Welcome back, Another busy week in Asia as the year draws to a close -- top stories: ☠️ Google's 'Pro
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December 24 · Issue #97 · View online |
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Welcome back, Another busy week in Asia as the year draws to a close – top stories: ☠️ Google’s ‘Project Dragonfly’ for China is “effectively dead” 🕹 China will being issuing gaming licenses again 💸 Facebook is apparently developing a stablecoin to deploy in India 💲 India’s Swiggy raised $1 billion 🚖 Grab is set to net up to $1.5 billion from SoftBank’s Vision Fund 📉 Speaking of SoftBank, its Japanese IPO got off to a rocky start And finally, Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate it 🎅🏻🎄🎁 ! See again next week for the final time in 2018, Jon ♥️ ATR is totally free so share the love and spread word to friends who will enjoy it ♥️
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Google’s plan to launch products in China has been “effectively ended”
The Intercept, which first broke news of ‘Project Dragonfly’ and has been a key source of information to this point, reports that Google reassigned several groups of engineers away from its planned censored search engine following a rift over its use of real internet queries in China for testing. The publication has, again, been a key source for details on the project, but still it seems like the overall goal of being in China remains on the table even if this particular project is reportedly over.
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China is restarting game approvals
This is massive news for tech giants like Tencent which have been strangled by a nine-month freeze in approvals for new titles, which has cost it significantly it lost earns.
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Mobike founder Hu Weiwei quits as CEO
The company was sold to Meituan and, though Hu agreed to stay on, she is moving on now according to a letter to staff.
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Fourth Paradigm becomes China's latest AI unicorn after raising $150M
Founded by ex-Huawei workers, its main service helps banks to detect fraud, identify customers and perform other analysis. The new funding round adds Bank of Communications to a roster of investors that include Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China and China Construction Bank. The startups valuation is now $1.2 billion.
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Meituan teams up with Starbucks rival Luckin
The deal follows Starbucks’ alliance with Alibaba and its Ele.me delivery service which rivals Meituan.
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BMW’s premium ride-hailing service is now live in China
The service features 200 chauffeured cars in Chengdu. That might sound like a random start, but the city was once Uber’s largest market in the world for rides… before it sold to Didi, of course.
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Lightspeed is raising its largest China fund yet – TechCrunch
The firm’s fourth China fund is targeted at a $360 million raise according to a US filing.
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Baidu leads $87m Series D round in smart lock startup YunDing
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Bowtie raises $30M to bring the digital insurance model to Hong Kong
The company has become the first insurer to be granted a digital operations license in Hong Kong, while it has also pulled in an investment led by Sun Life’s Hong Kong unit.
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Hong Kong regulators say IPOs by cryptocurrency businesses are premature
The announcement puts into question proposed listings from Bitmain, which is said to be seeking to raise up to $3 billion, and rival company Canaan.
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Facebook is reportedly developing a cryptocurrency for WhatsApp transfers
The crypto token, which is said to be a stablecoin, would be launched for WhatsApp’s Indian user base to cover global remittances, according to sources.
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India's government denies telling federal agencies that they can snoop on every computer, despite an order that seemingly says they can
Authorities seemingly authorized 10 government agencies — including federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies — to monitor, intercept, and decrypt all data on all computers in the country.
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Swiggy lands $1 billion round at $3.3 billion valuation
The deal was led by Naspers and it saw Tencent join. It is Swiggy’s third deal of the year.
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Byju’s targets global expansion for its digital education service after raising $540M
Confirming a new round reported one week prior, Naspers also led this deal which will see the startup launch English-based learning products for kids aged 3-8 worldwide.
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Flipkart is planning a video streaming service
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Ola invests $100M in scooter rental startup Vogo
Ola backed Vogo via its Series A this summer, now it plans to integrate scooters into its app and potentially help with expansion.
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Moglix raises $23M to digitize India’s manufacturing supply chain
The B2B commerce company has benefitted from India’s GST push to digitize tax as it aims to do the same for manufacturing sales in the country. It is also beginning to look at overseas options.
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Xiaomi gets approval to launch payment service
Mi Pay is coming soon to India.
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SoftBank's $23B IPO didn't go well
The record Japanese IPO saw prices tumble some 15 percent of their first day of trading, leading to concerns that the over-priced listing has burned consumers.
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Food delivery startup Woowa Bros lands $320 million investment
Now valued at $2.6 billion, the company is doubling down on developing robots for its ‘Baedal Minjok’ food delivery service and looking at overseas expansion. The round came from Tencent backer Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia Capital and Singapore’s GIC.
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SoftBank’s Vision Fund is preparing to invest $1-$1.5 billion in Grab
The deal seems to be contingent on SoftBank’s existing stake in Grab transferring over to the Vision Fund. Grab is close to closing $3 billion for its Series H round, which would then be made larger still via this investment.
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Facebook purges more ‘bad actors’ in Myanmar but it still won’t commit to a local office
Facebook removed a number of accounts and pages on Facebook, as well as Instagram accounts, but it still isn’t prepared to open a local presence in the country.
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Netflix rival Iflix offloads its Africa business to focus on Asia
Iflix said it will double down on markets like Malaysia and Indonesia.
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500 Startups Vietnam launches $100k investment accelerator program
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Inside Shenzhen’s race to outdo Silicon Valley link
Apple is struggling to make an impact in India’s smartphone market link
How Grab mapped over volunteer edits in Thailand using remote employees link
Red tap is preventing startups like Airbnb and Uber in South Korea link
A look at which Indian startups expanded overseas in 2018 link
ByteDance is suing a Chinese news site that wrote about its fake news problem in India link
A review of SoftBank in 2018 link
Local GPS systems are being developed across Asia link
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