H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (26 October 2018) – Uniqlo parent goes digital as it faces Amazon; Fast Retailing founder looks to the future of fashion

October 26, 2018 Leave a comment

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (26 October 2018) – Uniqlo parent goes digital as it faces Amazon; Fast Retailing founder looks to the future of fashion

Companies

  • Uniqlo parent goes digital as it faces Amazon; Fast Retailing founder looks to the future of fashion (Nikkei)
  • Popular Japanese video game Monster Strike raked in US$7.2 billion in five years and is the top-grossing mobile app of all time (SCMP)
  • Bilibili partners with Tencent on anime and games (Technode)
  • Naver to invest W80b in subsidiary Snow (Investor)
  • Koh Young America Delivers Record Results in 3Q 2018; The high conversion rate of new customers to Koh Young solutions and the company’s consistent growth reflects the industry’s confidence in the Koh Young True 3D technology and its Smart Factory (iconnect)
  • Foxconn slumps as worries build over trade war, iPhone margins (FT)
  • Sinbon posts record EPS (Taipei Times)
  • ASX-listed Citadel Group has partnered with Crime Stoppers Australia to digitise the way in which crimes can be reported from members of the public to the law enforcement community. (IDM)
  • Tech stocks tumble on Bursa Malaysia (Star)

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

  • Net-A-Porter turns to Alibaba to sell more $2,500 bags in China (CNN)
  • The U.S.-China Trade War Means Alibaba Is Producing Its Own Chips; The e-commerce company will design semiconductors to help support its cloud and AI businesses. (Bloomberg)
  • Inside Samsung’s Bid to Challenge Apple With 5G, Folding Phones (Bloomberg); Samsung Electronics: Seoul trader It is too soon to call the end of boom/bust cycles in semis (FT)

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

  • Amazon: push marketing: Care is needed in navigating privacy concerns about customer data (FT); Amazon’s ad initiative is a useful add-on item (Reuters)
  • Alphabet’s Waymo begins charging passengers for self-driving cars (FT)
  • Facebook has a secret plan to clone Tik Tok (TIA)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

  • Aikucun, a Chinese online distribution platform that connects fashion brands and professional online shoppers to help brands reduce their inventories, has secured US$110 million in series B+ round of funding (CMN)
  • Hong Kong halts e-wallet auto top-ups after user reports of missing funds (SCMP)
  • Grofers vs BigBasket: Tale of two strategies; Going deep versus going wide: Which will trump the other as online grocers BigBasket and Grofers battle to corner market share? (Forbes)
  • Uber Eats reveals its plan to conquer the rest of India (TIA)
  • OnlinePajak secures $25m funding to improve Indonesia’s tax landscape (TIA)
  • India’s Rickshaw Revolution Leaves China in the Dust; There are more e-rickshaws in India than battery-powered passenger cars in China (Bloomberg)
  • From supermarkets to super-apps, Southeast Asian tech start-ups are looking to China not Silicon Valley (SCMP)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

  • Uber aims to be ‘Amazon of transportation’: Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi targets 1bn users and the ‘end of car ownership’ (FT)
  • Ben Thompson on Business and Tech (Ep. 52) (Medium)
  • 3 metrics that matter when evaluating early-stage SaaS startups (TIA)
  • AMD Chief Lisa Su Says the Trade War Is an Opportunity (Barron’s)
  • S. tech funds turn to Visa, Paypal as FANGs fade (Reuters)
  • Autodesk CIO Says AI Helps Human Worker Productivity; Employees pursue new responsibilities as AI-based assistant tackles customer inquiries (WSJ)
  • Hotel-search company Trivago is raising profitability targets and reducing advertising spend in a bid to offset lower revenues from its main customers Booking Holdings and Expedia Group. (WSJ)
  • Expedia, which owns travel aggregator websites like Hotels.com, Hotwire.com and CarRentals.com, is starting to see the benefits of buying HomeAway three years ago. (Bloomberg)
  • Intel’s Still Dancing as the Chip Party Dies (Bloomberg, Reuters)
  • Your next doctor’s appointment might be with an AI; A new wave of chatbots are replacing physicians and providing frontline medical advice-but are they as good as the real thing? (TR)

Life

  • When Sales Isn’t Just Selling: Advice for Founders in Early Markets (a16z)

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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