H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (13 March 2019) – China may use facial recognition to stop kids from livestreaming; The US Government Will Be Scanning Your Face At 20 Top Airports; Citizen, the real-time crime alerting app, is growing in big cities

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (13 March 2019) – China may use facial recognition to stop kids from livestreaming; The US Government Will Be Scanning Your Face At 20 Top Airports; Citizen, the real-time crime alerting app, is growing in big cities

Companies

  • China’s Qutoutiao is burning millions of dollars to take on TikTok parent (TC)
  • Meituan willing to sacrifice profitability for growth as business model shifts from subsidies to investments; Meituan’s net loss widened 57 per cent to US$508 million, dragged down by its bike-sharing service Mobike (SCMP)
  • New Oriental online education subsidiary files for Hong Kong IPO (Technode)
  • Trend Micro launches security suite for telecom companies (NWA)
  • Foxconn lashes out at Microsoft over royalties; Terry Gou says US tech giant’s latest lawsuit seeks to gain from US-China trade talks (Nikkei)
  • Delta Electronics seeking to build sustainable 8K display ecosystem (Digitimes)
  • Seoul Semiconductor wins top award in lighting sector (Investor)
  • Global investment platform Praemium has signed a partnership with London and Jersey-based Enhance Group that will enable its clients to access the Australian firm’s technology. (IA)

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

  • TSMC likely to post first annual profit drop in 8 years (Digitimes)

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

  • YouTube Music launches in India to battle it out with Spotify et al (TNW)
  • Apple’s Streaming Service Could Win 100 Million Subscriptions, Analyst Says (Barron’s)
  • Netflix is pursuing more interactive content, including, maybe, a rom-com (TC); Analyst Who Called Netflix’s Rise Sees ‘Dramatic Returns’ for Spotify (Barron’s)
  • Nvidia Is Buying Mellanox. Here’s What It Means for Semiconductors. (Barron’s)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

  • SenseTime facial recognition system to alert fatigued Shanghai bus drivers (Technode)
  • China may use facial recognition to stop kids from livestreaming (TIA)
  • Tencent-backed second-hand goods app gains traction with 50 million monthly active users in 2018 (KRA)
  • Are Chinese electric car start-ups doomed after Tesla’s big price cuts? Tesla’s price cuts have provoked a fierce debate over the maturity of domestic EV industry – especially newcomers (SCMP)
  • Asian chipmakers mount 5G challenge to Qualcomm (Nikkei)
  • Transforming the manufacturing industry’s analog purchasing business with IT, the “RFQ Cloud” created by a former Keyence entrepreneur (TC)
  • For Sansan, IPO is always an option, but not the focus (TIA)
  • Indonesia tightens rules for online lending platforms; It’s an ongoing battle to reign in unethical P2P lending platforms (KRA)
  • Oyo pledges $800m to upgrade hotels in India and China; SoftBank-backed unicorn uses enlarged war chest to bolster presence (Nikkei)
  • Handling Big Tech in ASEAN: Cooperate in crafting and enforcing privacy and competition rules in digital markets (Nikkei)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

  • The US Government Will Be Scanning Your Face At 20 Top Airports, Documents Show; “This is opening the door to an extraordinarily more intrusive and granular level of government control.” (BFN)
  • How to rein in Airbnb; The success of cities that have been able to regulate tech-enabled tourism owes to the powerful coalitions that have mobilized to challenge these data-driven platforms. (FastCo)
  • Uber’s self-driving car unit was burning $20 million a month; In the run up to its IPO, court filing reveals new details of Uber’s huge spending and equally huge ambitions (TC)
  • Citizen, the real-time crime alerting app, is growing in big cities (CNN)
  • Zoho invests $40m in Aussie cloud push (AFR)
  • How TodayTix plans to solve ‘bad behaviour’ in ticket sales (AFR)
  • Mastercard and Visa Look Set to Further Disrupt the P2P Payments Landscape (Barron’s)

Life

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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