H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (11 October 2018) – Altium Disrupts PCB Design + Delisting of 23 Chinese firms due to accounting fraud etc in Korea costs investors W270b

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (11 October 2018) – Altium Disrupts PCB Design + Delisting of 23 Chinese firms due to accounting fraud etc in Korea costs investors W270b

Companies

• Uniqlo-owner Fast Retailing to invest $885 mln in warehouse automation and teams up with logistics firm Daifuku (Reuters)
• China Lithium King Tanks in Hong Kong Debut Amid Stocks Rout (Bloomberg)
• Altium Disrupts PCB Design (EEJ)

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

• Tencent’s Worst Investment Has Been Its Own Shares; The Internet giant has lost an annualized 85 percent over the course of its six-week-long buyback adventure. (Bloomberg)
• Tencent VC Arm Is Said to Seek a New Fund of Over $650 Million (Bloomberg)
• SoftBank in danger of over-WeWorking itself (Reuters); WeWork and SoftBank Need Each Other; One of these companies enjoys growth, the other has money. Both are heavily reliant on faith. (Bloomberg)

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

• The Battle for the Home (Stratechery)
• Apple to buy part of supplier Dialog’s business in $600 million deal (Reuters)
• Apple streaming-TV service to be free for device users: report (MW)
• Chipmaker Nvidia to supply computer for Volvo’s upcoming vehicles (Reuters); Nvidia aims to woo business analysts with new software (Reuters)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

• China’s grip on electronics manufacturing will be hard to break; Will the supply chain bifurcate, between East and West? (Economist)
• Music education platform Finger wins RMB 100 million Series B to expand into offline market; Finger, launched in December 2015, offers online courses of more than ten instruments. (KRA)
• Chinese lidar maker RoboSense raises US$45m in biggest fundraising round among local peers (SCMP)
• Education, enterprise-oriented services and AI are recession resistant: says the investor behind Didi & Ofo Allen Zhu (KRA)
• Infographic | GGV on investing education tech startups (KRA)
• Snapdeal 2.0 faces a new world order in Indian e-commerce (qz)
• Bridestory launches Parentstory, an online marketplace for kids activities (e27)
• Go-Jek and its tech expansion strategy in SEA; How Go-Jek uses a feedback loop process to build and collate data to understand consumers needs and launches 18 verticals. (KRA)
• Online payments still a challenge for Southeast Asia’s tech players (SCMP)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

• Zuora Plans a Partnership With Amazon Pay (Barron’s)
• Boss Talk: Slack’s CEO Wants to Unshackle You From Email; Slack, valued at $7 billion in a recent fundraising round, has resisted going public-though that could change; Stewart Butterfield talks about how he works (WSJ)
• The untold story of Stripe, the secretive $20bn startup driving Apple, Amazon and Facebook; Patrick and John Collison have democratised online payments – and reshaped the digital economy in the process (Wired)
• Walmart Cuts Online Video Deals in Bid to Become Entertainment Hub; Retail giant teams up with MGM and a video startup in its rivalry with Amazon; first up is a remake of ‘Mr. Mom’ (WSJ)
• Snap Is Making a Big Bet on Grabbing Eyeballs With Original Content (Barron’s); Snapchat announces new scripted shows to win over users (Reuters)
• Uber’s Junk Bond Is an Entree to the Main Event (Bloomberg)
• Tech’s $900 Billion Rout Is Price of Earnings Becoming Ordinary (Bloomberg)
• Chipmaker Micron to invest $100 million in artificial intelligence companies (Reuters)

Life

• Delisting of 23 Chinese firms due to accounting fraud etc in Korea costs investors W270b (Investor)
• A proposal by HKSE that listed companies suspend share trading immediately if auditors refuse to give their financial statements a clean bill of health could lead to an increase in tensions between firms and auditors (SCMP)
• Hong Kong markets watchdog to sue 60 companies and individuals for corporate fraud in first half of 2019 (SCMP)