going to be a big part of WeWork’s growth globally, so we’re working on different models to see how we can be flexible.”

McKelvey also points out that WeWork has over 30 locations in New York alone, and over 20 in London. He expects a similar pattern in other cities, including Bangalore, as demand grows. Then there could be different price points depending on location. But for now, all the WeWork spaces in India are in prime locations, which could be out of the reach of a large section of the entrepreneurial community.

“We invest a lot in the support we’re trying to create, our business model requires a certain level of experience to create the vibe we want, so we’re never going to be an inexpensive solution,” McKelvey tells Tech in Asia. “At the same time, we have found companies that are aspirational and willing to pay the rent at a basic level – you have to be achieving something to be able to be a part of this. It differentiates them from people who’re not taking their business that seriously.”

Global playbook, local strategy

When WeWork started in 2010, the world had just come out of a financial meltdown. Real estate prices had crashed, which worked to WeWork’s advantage in leasing properties. The risk going forward is what happens in the event of another major economic downturn, whether companies would want to rent high-end office spaces even if they provide a hassle-free environment and exalted work-life experience.

WeWork Hong Kong

WeWork’s Tower 535 co-working space in Hong Kong’s. Photo credit: WeWork.

The rapid expansion in multiple markets aims to mitigate that risk. The scale also creates new possibilities for WeWork from the analytics it can bring to better utilization of space, improving productivity with tech services, and creating opportunities for collaboration between diverse entities. A large part of what clicks for WeWork comes from its design and research insights.

It’s still early days for all of that to come to India. Even though WeWork Galaxy draws upon the global playbook of space utilization, meeting places, and work-life amenities, building out the local WeWork community is at a formative stage.

“We’re new here, so our immediate response is just with our local team and the way that they respond to not only what happens inside the building with members but also with the larger ecosystem in terms of connecting with government initiatives or other organizations that are doing cool things to support startups and small business,” says McKelvey. “Typically our research teams come in later when the whole building is full and operating.”

We’re not a landlord, we’re not here to just lease out a building. We want to create a community.

“Another part,” continues McKelvey, “is that we’re always a mix of the very small, the entrepreneur, the startup, and the larger enterprise companies that join us. We’re always trying to figure out how are we bridging between the two to make sure what we’re offering is mutually beneficial. You have a company like Microsoft which moves in with 400 members, that has an impact on the community and you want to figure out how to cultivate that relationship.”

Christian Lee, MD of WeWork Asia, elaborates on it. “Different parts of town in different cities will have different components to it. Part of what our design and research team does is to understand in each area what is it that’s going to make a community vibrant and the people interactive. You have to look at it building by building and market by market as you expand.”

“I just met a guy having coffee outside, and he teaches the Vedas, trains people to meditate,” adds Jitendra Virwani. “He said he was the second guy to sign up here and he’s got a lot of customers within the building. So there’s a lot of different opportunities, but I think to your question of what science goes into it, it will take us a little more time as we go to different cities.”

WeWork in Bangalore. Photo credit: WeWork.

Philosophical moorings

WeWork India 2.0 with multiple, diverse locations may be some way off, but Karan Virwani already has his sights set on the next three Indian cities on the horizon – the emerging tech hubs of Chennai, Hyderabad, and Pune. The biggest challenge there, too, may be to keep the heterogeneity that creates opportunities for diverse perspectives and useful connections, because large enterprises have a higher capacity to pay and take up large numbers of seats.

See: Techstars launches first center in Asia. Founders explain what’s special about it.

Not surprisingly in this context, Christian Lee, who is now based in Shanghai, defines his main job as finding like-minded partners who can strike the right balance between money and mission, business and culture, revenue and impact.

If the price barrier is too high for a large swathe of Indian startups, for example, there are plenty of local rivals in the likes of BHive Workspace, 91Springboard, Awfis, and The Hive for them to gravitate towards. WeWork’s global presence may be unmatched but the more it tilts towards big enterprise clients, the harder it would get to keep up its entrepreneurial vibe, however cool its office decor, glass partitions, and aroma of roasted coffee may be.

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Singapore will work with universities to get more research to market

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Singapore Minister of Finance Heng Swee Keat opens Switch 2017

Singapore Minister of Finance Heng Swee Keat opens Switch 2017. Photo credit: Switch.

The Singapore government is determined to cultivate more entrepreneurial minds through its institutes of higher learning. During Switch 2017, Minister of Finance Heng Swee Keat announced two new initiatives for building the city-state’s “technopreneurial” talent.

First off, a nation-wide entrepreneurship training program called Lean LaunchPad will focus on helping research scientists and engineers learn about commercialization processes. The 10-week program is modeled after the US National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program, as well as US universities’ entrepreneurship programs.

Topics tackled include technology translation, development of proofs of concept, licensing, and starting a company.

