asia News of 01/16/21

How Alibaba And JD.Com Compare In Their Healthcare Endeavors

China’s tech circle is shifting its attention to online healthcare this week as JD Health is set to go public in one of Hong Kong’s largest IPOs this year. Like Amazon, China’s e-commerce firms Alibaba and JD.com have been ...

Singapore’S Government Launches Blockchain Innovation Program With $8.9 Million In Funding

A group of Singaporean government agencies is launching a new research program for blockchain technology with $12 million SGD (about $8.9 million USD) in funding. Called the Singapore Blockchain Innovation Programme (SBIP), the project is a ...

Enter New Markets And Embrace A Distributed Workforce To Grow During A Pandemic

Sarah Cole Contributor Sarah Cole is a senior associate in Taylor Wessing 's Silicon Valley office. She advises mostly North American technology and life sciences companies on their investments into the UK and Europe, including ...

Grab-Singtel And Ant Group Win Digital Bank Licenses In Singapore

Singapore on Friday granted four firms including Ant Group and Grab the licenses to run digital banks in the Southeast Asian country, in a move that would allow tech giants to expand their financial services offerings. The nation’s central ...

China’S Internet Regulator Takes Aim At Forced Data Collection

China is a step closer to cracking down on unscrupulous data collection by app developers. This week, the country’s cybersecurity watchdog began seeking comment on the range of user information that apps from instant messengers to ride-hailing ...

Health Tech Venture Firm OTV Closes New $170 Million Fund And Expands Into Asia

OTV (formerly known as Olive Tree Ventures), an Israeli venture capital firm that focuses on digital health tech, announced it has closed a new fund totaling $170 million. The firm also launched a new office in Shanghai, China to spearhead its ...

Web Summit Will Hold RISE 2022 In Kuala Lumpur, Launch A New Event In Tokyo

Web Summit announced today that it will revive RISE , one of Asia’s largest tech conferences, in March 2022, moving it to Kuala Lumpur after five years in Hong Kong. It also announced a new event, called Web Summit Tokyo, that will launch in 2022, ...

PhonePe Raises $700 Million, Becomes A Separate Entity

PhonePe, the crown jewel in Flipkart’s acquisition by Walmart, is “partially” spinning off, the financial services firm said on Thursday. To kick off its new journey, the firm said it has secured $700 million in a new financing round. ...

AutoX Becomes China’S First To Remove Safety Drivers From Robotaxis

Residents of Shenzhen will see truly driverless cars on the road starting Thursday. AutoX, a four-year-old startup backed by Alibaba, MediaTek and Shanghai Motors, is deploying a fleet of 25 unmanned vehicles in downtown Shenzhen, marking the first ...

Neuroglee Gets $2.3 Million To Develop Digital Therapeutics For Neurodegenerative Diseases

There are now about 50 million people with dementia globally , a number the World Health Organization expects to triple by 2050. Alzheimer’s is the leading cause of dementia and caregivers are often overwhelmed, without enough support. Neuroglee , ...

Jio Platforms Backs SF-Based AR Gaming Startup Krikey

Jio Platforms, the biggest telecom operator in India and which has raised over $20 billion from Facebook, Google and other high-profile investors this year, is leading a financing round of a San Francisco-based startup that develops ...

Eat Just To Sell Lab-Grown Meat In Singapore After Gaining “World First” Regulatory Approval

Eat Just will start offering lab-grown chicken meat in Singapore after gaining regulatory approval from the Singapore Food Agency (SFA). The cell-cultured chicken will eventually be produced under Eat Just’s new GOOD Meat brand through partnerships ...

Despite Everything, Oyo Still Has $1 Billion In Cash

India’s Oyo has been one of the worst impacted startups with the coronavirus, but it has enough cash to steer through the pandemic and then look at funding further scale, a top executive says. In a townhall with employees last week, Oyo founder ...

China’S Tech Firms Rush To Deliver Solutions For Grocery Shopping

Nearly all of China’s largest internet firms have established a presence in online grocery. Just this week, news arrived that Alibaba co-led the $196 million C3 funding round of Nice Tuan , the two-year-old grocery group-buying firm’s ...

Singapore-Based Mental Health App Intellect Reaches One Million Users, Closes Seed Funding

Singapore-based mental health app Intellect reaches one million users, closes seed funding image Theodoric Chew, co-founder and chief executive officer of mental health app Intellect Intellect , a Singapore-based startup that wants to lower barriers to mental health care in Asia, says it has reached more than one million users just six ...

AWS Brings The Mac Mini To Its Cloud

AWS brings the Mac mini to its cloud image AWS today opened its re:Invent conference with a surprise announcement : the company is bringing the Mac mini to its cloud. These new EC2 Mac instances, as AWS calls them, are now available in preview. They won’t come cheap, though. The ...

2-Year-Old CRED Valued At $800 Million After $80 Million Funding Round

2-year-old CRED valued at $800 million after $80 million funding round image CRED, a two-year-old startup that is helping credit card users in India improve their financial behaviour , has raised $80 million in a new financing round, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The new financing round, a Series C ...

The Trump Administration Will Add SMIC, China’S Largest Chipmaker, To Its Defense Blacklist: Report

SMIC , one of largest chip makers in the world, is among several companies that the Department of Defense plans to designate as being owned or controlled by the Chinese military, reports Reuters . Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed ...

India Sets Rules For Commissions, Surge Pricing For Uber And Ola

Ride-hailing firms such as Ola and Uber can only draw a fee of up to 20% on ride fares in India, New Delhi said in guidelines on Friday, a new setback for the SoftBank-backed firms already struggling to improve their finances in the key overseas ...

Alibaba Vies For A Piece Of China’S Booming EV Market

Alibaba vies for a piece of China’s booming EV market image There’s no lack of news these days on China’s tech giants teaming up with traditional carmakers. Companies from Alibaba to Huawei are striving to become relevant in the trillion-dollar auto industry, which itself is seeking an electric ...