Editor’s note:
Masayoshi Son, the man who founded SoftBank, has strengthened his grip on the global ride-hailing market after SoftBank becoming the dominant shareholder of Uber.
Apart from Uber, the ride-hailing companies that the Japanese conglomerate has invested in include China’s Didi Chuxing, India’s Ola, Singapore-based Grab, and Brazilian 99,
Kr-ASIA Daily is a five-minute read to brief you everything you need to know to start your day. We only choose the latest tech & startup news that is worth your time, with a focus on Southeast Asia and China.
Southeast Asia:
Thailand: Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group said it plans to invest Rs1,000 crore (approx. $156.8m) over the next five years to open wholesale stores in India. The group’s retail arm Siam Makro PCL will open 15 wholesale cash and carry stores in India starting with Delhi-NCR, over the next three years under a new brand ‘Lots Wholesale Solutions’ that the firm has created for this market. (Deal Street Asia)
Vietnam: NAH JSC, a new Vietnamese influencer and talent management platform, has raised a $200,000 seed round from local angel investors led by the founders of Cong Vang JSC (Golden Gate), the leading owner of several Vietnamese and foreign food brands. (Deal Street Asia)
The Philippines: State-run lender Land Bank of the Philippines (Landbank) has expressed interest to acquire up to 66.67 percent in fixed-income bourse Philippine Dealing System Holdings Corp (PDS Holdings). (Deal Street Asia)
Myanmar: The fledgeling startup ecosystem in Myanmar got a boost in 2017 with over a dozen venture capital deals recorded in the frontier market, according to data compiled by DEALSTREETASIA. (Deal Street Asia)
China:
WeChat rolled out its first staff-less pop-up store in Shanghai. (tech.sina)
Google and Tencent have agreed to share patents covering a range of products and technologies, an alliance between two of the world’s largest corporations. (Bloomberg)
Xiaomi is set to open 100 Xiaomi stores in India by 2019, according to Vice President at Xiaomi India Manu Jain. (tech.qq)
Baidu rolled out its live trivia game on its short video app Haokan. (qq)
News aggregator Yidianzixun launched its live trivia game on its app. (36Kr)
Staff-less in-car snack bar operator Mobile Go has closed a Series A funding round worth RMB 60 million (approx. USD 9.37 million) with participation from Hillhouse Capital, Didi Chuxing, IDG Capital and GSJ Venture. (36Kr)
Didi has officially launched its taxi and car-pooling services in Taiwan. (tech.qq)
According to people familiar with the matter, Xiaomi tends to get listed in Hong Kong. (Caixin)
Two Chinese smartphone manufacturers, OPPO and Vivo lost almost ten thousand sales points in India, as they have reduced the profit for retailers by 40%. (tech.sina)
Alipay users with Sesame credit over 550 can use the app to pay for their highway fees. (tech.sina)
In a bid to ramp up the content on its platform, Toutiao upgraded its content platform, allowing content makers to express themselves with images, short videos, short content, Q&A, etc. Content makers can also share the content across Toutiao’s subsidiary platforms. (36Kr)
PPDai is set to invest RMB 1 billion (approx. USD 155.8 million) in research in blockchain, financial cloud, and big data. (36Kr)
World:
SoftBank, Uber’s largest shareholder, has called for the ride-hailing group to concentrate on recovering market share in the US and key European markets. (ft)
Facebook, which is cutting the amount of news in its news feed, will prioritize information from the publishers that remain on the social network by measuring how trustworthy they are, the company said. (Bloomberg)
A South Korean consumer group has filed a criminal complaint against Apple CEO Tim Cook over slower iPhone devices, after probes in Europe into allegations the firm had deliberately shortened the life of its handsets. (Reuters)
Anthony Noto, a top Twitter executive, is in discussions to become the next chief executive of Social Finance, as the online lender grapples with accusations of improper workplace culture. (wsj)
Instagram tests new ‘Type’ feature for Stories and screenshot alerts. (The Next Web)
The chief executive officers of Google and YouTube pledged to scour videos and other content more closely for misleading news and inappropriate messages on their web services ahead of elections in the U.S later this year. (Bloomberg)
Amazon Go, the company’s first brick-and-mortar convenience store, will open to the public on Monday on the ground floor of Amazon’s new headquarters on Seventh Avenue in Seattle. (Recode)
WeChat says it now has 980 million monthly active users and 170 million daily active users for its Mini Program app platform, which now has 580,000 apps. (Technode)