The program is spearheaded by the National University of Singapore with offshoots into Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Management University, and the Singapore University of Technology and Design. It will be funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) with US$6 million over the next five years.

The aim is to train more than 1,000 participants and increase the number of technologies that go to market by more than 300 in five years. 22 teams have been selected for the program’s first run, which started in August.

“By pushing researchers to get out of the lab and talk to potential users and customers, they will better understand users’ needs and think from customers’ perspective,” says professor Wong Poh Kam, director of NUS Entreprise and lead for the Lean LaunchPad program.

Professor Wong had previously highlighted the need for effective translation of research to commercial applications during Innovfest Unbound in May, where he unveiled a study on the Singapore startup ecosystem by NUS Enterprise.

Cross-pollination

The second initiative is Pollinate, an incubator that targets startups and university teams from Singapore’s polytechnics. Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore Polytechnic, and Temasek Polytechnic will collaborate on Pollinate to build up growth-stage startups with ideas ready for commercialization.

The NRF will fund Pollinate with US$750,000 over the next three years. At the moment, there are 14 startups in Pollinate, with plans to grow to 30 in that time.

Pollinate will offer these startups access to the polytechnics’ students, alumni, and faculty, and help connect them to local and overseas industry partners. It will also get them to collaborate with small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) to address problems and encourage innovation in the SME sector.

Converted from Singapore dollars. US$1 = S$1.34

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You can score a $1m seed round even in Sri Lanka. These founders show how.

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ODoc founders Heshan Fernando, Sohan Dharmaraja, Dr. Janaka Wickremesinghe, and Inshard Naizer. Photo credit: oDoc.

The island nation south of India with its gorgeous beaches, rainforests, and ancient Buddhist ruins just saw one of its startups – medtech app oDoc – score US$1 million seed funding.

This is the largest seed investment round for any startup in Sri Lanka.

The country’s startup ecosystem is still very young with over 50 percent of its entrepreneurs using their personal savings to fund their companies. The seed funding round for oDoc comes at an opportune time as the island’s mass market is embracing tech through new ride-hailing options.

ODoc isn’t going after the mass market though – at least not yet. The app connects patients with doctors for video consultation. Say you wake up in the morning with a nasty rash and fever. Three taps on your smartphone and you can submit your pre-consultation notes, take a picture of your rash, and get a doctor to review those. A doctor will call you and send his prescription with the doctor’s seal and signature right to your phone. All done in 10 minutes.

Many startups around the world have been at it but oDoc’s four founders – with their diverse backgrounds – approached it more from a design perspective than as a tech problem to solve.

“The reason nobody has really cracked it is because they looked at it as a medical problem. They were building it as an Uber for doctors of sorts. But it is really about changing behavior. So it is more of a design problem. It needed a fresh set of eyes,” the founders tell Tech in Asia.

Stalking investors

The credentials of the founders plays a key role in instilling investor confidence, especially in the early stage of a startup when the product usage is yet to take off. That’s true for oDoc as well.

Before turning entrepreneur, oDoc CEO Heshan Fernando was the youngest assistant vice president of Sri Lanka’s largest listed company John Keells Holdings. He holds four majors – in mathematics, statistics, economics, and operations research – from the University of Warwick.

ODoc’s tech head Sohan Dharmaraja – with a PhD in computational applied mathematics from Stanford and masters from MIT – was an algorithmic trader with Goldman Sachs. He had built a braille keyboard app for the blind when was in the US.

Dharmaraja came back to Sri Lanka after his PhD. He tells Tech in Asia that he didn’t want to be just another expat critiquing his home country from afar instead of trying to push change himself.

Back home in Lanka, he started marketing tech startup SocialRoo with data analytics before moving to a consulting business. But he found it tough to convince companies in Sri Lanka what data analytics could do for their business.

Dharmaraja finally found his metier in oDoc, which has two more co-founders: Inshard Naizer, Fernando’s former colleague from John Keells, and Dr. Janaka Wickremesinghe, a general physician who holds three patents. Dr. Wickremesinghe is also the founder of Sri Lanka’s first online medical education platform CorpusMedici – which a third of all doctors in the island nation subscribe to, according to Fernando.

The investors who pumped in the US$1 million are Ajit Gunewardene, deputy chairman of John Keells; Phoenix Ventures, the investment arm of Sri Lankan apparel exporter Brandix; and Loits, the IT arm of conglomerate Lolc.

The oDoc team started the fundraising efforts early this year.

Gunewardene has known Fernando for nine years now, and he was also one of their mentors. “Even with him we walked a very fine line between being persistent and getting a restraining order,” Fernando jokes. “We assumed it would take us three months, but kept a six-month timeline. It ended up taking nine months,” he tells me.

