March seems to be starting on a higher note with several startups raising late stage funds in th range of US $1 billion and more. This includes Grab, Go Jek, NYSE listed Sea Group in the recent follow on share offer and the Alibaba backed, Chinese influencer power blogger marketing platform, Rhunn.
Government initiatives are picking up steam especially in Southeast Asia for coaching services, co-working spaces, tax exemption, seed fundings and other resources but requires program owners to improve execution, assesment criterias and reach for better outcomes.
Here are some key highlights to note this week;
5G Opportunities for Operators and Startups
The recent MWC 2019 in Barcelona, Spain may have been a routine yearly event, but visitors certainly caught a glimpse of a very different future for communication sector in the coming years. Change in business model, operation, partner eco-system, new customer and service segments is imminent. Operators will need to move upwards of the infrastructure, basic voice and data services for revenue and quicker ROI or risk running into massive losses at the point of the next network upgrade.
Various participants including KT, China Mobile, startup communities and others demonstrated usecases on Smartcities, Smartfactories, 5G Cloud, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality connectivity, autonomous vehicles and many more, that is pointing to enterprises as the key segment to monetise 5G investments.
Traditional partners such as Samsung and LG are adding new IoT services to offerings, apart from a range of mobile and connected devices. For instance the grocery replenishment service with Samsung refrigerator.
Telco operators in Korea, Japan and China are certainly leading the race when it comes to implementing 5G use cases and without a doubt will be in the forefront of innovations, in this space.
AirAsia launches Redbeat Capital in collaboration with 500 Startups
In our last weekly summary we covered how DBS was looking to invest in startups that can help distribute the banks products further into new territories. It seems that trend is here to stay with more conglomerates taking the same approach to unlock new markets and innovation.
This week AirAsia announces the launch of Redbeat Capital in collaboration with 500 Satrtups. The US$60 million fund will be used to provide post seed funding for global startups making way into Southeast Asia in travel, lifestyle, logistics and fintech segments.
Huawei Cloud Region Opens in Singapore
Huawei adds a new cloud region in Singapore aside from China, Europe, Latin America, Hong Kong, Russia, Thailand and South Africa. Huawei Cloud now has 40 availability zones in 23 geographic regions. Offerings will include various platform services for artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Currently the company is actively hiring the regional team and is aware of the market's highly competitive landscape with several key cloud vendors already delivering values, where customers are rapidly adopting cloud for better IT efficiencies, investment flexibilities, consistent performance, geographic expansion and faster time to market.
In the past, Huawei depended on its portfolio of foreign based Chinese customers to penetrate into new markets, but we should anticipate some new field tactics beyond price cuts and equivalent services for businesses this time. A shift of sales focus on nailing at least sixty percent of revenue share from services that run above the basic compute, storage and networking infrastructure services is almost mandatory to differentiate from the rest of the pack.
Meituan-Dianping and Chope
Restaurant booking sites and apps in the region has certainly changed how restaurants perceive customer experience for better or worst.
On peak days, customers are rushed to cater next booking, cancellation fees for no show, constant interruption from servers to top up drinks and other add ons to keep the table, have just made it more of a hassle for diners lately.
However, this deal with Meituan-Dianping should particularly benefit Chope to increase utility of their app and tap into the chinese tourist market at the same time. But will these reservation and restaurant referral sites in anyway add value to diners experiences? Can they help restaurants create unique experiences with the data they are collecting?
Horizon Robotics Raises US$600 Million
The trade war is now opening up opportunities for AI chip makers from China including Huawei and Alibaba to accelerate release of products within this year.
Horizon Robotics is one of the highest valued unicorn in China currently, apart from Cambricon for developing AI chips. The company recently raised another US$600 million in funds to push through development, final designs and outsourcing of manufacturing processes.
With several Chinese AI chip makers planning to outsource manufacturing process and rush to release second generation chips by mid 2019, this could prove to be a prospeporous year for Taiwan based TSMC with a full factory load.
