Asia's tech news: July 26th
In this (COVID-delayed) edition: Twitter vs the Indian gov't; Indonesian earned-wage-access fintech; China's Weibo boosts CCP censorship; Taiwan EVs in Thailand; Australia's Intersekt fintech fest...
India: Vegrow B2B marketplace for fruit raised $25M Series B, connecting more than 20K farmers with aggregated wholesalers and traders in more than 100 cities (link)
Indonesia: Kini on-demand payroll provider raised $4.3M seed funding with earned wage access, bill-paying services, micro insurance and more in the pipeline (link)
Philippines: Investree crowdfunding platform launches '2gether Towards the Future' campaign to help the country's SMEs, looking to expand Dept of Trade & Industry partnership (link)
India: Finvu AA raises $2.5M with consent-based financial account aggregation, the first non-banking financial company account aggregator to gain a license from the Reserve Bank (link)
Japan/Singapore: Oasys gaming blockchain builder raises $20M via private token sale, with sights on eventual move to becoming a DAO, decentralized autonomous organization (link)
Australia: InternMatch secures Au$10M Series A, providing students and career changers with worldwide options on professional internships, training and mentoring (link)
Hong Kong's Animoca Brands completes phase 2 of $75.3M funding round, with sights on the 'open metaverse' and digital property rights for online users (link)
China: TikTok parent firm ByteDance to launch Kesong social media app, stepping up competition with Xiaohongshu social e-commerce rival (link)
India: 26% of Indian adults currently have a digital-only bank account, up from 22% in 2020, with digital banking adoption set to hit 39% by 2023 and 46% by 2027 (link)
Twitter and free speech vs Indian gov't: "...whether, when an unjust law unjustly applied makes it all but impossible for a company to protect speech, the judiciary will step in to protect it." (link)
India: Dep't of Telecommunications tightens rules for licences in advance of 5G rollout, limiting options for Huawei, ZTE to provide gear to Indian telecom operators (link)
Australia: Critical infrastructure operators across 11 sectors must now report critical cyber breaches to the federal government within 12 hours (link)
Myanmar: Military junta is now installing cameras with facial recognition technology from Huawei, Hikvision and Dahua, claiming 'smart city' move and not protestor identification (link)
Australia: "AUKUS presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bolster its science, technology and defence industry ecosystem...strengthen its foundations for sovereign capability in critical areas." (link)
Philippines: DigiCon Valley 2022 conference set for October, delivered by the Internet & Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (link)
Singapore: An overview of Wateroam's development, aiming to boost access to clean drinking water (link)
Taiwan's Foxconn and Thailand's state-run energy group PTT to build Plus EV new electric vehicle production base, with production and delivery expected in 2024 (link)
China: Tencent News shuts NFT trading feature following gov't ban on secondary trading of digital collectibles; Tencent's Magic Core NFT trading firm also suffers (link)
India: Startup Karnataka partners CoinSwitch crypto exchange to host blockchain hackathon, themed around 'Building Future Cities' (link)
Australia: Intersekt 2022 conference from FinTech Australia is set for September 7-8 in Melbourne - registrations now open (link)
EY Foundry startup incubator program unveils fifth cohort, 16 startups from across Asia and the Pacific working in fintech, AI, blockchain and more (link)
India: Lightspeed Venture Partners raises new $500M fund, its largest, dedicated to India and Southeast Asia and looking at seed to Series B investments (link)
China: Geely automaker launches Radar Auto electric pickup, claiming a range of 595km and stepping into direct competition with Rivian electric vehicle range (link)
Singapore: Hugosave raised $4M pre-series A with app to manage wealth and savings with over 40K users, and options including Visa debit card and ability to buy and sell gold (link)
Australia: An intro to GoMicro, agri-tech startup with a $1 mobile microscope that aims to solve a $1 trillion food waste problem (link)
China: Weibo, the country's Twitter clone, to further boost censorship, regulating deliberately misspelt words used to discuss state-censored topics and events (link)
Cambodia: SAAMBAT agri-technology accelerator launches with $200K Challenge Fund, seeking 5 tech-based agriculture-focused startups (link)
Philippines: An intro to Advanced Abilities and Smartscan AI-enabled X-ray platform, able to detect up to 25 chest pathologies in 2 minutes, tapping a database of 6M images (link)
ICYMI: In Case You Missed It
Wider-world tech headlines with Asia and Indo-Pac relevance, or simply delivering points of reference on developments in relevant fields. ICYMI also covers news items that may be older, but which certainly resonate with a tech focused audience.
Confronting Reality in Cyberspace - Foreign Policy for a Fragmented Internet, online now from the Council on Foreign Relations: "The era of the global internet is over." (link)
Ericsson, Qualcomm and Thales partner to take 5G across a network of Earth-orbiting satellites, running smartphone-use-case testing of 5G non-terrestrial networks (link)
Xone selected for Abbey Road Studios Red startup incubator with metaverse-focused app to create virtual spaces to stream music, display NFTs and digital items (link)
Merck Uptune Program launches Asia edition, aiming to boost and capitalize on connecting early-stage firms with global networks and mentoring (link)
LABS196 Accelerator Program August 2022 cohort applications are now open, running remotely and in-person from Sugar Land, Texas - apply via F6S (link)
The (partial) death of Netflix's USP: 'Netflix to Partner With Microsoft on New Ad Supported Subscription Plan' (link)
Download: 'The state of industrial security in 2022' - "...more than 90% of organizations surveyed acknowledged experiencing a security incident in the last 12 months." (link)
France to build major microchip facility, boosting capacity from 10,000 to 22,000 wafers per week, partly in EU move to minimize China supply exposure (link)
Croatia's Revuto to offer lifetime digital subscriptions for Netflix, Spotify via NFTs, limited to a total of 10K users and seeing a secondary NFT trading market (link)
Former head of TikTok gaming rolls out blockchain gaming startup, MetaO, aiming to provide users with multiple blockchains (link)
The case for NFTs in music: "...the streaming system is also highly extractive for artists. Spotify, for example, only pays $0.003 per stream..." (link)
Asia tech news expertise
Connect with me:Â Wade K Wright
Other formats: App / Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn / Instagram
Get this for your website, blog, e-newsletter, socials:Â Talk to me.