Gunewardene’s endorsement piqued the interest of the other two investors, and finally, the team clinched the deal last week. The money has hit oDoc’s bank account and the team is going to hire more hands and start marketing their product now.

See: 6 years after a bloody civil war, Sri Lanka bets on startups, attracts investors

Photo credit: oDoc.

AI to help doctors diagnose better

The founders spent 12 months designing and building oDoc, which they describe as a “360 degree solution” – providing pre-consultation notes, video calls, and the prescription sent to your smartphone.

They began by building an electronic medical record system that would allow a doctor to document a consultation digitally. “We believe that there is a lot of power and insights that can be gathered from the consultation data which will be passing through our system. We want to collect, store, and analyse that data to provide insights to the doctors, and eventually move into a point where some of the consultation can be automated using AI,” Dharmaraja says.

Tap a button and you can consult a doctor anonymously too but then you won’t get a prescription.

For example, the AI could assist the doctor in diagnosis by reading the patient’s complaints or if the doctor is prescribing a medicine, the system can suggest the right dosage automatically.

“There were nuances in this space that had to be built into the product. Trust between the doctor and the patient, for example. You don’t need to be convinced of the skills of a driver when you are trying to book a cab. But patients will always have a concern about how good a doctor is. We built the app taking such nuances into consideration,” Dharmaraja says.

Patients will be charged a consultation fee, of which oDoc will get a percentage. The startup is mulling a subscription model as well, Fernando adds.

The oDoc app is available in three languages – English, Sinhalese, and Tamil. Its immediate goal is to get product-market fit. In the next five months, they’re aiming for 1,000 successful consultations – where doctor and patient are happy with the experience.

But there are inherent challenges. For instance, although a little over one-third of Sri Lanka’s 20 million people have smartphones, only around four million use the internet. There is 3G coverage in 75 percent of the country, and the big cities have 4G as well.

To begin with, oDoc requires a mindset shift in the users who have to get familiar with the idea of video consultation as an effective form of medical care delivery. “People have doubts like “Is this prescription really valid? Can I go to a pharmacy and show this to them?” Legally, there is nothing wrong with it but not many people know that,” Fernando says.

See: Sri Lanka isn’t synonymous with world class tech. But that might be about to change.

sri lanka

Colombo, Sri Lanka. Photo credit: Andrew Fysh.

Can convenience beat fear?

Telemedicine has been breaking down geographical barriers and bringing access to medical care to remote parts of the world. For years, radiologists in India have been consulting with hospitals in Africa using digital technology. But when it comes to conditions that need immediate attention, even if they are minor, video consultation has not caught on in India or Southeast Asia yet.

To begin with, oDoc requires a mindset shift in the users.

The convenience factor could do the trick though. For example, an app like oDoc could reduce leg work for chronic patients who go to a doctor every month to show a blood report. They could just click a picture of the report and talk to the doctor about it from anywhere.

For patients with mental or sexual health problems, who are hesitant to go to a hospital due to fear of stigma, consulting a doctor anonymously on oDoc is an option. “Tap a button and you can do it on an anonymous mode too but then you won’t get a prescription. The system will not collect or store any of your details either,” Dharmaraja explains.

Currently, the doctor-patient ratio in Sri lanka is 1:1000 – quite similar to India. ODoc has roped in 25 doctors in Colombo, Kandy, and other main cities of the country.

“For a product like oDoc, the easiest way to get more users is when they are at a doctor’s clinic or at a pharmacy. We could get doctors to tell their patients to do the follow-up consultation over oDoc – as a tool of convenience as well as to save their time,” says co-founder Inshard Naizer, who is also oDoc’s chief growth officer.

They are initially going after patients in Colombo. “Then to all other cities of the country, and then other Commonwealth countries. Bangladesh and Maldives, for example, where geography is a barrier and medical care could be improved,” Naizer says.

The nascent Sri Lankan startup ecosystem would get a boost if startups like oDoc gain traction and catch the attention of investors from abroad. The Lankan government’s Information and Communication Technology Agency has been holding an annual Disrupt Asia conference since last year to showcase what the island nation has to offer in tech innovation. But, as the saying goes, nothing succeeds like success on the ground.

This post You can score a $1m seed round even in Sri Lanka. These founders show how. appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Japanese VC firm Global Brain to start investing in ICOs

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Image credit Tiger Pixel.

Global Brain, one of Japan’s largest venture capital firms, is doubling down on the blockchain industry with a new entity that will conduct research and participate in ‘initial coin offerings’ or ICOs – a type of blockchain-based crowdfunding that was recently banned in China.

The new subsidiary, dubbed Global Brain Blockchain Labs Corporation (GBBL), will complement the Japanese VC fund’s investment activity in the blockchain space, which includes backing Singapore-based Bluzelle and Filipino remittance and payments startup Coins.ph.