Some Cheers for Startup Communities in India
Finally some cheer from our startup entrepreneur communities in India as the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) in India announces changes in the definition of startups (turnover not exceeding Rs 100 crore) and set the confusion over 'angle tax' to rest.
Fintechs Refining Playing Field
Lastly fintechs everywhere in the region are refining market strategies to bridge cashless payment, cryptocurrencies, lending, mobile wallets, e-wallets, and other financial services for both consumers and businesses through new alliances, effective sales programs and much polished product releases.
Aside from startups, fintechs are increasingly seen as a lucrative attached revenue source for mobile operators, ecommerce platforms, conventional financial institutions and travel related sectors that has access to a broad audience of B2C and B2B buyers.
Some noteworthy highlights of fintech activities this week are as follows;
Some common trends persist and still an untapped B2B segment....
Overall the startup scene is still evolving around ecommerce, ride-hailing, logistics, travel, gaming, payment and other B2C segments where a majority of funding deals are channeled by investors at the moment. As a result, we continue to observe several common repeating themes from previous weeks as follows;
Nevertheless, this is an ideal period for startups in the region to reboot the drawing board in the B2B segments, leveraging the approaching 5G connectivity in IoT, augmented reality, virtual reality and smart factory arenas for new innovations.
Telco operators in Southeast Asia are generally less prepared to monetise 5G services and may be more willing to pour investments in a startup ecosystem that fills the service gap in a shorter span of time.
In addition, many of these telcos are positioned poorly for an internal transformation in terms of adding skills, reorganising business structures and constructing business capabilities for 5G use cases due to outdated business policies, practise of privilege systems and lack of diversity in workforce.
Government initiatives are picking up steam especially in Southeast Asia for coaching services, co-working spaces, tax exemption, seed fundings and other resources but requires program owners to improve execution, assesment criterias and reach for better outcomes.
Here are some key highlights to note this week;
5G Opportunities for Operators and Startups
The recent MWC 2019 in Barcelona, Spain may have been a routine yearly event, but visitors certainly caught a glimpse of a very different future for communication sector in the coming years. Change in business model, operation, partner eco-system, new customer and service segments is imminent. Operators will need to move upwards of the infrastructure, basic voice and data services for revenue and quicker ROI or risk running into massive losses at the point of the next network upgrade.
 |
| Add caption |
Various participants including KT, China Mobile, startup communities and others demonstrated usecases on Smartcities, Smartfactories, 5G Cloud, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality connectivity, autonomous vehicles and many more, that is pointing to enterprises as the key segment to monetise 5G investments.
Traditional partners such as Samsung and LG are adding new IoT services to offerings, apart from a range of mobile and connected devices. For instance the grocery replenishment service with Samsung refrigerator.
Telco operators in Korea, Japan and China are certainly leading the race when it comes to implementing 5G use cases and without a doubt will be in the forefront of innovations, in this space.
AirAsia launches Redbeat Capital in collaboration with 500 Startups
In our last weekly summary we covered how DBS was looking to invest in startups that can help distribute the banks products further into new territories. It seems that trend is here to stay with more conglomerates taking the same approach to unlock new markets and innovation.
This week AirAsia announces the launch of Redbeat Capital in collaboration with 500 Satrtups. The US$60 million fund will be used to provide post seed funding for global startups making way into Southeast Asia in travel, lifestyle, logistics and fintech segments.
Huawei Cloud Region Opens in Singapore
Huawei adds a new cloud region in Singapore aside from China, Europe, Latin America, Hong Kong, Russia, Thailand and South Africa. Huawei Cloud now has 40 availability zones in 23 geographic regions. Offerings will include various platform services for artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Currently the company is actively hiring the regional team and is aware of the market's highly competitive landscape with several key cloud vendors already delivering values, where customers are rapidly adopting cloud for better IT efficiencies, investment flexibilities, consistent performance, geographic expansion and faster time to market.
