H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (7 December 2018) – Salesforce doubles down on Japan with dedicated $100M fund

December 7, 2018 Leave a comment

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (7 December 2018) – Salesforce doubles down on Japan with dedicated $100M fund

Companies

  • Mogu’s long journey: From rejecting Alibaba’s advances to US IPO (Techcrunch)
  • Chinese gaming firm iDreamSky stumbles in its Hong Kong debut (Technode)
  • Australian cloud service provider eyes China potential with expanded presence in Hong Kong (SCMP)
  • IRESS shows 2018 will be ‘record-breaking year’ for protection (CM)
  • Info Edge India gains 2% on acquisition of 15.5% stake in Shopkirana (MC)

BATTS – Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, TSMC, Samsung

  • Online used vehicle marketplace Uxin to list cars on Taobao (Technode)
  • Alibaba’s Hema criticized by central bank officials for rejecting cash payment (Technode)

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

  • Amazon Alexa is beta testing crowdsourced answers; Customers in the invitation-only program can start contributing answers to Alexa today (Verge)
  • Alexa just got better at picking music for you; Amazon Music is leaning on Alexa to remember your listening habits and nail down the right playlist. But don’t expect perfection just yet. (FastCo)
  • Fed up with Facebook, U.S. fund managers look for alternatives (Reuters)
  • Facebook’s top AI scientist says it’s ‘dust’ without artificial intelligence (CNN)
  • Google’s self-driving spinoff launches ride-hailing service, with human aboard for now (Japan Times)
  • Microsoft Calls for Laws to Prevent Bias in Facial Recognition AI; The company, which sells this software itself, wants human review, greater openness (Bloomberg, WSJ)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

  • Contacts management firm Sansan nets US$26.43M to drive expansion in Southeast Asia, Japan (e27)
  • Salesforce doubles down on Japan with dedicated $100M fund (Techcrunch)
  • Asian streaming startup M17, still recovering from a failed IPO, raises another $25M (Techcrunch)
  • Japanese Investors Look Towards India As The Land Of Rising Startups (Inc42)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

  • DeepMind in AI breakthrough with smarter version of AlphaGo; AlphaZero plays Go and chess at levels that defeat humans and the best existing programs (FT)
  • Business-app automation kingpin Zapier has its eye on consumers; With 3 million users and $50 million in annual revenues, the company is doing well at work. Now it wants to take automation mainstream. (FastCo)
  • Retailers Are Testing Facebook-Style Shopper Profiles to Battle Amazon; New software tracks every purchase you’ve made, product you’ve returned, ad you’ve clicked on and item you’ve tossed from your cart. (Bloomberg)
  • Qualcomm Redoubles Effort to Enter PC Market With New Chip (Bloomberg, Reuters)
  • Ride-hail firm Lyft races to leave Uber behind in IPO chase (Reuters)
  • Uber Is Headed for a Crash (NYmag)
  • Michael Dell plots his return to the public market; The largest private tech firm has an updated vision for computing’s future (Economist)
  • There Is Reason to Like Videogame Stocks, but Competition Is a Major Risk (Barron’s)

Life

  • Ultimate Innovation Strategy: The Intersection Between 2 Industry Pain Points (EH)
  • Want To Be Happier? How to Take Charge of Your Thoughts (BHCM)
  • Noble relisting is off; assets found to be potentially inflated; Investors won’t be trading in New Noble’s shares on an informed basis, say MAS, SGX Regco (BT)

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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