“With the recent movement of initial coin offerings, Global Brain looks to support blockchain startups from equity finance to ICO in order to pursue and create a hybrid financing structure for the startup’s growth,” said the company in a statement.

This year alone, startups worldwide have been able to raise more than US$1 billion through ICOs, according to industry publication CoinDesk. It’s a fast way to raise capital – millions of dollars have been raised within minutes – without giving away any equity. By offering startups both options, the Japanese venture capital firm may be able to offer blockchain startups the best of both worlds.

See: Everything you wanted to know about initial coin offerings but were afraid to ask

Equity-based financing of blockchain startups will continue through Global Brain’s main fund, which has US$500 million worth of assets under management. Donations, sponsorships, and participating in token crowdsales, however, will be carried out separately through GBBL. Those funds will come from Global Brain’s own proprietary capital.

According to Takashi Sano, venture partner of Global Brain, the Japanese VC fund will invest up to US$5 million in blockchain startups per round. The new subsidiary does not have a specific amount allocated for token crowdsales – funding will be decided on a project-by-project basis.

Besides financing, GBBL also plans to conduct studies on blockchain-related topics, such as the structure of ICOs, and help startups connect to relevant corporate and government partners. The aim will be accelerating the creation and deployment of real-world blockchain applications.

Several blockchain startup founders will sit on GBBL’s advisory board, including Kai Cheng Chng from Singaporean digital gold startup Digix, Jun Hasegawa, CEO and founder of OmiseGO, and Ron Hose, CEO and founder of Coins.ph.

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Remember that sex doll sharing startup? It just got shut down

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Chinese startup tests out sex doll sharing

Photo credit: Leiphone.

Just days after a Chinese startup launched a “girlfriend sharing” service involving sex dolls, the app has been shut down by authorities.

The dolls were available though an app for rent on a daily basis for US$45. It offered five varieties: “Greek bikini model,” “US Wonder Woman,” “Korean housewife,” “Russian teenager,” and “Hong Kong race car cheerleader.”

“We are sorry to announce that Ta Qu will suspend the operation of its ‘girlfriend sharing’ service,” said the startup in a notice posted to its Weibo, as spotted by South China Morning Post. “Soon after [it] launched, it triggered intensive attention and heated discussion online [and] we were informed by relevant authorities to cooperate voluntarily with all the investigations and accept the punishment.” The app’s store for sex toys – purchased, not rented – remains unaffected.

Chinese startup tests out sex doll sharing

Photo credit: Leiphone.

The raunchy rental service was inspired by a wave of “sharing” startups in China, including bicycles and umbrellas.

It’s unclear what charges are faced by the entrepreneurs, who were last week spotted promoting their sex doll rentals at a Beijing park, replete with a stage that featured the tagline “girlfriend sharing.”

All deposits will be returned.

Chinese startup tests out sex doll sharing

Photo credit: Leiphone.

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PropertyGuru is taking 99.co to court over copyright infringement and more

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Image credit: Wikimedia.

PropertyGuru, Singapore’s largest property classifieds portal in terms of traffic, is suing rival startup 99.co over reproducing content from its website, according to court documents obtained by Tech in Asia.

The next hearing will be held on September 20 in the Singapore Supreme Court.

“In April 2016, we filed a writ of summons against 99.co. The case has been heard in the court since then,” says a PropertyGuru spokesperson. A writ of summons is a court document for starting civil legal proceedings in Singapore.

PropertyGuru claims there are three causes of action:

  1. 99.co breached a settlement agreement that both parties entered into on September 2015.
  2. 99.co induced property agents on PropertyGuru to breach its terms of use.
  3. 99.co violated PropertyGuru’s copyright by reproducing photos with the latter’s watermark.

At the center of these three claims is Xpressor, a third-party app which property agents have been using to cross-post property listings from PropertyGuru to 99.co.

99.co is contesting all three accusations, and counterclaiming that PropertyGuru is making groundless threats.

In its defense, 99.co argues that:

  1. End users (the property agents) were the ones who reproduced the content that allegedly belongs to PropertyGuru.
  2. It was unaware of PropertyGuru’s terms of use for property agents, and therefore lacked the knowledge and intention to induce PropertyGuru’s users to violate its policies.
  3. Property agents are merely exercising their own copyright by cross-posting content from PropertyGuru to 99.co using a third-party software.

The case follows intensifying competition between the two for Singapore’s property market.

Earlier in September, over 1,000 property agents banded together to protest PropertyGuru’s price hikes on new packages, which allow agents to advertise their properties on the website. They’ve formed a group called Agents United, and one of its goals is to list more properties on 99.co.

PropertyGuru has over 15,000 agents subscribing to its packages. 99.co has about 12,000.

