Southeast Asia:
Garena’s parent company Sea’s loss more than doubled in the third quarter as the marketing costs at mobile-shopping unite Shopee surged. About 85 percent of the company’s total revenue in the third quarter came from the games unit Garena. The Singapore-based gaming and e-commerce company brands itself as an emerging company with operations in Southeast and Taiwan. It has raised about $884 million through an IPO this October. (Bloomberg)
Singapore’s telecoms technology provider MyRepublic has raised $51.7 million from Makara Innovation Fund (MIF). MIF is a collaboration between Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) and private equity firm Makara Capital. The fund seeks to invest in late-stage startups and growth-stage enterprises whose technology is globally competitive. It wishes to leverage Singapore’s status a strategic hub where companies can regionalize and scale up. (DealStreetAsia)
Temasek has sold 900,000 shares worth $1.85 million in StarHub to BS Group Holdings. This sees Temasek’s stake reduced to 55.97 percent from 56.02 percent. The market value of StarHub stands at about $3.63 billion. (DealStreetAsia)
Malaysia plans to roll out a regulatory structure for digital currencies such as bitcoin. This move aims at preventing money-laundering and terrorism financing activities. (DealStreetAsia)
China:
Alibaba is to set up an R & D center for Alibaba Cloud in Guang Dong and will recruit 1000 cloud computing and AI engineers. This move is part of the tech mogul’s plan to push the use of cutting-edge technology in the real industrial world. While setting up an industrial cloud platform, Alibaba aims at serving 100 000 enterprises across the country. Some of the leading manufactory companies are already integrating Alibaba’s technology to upgrade their business module. (Alibaba Cloud)
Toutiao rolled out a plan to support 1000 accounts on its platform with more than one million fans, wishing to share a cup of the fan economy. Toutiao CEO Zhang Yiming announced the company’s focus is to shift from content delivery to smart social network. With its sophisticated AI technology, Toutiao will be able to help original content makers reach out to fans on the platform.
Tencent gets the exclusive rights to operate the hit game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds in China, while some players are unhappy about that and have left bad reviews on the digital distribution platform Steam.
License for online microlenders is expected to become extremely expensive in China as the country just rolled out a new policy to halt new approvals for online microlenders. Regulators are poised to regulate the potential speculation and license transfers. (Finance.Sina)
World:
Uber lost records on 57 million customers and drivers after hackers got access to a third-party code management host GitHub. It’s common for software developers to use GitHub as it facilitates collaboration and applications’ early-stage distributions. (Bloomberg)
Apple acquired AR headset startup Vrvana for around 30 million. On its website, the Montreal-based startup shows off its unreleased Totem headset which combines AR and VR technology to allow for both experiences on a single headset. This move is considered as the clearest indicator of Apple’s interest in AR hardware. (TechCrunch)
