Asia Tech Review: April 29 2019

My former colleague and now Crunchbase editor Alex Wilhelm called the filing “amazing.”

“I have no idea what this company is worth, how big it will get, or what it’s current health is,” said Wilhelm, who has looked through filings on a near-daily basis for going on a decade.

His is the link you can read here – if you’re going to test the public markets in the US, test the media in the US first – but there are plenty of reports from Asia-centric reporters covering the company with more local context.

In case you never heard of it: Luckin is aiming to displace Starbucks in China using a strategy that puts significant emphasis on delivering orders placed through a mobile app. Starbucks is famous for its real estate play, Luckin is nearly entirely digital, at least in its customer touch points. Mostly it has collection stations where it makes and ships out orders, but there are some coffee shops.

Already, the Luckin factor forced Starbucks into a digital delivery deal with Alibaba – I wrote about that last year – and similar startups have already sprouted in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia’s Fore Coffee which has already raised $9.5M. It’ll be interesting to see how the listing fares.

Further reading: My TechCrunch colleague Rita Liao wrote about Luckin’s ‘money is no object’ strategy earlier this year link

Meanwhile, a Luckin clone – Coffee Box – just raised $30M link

I sound like a stuck record, but The Ken is a subscription that’s great value if you want to go deeper than tech news in India. This story covers Uber’s lack of commitment to the India market, which was once seen as a hugely important play for the US startup. Now its presence seems very token.

Indeed, days later, Uber announced a change to its leadership of Asia Pacific, handing the top job to a Europe-based executive whose responsibilities already include “leading our Rides teams across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.”

So, basically, Uber’s focus is US, Latin America – where it is battling Didi – and then ‘rest of the world.’ I’m trying to imagine Travis Kalanick’s reaction…

Nintendo isn’t predicting much growth for the Switch, which is now two years old, despite rumors of a new, cheaper model and the recent acquiring of a license to sell the console in China in partnership with Tencent. Nintendo missed its original sales target for the console this year, despite generally promising sales, and analysts think it is lowballing this year to avoid having to backtrack again.

Galaxy Fold devices sent to reporters for review have had major issues and prompted the pushback of the launch, which was scheduled for April 26.

The Nikkei is on a media buying spree after it bought The Next Web (my former employer) earlier this year. The Deal Street Asia move also taps into a new media company that runs tech event but, beyond, I understand Nikkei is considering new subscription bundles that will include DSA content – DSA already has a paywall. The deal values Deal Street Asia at up to $10 million, and it includes around $3 million in fresh funding as well as a buyout of existing investors.