Traffic for PropertyGuru’s Singapore site was at 1.9 million visits in August, estimates SimilarWeb. That’s down from a high of 2.15 million in April 2017.

However, that’s about four times more traffic than 99.co, which hit 450,000 monthly visits.

PropertyGuru tells Tech in Asia that the SimilarWeb numbers do not factor traffic on its mobile app and CommercialGuru, its commercial property site. She adds that “consumer visits” in August 2017 was up 28 percent over August 2016.

(Update on 11:50pm Singapore Time: Added more details about the court case.)

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Salesforce integrated Slack. Now Freshworks has an answer: Freshchat.

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Photo credit: Pixabay.

Cloud-based business software provider Freshworks, whose best known products are Freshdesk and Freshsales, today launched a new product: Freshchat. It aims to help businesses engage better with customers, capture more leads, and drive sales.

“Businesses today want to provide their consumers with contextual and personalized chat experiences,” says Freshworks CEO and founder Girish Mathrubootham.

He believes messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have created new expectations on user experience and the live chat products in business software are lagging. “Sales and support agents need to be empowered with a single platform that provides the flexibility to engage with prospects and customers who are always multi-tasking.”

Sales and support agents need to be empowered with a single platform that provides the flexibility to engage with prospects and customers who are always multi-tasking.

A Gartner survey shows digital marketing spend has been rising, but conversion of visitors into customers remains poor at 2 to 3 percent, points out Freshworks in a statement on the launch of Freshchat. To improve conversion, Freshchat uses an intelligent bot to screen leads and provide context to sales reps.

There are standalone products applying artificial intelligence to sales leads, such as Lucep. In the case of Freshchat, it works in sync with Freshdesk and Freshsales to be a part of the workflow.

See: Meet the artificially intelligent sales gorilla that closes deals faster

Freshworks has been building up its messaging tech with acquisitions over a period of time. Its very first acquisition two years ago was Bangalore-based 1Click, whose software enabled live video chat and co-browsing in Freshdesk. The acquisition of Frilp followed soon afterwards: this provided natural language processing for crowdsourcing of customer support.

Its third acquisition the same year was chat app Konotor. Then, last year it acquired Framebench, whose cloud-based software allowed teams to share comments and feedback on videos, images, and presentations. Freshworks is leveraging the tech and talent from all these acquisitions to build its full-blown messaging product.

See: Q&A: SaaS superstar Girish Mathrubootham on ambitions, fears, and secret strategies

Freshchat has features to route and manage conversations, to avoid timed-out sessions and missed chats. It can also be integrated into websites, apps, and other messaging products.

Last year, Salesforce – the big gorilla that Freshsales has challenged – integrated the enterprise chat app Slack into its product. With Freshchat, the Indian SaaS rival refuses to be left behind.

This post Salesforce integrated Slack. Now Freshworks has an answer: Freshchat. appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Opinion: iPhone X will sell like hotcakes in China

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Apple’s newest and most expensive iPhone, the iPhone X, isn’t even available for pre-order yet. But I’m going to make a not-so-bold prediction: the iPhone X is going to do very well in China.

Apple has been having a rough go of things in the Middle Kingdom in recent years. The once-king has long since been knocked from its perch as smartphone sales leader, and iPhone revenues have been dropping from model to model since the iPhone 6.

To be clear: Apple probably isn’t ever going to become the top smartphone seller by units sold again. China’s growing consumer class has increasingly expensive taste in phones, but it almost certainly doesn’t extend as high as the nearly-US$1,300 iPhone X (import duties make it more expensive in China than almost anywhere else), and the moderate updates in the iPhone 8 seem unlikely to excite anyone. That doesn’t matter, though, because the iPhone X is going to help Apple regain a different crown: the status-symbol phone.

When the first few models of the iPhone released in China, Chinese consumers were impressed by the both the product and the price. Most people couldn’t afford one, and that fact helped propel the rise of domestic players like Xiaomi who offered similar performance for much, much less money. But among those who could afford it, the iPhones were a kind of status symbol. They were a sign of success, but a reasonably affordable one.

China’s upper class and its growing upper-middle class had developed a taste for Western luxury brands, and in those early days Apple was one of them. Whipping one out in public was a great way to earn some envious stares. Giving them to a girlfriend was like giving her a diamond, but better – it proved that you were spendy and tech-savvy. They were also excellent for bribes.

I think we’re going to hear a happy Tim Cook in Apple’s next post-holiday earnings call

As the years went by, however, the iPhone lost some of its luster. Part of the problem was that as China’s economy grew, more and more people could afford iPhones. If half the people in your business meeting whip out iPhones, your iPhone isn’t impressing anybody. Part of the problem was also that the iPhone’s external design stopped changing. In the early days, anyone could see the difference between an iPhone 3G and an iPhone 4. But the iPhones 6, 6s, and 7 all look pretty similar, which makes them less appealing as a luxury item. What’s the point of buying a status symbol if everyone’s just going to think it’s a phone from three years ago?

