SEA
Shopee and Grab have teamed up to allow shoppers in the Philippines to purchase merchandise on Shopee to be delivered by Grab on the same day. (TIA)
MySQUAR Ltd, an AIM-listed Myanmar-language social media, entertainment and payment platform, has acquired MyPAY Myanmar Ltd, a mobile payment operator. (Deal Street Asia)
Singapore’s online gaming startup Mighty Bear Games has raised “seven-digit US dollars” seed round. The round was led by Skycatcher, Everblue, and M Ventures among others. (e27)
Entertainment group Yeah1 will debut on Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange on June 26. (Deal Street Asia)
Indonesia’s P2P lending platform UangTeman appoints Sukan Makmuri, former Kudo, and Kaskus executive, as the company’s new Chief Technology and Operations Officer. (Deal Street Asia)
China
VIPKID, China’s leading online education company, announced on Thursday it has closed a USD 500 million Series D+ round co-led by Coatue, Tencent, Sequoia Capital China, and Yunfeng Capital, marking the world’s largest funding round in the online education sector to date. The Beijing-based company is now valued at over USD 20 billion. (KrASIA)
Meituan-Dianping is reportedly planning to file for its IPO this Friday. Its notable list of underwriters includes Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Huaxing Capital. (KrASIA)
India’s OYO Rooms, a hotel chain operator backed by SoftBank and Sequoia Capital India, officially launched in China. (TechCrunch)
Data service firm Jiguang is planning a US$300 million IPO in New York in the second half of this year. The company could be valued at between US$1.5 billion and US$2 billion. (WSJ)
Tencent Games has introduced a new service to curb high-spending behavior among underaged gamers. The service is dubbed “Underage User Game Spending Reminder”. (Technode)
Xiaomi will secure US$548 million from seven cornerstone investors, including Qualcomm for its HK IPO of up to US$6.1 billion. (Reuters)
Ofo seeks to break even by the end of 2018. In that light, the company introduced ‘ofo customer strategy’ in an internal meeting. (36Kr)
Rest of Asia
Naspers co-leads the US$210 million round in India’s largest online food ordering startup Swiggy with Russia’s DST Global. Existing investor Meituan-Dianping also participated in the round. (Deal Street Asia)
World
Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon and JPMorgan Chase & Co. named Atul Gawande as chief executive of their health care company for their employees in the US. Atul Gawande is a prominent surgeon and researcher. (WSJ)
Instagram forays into long-form video by launching IGTV, a video hub that will host vertical videos up to 60 minutes. (CNBC)
Tesla sued a former employee for stealing the company’s data and transferring it to “outside entities”. (WSJ)
Oracle claims its revenues from its cloud services businesses increased by 25% YoY to US$1.7 billion for its fiscal Q4 that ended May 31. (WSJ)
Microsoft has agreed to acquired AI startup Bonsai which specializes in reinforcement learning. (TechCrunch)
Gadgets
Xiaomi launched Mi Pocket Speaker 2 in India. The product comes with Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity, a 5W speaker, and a claimed 7-hour battery life with continuous music playback. (Gadgets360)
Good News Bad News
Local companies in Hong Kong are slow to adopt digital technologies despite a growing demand and strong interest in digitalization, as per a study by HSBC. (SCMP)