In the past, Huawei depended on its portfolio of foreign based Chinese customers to penetrate into new markets, but we should anticipate some new field tactics beyond price cuts and equivalent services for businesses this time. A shift of sales focus on nailing at least sixty percent of revenue share from services that run above the basic compute, storage and networking infrastructure services is almost mandatory to differentiate from the rest of the pack.
Meituan-Dianping and Chope
Restaurant booking sites and apps in the region has certainly changed how restaurants perceive customer experience for better or worst.
On peak days, customers are rushed to cater next booking, cancellation fees for no show, constant interruption from servers to top up drinks and other add ons to keep the table, have just made it more of a hassle for diners lately.
However, this deal with Meituan-Dianping should particularly benefit Chope to increase utility of their app and tap into the chinese tourist market at the same time. But will these reservation and restaurant referral sites in anyway add value to diners experiences? Can they help restaurants create unique experiences with the data they are collecting?
Horizon Robotics Raises US$600 Million
The trade war is now opening up opportunities for AI chip makers from China including Huawei and Alibaba to accelerate release of products within this year.
Horizon Robotics is one of the highest valued unicorn in China currently, apart from Cambricon for developing AI chips. The company recently raised another US$600 million in funds to push through development, final designs and outsourcing of manufacturing processes.
With several Chinese AI chip makers planning to outsource manufacturing process and rush to release second generation chips by mid 2019, this could prove to be a prospeporous year for Taiwan based TSMC with a full factory load.
Some Cheers for Startup Communities in India
Finally some cheer from our startup entrepreneur communities in India as the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) in India announces changes in the definition of startups (turnover not exceeding Rs 100 crore) and set the confusion over 'angle tax' to rest.
Fintechs Refining Playing Field
Lastly fintechs everywhere in the region are refining market strategies to bridge cashless payment, cryptocurrencies, lending, mobile wallets, e-wallets, and other financial services for both consumers and businesses through new alliances, effective sales programs and much polished product releases.
Aside from startups, fintechs are increasingly seen as a lucrative attached revenue source for mobile operators, ecommerce platforms, conventional financial institutions and travel related sectors that has access to a broad audience of B2C and B2B buyers.
Some noteworthy highlights of fintech activities this week are as follows;
- Axiata and Singtel collaborating for cross border payment;
- Alipay having reached staggering 2 million users and 50,000 merchants in Hong Kong in just a year from launch;
- PayTM India introducing subscription programmes to increase utility;
- Razer launches beta services of Razer Pay digital wallet in Singapore;
- and Mobi Direct teaming up with Worldline for digital payment processing in Pakistan.
Some common trends persist and still an untapped B2B segment....
Overall the startup scene is still evolving around ecommerce, ride-hailing, logistics, travel, gaming, payment and other B2C segments where a majority of funding deals are channeled by investors at the moment. As a result, we continue to observe several common repeating themes from previous weeks as follows;
- Traditional sectors such as finance, telco and travel continue turning to startups eco-system to accelerate innovation, build new growth engines and discover business frontiers.
- Chinese corporate investors such as Alibaba, Tencent, Didi and Meituan-Dianping continue to supply capital to various Southeast Asian startups in ride-hailing, travel, e-commerce and other lucrative B2C segments.
- Cloud companies such as Facebook (with IMDA) and Alibaba are working in deeper collaboration with regional startup incubators to lure and accelerate startup success on their platforms.
Nevertheless, this is an ideal period for startups in the region to reboot the drawing board in the B2B segments, leveraging the approaching 5G connectivity in IoT, augmented reality, virtual reality and smart factory arenas for new innovations.
Telco operators in Southeast Asia are generally less prepared to monetise 5G services and may be more willing to pour investments in a startup ecosystem that fills the service gap in a shorter span of time.
In addition, many of these telcos are positioned poorly for an internal transformation in terms of adding skills, reorganising business structures and constructing business capabilities for 5G use cases due to outdated business policies, practise of privilege systems and lack of diversity in workforce.