It shouldn’t be difficult to see how – for a particular demographic – the iPhone X addresses all of these problems. Thanks to the bezel-less screen it’s the most unique-looking iPhone model in years. And the sky-high price pushes it firmly back into the realm of luxury for most of the population. In fact, unlike the iPhone 8, the iPhone X costs more than the average Chinese worker makes in a month even in the top-paying city (Beijing). Whip an iPhone X out on the street this November and heads are going to turn in a way that they haven’t for iPhones for years.

I want to emphasize that I’m not suggesting Chinese people are all vain idiots who’ll just buy the highest-priced phone. But China, like every country, certainly has plenty of vain people, and the iPhone X also looks like it’s going to be a great phone. It’s not just a status symbol, but the fact that it can serve as one again is going to pull back a demographic that Apple had been losing (or at least losing the interest of).

For example: I think Apple China’s going to sell more iPhone Xs as gifts this holiday season than it has in years. Nothing says “I want the best for you…and I can afford it!” quite like a US$1,300 phone. It’s going to be an impressive gift in a way that previous models of the phone simply haven’t been, and that’s going to help Apple’s revenue numbers.

Of course, the fact that Apple will get a few hundred dollars extra in the revenue column for every iPhone X sold doesn’t hurt either.

I’m not nearly as confident in the success of the iPhone 8, which seems a bit like the worst of both worlds – not as affordable as an earlier iPhone model, not as cool as an iPhone X. But even if it bombs, I think we’re going to hear a happy Tim Cook when China comes up in Apple’s next post-holiday earnings call.

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6 rising startups in Japan

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We’re back with the Japanese startup funding roundup. Initial Coin Offerings are all the rage at the moment and Japan is no exception. Check out the companies which raised coins and cash below.

ALIS

Alis is a social media platform which provides content to users directly without advertising.

Alis rewards quality content providers and sharers with tokens called ALIS. The project was inspired by Steem and aims to bring a similar platform to the Japanese market. Instead of making revenue through advertising or stealth-marketing, the platform simply lets users give tokens to content creators and raises the value of the tokens through this exchange.

Alis raised over US$3.5 million in Japan’s first social media ICO.

Collet by Crevo

Crevo’s Collet is a crowdsourcing platform for finding talent for video projects.

The service includes a job board where you can browse video professionals and their portfolios. Upon selecting a team for a video project, the service offers a suite of tools for communication, sharing resources, and plotting progress. Through the use of artificial intelligence and cloud-based storage, Collet brings the necessities of video production and team coordination online.

Crevo received roughly US$2.8 million in funding last week.

Monomy by Fun Up

Monomy is an online marketplace app for fashion accessories by Fun Up.

The app is like a highly specialized version of Etsy. The company partners with factories, craftsmen, and other producers to create fashion accessories and jewelry. Users can browse producers and products, as well as make special requests of creators through the app.

The startup received an investment of just under US$1.1 million, reports TechCrunch.

Saleshub

Saleshub is an online business referral service.

Companies that want private spokespeople or brand ambassadors can match with individuals that suit their needs via the site. People who sign up to refer their friends or acquaintances to a service can then receive compensation from the company. The platform has 340 participating companies and 1,000 registered users two months after launch.

The startup raised over US$800,000 in funds last week from Incubate Fund, reports The Bridge.

Learnie

Learnie is an online English education service for elementary school students.

The startup focuses on teaching students English through online group coursework and conversation. Whereas most English education courses focus on conversation with a native English speaker, Learnie focuses on group conversation with bilingual Japanese and English speakers as instructors. The goal is to make a lower stress and more enjoyable experience for children.

The startup announced raising US$480,000 in funds last week.

Summon by Moso Mafia

Summon is an app for finding freelance beauticians by Moso Mafia.

The app lets beauty professionals such as hair stylists, manicurists, or personal trainers register online as freelancers. Users of the app can then browse freelancers to hire them. Although the app focuses on the beauty industry, the services listed on the app range from flower arrangement classes to live music performances.

Moso Mafia announced an investment total of just under US$315,000 last week. The funds were raised over crowdfunding site Fundinno.

Get a closer look at #tiatokyo2017

Editor’s Note: These startups are featured because they have acquired funding, and are not necessarily attending Tech in Asia Tokyo 2017.

We are starting our one week countdown to Tech in Asia Tokyo 2017. Come check out the latest trends in Asia by visiting 150 startups exhibiting at bootstrap alley. This year once again features some of the biggest names in tech from Japan and abroad. Listen to talks by two of Japan’s top 10 funded companies Freee and Raksul, as well as learn about the state of SaaS from Matt Garratt, Vice President of the world’s most famous SaaS investor Salesforce Ventures.

