Asia Tech Review: March 7 2016

The company entered via an acquisition in 2012, but is one of the smaller players in the very competitive market. 400 staff will be let go. The company has reorganized its global business after pulling out of an IPO last year, and it seemingly decided China isn’t worth attention at this point.

Mobvista claims to be one of the world’s largest mobile advertising networks with 10 billion daily impressions and a user database that covers two billion devices.

CEO Lei Jun has said something other than ‘no plan’ for an IPO for the first, after admitting that Xiaomi is “not ruling it out.” That’s hardly a cue for something imminent, but could represent a change in approach. Xiaomi missed its targets last year, and is seen by many as overvalued at $45 billion. It last raised money in December 2014, when it pulled in $1.1 billion.

The company said it neither denies nor admits violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The battle is intensifying and moving to two wheels with two new services that have debuted in Bangalore. Uber first launched bike taxis in Thailand last month, but this is Ola’s first time moving into the segment.

This one might surprise you. While Apple accounted for less than 1% of smartphones sold in India in Q3 2015, the company’s marketshare in India’s tier-one cities was over 5% in Q4. Yes, the launch of two new devices boosted that, but it seems Apple is actually doing decent in urban areas in India.

Eduardo Saverin led the deal for Hopscotch, his first in India in a personal capacity. The startup was founded by ex-Diapers.com executives and is far leaned than others in the mum commerce segment in India.

Its first deal in the US keeps its focus on cricket and sports while expanding its broadcast media reach.

You don’t often hear about new market launches for Uber these days, the company has expanded rapidly worldwide in recent years, but Pakistan is one such example. There, Uber is debuting with ‘Go’, its low-cost hatchback service that first went live in India. 

This is the peer-to-peer marketplace startup’s Series D round, and it brings its total funding to just over $110 million. Mercari has 32 million downloads, 7 million from the US, and is Japan’s first private tech unicorn – others that have IPOed include GREE, DeNA, Nintendo and more.

Wrap, which is actually based in San Francisco, enables customers to make more responsive mobile sites. It has raised around $25 million so far.

The story that never dies. Line is again planning a US-Japan IPO having abandoned similar plans in 2014 and 2015.

Also in Lineland, the company is scaling back its commerce efforts in Japan, but still has similar services operating in Thailand and Taiwan. For now at least.

Not a lot of Korean startups expand globally and there are plenty of competitors in this space in Asia already.

The company says it has reached a gross merchandise value of $5 million, and wants to grow that amount ten times and hit profitability by the end of this year.

It is putting its cash in Israeli-based equity funding platform OurCrowd, which claims to have thus far helped raise $200 million in funding for startups on its platform.

Budget stay networks are a hot thing in Southeast Asia right now. It’s increasingly becoming a crowded market, with well-backed entrants from India and a Rocket Internet company in the fray, but Tinggal has the backing of the investors and CEO of ambitious Indian startup Wudstay, which could make it one to watch.