H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (6 September 2018) – Are Robots All Hype? One Company May Have the Answer; Japanese motor maker Nidec, a bellwether for manufacturing trends, has been investing heavily in automation + Friedrich Nietzsche: Why Life Isn’t Meaningless

September 6, 2018 Leave a comment

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (6 September 2018) – Are Robots All Hype? One Company May Have the Answer; Japanese motor maker Nidec, a bellwether for manufacturing trends, has been investing heavily in automation + Friedrich Nietzsche: Why Life Isn’t Meaningless

Companies

  • Are Robots All Hype? One Company May Have the Answer; Japanese motor maker Nidec, a bellwether for manufacturing trends, has been investing heavily in automation. (Bloomberg)

  • Alipay partners with Yahoo Japan to expand mobile payments reach (Nikkei)
  • China’s Tesla Wannabe Is Asking Investors to Pay for Potential; NIO seeks market cap above $8 billion with limited production. Tencent-backed NIO among 5 local EV makers considered unicorns (Bloomberg)
  • Meituan Dianping to halt ride-hailing expansion in China amid crisis at industry leader Didi (SCMP)
  • Chinese e-commerce portal Yunji Weidian taps banks for U.S. IPO – source (Reuters)
  • Kakao to link Korea-Japan taxi-hailing apps; South Korean company will invest $14m in JapanTaxi (Nikkei)
  • Xero launches open API for banks to integrate (AFR)

BATTSS – Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, TSMC, Softbank, Samsung

  • Tencent Bets $1 Billion on China Housing Boom With Stake in Property Brokerage; The fundraising is likely to value the Beijing-based company, which has plans for an IPO, at about $13 billion (WSJ)
  • Deal-shy chipmaker TSMC says it’s open to memory acquisition; Apple supplier under pressure to diversify as demand shifts beyond phones (Nikkei); TSMC founder Chang warns of Chinese dominance in chip industry; Industry icon sees 6% growth in sector over 20 years, double that of global GDP (Nikkei)

FAANNMG – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, Netflix, Microsoft, Google

  • The End of Amazon: How, when and why the e-commerce giant will fall. (BOF)
  • Amazon enters Japan’s cashless payments fray; US conglomerate sees opportunity to sway reluctant Japanese consumers (Nikkei)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

  • Online home leasing platform Ziroom caught in scandal after death of tenant (Technode)
  • AI powerhouse SenseTime shifts focus to cars and medicine; Hong Kong unicorn will reach beyond surveillance, says co-founder (Nikkei)
  • ‘Social buyers’ deal Japanese goods to online shoppers in China (Nikkei)
  • Zomato acquires $18m online catering marketplace (TIA)
  • Two Years Ago, India Lacked Fast, Cheap Internet-One Billionaire Changed All That; Mukesh Ambani’s national 4G network for Reliance Jio, which charges pennies for data, is bringing hundreds of millions online for the first time (WSJ)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

  • The Tension Is Building Between Spotify and the Music Industry (Bloomberg)
  • Airbnb for Work expands to include experiences, offsite meeting services (AFR)
  • Technology delivered: Implications for cost, customers, and competition in the last-mile ecosystem (Mckinsey)
  • Booming technology stocks are testing the limits of investors’ appetite for one sector (CNBC)

Life

  • Friedrich Nietzsche: Why Life Isn’t Meaningless (Medium)
  • The State of Your Attention Determines the State Of Your Life (Medium)
  • Concealed Emotions (Morgan Housel)
  • Thriving in a Digital World: My Conversation with Stratechery’s Ben Thompson [The Knowledge Project Ep. #40] (Farnam Street)

Filed under Innovation

About bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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