See the full speaker list and get tickets below:

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Video: Robot fridge brings us closer to laziness nirvana

Singapore-founded cryptocurrency startup Luno raises $9m series B

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Photo credit: Luno.

Cryptocurrency startup Luno – previously known as BitX – has landed US$9 million in series B funding, it announced today. London-based Balderton Capital led the the round, with Alphacode – the fintech-focused arm of South Africa’s Rand Merchant Investment Holdings – and Digital Currency Group (DCG) also participating.

The company also announced its expansion into 35 European countries, meaning that its services are now available in a total of 40 markets worldwide.

Luno said in a statement that the funding will be used for product development, including the introduction of a number of new features. The money will also go towards new hires, with a company blog post indicating it will “at the very least be doubling our existing team of 70” to bring in additional engineering, business development, product development, compliance, and customer support talent.

Tech in Asia has reached out to Luno for additional comment.

Luno – founded and registered in Singapore, but now headquartered in London with satellite offices in the city-state and Cape Town – offers an ewallet for storing, converting, and transacting bitcoin. It also facilitates purchase and sale of bitcoin and provides an exchange for trading digital currencies, as well as enterprise services including merchant integration and open APIs for developers.

Luno Wallet and Luno’s bitcoin buying and selling features will be available in Europe, though its exchange service will not.

Today’s series B injection follows an undisclosed investment from Singapore’s Venturra Capital in December 2015, and a series A round six months earlier, which saw South African media company Naspers lead a US$4 million investment also joined by DCG. Luno had previously raised US$800,000 from backers including Ariadne Capital and Bitcoin Opportunity Corp.

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Tech billionaires launch internship program to incubate Singapore’s finest in China

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Copyright: <a href='https://www.123rf.com/profile_iakov'>iakov / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

Lujiazui district, Shanghai. Photo credit: iakov / 123RF Stock Photo.

Yesterday saw the official launch of the Singapore Valley Awards – a new internship scheme that will give Singaporean undergrads the opportunity to gain work experience in some of China’s top tech companies.

The Awards are being facilitated by local investment firm Tembusu Partners, with US$2.5 million funding coming from Chinese tech billionaires including 2345.com founder Pang Shengdong, Shanghai Kingnet Technology founder and CEO Wang Yue, and Alibaba co-founders James Sheng and Eddie Wu. Singaporean entrepreneur Calvin Cheng, chairman of Retech Technology, also provided funding for the Awards.

“We hope that by sponsoring Singapore students for internships at Alibaba, Tencent, and the top VCs like Matrix Partners, Singapore students can get inspired and come back to Singapore and create their own successful start-ups,” Cheng wrote in a Facebook post. “We also believe that we should look more to China for tech innovation – some of the biggest and best tech companies are now Chinese.”

GGV Capital, Matrix Partners China, and travel booking site Qunar are also supporting the initiative.

Undergraduates who are Singaporean citizens or permanent residents, and are in their third or fourth year of full-time study at one of Singapore’s six publicly funded universities, are eligible to apply for the Awards. Those that are shortlisted then have to pitch business ideas to a judges’ panel made up of 10 prominent members of Singapore’s and China’s tech and investment communities.

In addition to the five investors named above, Qunar founder Zhuang Chenchao, Insignia Ventures Partners CEO and former Sequoia partner Tan Yinglan, Tembusu chairman Andy Lim, Matrix managing partner David Su, and GGV managing partner Jenny Lee will be on the panel.

Up to nine students that manage to impress the judges will win three-month internships in China starting next year. They’ll also get a grant of about US$1,500 per month each over the course of their internship.

The scheme’s first application period ends on October 16. Interested undergrads can apply here.

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

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Trump administration eases throttle on visas for techies

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President Trump. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced resumption of “premium processing” of non-immigrant H1-B visas that large tech companies use to move workers temporarily to the US to work on projects. For a premium fee, these visas get processed fast.

The Trump administration had clamped down on this six months ago to look into alleged misuse of the visas to bring in workers on rotation instead of hiring Americans. Tech workers from India, for example, cost less than their counterparts in the US. Apart from US tech giants, Indian IT services companies are the biggest users of these visas, which also give them a lot of flexibility in deploying talent according to ongoing projects.

See: Asian cities suck for programmers in terms of real earnings: study

Initially, new visa applications too were halted. This resumed in April, but without the premium processing option. This meant long delays and uncertainty over the availability of tech talent from abroad, forcing companies to choose between hiring more American workers at higher costs or moving more work to offshore centers. Indian IT giants like Infosys, TCS, and Wipro as well as US tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon lobbied against the throttling, criticizing its impact on their businesses.

