Asia's tech news, weekly: Feb 7th 2023
Insure-tech in Thailand, hydrogen-diesel engines in Australia, urban farming in Malaysia, e-commerce in Cambodia, Singapore-EU digital partnership, Apple and Hong Kong...
• Australia: Hackers breach at least 12 firms, compromising an online education provider and impersonating it to gain access to other firms' systems
• Philippines: Now Telecom selects Nokia's R&D arm Bell Labs to design 5G Standalone network, piloting in Manila
• US gov't ceases providing US firms with licences to export to China's Huawei, moving closer to a total ban on sale of US tech to the equipment giant
"According to the survey, 62% of Australian CFOs believe their IT security and resilience measures are effective..."
• China's Spacety research institute hit with sanctions for providing satellite imagery of Ukraine to Russia's mercenary Wagner Group for use in combat operations
• China: Recent reports of a state-owned ride-hailing launch turn out to be more likely a transport aggregation mini-app project by a Ministry of Transport body
• Indonesia: Mitsubishi subsidiary unveils 'MUFG Innovation Partners Garuda No 1 Limited Investment Partnership', a $100M fund targeting series B startups in lending, payments, SaaS, ESG and wealth management
• Philippines: Locad gains $11M led by Singapore's Reefknot Investments with focus on streamlined logistics solutions for e-commerce firms across the Asia-Pacific
• Australia: "Customers like chatbots as they provide 24/7 support (76%), faster response times (58%) and autonomy (44%)...respondents are 24% more likely to interact with brands using a chatbot than...with an agent..."
• China: Little Red Book's 200 million users now able to display NFTs minted on Conflux on their profiles, building on Shanghai gov't $5M grant to Conflux in 2021
"...the US is launching a series of ambitious technology, space and defence initiatives with India...designed to counter China in the Indo-Pacific and wean New Delhi off its reliance on Russia for weapons..."
• Philippines: Strike, Bitcoin-based payments network and app, to expand to the Philippines with sights on remittances market of $12.7BN sent home from US-based Filipinos alone
• Malaysia: An overview of the country's moves into urban farming, vertical farms and hydroponic agriculture
• Australia: Q-CTRL raises $27.4M with Salesforce Ventures as a new investor, developing software that helps quantum computers run more accurately
• Thailand: Eazy Digital gains $850K with SaaS digital platforms for insurance firms, spanning agent management, operations, referrals and engagement and focusing on insurance SMEs
• China's JD e-commerce major to end services in Thailand and Indonesia, with online shopping sites in both countries to stop taking orders from mid-February
• Indonesia: An overview of the country's fisheries management industry, and the opportunities for technology to help it reach its potential
• Malaysia: An overview of the Malaysian Research Accelerator for Technology and Innovation and what MRANTI Park offers to innovators, researchers and creators
"Proofpoint detailed how North Korean state-backed hackers managed to siphon more than $1 billion in cryptocurrencies and other blockchain assets in the 2022 calendar year..."
• 'E-Commerce in Cambodia 2022, A comprehensive overview of Cambodia’s E-commerce landscape' from Profitence
• India: Reliance Retail, country's largest retail chain, to accept 'digital rupee' payments in a move that may supercharge adoption of the recently-launched central bank digital currency
• Pakistan's telecoms regulator to block access to Wikipedia if the platform fails to take down content deemed 'sacrilegious' within 48 hours
Hong Kong: "When Safari users...tried to load...code-sharing website GitLab, they received a strange warning instead: Apple's browser was blocking the site... The warning screen itself came courtesy of Tencent..."
• Singapore and EU ink Digital Partnership to boost cooperation in areas across semiconductors, data flows and data innovation, digital trust, digital trade and more
• A round-up of the semiconductor space's funding news from January 2023, with 138 startups raising over $2 billion
• Taiwan: WeMo urban mobility startup raises $15M with electric vehicles and alt-transportation solutions, with growth sights on Thailand and Indonesia
• Pakistan's NICAT aerospace and deep -tech incubation center opens Cohort-1 Startup Applications for 2023, seeking innovations in aviation and more
• India: Vayve Mobility unveils solar-powered electric car Eva, claiming 10-12km travel per day on solar energy charging and performance of 20km per unit of electricity
• Indonesia: iSeller raises $12M with point-of-sale platform for online & offline merchants, allowing digitization of all aspects of sales and operations, from inventory to food delivery integrations
"Japan’s startup ecosystem has arrived at a pivot point: for the first time, it is able to draw top-tier talent to high-growth startups at a scale that was not possible just 15 years ago."
• Philippines: SUN Mobility energy infra and services provider for EVs partnered by Shell to facilitate battery-swapping for 2 and 3-wheeled vehicles
• Australia: H2i Technology working on systems to inject hydrogen into diesel engines to reduce overall diesel use, building 10 commercial-ready systems with plans for field testing
• North Korea: "...the money raised by North Korea's criminal cyber operations help finance up to a third of the funds dedicated to its missile programmes."
The trouble with ChatGPT and its ilk: "It often produces true statements as a side effect of being plausible and persuasive, but that [truth] is not the goal."
In other news…
» UK sets new regulatory regime for crypto industry, bringing rules on issuance, trading and lending of crypto tokens into line with those for traditional assets such as stocks and bonds
» Global study finds most customers prefer chatbots for automated support but businesses fail to deliver positive experiences; over half of customers see chatbot experiences as overall reflection of a brand
» English Premier League inks $37M-per-year deal with Sorare, digital trading card and 'fantasy soccer' firm, aiming to boost NFT offerings for fans
» Google is testing ChatGPT-like products featuring its LaMDA technology, alongside testing new search page designs that integrate chat technology
Social platforms: "...first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for business customers; finally, they abuse business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."