H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (8 May 2019) – This Little-Known Stock Nearmap Rallies 149% to Take Australia’s No. 1 Spot + Robert Browning on Artistic Integrity, Withstanding Criticism, and the Courage to Create Rather Than Cater

May 8, 2019 Leave a comment

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (8 May 2019) – This Little-Known Stock Nearmap Rallies 149% to Take Australia’s No. 1 Spot + Robert Browning on Artistic Integrity, Withstanding Criticism, and the Courage to Create Rather Than Cater

Companies

  • Zoom Video shares rise following clearance for federal use (MW)
  • China’s Meituan Dianping pushes its short delivery service to more customers in search for profit; The Beijing-based company’s delivery system currently has more than 600,000 active daily couriers, and serves over 3.6 million merchants in China (SCMP)
  • SeaTown Invests $3.17 Million in Tencent Music (FID)
  • China Is Losing Its Grip on Companies Due to Trump’s Trade War; Delta Electronics is expanding in India, Taiwan and elsewhere (Bloomberg)
  • Afterpay rival Flexigroup inks deals with Myer, IKEA, health groups (AFR)
  • Shares in Nearmap., which provides aerial images and location data that allow businesses to conduct virtual site visits, have surged 149 percent this year, making it the biggest gainer on the benchmark index. (Bloomberg)
  • TCS set to become world’s third-largest IT services company (LM)

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

  • Baidu founder Robin Li says his firm shipped more smart screens than speakers in February; Smart speakers with display screen are gaining traction. (KRA)
  • Tencent aims to digitize Beijing Tourism Group’s 7,000 offline businesses (KRA)
  • Tencent trials AI diagnosis program for Parkinson’s in London (FT)
  • Smart appliances slow to pick up Samsung’s recipe for recovery (Nikkei)

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

  • A Tax That Could Fix Big Tech: Putting a levy on targeted ad revenue would give Facebook and Google a real incentive to change their dangerous business models. (NYT)
  • Google unveils new privacy tools, smarter AI assistant, cheaper phones (MW); Google brings augmented reality to Search (TC); Google Search will offer better news coverage, and soon, support for podcast search (TC); Google is bringing AI assistant Duplex to the web (TC); Google Assistant gets driving mode (TC); Google Lens can translate foreign language text in photos and read it back to you (TC); Google Assistant gets more personalized through a new ‘Picks for You’ feature (TC); Google’s I/O developer conference is no longer just about tech (qz)
  • Google Face Match brings privacy debate into the home; New ‘smart display’ pushes boundaries of acceptance for recognition systems Google at-home device (FT)
  • Google Will Give Users More Control Over Who Tracks Them Online (Bloomberg)
  • Google Debuts Cheaper Pixel Phones After Premium Handsets Flop (Bloomberg)
  • YouTube TV (AVC)
  • How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster; In interviews, current and former employees say brand building became more important than serving shoppers. (Bloomberg)
  • Apple teams up with SAP to help clients develop iPhone business apps (Reuters)
  • Microsoft’s Newest Offerings Aim at Cloud-Computing Market (Barron’s)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

  • Online education platform Hujiang’s Hong Kong IPO application expired: report; company had been running with increasing deficits from 2015 to 2017, with respective net losses of RMB 280 million, RMB 422 million, and RMB 537 million (TN)
  • Shanghai district installs comprehensive surveillance system; City Brain’s 1,100 security cameras are a test case for constant monitoring (Nikkei)
  • Japan Inc. will defy its critics and innovate once more; Faced with an aging society, companies can overcome conservatism and embrace a digital world (Nikkei)
  • NTT to launch AI-based genome screening for preventive medicine (Nikkei)
  • Brankas wants to bring Southeast Asia’s banks and e-commerce into the digital era (TC)
  • After Indonesia introduced minimum tariffs for online motorcycle taxi rides, platforms are already seeing a dip in demand (KRA)
  • Big Basket raises $150 million to expand its operations (Forbes)
  • The Rise of India’s New Billionaires (And the Fall of the Old); New entrepreneurs are growing wealthy in areas like technology (Bloomberg)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

  • Match Group Stock Is Jumping Because Facebook Hasn’t Killed Tinder (Barron’s); Match Group Beats Estimates as Tinder’s Popularity Grows Abroad (Bloomberg); Match Group adds more Tinder subscribers, shares surge (Reuters)
  • Square acquires conversational AI startup Eloquent Labs (TC)
  • Bubble-driven boom in M&As hides steep costs long-term (TC)
  • This tablet on a stick isn’t RoboCop, but it’s a smart solution to risky traffic stops (TNW)
  • LinkedIn wants Indians to spend more time on its platform. But how far can colourful emojis go? (qz)
  • The Farm Automation Breakthrough Bringing The High-Tech West Coast And Rural Rust Belt Together (Forbes)
  • Casper, With Competition Growing, Wants To Be More Than A Mattress Company (Forbes)
  • A Vision of the Dark Future of Advertising; Companies will know more about you than you can even imagine (Medium)
  • Why Tech Giants Are So Desperate to Provide Your Voice Assistant (HBR)
  • Lyft unveils Waymo partnership as loss widens to $1.1 billion (JT)
  • NCR Weighs a Sale After Receiving Takeover Interest (Bloomberg)
  • Spotify Turns the Anti-Apple Volume Up to 11 (Bloomberg)
  • Americans Have So Many Subscriptions They Need Apps to Track and Cancel Them (Bloomberg)
  • As IPO looms, Uber clings to hard-knuckled tactics in pursuit of growth (Reuters)

Life

  • Chinese gaming company Kingnet confirms its boss has been arrested for market manipulation (KRA)
  • Robert Browning on Artistic Integrity, Withstanding Criticism, and the Courage to Create Rather Than Cater (BP)
  • Seneca: Curbing Anger: The Stoic’s Cure for the Most Destructive Emotion (Medium)
  • Make Friends With the Monster Chewing on Your Leg, and Other Tips for Surviving Startups (FR)
  • Will You Choose Alive Time or Dead Time? Not having control over our circumstances is frustrating, but it doesn’t mean we’re helpless (RH)

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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