Now it appears to be back to business as usual with fast processing of H1-B visas. But the number of visas is still capped at 65,000 for the financial year 2017-18, which is much lower than the 195,000 limit in the early years of this millennium. In addition to the 65,000, there are 20,000 H1-B visas earmarked for those who have a master’s degree or higher qualification from an American university.

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E-bike startup Gogoro raises $300m to expand its smart energy network

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Gogoro scooter battery swap

Battery swapping at a Gogoro GoStation. Photo credit: Gogoro.

Taiwanese company Gogoro is known for its “smart scooter,” an electric bike that stands out from the competition with its stylish look and geeky heart.

But the firm, founded in 2011 by HTC veterans Horace Luke and Matt Taylor, is thinking bigger than that. The team’s vision involves energy solutions that could end up powering a lot more than just their scooter. It hinted at this from the start: When the company launched, its product was only described as “a device around energy management.”

Gogoro created a network of charging stations called GoStations to support the bike’s energy needs. There, you can swap your vehicle’s spent batteries with fresh ones. The accompanying app shows you the closest battery station and allows you to book fresh batteries in advance. The service, which includes support and road assistance, is offered through a subscription fee.

At the moment, it has over 400 such stations in Taiwan, with more than 34,000 vehicles sold in the country. But in the future, the charging station model could be used to power other types of vehicles and even serve other energy-related purposes.

“Vehicle makers see how many stations we have and how we can swap batteries anywhere,” Luke, Gogoro’s CEO, tells Tech in Asia. “Other potential industries include logistics and warehousing, or industrial applications.”

Fully charged

Gogoro announced today it’s raised US$300 million for its series C round. Investors include London-headquartered Generation Investment Management, which is chaired by former US vice president Al Gore and invests long-term in sustainability, clean energy, and mobility projects.

Gogoro wants to boost its station network so it can better predict demand spikes.

Also joining in are Singaporean state fund Temasek, Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation, and French electric utility company Engie. Existing investors also participated, including founding investor Dr. Samuel Yin, Panasonic, and more.

Gogoro gains from its new investors’ local and regional connections which include strategic benefits for expansion. While it’s not making any announcements in terms of new markets, it’s definitely looking at several regions with interest, including scooter-happy Southeast Asia.

The funding will also go into technology development and hiring. Gogoro wants to boost its station network so it can better predict demand spikes and know when it needs to get more batteries charged. This way, it doesn’t waste energy charging batteries that aren’t going to be used.

“It’s not as simple as putting a battery [in the station] and charging it,” Luke says. The company plans to work on machine learning and big data applications to let the network make such decisions on its own.

Gogoro co-founder and CEO, Horace Luke

Gogoro co-founder and CEO, Horace Luke. Photo credit: Gogoro.

Betting on electricity

Trying to expand in more markets, Gogoro has remained flexible. While it’s managed to get good traction and coverage with its GoStations in Taiwan, it’s not easy to replicate that model elsewhere.

A partnership with Bosch that kicked off last year allowed it to bring its scooters to Berlin and, more recently, to Paris, but based on a bike-sharing model. Using an app called Coup, people can pick up the scooter closest to them and ride it to their destination.

In the future, Gogoro’s charging station model could serve other energy-related purposes.

The company doesn’t use docking or charging stations in this scenario. Instead, it sends its team out to change the batteries of scooters that are running low, while at the same time hiding those scooters from the app.

In late 2015, Gogoro decided to bring its scooters and network of charging stations to Amsterdam. Immediately after the announcement, however, it was approached by Bosch with the bike-sharing proposal, so the Amsterdam plans were delayed.

Gogoro has 1,600 bikes in Berlin and Paris at the moment. Luke says the sharing model could be the way into other territories like Southeast Asia, but the company is still exploring options.

Coming from HTC, where he served as chief innovation officer, Luke saw first-hand one of the challenges of building hardware products – customer stickiness. Once someone buys your phone, for example, that’s it from that customer for maybe a couple of years or more.

See: Gogoro is a geeky electric scooter with the soul of a motorbike

The way Gogoro works in Taiwan – selling the bike with a subscription for the batteries on top – ensures an ecosystem of customers who come back again and again. With a scooter’s average age in the seven-to-10-year range, the subscription revenue gives the company a lot of room for growth and evolution. Luke declines to talk about Gogoro’s revenue in more detail.

He also believes the timing is right, with several countries including India and China pledging to reduce fossil-based fuel consumption. The opportunity is not lost on competitors either, with manufacturers like BMW and Vespa building their own electric bikes – although without getting into swappable battery tech like Gogoro.

Other companies working on batteries for vehicles, except Tesla of course, include Austrian startup Kreisel Electric.

The new investment brings Gogoro’s total funding to over US$480 million. The company had previously raised US$130 million from investors including Panasonic, which works with Gogoro on the scooter’s batteries, and the National Development Fund of Taiwan.

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